In my precinct? I've never seen the same poll workers twice, and I've never recognized any of them, ever. I've never seen a familiar face in line at the polls (among the other voters). I've been voting consistently in local, state, and federal elections for over 25 years. 15 of those in the same precinct.
As for absentee voting: that strikes me as something we should handle with about the same grace that you'd handle correspondence with your bank. And of course, those all leave a nice paper trail, and can be easily reviewed/challenged if it comes to it. How would anyone who is a citizen, and has registered to vote, not be able to show some form of ID? How would someone doing something as important as voting considering themselves up to the sober civic task that it is, and consider themselves ill-used if they're not willing to protect their own precious vote by embracing a process that at least checks to make sure it's relatively honest? If someone shows up unprepared to actually show who they are, let them cast a provisional ballet that is only taken into account if the math shows it must be - and then it can be done under scrutiny.
If I legitimately vote, and the guy next to me (who already voted in his own precinct) is standing there saying he's his neighbor's dead grandfather, and votes contrary to my vote, I've just been effectively disenfranchised. There was just some news out of Connecticut, where a study found roughly 8000 votes had been cast by dead voters. In most cases, those were probably poll workers simply marking off the wrong name on the list (since nobody had been getting the dead people OFF the list, that's easier to do). But the point is you have no way of knowing. This is so simple with a driver's license, a passport - anything. I have no problem with the state issuing someone who has neither of those documents a photo ID as part of their voter regisration, if that's all they've got. But no more than they should be able to just verbally state a name at the poll, they should have to prove who they are when they register to vote in the first place. Otherwise, it's a complete disservice to those that do it legitimately.
So what you're really asking is what sort of evidence of tampering you should be sure to avoid leaving behind?
Right, he's not nearly as clever as his idealogical opponents, who prefer wholesale fraud through bogus enrollment and the use of dead people. That way the voting machines don't have to be tampered with at all... it's the identity of the person using it that has to be tampered with. And there are activist groups that get busted doing it every year, stuffing registration roles, trotting out thousands of dead voters, etc. Yes, just Google for groups like Acorn, and enjoy. High-tech tampering is WAY too much trouble. Just do what the activist callers says, sign the clipboard, get on the bus, and walk in and lie about who you are... that's why the people pitching the biggest fit about requiring simple forms of ID when casting votes aren't usually the Republicans.
It works on a small scale, but is unwieldy on a large scale, which is the real problem
And that's why Hillary Clinton was proposing that she'd be willing to attach the wages of people that didn't sign up for mandatory health insurance. It's a nice, warm, family-oriented thing to do.
And if you're right, that lowering the tax burden on both individuals and companies DOES NOT allow them to spend money on other things or invest in growth... then what's left? That raising taxes is better? You're saying that a higher tax burden helps companies grow, and helps families thrive, and helps money move around in the economy where it's most likely to reward the people who take risks and start companies to make things and employ people. If that's true, then you should be for doubling taxes. Quadrupling them... why not? Raist them ten-fold! If higher taxes are good, then even HIGHER taxes would be better, right? Or is it possible that you actually have specific target numbers that you think are actually the ideal tax rate for each and every area of economic activity? Not too little, not too much... pretty impressive if you've actually got all of that just right, and know how to take that tax money and use it through government agencies that, somehow, will be more efficient than private investment in creating jobs and economic activity. Do tell, really.
If Comcast has any sense they will try to hire the guys rather than drag them through the courts. We need people like this looking for and fixing flaws rather than exploiting them.
I have discovered that I can throw bricks through windows. But strangely, no glass manufacturers want to hire me to give them advice on the specifics of engineering brick-proof glass.
Reply all you want, it doesn't make you right, spanky.
Ah, but comparing spreading around ripped off DVDs to using the passenger seats in your car is what you consider a valid way to show that ripping off an artist is perfectly OK? If you don't like the way that an artist chooses to do business, then what is it about that artist that you find so compelling that you MUST have their work? Are you willing to look your favorite film director or musician in the eye and say that you think highly enough of them to want to use their creative efforts to entertain yourself, but not highly enough of them to respect their choices when it comes to dealing with them? Unusable analogies to your car, and lame ad hominem nonsense don't actually make your point... since your point can't be made. But then, most 8th graders don't really have debating or critical thinking down yet, so just relax. You'll get there.
And carpenters have to plan for people inviting friends over who never paid one cent toward the home yet still go inside anyway, and auto manufacturers have to plan on people riding in cars that they themselves never purchased.
Neither of which has anything at all to do with copyright infringement. Your house analogy might go better like this: it costs an architect hundreds of man hours to design a home, and you rip off his plans (hey, information wants to be free, right?) so that you can avoid bearing any of the costs for the benefits you get from his having done the work.
You're not reproducing your car when you give a friend a ride, any more than you're making extra copies of the CD you play for them while they're in the car. Reproducing the CD for them, so that they can skip out on paying, isn't the same as giving them a ride in the car you paid for, using the fuel you bought. Of course, you know that, and you're just hoping no one will bother replying to your comment.
Glad to see you understand that the copyright holders are not honoring the offered deal.
Nice try. But that IS the deal. And if I'm trying to scrape together millions of dollars to create a movie that involves the work of hundreds of supporting actors and technical people, that deal has to be taken into account. Unfortunately, these days, one also has to take into account that someone is going to simply burn a copy of the preview DVD sent to critics and "share" it with 1,000,000 of their very best, most personal friends. Just like a store has to plan for a certain amount of daily theft, and restaurants have to plan for a certain number of people enjoying the chef's work, and then ducking out on paying for it.
You think the people making bank are the ones creating the work? You ARE naive
The people making money are the people with whom the artist has decided to set up a business arrangement. It could be that their wife runs their publishing company, so SHE gets a piece, or it coule be that a musician is absolutely hopeless at running his own business affairs, and knows that he would never generate any income from playing a guitar and singing the blues unless he has people working for him to deal with recording, publication, event management, insurance, transportation, and all the rest. Even though you think those people should work for free, most artists don't (since they know they'd be stuck working for bar tips, otherwise). You want naive? Naive is thinking that earning a living as an artist is anything more than 5% creating artwork or performing unless someone else is doing all of that work for you. Earning a living as an artist means, first and foremost, running the business of selling the art. And most artists are horrible business people. It's completely rational to take a percentage of a much larger flow of cash than it is to settle for the NOTHING that you'd generate going nowhere on your own, or (as almost all small businesses do) just plain failing, usually in debt. Most talent can't produce anything to sell to enough people to matter, no matter who is making the money. But a larger record company can absorb those losses when they work with enough people. Naive would be you pretending that's not true. Well, naive or disengenuous, which is more likely.
By the "few" you mean... the people who actually go to the trouble of creating the work? Copyrights weren't established to encourage the release of work, they were established to give the people who do the work of creating them have some redress when someone else rips them off.
Endless? Well, I guess 70 years might seem endless to someone who's itching to make money off of someone else's work, rather than their own.
I'm already being ripped off by infinite copyright terms
How? Which infinitely copyrighted work is it, exactly, that is causing you to be ripped off? What is you're being forced to spend your money on, but not receiving?
Any time power is granted, bar none, it will be abused. This has nothing to do with the spirit of the judgment.
So, therefore there should be NO way to actually seek a remedy when someone is making money off of ripped-off copies of your work? Since all power corrupts, there should be no police, either? Or, should we consider the technical ability to rip off someone's work to be a form of power that we see being abused by millions of people too cheap to pay for their entertainment? Are you really of the "all power can be abused, so therefore no power should be granted to anyone" camp? Because the only thing that vapid philosophical position provides for is a vaccum in which a fuedal system arises. A constitutional framework is far more appropriate, and you know it.
The entire business model needs to fail for artists to ever see the money they're due.
There is only one business model, and only ever will be: it's called "the artist decides whether and how they want to try to sell their music." As folks here are so fond of pointing out, all sorts of musicians elect to sell CDs themselves, provide downloads for their fans, start their own labels, and succeed or fail along all sorts of fronts. The only people who are limiting choices are the "fans" that decide, regardless of how the artist they like has chosen to sell their work, that they're going to just rip it off. You are making the usual lame argument that musicians are too dumb to enter into a contract that works for them, and that only you are smart enough to know what's best for them, which is to rip off their music until it hurts them so badly that they choose some other entity to handle their business affairs in a way that you approve of. So, I'm sure they really appreciate your doing them the favor of ripping them off so that they can see how dumb they are, being good enough at entertaining you that you want their stuff, but too dumb otherwise, as adults, to choose business partners and delegate the non-music-making stuff to someone else in a way that suits you.
How many of the musicians you really like have you written to, saying, "Dear Band X: I really like your music, and hope you keep making more of it. But you are stupid, and need to listen to me, and change to a business model that doesn't involve me having to pay for your music. I have already changed my business relationship with you (a group of musicians I really like and respect, I gotta tell ya - that last album was great!), and have chosen the more efficient way to interact with you by just ripping off your work via a web site in Scandinavia. Now, I realize that instead of you getting only a percentage of a sale, you are now getting nothing. And I realize that you already have all sorts of other options, which you've elected not to pursue. So, I'm helping you by ripping you off. It's OK, you can thank me later. Anyway, please do hurry up on that next recording, OK? What does a fan have to do to get you guys to invest a little more time and resources in the studio so you can get your albums out a little more frequently? Love, Whirred. PS: can you send me a free t-shirt or something, for being your biggest fan?"
You know what percentage of a CD sale goes to the artist? Would 5 or 10% tops surprise you?
No. Would YOU be surprised how many musicians start their own labels so that they can be free from The Man, and then encourage up and coming musicians to sign with them so that they can give them the great deal that they, themselves, didn't get when they first started, and then... lo and behold, things like marketing costs, overhead, production costs, and the fact that only some of the talent they recruit do anything but cost them tons of money because - shockingly! - not every band you think is going somewhere has what it takes to sustain a fan base... well, gee, sometimes there just isn't more than 10% left to hand over. So, why doesn't EVERY band just handle all of their business matters, contracts, promotion, and all the rest entirely on their own? Because: shock! - then you're running a business, and don't have time to be a musician, producing the product that the business needs to sell in order to get everyone their food and rent money. Hey, I have an idea... let's hire someone to do that crap for us! What? A savvy business professional costs a lot money, and marketing is expensive when you're doing it only for yourself? Wait, I have a better idea... let's see if we can find someone who can do all of that for us, and since they're also doing that for a bunch of other people, it actually takes up LESS of our profit to have them do it. Yeah, that's called a record label. And musicians can CHOOSE whether or not to have one handle their business issues for them. And they do, with exactly the mixed results you'd expect, since not all musicians are equally good or smart.
Save for the really successful and heavily marketed artists, the record companies hardly pay them, either
Ah, well, then. I guess it's cool to steal their work then, after all.
Or are you saying that poor musicians - their simple minds so full of music and whatnot, and with not a single other professional musician's career out there for them to study and to understand - are, almost every one of them, unable to grasp the numbers that are put in front of them as they sign a contract? That thousands of musicians, every year, are actually the victims of fraud? That none of them can use internet forums, read magazines, or watch the news, and understand that very few of them can ever generate enough interest to make a living as recording artists? Or is it more likely that most of them know that, and are willing to settle for a piece of the action when they play live, and the chance that their recordings will generate enough interest that they and the publishing company with which they're working might actually hit it big? It's funny that while leaping to the defense of musicians, you're so quick to consider them all too dumb to understand the pros and cons of working with a record label. Do you ever wonder why some of the smarter musicians actually take their proceeds and start their own labels?
where artists are truly supported
So what matters, here, is YOUR decision about where an artist is truly support, not the artist herself? If she's got actual talent, she can pick and choose between hundreds of labels, agents, and variations on contracts. If she's talented as a musician, the odds are that she doesn't WANT to deal with the business side of what it takes make a living in that market, and do what it takes to generate the exposure to actually hit it big. A percentage of hitting it big is a far better deal than keeping 100% of never getting past playing bar gigs - or, it is for some people. And it's their choice. And you're saying that the only thing that stops you from not being even more active in depriving them of the choices that musicians make, is being afraid of getting caught. Way to respect the artists, there.
Business must either adapt to the marketplace or perish. People hand over cash when they feel they're getting value
So, do you sit down at a restaurant and eat a meal, and then decide what you'll be paying, or if you'll even pay?
It is not a marketplace when only one party involved is honoring the offered deal. If I offer to sell you a copy of a movie I've made, and you don't like the offer, or the packaging I put it in... just walk away. Or are you suggesting that you have a right to what I've created, regardless of my willingness to meet you in the marketplace and strike a deal? Business must adapt to the market in which they operate, but having your work ripped off is not something to which you can adapt... because that's not happening in a market, it's happening outside of the market. The vendor isn't participating when you choose to steal what they're selling. You and the vendor ARE participating when you look over their offer and walk away. That's honorable, and the business involved can choose to alter their sales pitch or product, or not.
Now, profits can be maintained through the erosion of freedoms
So, before you had the freedom to rip off an artist's work, and now your freedom to have them work for you for free has been eroded?
business has found another way and that's to infiltrate our government
So, George Lucas has infiltrated the government and you are now forced to go see Indiana Jones AND pay to do so? Or, do you just want to see movies without paying the people who invest in them and bring them to market the price they're asking, and without consequence? Which is it? If you're simply saying that you don't like what people charge for the services they're providing and the products they produce, why not simply stand up and show the intellectual integrity to not also go outside of the market in which that artist has chosen to work, and steal what they do? Whose freedoms are actually being eroded, in that situation? Not yours. You have the freedom to take, or leave, the offer that an artist gives you. When you make a third choice (to rip them off, instead), YOU'RE the one that's attacking the freedom and integrity of the marketplace. Don't want to pay, but still want someone to entertain you? Then find another artist who doesn't want to charge you. Any other choice is morally bankrupt. If the person who DOES want to charge you decides they'd like to chase you down and make a different offer under different terms, that's THEIR choice. Ripping them off means that you don't think they should have choice, and you would like to dictate to an artist the way they should spent their time and risk their capital. You can respect the artist by choosing whether or not to do business with them as they ask, or you can steal from them, in the name of dictating to them how you think they should do business. Gee, I wonder which of those positions is the one that isn't hypocrtical.
Yeah, that whole "not stealing people's work" way of looking at things is so quaint, isn't it? When you really respect an artist, and are glad they've managed to spend a couple of years and tons of money laboring over something that will be available for you to pay a latte's worth of cash to enjoy, the REAL way to show your respect for that artist is to rip off their work. Ideally, as a real monument to that artist, nobody would ever pay them, and they can just be your bankrupt entertainment slave. In fact, the more popular their work, the LESS rights they should have to influence how it's published, right? The best way to encourage new creative efforts is to punish the people who risk doing them. Because that, of course, will inspire them to spend a bunch more money and time making the next movie that you'll also rip off. Yeah, that's a much better, newer, hipper business model. Out of curiosity, do you enter into business transactions in which you have no say over whether or not you'll get paid for your work? Are you willing to invest years of your life and your financial credibility on something that, at the end of the project, someone else can say, "thanks, but if you don't mind, I'm now going to steal that from you..." ? No? You're cool with people ripping you off? Man, you sure have embraced the powerful new business model! No outdated old crap like "integrity" or anything getting in YOUR way, no sir!
No, this will just damage the "business" plans for those that set out, specifically, to direct people to content that the search engine and the people using it all know are pirated resources. When these sites promote themselves as ways to find ripped-off DVD images, have an entire atmosphere that revolves around perpetuating that notion, and show search results that are loaded with (rather than links to RottenTomatos.com or IMDB) bootleg copies of commercial material when you search by, for example, movie title... that's what this is all about. Running a web site that bumps into and indexes such content while also returning lots of legit links is very different than building a web site expressly to draw in people looking to rip off movies so that they can generate a few cents worth of click-through revenue by running "Hook Up With A Hottie" banner ads throughout the list of places you can get hold of a leaked Indiana Jones review DVD ISO or Season Two of Deadwood. When you run a web site that says or implies, "come here for help with ripping off the entertainment you want," then you shouldn't be surprised when the people who invest the money to make that entertainment go to some trouble to stop you when you deliberately, publicly, state that you'll help people (people too cheap to spend $3 so that they and their friends/family can watch a movie) rip them off.
Really? Which manners are those? I deal with people deep inside geek culture, and those as far away from it as possible. Some of the brightest, most articulate, well-mannered people I know are geeks. But then, that also describes some farmers I know. And some artists. On the other hand, taken as a group, the larger body of geeks with which I'm familiar also contains the biggest number of rude, snarky, grasping, deceitful, jerky, foul-mouthed louts I've ever encountered. Very bright people that don't just lack good manners, they aggressively pursue a manner and bearing that is confrontational, mean-spirited, hypocritical, often delusional and ultimately often self-destructive... even as they complain that nobody likes them. You all know who I'm talking about (or know who you are!).
I know some very inspiring geeks. But I don't find them to be any more numerous than I do inspiring fine artists, or even inspiring landscape designers, chefs, dog trainers, or English teachers. Every demographic has some. But few demographics have as many mal-adjusted asses per capita as do the geeks. I know, since I'm one of them. This whole concept is wrong. It's not "rise of the geeks" as seen in their online public forums and playgrounds. No, this is just "re-emergence of smart people who are able to communicate in interesting ways... and use technology to do it." The whole point is that technology is now to where you don't have to BE a geek in order to use it, and we're just seeing bright, interesting people from all walks materializing in places that USED to only include technologists.
It would not surprise me to learn that you work for M$ or some kind of PR firm under their hire
That's because it would really make you feel better if you could honestly discover that to be true. You want it to be true, because you're so invested in that fantasy that if you ever admit to yourself that it's a delusion, the psychic pain it will cause will really hurt you. Deep down, you rationally know that, but because you're afraid of the pain that will come with the shame of admitting you've been weaving a paranoid fantasy all this time, you just build up that house-of-cards narrative all the higher. Every comment you read about your own disconnected world view is just another card you're adding to the stack, because you find the habit of defending that broken world view to be - despite being actually badly damaged and damaging - just a case of inertia. You're so latched onto your fiction that your only constructive activity, now, is to add to it... and just make matters worse.
but it does not matter. No one here cares or listens, except to reflect, "Yeah, that's what M$ does to people who bad mouth them."
Except, that's not true, and you know it's not true. That's actually a lie. And you know it. And yet you repeat it, over and over again. I know you won't be able to actually address it such, and that's OK. You do, internally, know it. The only thing that's a shame is that someone who doesn't know better may actually have their reasoned understanding of a given situation on which you comment temporarily delayed, as they spend a little time dissecting your ramblings, and comparing them to reality. You've already decided to waste your life pretending that reality is different than it actually is. It's just unfortunate that your willingness to spend so much time at it - in a vain attempt to make it appear that you're sincere and being honest about it - may drag some other person, however briefly, into your unhappy relationship with reality. Ah, well.
How is this marked interesting? This is about the merchants (say, retailers or service providers, who have to push credit card revenue through their banks) having their aggregate incoming cash take by that channel reported. This would be rather helpful if you were to spot, say, an escort service collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars against a bank account owned by someone who only reports the income from their day job as a marketing consultant. Or a partnership running a restaurant for years on end, reporting far less income than would be normally associated with a particularly high credit card cash flow.
This isn't about the SHOPPERS, and isn't about transaction details.
No, most people don't select a board to post on (or a public forum in general) because its moderated/censored. You are not here because you thought: gee, I want to post on an uncensored board, but because of the content on/.
See, now, for your point to be valid, you'd need to back that up (about what "most" people do, or don't do). But since we both know perfectly well that forum moderation is a feature that some people DO appreciate, my point holds. People who do not want any moderation have that option, and people that DO want moderation have THAT option. Where's the censorship?
Slashdot's content would be nigh on useless without the mod system, funky as it is. By and large, it often does elevate the more useful comments into visibility. Without that, every reader would have to wade through every comment, regardless of the merit. It's imperfect, but it's a moderation system that is understood by all who choose to be here. If enough people didn't like it, they'd go somewhere else, or make somewhere else. And of course they have, and do, all the time.
Slashdot is heavily moderated at the content level. Without editorial oversight, there would be no quality check on the items that are posted here. Slashdot isn't "censored," it's edited and moderated.
there is only one board that I know of that... Fortunately the moderator doesn't usually do anything, but if she did, it might be an issue because its the only game in town
And what if she did? What would you do? Just give up, and scream "OMG, censorhip!" or would you just look for another board that meets your needs (and since the board you use now seems to, why are you so sure that another like it would not surface, if the current one started being moderated in a way that lowers its value to you, and presumably to others like you)? And if you know it's so valuable, and would miss it if the person running it decided to handle its content in a different way, you could either make the case that she should change it back, or you could just walk off and start your own. Still no censorship involved. No repressive authority is limiting your choices.
I don't choose to travel to China because its a repressive society, but because I want to observe or compete in the Olympics and that's where its being held.
You still have choice. You can simply not go. You're not forced to go participate in, or observe a sporting event that a large international committee was gullible enough to give to a country that promised an openess they, of course, won't deliver. China DOES censor, and if you want to subject yourself to it (as an American citizen) in order to get the benefits of some entertainment, well, then that's not your government censoring you, is it? You don't go to China because they are repressive, you go there, out of choice, despite the fact that they are. That really doesn't have anything to do with whether or not a moderated message board is an agent of censorship or not.
From the dictionary: censorial control exercised repressively
What you're missing here is the complete absence of any repression. You are not being "censored" (in the way that the word is both usefully used and somewhat in the way that it's commonly used) when you can find or create any number of other outlets to say what you will, when you will, both anonymously and not.
There's a reason that the terms "edited" and "moderated" are correctly used in cases like this. It's because to use the terms "censored" completely cheapens that word as it's used to describe its actual, repressive, authoritarian use as in (for the obvious examples these days) China, Iran, North Korea, etc. You don't experience repression when you use a moderated message board. You go there BECAUSE it's moderated. It's a choice. Censored public discourse restricts choice, while moderated discourse in which you choose to participate is itself the expression of choice.
If you choose to assign it a negative connotation to the word, that is your prerogative.
You didn't find the connotation of the word, as trotted out in the summary, to already be dripping with negativity? The summary correctly assigns a repressive tone to the word "censorship," but is completely tone-deaf in applying it to the topic being discussed, where it's not meaningful.
Censored? Do we mean, less melodramatically, "moderated"?
Really. I'm surprised the summary didn't say, "One site, run by fascists, gets less traffic from nice people like me."
Of all of the terms that get tortured out of proper use (on this board, esepcially), "censorship" is one of most abused. When you choose to go make use of a service (like an online forum), one of the things you consider is whether or not the rules of that gathering's discourse are useful to you, or not. It's called freedom of association, and it's the exact opposite of censorship. Censorship would involve a central authority, backed up by force, that would impact all public discourse in the same way. That central government authority is not present in this case. Censorship is not happening. There's nothing stopping anyone from just starting up another board that DOES tolerate any nonsense anyone wants to post.
There are all sorts of forums that are only worth a damn because they ARE moderated. That's not censorship, it's quality control. People who call it censorship probably also complain that there are rules in pick-up basketball games among people who gather to play them, or that not every church uses the hymn book they think should be used, or that the politcal party they hate has primary elections according that party's own preferences.
Slashdot has opted not to run with at least a few of my submitted articles over the years. Censorship? Give me a break.
I vote for a full two or three year run on HBO of an entire series - a la Rome or Deadwood - from Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Sex, science, swashbuckling, financial intrigue, calculus intrigue (!), cruel violence, funny violence, equal opportunity culture skewering, history, romance, and at least a couple of scenes out of Scooby Doo (only with dire consequences). It would be right up HBO's alley.
Slashdot Mirror
In my precinct? I've never seen the same poll workers twice, and I've never recognized any of them, ever. I've never seen a familiar face in line at the polls (among the other voters). I've been voting consistently in local, state, and federal elections for over 25 years. 15 of those in the same precinct. As for absentee voting: that strikes me as something we should handle with about the same grace that you'd handle correspondence with your bank. And of course, those all leave a nice paper trail, and can be easily reviewed/challenged if it comes to it. How would anyone who is a citizen, and has registered to vote, not be able to show some form of ID? How would someone doing something as important as voting considering themselves up to the sober civic task that it is, and consider themselves ill-used if they're not willing to protect their own precious vote by embracing a process that at least checks to make sure it's relatively honest? If someone shows up unprepared to actually show who they are, let them cast a provisional ballet that is only taken into account if the math shows it must be - and then it can be done under scrutiny.
to ensure that people are not kept from voting
If I legitimately vote, and the guy next to me (who already voted in his own precinct) is standing there saying he's his neighbor's dead grandfather, and votes contrary to my vote, I've just been effectively disenfranchised. There was just some news out of Connecticut, where a study found roughly 8000 votes had been cast by dead voters. In most cases, those were probably poll workers simply marking off the wrong name on the list (since nobody had been getting the dead people OFF the list, that's easier to do). But the point is you have no way of knowing. This is so simple with a driver's license, a passport - anything. I have no problem with the state issuing someone who has neither of those documents a photo ID as part of their voter regisration, if that's all they've got. But no more than they should be able to just verbally state a name at the poll, they should have to prove who they are when they register to vote in the first place. Otherwise, it's a complete disservice to those that do it legitimately.
So what you're really asking is what sort of evidence of tampering you should be sure to avoid leaving behind?
Right, he's not nearly as clever as his idealogical opponents, who prefer wholesale fraud through bogus enrollment and the use of dead people. That way the voting machines don't have to be tampered with at all... it's the identity of the person using it that has to be tampered with. And there are activist groups that get busted doing it every year, stuffing registration roles, trotting out thousands of dead voters, etc. Yes, just Google for groups like Acorn, and enjoy. High-tech tampering is WAY too much trouble. Just do what the activist callers says, sign the clipboard, get on the bus, and walk in and lie about who you are... that's why the people pitching the biggest fit about requiring simple forms of ID when casting votes aren't usually the Republicans.
It works on a small scale, but is unwieldy on a large scale, which is the real problem
And that's why Hillary Clinton was proposing that she'd be willing to attach the wages of people that didn't sign up for mandatory health insurance. It's a nice, warm, family-oriented thing to do.
Taxes are a reality of doing business
And if you're right, that lowering the tax burden on both individuals and companies DOES NOT allow them to spend money on other things or invest in growth... then what's left? That raising taxes is better? You're saying that a higher tax burden helps companies grow, and helps families thrive, and helps money move around in the economy where it's most likely to reward the people who take risks and start companies to make things and employ people. If that's true, then you should be for doubling taxes. Quadrupling them... why not? Raist them ten-fold! If higher taxes are good, then even HIGHER taxes would be better, right? Or is it possible that you actually have specific target numbers that you think are actually the ideal tax rate for each and every area of economic activity? Not too little, not too much... pretty impressive if you've actually got all of that just right, and know how to take that tax money and use it through government agencies that, somehow, will be more efficient than private investment in creating jobs and economic activity. Do tell, really.
If Comcast has any sense they will try to hire the guys rather than drag them through the courts. We need people like this looking for and fixing flaws rather than exploiting them.
I have discovered that I can throw bricks through windows. But strangely, no glass manufacturers want to hire me to give them advice on the specifics of engineering brick-proof glass.
Reply all you want, it doesn't make you right, spanky.
Ah, but comparing spreading around ripped off DVDs to using the passenger seats in your car is what you consider a valid way to show that ripping off an artist is perfectly OK? If you don't like the way that an artist chooses to do business, then what is it about that artist that you find so compelling that you MUST have their work? Are you willing to look your favorite film director or musician in the eye and say that you think highly enough of them to want to use their creative efforts to entertain yourself, but not highly enough of them to respect their choices when it comes to dealing with them? Unusable analogies to your car, and lame ad hominem nonsense don't actually make your point... since your point can't be made. But then, most 8th graders don't really have debating or critical thinking down yet, so just relax. You'll get there.
And carpenters have to plan for people inviting friends over who never paid one cent toward the home yet still go inside anyway, and auto manufacturers have to plan on people riding in cars that they themselves never purchased.
Neither of which has anything at all to do with copyright infringement. Your house analogy might go better like this: it costs an architect hundreds of man hours to design a home, and you rip off his plans (hey, information wants to be free, right?) so that you can avoid bearing any of the costs for the benefits you get from his having done the work.
You're not reproducing your car when you give a friend a ride, any more than you're making extra copies of the CD you play for them while they're in the car. Reproducing the CD for them, so that they can skip out on paying, isn't the same as giving them a ride in the car you paid for, using the fuel you bought. Of course, you know that, and you're just hoping no one will bother replying to your comment.
Glad to see you understand that the copyright holders are not honoring the offered deal.
Nice try. But that IS the deal. And if I'm trying to scrape together millions of dollars to create a movie that involves the work of hundreds of supporting actors and technical people, that deal has to be taken into account. Unfortunately, these days, one also has to take into account that someone is going to simply burn a copy of the preview DVD sent to critics and "share" it with 1,000,000 of their very best, most personal friends. Just like a store has to plan for a certain amount of daily theft, and restaurants have to plan for a certain number of people enjoying the chef's work, and then ducking out on paying for it.
You think the people making bank are the ones creating the work? You ARE naive
The people making money are the people with whom the artist has decided to set up a business arrangement. It could be that their wife runs their publishing company, so SHE gets a piece, or it coule be that a musician is absolutely hopeless at running his own business affairs, and knows that he would never generate any income from playing a guitar and singing the blues unless he has people working for him to deal with recording, publication, event management, insurance, transportation, and all the rest. Even though you think those people should work for free, most artists don't (since they know they'd be stuck working for bar tips, otherwise). You want naive? Naive is thinking that earning a living as an artist is anything more than 5% creating artwork or performing unless someone else is doing all of that work for you. Earning a living as an artist means, first and foremost, running the business of selling the art. And most artists are horrible business people. It's completely rational to take a percentage of a much larger flow of cash than it is to settle for the NOTHING that you'd generate going nowhere on your own, or (as almost all small businesses do) just plain failing, usually in debt. Most talent can't produce anything to sell to enough people to matter, no matter who is making the money. But a larger record company can absorb those losses when they work with enough people. Naive would be you pretending that's not true. Well, naive or disengenuous, which is more likely.
an endless revenue stream for the few
By the "few" you mean... the people who actually go to the trouble of creating the work? Copyrights weren't established to encourage the release of work, they were established to give the people who do the work of creating them have some redress when someone else rips them off.
Endless? Well, I guess 70 years might seem endless to someone who's itching to make money off of someone else's work, rather than their own.
I'm already being ripped off by infinite copyright terms
How? Which infinitely copyrighted work is it, exactly, that is causing you to be ripped off? What is you're being forced to spend your money on, but not receiving?
Any time power is granted, bar none, it will be abused. This has nothing to do with the spirit of the judgment.
So, therefore there should be NO way to actually seek a remedy when someone is making money off of ripped-off copies of your work? Since all power corrupts, there should be no police, either? Or, should we consider the technical ability to rip off someone's work to be a form of power that we see being abused by millions of people too cheap to pay for their entertainment? Are you really of the "all power can be abused, so therefore no power should be granted to anyone" camp? Because the only thing that vapid philosophical position provides for is a vaccum in which a fuedal system arises. A constitutional framework is far more appropriate, and you know it.
The entire business model needs to fail for artists to ever see the money they're due.
There is only one business model, and only ever will be: it's called "the artist decides whether and how they want to try to sell their music." As folks here are so fond of pointing out, all sorts of musicians elect to sell CDs themselves, provide downloads for their fans, start their own labels, and succeed or fail along all sorts of fronts. The only people who are limiting choices are the "fans" that decide, regardless of how the artist they like has chosen to sell their work, that they're going to just rip it off. You are making the usual lame argument that musicians are too dumb to enter into a contract that works for them, and that only you are smart enough to know what's best for them, which is to rip off their music until it hurts them so badly that they choose some other entity to handle their business affairs in a way that you approve of. So, I'm sure they really appreciate your doing them the favor of ripping them off so that they can see how dumb they are, being good enough at entertaining you that you want their stuff, but too dumb otherwise, as adults, to choose business partners and delegate the non-music-making stuff to someone else in a way that suits you.
How many of the musicians you really like have you written to, saying, "Dear Band X: I really like your music, and hope you keep making more of it. But you are stupid, and need to listen to me, and change to a business model that doesn't involve me having to pay for your music. I have already changed my business relationship with you (a group of musicians I really like and respect, I gotta tell ya - that last album was great!), and have chosen the more efficient way to interact with you by just ripping off your work via a web site in Scandinavia. Now, I realize that instead of you getting only a percentage of a sale, you are now getting nothing. And I realize that you already have all sorts of other options, which you've elected not to pursue. So, I'm helping you by ripping you off. It's OK, you can thank me later. Anyway, please do hurry up on that next recording, OK? What does a fan have to do to get you guys to invest a little more time and resources in the studio so you can get your albums out a little more frequently? Love, Whirred. PS: can you send me a free t-shirt or something, for being your biggest fan?"
You know what percentage of a CD sale goes to the artist? Would 5 or 10% tops surprise you?
No. Would YOU be surprised how many musicians start their own labels so that they can be free from The Man, and then encourage up and coming musicians to sign with them so that they can give them the great deal that they, themselves, didn't get when they first started, and then... lo and behold, things like marketing costs, overhead, production costs, and the fact that only some of the talent they recruit do anything but cost them tons of money because - shockingly! - not every band you think is going somewhere has what it takes to sustain a fan base... well, gee, sometimes there just isn't more than 10% left to hand over. So, why doesn't EVERY band just handle all of their business matters, contracts, promotion, and all the rest entirely on their own? Because: shock! - then you're running a business, and don't have time to be a musician, producing the product that the business needs to sell in order to get everyone their food and rent money. Hey, I have an idea... let's hire someone to do that crap for us! What? A savvy business professional costs a lot money, and marketing is expensive when you're doing it only for yourself? Wait, I have a better idea... let's see if we can find someone who can do all of that for us, and since they're also doing that for a bunch of other people, it actually takes up LESS of our profit to have them do it. Yeah, that's called a record label. And musicians can CHOOSE whether or not to have one handle their business issues for them. And they do, with exactly the mixed results you'd expect, since not all musicians are equally good or smart.
Save for the really successful and heavily marketed artists, the record companies hardly pay them, either
Ah, well, then. I guess it's cool to steal their work then, after all.
Or are you saying that poor musicians - their simple minds so full of music and whatnot, and with not a single other professional musician's career out there for them to study and to understand - are, almost every one of them, unable to grasp the numbers that are put in front of them as they sign a contract? That thousands of musicians, every year, are actually the victims of fraud? That none of them can use internet forums, read magazines, or watch the news, and understand that very few of them can ever generate enough interest to make a living as recording artists? Or is it more likely that most of them know that, and are willing to settle for a piece of the action when they play live, and the chance that their recordings will generate enough interest that they and the publishing company with which they're working might actually hit it big? It's funny that while leaping to the defense of musicians, you're so quick to consider them all too dumb to understand the pros and cons of working with a record label. Do you ever wonder why some of the smarter musicians actually take their proceeds and start their own labels?
where artists are truly supported
So what matters, here, is YOUR decision about where an artist is truly support, not the artist herself? If she's got actual talent, she can pick and choose between hundreds of labels, agents, and variations on contracts. If she's talented as a musician, the odds are that she doesn't WANT to deal with the business side of what it takes make a living in that market, and do what it takes to generate the exposure to actually hit it big. A percentage of hitting it big is a far better deal than keeping 100% of never getting past playing bar gigs - or, it is for some people. And it's their choice. And you're saying that the only thing that stops you from not being even more active in depriving them of the choices that musicians make, is being afraid of getting caught. Way to respect the artists, there.
Business must either adapt to the marketplace or perish. People hand over cash when they feel they're getting value
So, do you sit down at a restaurant and eat a meal, and then decide what you'll be paying, or if you'll even pay?
It is not a marketplace when only one party involved is honoring the offered deal. If I offer to sell you a copy of a movie I've made, and you don't like the offer, or the packaging I put it in... just walk away. Or are you suggesting that you have a right to what I've created, regardless of my willingness to meet you in the marketplace and strike a deal? Business must adapt to the market in which they operate, but having your work ripped off is not something to which you can adapt... because that's not happening in a market, it's happening outside of the market. The vendor isn't participating when you choose to steal what they're selling. You and the vendor ARE participating when you look over their offer and walk away. That's honorable, and the business involved can choose to alter their sales pitch or product, or not.
Now, profits can be maintained through the erosion of freedoms
So, before you had the freedom to rip off an artist's work, and now your freedom to have them work for you for free has been eroded?
business has found another way and that's to infiltrate our government
So, George Lucas has infiltrated the government and you are now forced to go see Indiana Jones AND pay to do so? Or, do you just want to see movies without paying the people who invest in them and bring them to market the price they're asking, and without consequence? Which is it? If you're simply saying that you don't like what people charge for the services they're providing and the products they produce, why not simply stand up and show the intellectual integrity to not also go outside of the market in which that artist has chosen to work, and steal what they do? Whose freedoms are actually being eroded, in that situation? Not yours. You have the freedom to take, or leave, the offer that an artist gives you. When you make a third choice (to rip them off, instead), YOU'RE the one that's attacking the freedom and integrity of the marketplace. Don't want to pay, but still want someone to entertain you? Then find another artist who doesn't want to charge you. Any other choice is morally bankrupt. If the person who DOES want to charge you decides they'd like to chase you down and make a different offer under different terms, that's THEIR choice. Ripping them off means that you don't think they should have choice, and you would like to dictate to an artist the way they should spent their time and risk their capital. You can respect the artist by choosing whether or not to do business with them as they ask, or you can steal from them, in the name of dictating to them how you think they should do business. Gee, I wonder which of those positions is the one that isn't hypocrtical.
protect your outdated business model
Yeah, that whole "not stealing people's work" way of looking at things is so quaint, isn't it? When you really respect an artist, and are glad they've managed to spend a couple of years and tons of money laboring over something that will be available for you to pay a latte's worth of cash to enjoy, the REAL way to show your respect for that artist is to rip off their work. Ideally, as a real monument to that artist, nobody would ever pay them, and they can just be your bankrupt entertainment slave. In fact, the more popular their work, the LESS rights they should have to influence how it's published, right? The best way to encourage new creative efforts is to punish the people who risk doing them. Because that, of course, will inspire them to spend a bunch more money and time making the next movie that you'll also rip off. Yeah, that's a much better, newer, hipper business model. Out of curiosity, do you enter into business transactions in which you have no say over whether or not you'll get paid for your work? Are you willing to invest years of your life and your financial credibility on something that, at the end of the project, someone else can say, "thanks, but if you don't mind, I'm now going to steal that from you..." ? No? You're cool with people ripping you off? Man, you sure have embraced the powerful new business model! No outdated old crap like "integrity" or anything getting in YOUR way, no sir!
This will break the internet.
No, this will just damage the "business" plans for those that set out, specifically, to direct people to content that the search engine and the people using it all know are pirated resources. When these sites promote themselves as ways to find ripped-off DVD images, have an entire atmosphere that revolves around perpetuating that notion, and show search results that are loaded with (rather than links to RottenTomatos.com or IMDB) bootleg copies of commercial material when you search by, for example, movie title... that's what this is all about. Running a web site that bumps into and indexes such content while also returning lots of legit links is very different than building a web site expressly to draw in people looking to rip off movies so that they can generate a few cents worth of click-through revenue by running "Hook Up With A Hottie" banner ads throughout the list of places you can get hold of a leaked Indiana Jones review DVD ISO or Season Two of Deadwood. When you run a web site that says or implies, "come here for help with ripping off the entertainment you want," then you shouldn't be surprised when the people who invest the money to make that entertainment go to some trouble to stop you when you deliberately, publicly, state that you'll help people (people too cheap to spend $3 so that they and their friends/family can watch a movie) rip them off.
Really? Which manners are those? I deal with people deep inside geek culture, and those as far away from it as possible. Some of the brightest, most articulate, well-mannered people I know are geeks. But then, that also describes some farmers I know. And some artists. On the other hand, taken as a group, the larger body of geeks with which I'm familiar also contains the biggest number of rude, snarky, grasping, deceitful, jerky, foul-mouthed louts I've ever encountered. Very bright people that don't just lack good manners, they aggressively pursue a manner and bearing that is confrontational, mean-spirited, hypocritical, often delusional and ultimately often self-destructive... even as they complain that nobody likes them. You all know who I'm talking about (or know who you are!).
I know some very inspiring geeks. But I don't find them to be any more numerous than I do inspiring fine artists, or even inspiring landscape designers, chefs, dog trainers, or English teachers. Every demographic has some. But few demographics have as many mal-adjusted asses per capita as do the geeks. I know, since I'm one of them. This whole concept is wrong. It's not "rise of the geeks" as seen in their online public forums and playgrounds. No, this is just "re-emergence of smart people who are able to communicate in interesting ways
It would not surprise me to learn that you work for M$ or some kind of PR firm under their hire
That's because it would really make you feel better if you could honestly discover that to be true. You want it to be true, because you're so invested in that fantasy that if you ever admit to yourself that it's a delusion, the psychic pain it will cause will really hurt you. Deep down, you rationally know that, but because you're afraid of the pain that will come with the shame of admitting you've been weaving a paranoid fantasy all this time, you just build up that house-of-cards narrative all the higher. Every comment you read about your own disconnected world view is just another card you're adding to the stack, because you find the habit of defending that broken world view to be - despite being actually badly damaged and damaging - just a case of inertia. You're so latched onto your fiction that your only constructive activity, now, is to add to it... and just make matters worse.
but it does not matter. No one here cares or listens, except to reflect, "Yeah, that's what M$ does to people who bad mouth them."
Except, that's not true, and you know it's not true. That's actually a lie. And you know it. And yet you repeat it, over and over again. I know you won't be able to actually address it such, and that's OK. You do, internally, know it. The only thing that's a shame is that someone who doesn't know better may actually have their reasoned understanding of a given situation on which you comment temporarily delayed, as they spend a little time dissecting your ramblings, and comparing them to reality. You've already decided to waste your life pretending that reality is different than it actually is. It's just unfortunate that your willingness to spend so much time at it - in a vain attempt to make it appear that you're sincere and being honest about it - may drag some other person, however briefly, into your unhappy relationship with reality. Ah, well.
How is this marked interesting? This is about the merchants (say, retailers or service providers, who have to push credit card revenue through their banks) having their aggregate incoming cash take by that channel reported. This would be rather helpful if you were to spot, say, an escort service collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars against a bank account owned by someone who only reports the income from their day job as a marketing consultant. Or a partnership running a restaurant for years on end, reporting far less income than would be normally associated with a particularly high credit card cash flow. This isn't about the SHOPPERS, and isn't about transaction details.
No, most people don't select a board to post on (or a public forum in general) because its moderated/censored. You are not here because you thought: gee, I want to post on an uncensored board, but because of the content on /.
... Fortunately the moderator doesn't usually do anything, but if she did, it might be an issue because its the only game in town
See, now, for your point to be valid, you'd need to back that up (about what "most" people do, or don't do). But since we both know perfectly well that forum moderation is a feature that some people DO appreciate, my point holds. People who do not want any moderation have that option, and people that DO want moderation have THAT option. Where's the censorship?
Slashdot's content would be nigh on useless without the mod system, funky as it is. By and large, it often does elevate the more useful comments into visibility. Without that, every reader would have to wade through every comment, regardless of the merit. It's imperfect, but it's a moderation system that is understood by all who choose to be here. If enough people didn't like it, they'd go somewhere else, or make somewhere else. And of course they have, and do, all the time.
Slashdot is heavily moderated at the content level. Without editorial oversight, there would be no quality check on the items that are posted here. Slashdot isn't "censored," it's edited and moderated.
there is only one board that I know of that
And what if she did? What would you do? Just give up, and scream "OMG, censorhip!" or would you just look for another board that meets your needs (and since the board you use now seems to, why are you so sure that another like it would not surface, if the current one started being moderated in a way that lowers its value to you, and presumably to others like you)? And if you know it's so valuable, and would miss it if the person running it decided to handle its content in a different way, you could either make the case that she should change it back, or you could just walk off and start your own. Still no censorship involved. No repressive authority is limiting your choices.
I don't choose to travel to China because its a repressive society, but because I want to observe or compete in the Olympics and that's where its being held.
You still have choice. You can simply not go. You're not forced to go participate in, or observe a sporting event that a large international committee was gullible enough to give to a country that promised an openess they, of course, won't deliver. China DOES censor, and if you want to subject yourself to it (as an American citizen) in order to get the benefits of some entertainment, well, then that's not your government censoring you, is it? You don't go to China because they are repressive, you go there, out of choice, despite the fact that they are. That really doesn't have anything to do with whether or not a moderated message board is an agent of censorship or not.
You are wrong
Not really.
From the dictionary: censorial control exercised repressively
What you're missing here is the complete absence of any repression. You are not being "censored" (in the way that the word is both usefully used and somewhat in the way that it's commonly used) when you can find or create any number of other outlets to say what you will, when you will, both anonymously and not.
There's a reason that the terms "edited" and "moderated" are correctly used in cases like this. It's because to use the terms "censored" completely cheapens that word as it's used to describe its actual, repressive, authoritarian use as in (for the obvious examples these days) China, Iran, North Korea, etc. You don't experience repression when you use a moderated message board. You go there BECAUSE it's moderated. It's a choice. Censored public discourse restricts choice, while moderated discourse in which you choose to participate is itself the expression of choice.
If you choose to assign it a negative connotation to the word, that is your prerogative.
You didn't find the connotation of the word, as trotted out in the summary, to already be dripping with negativity? The summary correctly assigns a repressive tone to the word "censorship," but is completely tone-deaf in applying it to the topic being discussed, where it's not meaningful.
Censored? Do we mean, less melodramatically, "moderated"?
Really. I'm surprised the summary didn't say, "One site, run by fascists, gets less traffic from nice people like me."
Of all of the terms that get tortured out of proper use (on this board, esepcially), "censorship" is one of most abused. When you choose to go make use of a service (like an online forum), one of the things you consider is whether or not the rules of that gathering's discourse are useful to you, or not. It's called freedom of association, and it's the exact opposite of censorship. Censorship would involve a central authority, backed up by force, that would impact all public discourse in the same way. That central government authority is not present in this case. Censorship is not happening. There's nothing stopping anyone from just starting up another board that DOES tolerate any nonsense anyone wants to post.
There are all sorts of forums that are only worth a damn because they ARE moderated. That's not censorship, it's quality control. People who call it censorship probably also complain that there are rules in pick-up basketball games among people who gather to play them, or that not every church uses the hymn book they think should be used, or that the politcal party they hate has primary elections according that party's own preferences.
Slashdot has opted not to run with at least a few of my submitted articles over the years. Censorship? Give me a break.
I vote for a full two or three year run on HBO of an entire series - a la Rome or Deadwood - from Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. Sex, science, swashbuckling, financial intrigue, calculus intrigue (!), cruel violence, funny violence, equal opportunity culture skewering, history, romance, and at least a couple of scenes out of Scooby Doo (only with dire consequences). It would be right up HBO's alley.