I do think your comment is insightful, up until the point where you call for us to contact our government representative.
This is not terrorism, and it is exactly the kind of thing we do NOT want the government involved in. I ask, what can the government do with legislation? Aren't these spammers already outside of our borders? It seems to me that a service that everyone likes alot can find a market solution to people trying to disrupt it. That has been the beauty of the internet so far, let everyone on and see what happens.
This is just my armchair philosophy, I don't really know anything, I'm just sure that asking the government to fix this problem is fruitless and most likely damaging. Especially since they will introduce the bill against "cyberterrorists"
If you want to be reasonable you should take an introductory course in economics. Just because you are buying from the US does not mean you are automatically doing the best thing for the US economy.
The concept is called relative advantage. Due to the situations being what they are, The US has been a leader in science and education for a while now, and China has lots of cheap labor. So the computer was first made by a handful of scientists in America, it was expensive as hell and there were very few of them. As the scientists better understood the computer and were able to commoditize its production it became cheaper and more accessible. Computers have now gotten to the point where they are pretty much a commodity, and manufacturing them at the cheapest cost is important inorder to meet the demand.
So China has the relative advantage of manufacturing, while Americans are still the leader in business and software. If you really want to do something good for the US stand up and proclaim that you want better education systems! If we are going to lose status in the world economy it wont be because we are buying foreign products, it will be because we got fat and lazy.
Just google Comparative Advantage if you want to know more about it.
I'm registered as a Democrat, but have you already forgotten who signed the DMCA into law? I don't think we can rely on either major party to keep our internet free.
Why? Don't you know that technology is a tool and is not inherently good or evil. That's our arguement in defense of bittorrent, and you want to turn around and use the same logic as the RIAA??
The power of bittorrent is not that people hold hands and share love, its that they hold hands inorder to diffuse the cost of distribution. It should be no surprise that a large company takes advantage of a tool that could make distribution more efficient. I really don't see how they are throwing anything into the "mix" whatever that is. You are just using selective logic =\
Somehow I don't think that technology is every going to stop those people from being retards. This is not a valid argument against an easy option to turn of traction control. You are misdirecting responsibility onto the car manufacturer, they are supposed to build the best cars not the safest trains. Asking a car to make a person a safe driver is a huuuge request, what happened at the DARPA challenge again?
How is this comment informative? Besides being wrong it has no substance.
"That's how it is"
What kind of contribution is that? It doesn't even make sense, requiring a license for an email server is how it is?
It is a stupid law that does nothing to help free speech, but its most definately not "the way it is"
"The way it is" is that those internet users mostly play video games and read up on entertainment, just like their valiant counterparts in the West. The way it is is a few dissidents trying to get information who are techsavvy enough not to use plaintext email in the first place (except for that Yahoo blogger, hmm American run...)
The way it is is not what you say it is, things are much more complicated than most people are comfortable with discussing, but we can try if you want.
because nobody in America wants to make that crap. It's called specialization. You pay for things so that you don't have to waste your time doing them yourself, like manufacturing textiles or computer parts. Garaunteed you're running Chinese hardware or at least contributing to the sale of it by posting on slashdot.
I suppose I just have too much faith in the internet and freedom. The weirdest thing is how insignificant this law is. First we can compare it to more effective regulations on internet communications, then we could compare it to the various human rights violations. Then if we remember how insecure and non-private email is, we see that this is the government grasping at straws.
Lets think about email for a second. If I send an email out, how many webservers does it pass through? How many cache it? If I decide its private but my recipient (or my recipient's boss) decides its not, sucks for me! Plain text email feels private but its far from it. Here in Florida I could use Sunshine laws to get all emails from any school account, since I attend a state school. I think email would be the last place to put sensitive information if you know what you were doing in the slightest. Maybe if you were using encryption on the text, and with that the level of security you have wont change with who is running the email server.
The way I look at China is that the government is losing the war on information just like the feds here are losing the war on drugs. They have their firewall and now their email control, but they cannot stop the disseminating of information. Forums and IMs fire off whenever there is something interesting banned. Only a small fraction of the country is wired as of yet, the rest are too poor. While their economy continues on the rise I am betting that their freedoms will grow.
In the mean time we can all sit here and bitch about how terrible their attacks on civil liberty are and not do anything about the reckless disregard for the constitution by both parties here.
I used to feel this way... and the way things are going it gets more tempting, but I really don't think we are at the end of the world.
It's easy to point to a slippery slope and cry for the armaggedon, but think of how many generations have thought the same, only to never see it happen? What about McCarthyism, the Cold War, Vietnam? I do not believe every time you lose a right you lose it for good, I think there is an ebb and flow when it comes to civil liberties.
I do agree that there has got to be a line somewhere, there is a point where its not just coffee and donuts and things actually deteriorate into a police state. I just think that doom-sayers lose a lot of credibility because they are inspiring out of fear. Provoking people to action out of fear is the same thing that the crooked administration is doing now.
I meant to say the opposite, my bad! What I mean is that I do believe in democracy, and that it can be done, its just that we cant just expect China to just drop everything all over again when they seem to be doing fine and making progress.
sorry for the confusion.
I appreciate the informative reply. I even agree with your point that a 1 billion person society needs communism rather than democracy. I think my feelings align with yours, not wanting a bloody revolution. My point is that the path to democracy might seem slow right now, but I think its on track.
Unfortunately I have not spent as much energy learning about India's past, and I would appreciate it if you enlightened me on the subject.
From the little I do know I presume you are referring to their reasonably successful conversion to democracy. The only comment I have on that now is that India was under colonized rule for a long while, and they switched to democracy the moment of their independance in 1945. I think this is a very large difference, and it is the type of oversimplification I was trying to argue against. The two cultures are also very different. Perhaps if I knew more about India's history I would be better able to judge the comparison.
As far as being a devil's advocate, I appreciate the compliment. Sometimes even the Devil is innocent. I would encourage you to consider who the devil is,however, the government or the people? Try thinking from other peoples perspective sometime, you might realize you are the devil needing an advocate;)
I am going to take an extremely unpopular position here, just to try and give people some perspective.
The flamebait version is China's censorship is not a bad thing.
Now to explain.
China is a much different country than the United States (as an American I will be referring to the US exclusively, a lot applies to other free western nations). Our country was founded on the principles of individual liberties and freedom. 200 years ago we got a fresh start and set out to do things right, and for the most part its worked pretty well.
Now lets look at China. This country has a written history of over 2000 years. In the last hundred years China has seen more revolution and social change than the U.S. ever has, even if you include the American Revolution. In the 1910s China overthrew their last Dynasty. What resulted was 10-20 years of civil war between regional warlords. Then communism came along, sweeping the nation with promises of food for everybody. They were opposed with the Nationalist party. 20 more years of civil war and struggle until the Nationalist party was forced to flee to Taiwan. Mao Zedong became president but had to step aside because of the political atmosphere. When he regained power in the late 60s he completely changed the country. The often quoted figures of 30million people dying because of reforms, combined with the systematic distruction of everything that represented Old Chinese Culture make him evil in the eyes of many. Yet he accomplished a lot of good for the country, uniting the people and restructuring the land.
This is a very important point, one of the most important things in Chinese culture is unity of the country. (the South shall rise again!;) This supercedes many concerns, as it is rooted in the 2000 year history.
Since the Cultural Revolution many many changes have occured. Gaige Kaifang, or the Openness Policy was set into motion, and every year China moves closer and closer to a capitalist economy (In some ways it is indistinguishable).
The point of talking about all the revolutions and societal change in the last hundred years is to understand that China is not stable. The people do not know where things are going, or if where they are going is truely a good thing (Like it or not, not everyone thinks us westerners are perfect).
That said we can take a look at demographics for further evidence that we cannot judge the Chinese like we judge ourselves. The country is home to over 1.3 Billion people, hundreds of millions of which do not live in the cities. These country folk have enough trouble with running water and food, let alone electricity to worry about Google or Yahoo.
The central government is very strong, and it does a lot to keep the infrastructure of China solid and the people fed. Furthermore, there are millions of people living in many cities. By the nature of cities ideas can spread very fast. The main concern of the government is stability, they dont want hundreds of thousands of protestors upsetting the core of the country because they want a luxury like democracy.
Now that last statement is quite inflamatory, but think about it. We can have polarized debates here, we can have peta and the NRA, but the general stability of our country insures that millions of people arent going to hit the streets because of some nut with a megaphone.
Now before you all call me facist, I truely believe in the freedom of information as the savior of this world. I believe what is going on is "not good" but I just want to illustrate that we cannot hold everyone to some of our standards and not others. When the Chinese have advanced their economy, and they are buying toys manufactured by American kids, perhaps then they will have all the wonderful freedoms you and I take for granted everyday.
Until then we can only do our part, get educated. Understand that you cannot change entire cultures by force. Lead by example, and help out the PEOPLE that need help. You may disagree with these highly pu
Of course, my point is that it is not a selling feature. Actually, it would detract from the simplicity of the iPod.
What I really meant to say was that an FM radio in a different mp3 player is not a feature I want. I am, however, curious as to these amazing deals that have more value than I give to my iPod. Every day I become more of an Apple fanboy, but thats only because no one gives me a reason not to!
I am not arguing for a government like that under the Articles of Confederation.
The constitution IS the rough framework that restrains and supports more localized frameworks. What I am arguing against is the federal government getting into the messy details of all these things. The point of the murder arguement was that the states can handle implementing laws for murder, within the bounds of the constitution.
I am not advocating that states have absolute authority, just that the federal government doesn't waste its time trying to balance the needs, values, and perceptions of 50 different communities.
More laws from "stronger" authority doesn't mean a better system. If you can't trust each state to do the right thing, how can you trust the federal government too? Just because fewer people are making decisions that represent a bigger population does not mean that the decisions will be more effective.
There are two issues you have to consider when looking at DRM, the legal and the technological.
As far as legal, we can all agree that enforcing DRM with the DMCA is wrong. We shouldn't need DRM exceptions because there should be no legal ruling on DRM anyway.
The technological aspect is debatable. You and I probably see that DRM is a bad idea. The parent doesn't think its a terrible idea, and the RIAA think its a great idea. This is the perfect opportunity for the market to sort things out. It already is in someways: music stores with independant mp3s for sale gaining recognition, the press around the sony debacle, and alot of the talk about mp3 players is getting very public.
I like to think the DRM is like an API, both can be added at the software maker's descretion, and both can have an effect on their software's sales. While they do completely different things, the market will tell people what they do and do not want.
That being said, it is still our jobs to inform people that DRM is a bad idea, but not that it is evil.
That's the problem with idioms and fables, you can come up with one for any side of any issue. They are not effective tools for arguing anything, because you take them as a premise of truth.
Furthermore, how does a scorpion not changing its nature mean that capitalism can't change its nature. In fact, the parents post did not convince me that capitalism had a nature that was bad. Capitalism is a system for running our society, its successes and failings are more complicated then a scorpion riding on a frogs back.
You keep talking about states rights friend, and your gonna start a civil war!
Actually, I think a state SHOULD be allowed to determine each of those things. Why does it make more sense for the federal government to determine it? Part of the idea behind founding this country was that we wouldn't have a strong central government, you know we were a little bit bitter about monarchies. So why should the nation as a whole define sensitive issues that can be interpreted in slightly different ways in different places? That way you get more tyranny of the majority.
1. Murder - If a state tried to allow killing poor people, it would probably be found unconstitutional. The Constitution is still the important binding document that holds all of our states together. This is a bad example
2. Obscenity - Yes, states should determine whats obscene, it should probably go even more local. You asked the wrong question, it should be, do you really want the federal government to broadly restrict speech because it has to please the whole nation?
3. Tax - me too
4. Theft - states should handle this, dealing with theft is something that states can take care of, why should the federal government bother with it?
5. Rape - see murder
6. Slavery - this is unconstitutional, therefor no state can make this decision. The civil war was fought over this very question. This is not a very rational addition to an arguement about obscenity. Slavery is a very well defined concept, treating people as property, while obscenity is a general concept that you cannot pinpoint but on a casebycase basis.
My case is that morally, we are not all the same. Isn't that always thrown around, laws are not moral? You do NOT want morally charged laws coming from the most global authority, you want them made locally.
That is the very essence of the arguement. Do you want to live in a world where everything is controlled by the copyright holder, to the extent where innovation and access to information is inhibited? I know the founding fathers of America did not, when they wrote Article 1 Section 8. They want to promote the science and the useful arts. Someone please tell me how Google et al does not do this? Tell me how they are destroying the arts and sciences as we know it. Promoting the progress of science and art "happens to serve us!"
This is the same reason usenet is different from broadcasting. When a broadcaster sends out a signal it takes significant resources and energy, allowing for regulation to be effective. When you "broadcast" on usenet, you know (or should know) that the technology for archiving and redistributing is trivial. People will use technology in the most effective way, and I'll be damned if archiving mailing lists is not an effective way of using technology and promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. Thats the fundimental expectation people should follow, not "those are my words don't copy them! Even though I published them into a medium where it is trivial to redistribute them"
"Is it possible for people to sift through 10000 pieces of crap to find one useful/good item?"
Yes. That is what Google is for, that is what slashdot.org, del.icio.us, reddit.com, digg.com are all for. The whole facination with web 2.0 and social websites is that we are figuring out how to deal with this massive amount of content.
Don't worry, in the next couple years there will be excellent technological solutions to finding good jazz music.
It is easy to point out how much crap there is, but it is foolish to point out how capable we are at sorting through it. This argument is older than we may think, look back to the medieval times when only monks were allowed to read and write. They worried that if everyone could write the world would be flooded with the ideas of a bunch of stupid peasants. How would they ever find what was a good book and what was a bad book? Well, we certainly dealt with that, and we already are dealing with the internet.
Information overload is a fallacy, people take what they want. If I can't handle reading all the blogs I get linked too, I'll just read the ones I like. If I need to find an AJAX tutorial, wikipedia and google do a good job of finding the answer.
The internet is a great medium for rapidly communicating, not just content, but also the value of content. Don't worry if music recommendation isn't quite there yet now, I would bet money that it will be the most reliable recommendation system behind websites and images in the comming years.
Likely, "intentionally disclosing information identifying or describing" the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program would not affect a law abiding President at all.
If you are so eager to believe that "those who are innocent have nothing to fear," then why can't we apply it to the President? If he is right in his programs, why can't we know anything about them, why can't the courts?
This law is bad because at best it makes things that are already illegal, illegal, and at worst it makes things that are legal illegal. When you look at laws you can't say "likely it will be used right" or "it probably will be used right" you have to look at in what worst way can it be used for the wrong ends, and thats what that law can do.
I agree that TFA didn't give us enough to go on, but I don't think those two quotes have to be contradictory.
Slashdot Mirror
I do think your comment is insightful, up until the point where you call for us to contact our government representative.
This is not terrorism, and it is exactly the kind of thing we do NOT want the government involved in. I ask, what can the government do with legislation? Aren't these spammers already outside of our borders? It seems to me that a service that everyone likes alot can find a market solution to people trying to disrupt it. That has been the beauty of the internet so far, let everyone on and see what happens.
This is just my armchair philosophy, I don't really know anything, I'm just sure that asking the government to fix this problem is fruitless and most likely damaging. Especially since they will introduce the bill against "cyberterrorists"
If you want to be reasonable you should take an introductory course in economics. Just because you are buying from the US does not mean you are automatically doing the best thing for the US economy.
The concept is called relative advantage. Due to the situations being what they are, The US has been a leader in science and education for a while now, and China has lots of cheap labor. So the computer was first made by a handful of scientists in America, it was expensive as hell and there were very few of them. As the scientists better understood the computer and were able to commoditize its production it became cheaper and more accessible. Computers have now gotten to the point where they are pretty much a commodity, and manufacturing them at the cheapest cost is important inorder to meet the demand.
So China has the relative advantage of manufacturing, while Americans are still the leader in business and software. If you really want to do something good for the US stand up and proclaim that you want better education systems! If we are going to lose status in the world economy it wont be because we are buying foreign products, it will be because we got fat and lazy.
Just google Comparative Advantage if you want to know more about it.
...as thousands of nerds choke on their breakfast upon realizing that the USPTO finally read their comments on Slashdot.
Your second paragraph could have used nice links like your first paragraph. Wtf are you talking about?
I'm registered as a Democrat, but have you already forgotten who signed the DMCA into law? I don't think we can rely on either major party to keep our internet free.
Why? Don't you know that technology is a tool and is not inherently good or evil. That's our arguement in defense of bittorrent, and you want to turn around and use the same logic as the RIAA??
The power of bittorrent is not that people hold hands and share love, its that they hold hands inorder to diffuse the cost of distribution. It should be no surprise that a large company takes advantage of a tool that could make distribution more efficient. I really don't see how they are throwing anything into the "mix" whatever that is. You are just using selective logic =\
Somehow I don't think that technology is every going to stop those people from being retards. This is not a valid argument against an easy option to turn of traction control. You are misdirecting responsibility onto the car manufacturer, they are supposed to build the best cars not the safest trains. Asking a car to make a person a safe driver is a huuuge request, what happened at the DARPA challenge again?
And in Chinese it can mean girl, so if we just cycle the languages we get nu nu nu = naked girl now
How is this comment informative? Besides being wrong it has no substance.
"That's how it is"
What kind of contribution is that? It doesn't even make sense, requiring a license for an email server is how it is?
It is a stupid law that does nothing to help free speech, but its most definately not "the way it is"
"The way it is" is that those internet users mostly play video games and read up on entertainment, just like their valiant counterparts in the West. The way it is is a few dissidents trying to get information who are techsavvy enough not to use plaintext email in the first place (except for that Yahoo blogger, hmm American run...)
The way it is is not what you say it is, things are much more complicated than most people are comfortable with discussing, but we can try if you want.
because nobody in America wants to make that crap. It's called specialization. You pay for things so that you don't have to waste your time doing them yourself, like manufacturing textiles or computer parts. Garaunteed you're running Chinese hardware or at least contributing to the sale of it by posting on slashdot.
I suppose I just have too much faith in the internet and freedom. The weirdest thing is how insignificant this law is. First we can compare it to more effective regulations on internet communications, then we could compare it to the various human rights violations. Then if we remember how insecure and non-private email is, we see that this is the government grasping at straws.
Lets think about email for a second. If I send an email out, how many webservers does it pass through? How many cache it? If I decide its private but my recipient (or my recipient's boss) decides its not, sucks for me! Plain text email feels private but its far from it. Here in Florida I could use Sunshine laws to get all emails from any school account, since I attend a state school. I think email would be the last place to put sensitive information if you know what you were doing in the slightest. Maybe if you were using encryption on the text, and with that the level of security you have wont change with who is running the email server.
The way I look at China is that the government is losing the war on information just like the feds here are losing the war on drugs. They have their firewall and now their email control, but they cannot stop the disseminating of information. Forums and IMs fire off whenever there is something interesting banned. Only a small fraction of the country is wired as of yet, the rest are too poor. While their economy continues on the rise I am betting that their freedoms will grow.
In the mean time we can all sit here and bitch about how terrible their attacks on civil liberty are and not do anything about the reckless disregard for the constitution by both parties here.
I used to feel this way... and the way things are going it gets more tempting, but I really don't think we are at the end of the world.
It's easy to point to a slippery slope and cry for the armaggedon, but think of how many generations have thought the same, only to never see it happen? What about McCarthyism, the Cold War, Vietnam? I do not believe every time you lose a right you lose it for good, I think there is an ebb and flow when it comes to civil liberties.
I do agree that there has got to be a line somewhere, there is a point where its not just coffee and donuts and things actually deteriorate into a police state. I just think that doom-sayers lose a lot of credibility because they are inspiring out of fear. Provoking people to action out of fear is the same thing that the crooked administration is doing now.
I wish I knew how to do something about it.
I meant to say the opposite, my bad! What I mean is that I do believe in democracy, and that it can be done, its just that we cant just expect China to just drop everything all over again when they seem to be doing fine and making progress. sorry for the confusion.
I appreciate the informative reply. I even agree with your point that a 1 billion person society needs communism rather than democracy. I think my feelings align with yours, not wanting a bloody revolution. My point is that the path to democracy might seem slow right now, but I think its on track.
Unfortunately I have not spent as much energy learning about India's past, and I would appreciate it if you enlightened me on the subject.
,however, the government or the people? Try thinking from other peoples perspective sometime, you might realize you are the devil needing an advocate ;)
From the little I do know I presume you are referring to their reasonably successful conversion to democracy. The only comment I have on that now is that India was under colonized rule for a long while, and they switched to democracy the moment of their independance in 1945. I think this is a very large difference, and it is the type of oversimplification I was trying to argue against. The two cultures are also very different. Perhaps if I knew more about India's history I would be better able to judge the comparison.
As far as being a devil's advocate, I appreciate the compliment. Sometimes even the Devil is innocent. I would encourage you to consider who the devil is
I am going to take an extremely unpopular position here, just to try and give people some perspective.
;) This supercedes many concerns, as it is rooted in the 2000 year history.
The flamebait version is China's censorship is not a bad thing.
Now to explain.
China is a much different country than the United States (as an American I will be referring to the US exclusively, a lot applies to other free western nations). Our country was founded on the principles of individual liberties and freedom. 200 years ago we got a fresh start and set out to do things right, and for the most part its worked pretty well.
Now lets look at China. This country has a written history of over 2000 years. In the last hundred years China has seen more revolution and social change than the U.S. ever has, even if you include the American Revolution. In the 1910s China overthrew their last Dynasty. What resulted was 10-20 years of civil war between regional warlords. Then communism came along, sweeping the nation with promises of food for everybody. They were opposed with the Nationalist party. 20 more years of civil war and struggle until the Nationalist party was forced to flee to Taiwan. Mao Zedong became president but had to step aside because of the political atmosphere. When he regained power in the late 60s he completely changed the country. The often quoted figures of 30million people dying because of reforms, combined with the systematic distruction of everything that represented Old Chinese Culture make him evil in the eyes of many. Yet he accomplished a lot of good for the country, uniting the people and restructuring the land.
This is a very important point, one of the most important things in Chinese culture is unity of the country. (the South shall rise again!
Since the Cultural Revolution many many changes have occured. Gaige Kaifang, or the Openness Policy was set into motion, and every year China moves closer and closer to a capitalist economy (In some ways it is indistinguishable).
The point of talking about all the revolutions and societal change in the last hundred years is to understand that China is not stable. The people do not know where things are going, or if where they are going is truely a good thing (Like it or not, not everyone thinks us westerners are perfect).
That said we can take a look at demographics for further evidence that we cannot judge the Chinese like we judge ourselves. The country is home to over 1.3 Billion people, hundreds of millions of which do not live in the cities. These country folk have enough trouble with running water and food, let alone electricity to worry about Google or Yahoo.
The central government is very strong, and it does a lot to keep the infrastructure of China solid and the people fed. Furthermore, there are millions of people living in many cities. By the nature of cities ideas can spread very fast. The main concern of the government is stability, they dont want hundreds of thousands of protestors upsetting the core of the country because they want a luxury like democracy.
Now that last statement is quite inflamatory, but think about it. We can have polarized debates here, we can have peta and the NRA, but the general stability of our country insures that millions of people arent going to hit the streets because of some nut with a megaphone.
Now before you all call me facist, I truely believe in the freedom of information as the savior of this world. I believe what is going on is "not good" but I just want to illustrate that we cannot hold everyone to some of our standards and not others. When the Chinese have advanced their economy, and they are buying toys manufactured by American kids, perhaps then they will have all the wonderful freedoms you and I take for granted everyday.
Until then we can only do our part, get educated. Understand that you cannot change entire cultures by force. Lead by example, and help out the PEOPLE that need help. You may disagree with these highly pu
Of course, my point is that it is not a selling feature. Actually, it would detract from the simplicity of the iPod.
What I really meant to say was that an FM radio in a different mp3 player is not a feature I want. I am, however, curious as to these amazing deals that have more value than I give to my iPod. Every day I become more of an Apple fanboy, but thats only because no one gives me a reason not to!
If you are so busy telling people about them please link them here, it would be relative information to support your position.
As an aside, I personally DONT want an FM radion in my ipod, I got one so that I dont have to listen to the radio...
I am not arguing for a government like that under the Articles of Confederation.
The constitution IS the rough framework that restrains and supports more localized frameworks. What I am arguing against is the federal government getting into the messy details of all these things. The point of the murder arguement was that the states can handle implementing laws for murder, within the bounds of the constitution.
I am not advocating that states have absolute authority, just that the federal government doesn't waste its time trying to balance the needs, values, and perceptions of 50 different communities.
More laws from "stronger" authority doesn't mean a better system. If you can't trust each state to do the right thing, how can you trust the federal government too? Just because fewer people are making decisions that represent a bigger population does not mean that the decisions will be more effective.
There are two issues you have to consider when looking at DRM, the legal and the technological.
As far as legal, we can all agree that enforcing DRM with the DMCA is wrong. We shouldn't need DRM exceptions because there should be no legal ruling on DRM anyway.
The technological aspect is debatable. You and I probably see that DRM is a bad idea. The parent doesn't think its a terrible idea, and the RIAA think its a great idea. This is the perfect opportunity for the market to sort things out. It already is in someways: music stores with independant mp3s for sale gaining recognition, the press around the sony debacle, and alot of the talk about mp3 players is getting very public.
I like to think the DRM is like an API, both can be added at the software maker's descretion, and both can have an effect on their software's sales. While they do completely different things, the market will tell people what they do and do not want.
That being said, it is still our jobs to inform people that DRM is a bad idea, but not that it is evil.
That's the problem with idioms and fables, you can come up with one for any side of any issue. They are not effective tools for arguing anything, because you take them as a premise of truth.
Furthermore, how does a scorpion not changing its nature mean that capitalism can't change its nature. In fact, the parents post did not convince me that capitalism had a nature that was bad. Capitalism is a system for running our society, its successes and failings are more complicated then a scorpion riding on a frogs back.
You keep talking about states rights friend, and your gonna start a civil war!
Actually, I think a state SHOULD be allowed to determine each of those things. Why does it make more sense for the federal government to determine it? Part of the idea behind founding this country was that we wouldn't have a strong central government, you know we were a little bit bitter about monarchies. So why should the nation as a whole define sensitive issues that can be interpreted in slightly different ways in different places? That way you get more tyranny of the majority.
1. Murder - If a state tried to allow killing poor people, it would probably be found unconstitutional. The Constitution is still the important binding document that holds all of our states together. This is a bad example
2. Obscenity - Yes, states should determine whats obscene, it should probably go even more local. You asked the wrong question, it should be, do you really want the federal government to broadly restrict speech because it has to please the whole nation?
3. Tax - me too
4. Theft - states should handle this, dealing with theft is something that states can take care of, why should the federal government bother with it?
5. Rape - see murder
6. Slavery - this is unconstitutional, therefor no state can make this decision. The civil war was fought over this very question. This is not a very rational addition to an arguement about obscenity. Slavery is a very well defined concept, treating people as property, while obscenity is a general concept that you cannot pinpoint but on a casebycase basis.
My case is that morally, we are not all the same. Isn't that always thrown around, laws are not moral? You do NOT want morally charged laws coming from the most global authority, you want them made locally.
Sucks for the company when there are no more users.
These back-and-forths don't make any sense, its a market. Advertising is NOT a right, its a business model!
"because it happens to serve them"
That is the very essence of the arguement. Do you want to live in a world where everything is controlled by the copyright holder, to the extent where innovation and access to information is inhibited? I know the founding fathers of America did not, when they wrote Article 1 Section 8. They want to promote the science and the useful arts. Someone please tell me how Google et al does not do this? Tell me how they are destroying the arts and sciences as we know it. Promoting the progress of science and art "happens to serve us!"
This is the same reason usenet is different from broadcasting. When a broadcaster sends out a signal it takes significant resources and energy, allowing for regulation to be effective. When you "broadcast" on usenet, you know (or should know) that the technology for archiving and redistributing is trivial. People will use technology in the most effective way, and I'll be damned if archiving mailing lists is not an effective way of using technology and promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. Thats the fundimental expectation people should follow, not "those are my words don't copy them! Even though I published them into a medium where it is trivial to redistribute them"
"Is it possible for people to sift through 10000 pieces of crap to find one useful/good item?"
1 /qid=1142610470/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7606918-8820101?_ encoding=UTF8book)
Yes. That is what Google is for, that is what slashdot.org, del.icio.us, reddit.com, digg.com are all for. The whole facination with web 2.0 and social websites is that we are figuring out how to deal with this massive amount of content.
Don't worry, in the next couple years there will be excellent technological solutions to finding good jazz music.
It is easy to point out how much crap there is, but it is foolish to point out how capable we are at sorting through it. This argument is older than we may think, look back to the medieval times when only monks were allowed to read and write. They worried that if everyone could write the world would be flooded with the ideas of a bunch of stupid peasants. How would they ever find what was a good book and what was a bad book? Well, we certainly dealt with that, and we already are dealing with the internet.
Information overload is a fallacy, people take what they want. If I can't handle reading all the blogs I get linked too, I'll just read the ones I like. If I need to find an AJAX tutorial, wikipedia and google do a good job of finding the answer.
There is a wisdom in crowds, if the system is set up right (I recommend the http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385721706/sr=8-
The internet is a great medium for rapidly communicating, not just content, but also the value of content. Don't worry if music recommendation isn't quite there yet now, I would bet money that it will be the most reliable recommendation system behind websites and images in the comming years.
Likely, "intentionally disclosing information identifying or describing" the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program would not affect a law abiding President at all.
If you are so eager to believe that "those who are innocent have nothing to fear," then why can't we apply it to the President? If he is right in his programs, why can't we know anything about them, why can't the courts?
This law is bad because at best it makes things that are already illegal, illegal, and at worst it makes things that are legal illegal. When you look at laws you can't say "likely it will be used right" or "it probably will be used right" you have to look at in what worst way can it be used for the wrong ends, and thats what that law can do.
I agree that TFA didn't give us enough to go on, but I don't think those two quotes have to be contradictory.