The old GPL has several gray areas, hopefully the new GPL has more provisions.
In a document such as the GPL, gray areas might actually be more efficient at preserving the freeness of a body of code. If one were to give a list of what a "derivative work" is, for instance, an enterprising corporation may come up with a way of code integration that dodges all of the descriptitions in the list but which many software engineers would still clearly see as a derivation technique. In this case, having a vague descriptition helps matters because it allows each individual case to be judged as it comes along rather than any corporation or person being able to effectively "count their legal chickens" before doing something which most would consider derivation but is not covered in a legal document.
That being said, if the document can be improved by addressing more things then I'm all for it. I just think it would be stupid to abandon vagueness in favor of more specific descriptions in cases where it is nearly impossible for a person or a group of people to concieve of and keep track of every single specific instance of something. For that class of things ("derivative software" being one of them), I think vagueness is about the best one can do, especially considering that new software technology is constantly being developed.
Downloading movies from the Internet so you don't have to pay towards the costs of making them is certainly a comparable activity to the examples you mention.
And since the problems we have today are not comperable to the problems of yesterday, they must not be problems at all.
It doesn't take much moral sophistication to proclaim that killing others is bad. It does take a certain amount of moral and mental sophistication to consider the commandeering of copyright law by people who have much more money than any of us do to be a problem, and one that is threatening to not only pirates, but to people who do not engage in activity on P2P networks, and to the artists of the future.
If you intend to claim that copyright infringement and the Holocaust are in different classes of "bad things", then it is unfair to use the same criterion when deciding how bad each of them is.
Example (extreme, I know. But it illustrates the point): Say I sold my personal autonomy to someone. I then became legally bound to be a puppet for my master for the rest of my life and was not allowed to dictate my own actions or speech. Even though I am in this situation, I am fed well, given medicine and medical care when I need it, given a nice place to sleep and live and good clothes to wear, etc. etc. If I were to apply this same situation to the rhetorical statement you just made, I might get this:
"People before you had to live with famine, disease and poverty for their entire lives. Your position isn't even comperable to theirs since you get all of those things taken care of for you, so don't act like there's anything wrong with it."
Someone who said that to me would be right to say that our two positions (those of the people of the past and myself) are not comperable, but it *does not follow* that there is nothing wrong with my position just because our situations are different. Said another way, you can not use the same criterion to judge how bad two problems are when they are (as you are trying to point out) in completely different classes. Just because many people lack the forsight to see why the current copyright situation is dangerous does not make it any less dangerous.
By the way, before anyone decides to discount me as a pirate trying to justify piracy, please keep in mind that the ideas contained in this post are not made any less or more valid depending upon my status as a pirate or not.
The solution to this would be to have a clause in the copyright registration that requires the copyright holder to ensure that the material remains available in whatever the current distributed media is.
You're missing the entire point. Copyright was not meant to last for a hundred years at a time. Copyright was meant to be a temporary incentive someone had to produce new and original works. It would let someone have control over the work's distribution, but eventually it would be released into the public domain as fodder for the new artists of the day to use in their own works. I believe the length of copyright at that time was (creators life + 17 years) or something.
You're suggesting a method of fixing a problem with the copyright system, but that problem only exists because it was broken in the first place. Copyright is not meant to be perpetual at all and your suggestion basically assumes that infinite copyrights are okay and are the way things should be. Said another way, your suggestion is a way to *not making things so bad* rather than *admitting that things are bad* and then suggesting a way to *remove the badness*. It's like spraying water at the tip of a burning fire rather than at its base. It might make the fire burn less, but it won't get rid of the problem.
I might also add that while the condition for "keeping one's copyright" may be simple enough for a corporation, it poses real problems for individuals who do not have the financial resources to ensure that there's always books or CD's floating around the market. I know a lot of artists are stretching themselves thin already. Under the conditions you put forth, their copyright terms might wind up being shorter than they would have been at the advent of copyright law.
Nintendo's last off shoot from the game boy line led to a piece of shit. This one will most likely be considered in the same category in a year or so.
If i remember correctly, there were less than 20 games produced for the Virtual Boy during its entire life. At this point, I believe the DS has the support of over 50 (I think it's closer to 100) 3rd party developers. I'm willing to bet the story will be a little different this time.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what. Would *you* write something for someone else to claim? I wouldn't.
And the musicians whose songs you think you have a right to copy would quit recording and get real jobs. Authors would quit writing, sculptors would no longer sculpt, except in their spare time away from those meaningful jobs at Kroger and General Electric.
I don't think you understand the economics of the situation. When you ask an actual artist whether they think P2P hurts them, you are not guaranteed to get the same answer each time. Many artists don't care or even think it is a good thing, and many artists percieve it as hurting their overall sales. However, if you ask distributors of music and movies the same question, you will get a nearly unanimous answer. Why do you think this is the case?
The issue of copyright infringement is a distribution issue, as you pointed out. The difference now is that certain things can be very easily redistributed at no cost. The reason no one cared about someone copying a book in the past is that it was hard to do it, and in order to do it with any sort of economic impact, you would need to either 1.) employ a lot of people or 2.) have special equipment. On the other hand, it is easy to copy information nowadays. Whether you think copy protection and DRM restrictions are good or bad things, one fact remains true. Both of those things try to impose artificial scarcity on products which are not naturally scarce anymore (read: information, bits and bytes). That is why distributors are so pissed off but artists don't seem to care so much.
P2P networks put distributors in a position in which they can no longer control the supply chains for their products. DRM and copy protection schemes are methods they use to regain this control, but whether they are present or not in a market, the demand for the artist's skill will still be present.
Your argument assumes that the current methods of distribution are the only systems in which artists will be able to subsist. Even if our current distribution scheme goes away, the demand for music, movies, video games, etc will still exist. Artists will still be able to produce and will continue to make money at it, but the distribution system will more than likely not be one that you are used to. There are business models out there that take piracy into account, i.e. the amount of money that a business makes is not dependant on the amount of piracy by definition. Said another way, your argument only makes sense if you assume we have to use the current system or no system at all. That is simply not true.
Suppose it were no longer against the law to copy people's creative work however you wanted. Why, you could download a bunch of source code and put your own name on it. Wow, the AC Compiler. AC Linux. AC UNIX. AC Office.Org. And so on.
Please don't confuse law with economics. They don't always go hand in hand. The situation we're dealing with is an economic one, not a legal one. Filesharing networks will not get rid of copyright, and so the first part of your comment has no bearing on the discussion.
Now on to the second part.
First off, if I understand the GPL correctly, it is perfectly legal to redistribute GPL'd software as your own. Many people have done this, including all of the Debian-flavors-of-the-week. Second off (and this is the important point), you've missed the entire point of free software. GPL and BSD-style Free software is meant to be copied. Business models that revolve around free software *assume* that copying *will* and *does* occur on an *hourly* basis. If the makers of free software really feel like the redistribution of their software hurts them, then tell me why they themselves set up and maintain mirrors of their own software.
If I have to pay for my stuff, why should you get it for free?
You may or may not know this, but there is a "piracy tax" on blank media that you buy which could be used to make copies of copyrighted material. Check out the section labeled "Audio Home Recording Act" near the bottom of this page: http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/200 2dltr0023.html. As you can see, everyone who buys blank media pays for piracy in one way or another, regardless of whether they actually do infringe on anyone's copyrights.
On another note, you don't have to pay for your stuff. That is simply a choice you make.
wouldn't the more enlightened way to curb gun violence be to have gun training programs at every high school, and teach people how to be responsible assault rifle owners?
Two things. First, the statement you are making relies on situational ethics. You are attempting to say that the grandparent's methods of dealing with the problems associated with drug use and consensual sex would not work by applying his/ her methods to the problems associated with gun violence. But the fact is that drug use and consensual sex are fundamentally different from gun use in two (and probably more) ways.
Drug use and consensual sex are either 1.) carried out by a single person whose own body bears the consequences or 2.) carried out between one or more consenting adults. Said another way, only the people participating in the drug use or sex will bear the direct consequences of the actions - physical, emotional, mental, whatever. This is not true in a gunfight. It is possible to have bystander casualties, but more importantly, I doubt that any party participating in a conflict involving a gun is participating because they want to be shot. Simply put, gun violence (operation of a firearm in the direction of another person) is not something that occurs between consensual adults.
It is a fallacy to think that a method of solving one set of problems should be applied to another set of problems which are so fundamentally different. I think you intended to say that drug use, sex and gun violence should be grouped together because they all fall into some sort of "touchy issue" category.
That being said, I personally believe that more education regarding gun use can only be a positive thing. Education which teaches you how to keep from hurting yourself or others inadvertently, and education that deals with the times in which it is absolutely necessary to use a gun are both things which I think should be accessible to gun owners (although I have some misgivings about the last part - that is almost akin to moral teaching, and I don't know if I would trust a teacher to not let his/ her own politics cloud their lessons).
All that being said, gun education is not something that I think belongs in schools as a fair number of students will never wind up owning guns. It would take up too much time and resources to give education to students who would never wind up using it. On the other hand, I am willing to bet that most students wind up having sex eventually and will at some point be exposed to mind altering drugs. In that sense, education is very valuable.
when I buy blank CDs I am forced to pay a tax on it to 'help the artists'.
A friend of mine pointed out that there are pirates and non-pirates. And that by pirating music, he was making sure the non-pirates got the most out of their pirate tax.
Why pay for something if you're not going to use it?
They seem to like more interesting music over there.
I agree that non-US music is in general more interesting and fresher than the stuff we listen to here. I also think that it's evidence of the failings of a bloated system's inability to put out interesting music. But music from non-US countries may also sound interesting due to the fact that it is exotic in a lot of ways, and does not make the same cultural assumptions that US music does.
I can vouche for the 18-20 bucks for a new CD. I don't buy them (hell, 1 new CD is almost 1 new video game), but I can attest to their high prices. If the CD isn't one of the newer ones, the price may drop to 15, but that's the lower bound in my experience. Does anyone remember a time when prices were lower?
Re:I've never understood the obsession with Halo
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Halo 2 Reviews
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To me, it was like you were just going through the same repeating rooms over and over fighting endless hoards of monsters.
we should get receipts showing how we voted for our own records.
We should absolutely not. Voting is supposed to be anonymous - that means that there can be nothing that links any of your identifying information to the vote you made.
What should happen is that after voting it prints a reciept that you get to see. After making sure everything is correct on the reciept, you can press a button, which puts your reciept (with no identifying information) into a box with the reciepts of the people who voted before you.
This solution is good since each voter gets to verify that their vote was counted correctly and we don't have to worry about there being ambiguity like what happened in Florida. I would add a system that would automatically take a pile of reciepts and read each one, tallying the votes. Like a scantron system. Of course, anywhere technology is involved, the firmware and hardware should be open and viewable by anyone so that we can see for ourselves that voting fraud is not occuring instead of having to trust a company that has consistently ignored warnings about vulnerabilites in their machines for what, four years? Longer? That simply will not do.
People lose information like this quite frequently. My ability to vote should not be dependant upon whether or not I can keep track of a slip of paper for 2 years.
And most importantly, we shouldn't need to impose a system such as this in the first place. We should have secure, open machines with a procedural protocol so that there is little room for a malicious person to tamper in the first place.
This idea tries to patch up problems caused by eVoting machines, but it only attacks the symptoms, not the cause.
The Republicans are the party of inclusion. If this is true, then I have one question. Why is the Republican leadership pushing for a *Constitutional Amendment* that will exclude consenting homosexual adults from engaging in private relationships with each other?
Let us say for a moment that the Republican leadership really does have America's best interests in mind with this amendment. If this is true, then there must be a convincing reason why such an amendment is necessary and that it is the only efficient way of solving whatever problem we have.
Put another way, in order to argue that this is not exclusion, you must prove without a doubt that homosexual relationships pose a direct threat to the safety of our nation and/ or the health of its economy, and what's more, you must demonstrate that the threat to our nation is so great that amending the Constitution is the only way to fix the problem. This includes showing that any law passed by Congress will fall short of the mark.
Unless you can do both these things, you will not have proven that there is a convincing reason to have such an amendment. If no such reason exists, we must conclude that there is another motivation for pushing the amendment. Whatever that motivation is, if there is no reason why homosexual unions pose a direct threat to the safety of our country, then it follows that homosexuals are being excluded from the class of people who have the right to make their own marital and relational decisions without a convincing reason that this should be so.
I should take this opportunity to point out that "This is a Christian nation and homosexuality is a sin" does not count as a convincing reason to ban gay relationships. Whether it is a sin or not, it does not mean that our nation will be attacked or the economy will collapse. Leadership which truly embraces inclusion would adopt policies which embrace the different lifestyles people chose to adopt, regardless of what they are.
I would also like to add that if the ban on homosexual marriage / civil unions passes, then the Bush Administration will have passed the first amendment ever to actually exclude a group of citizens in our country from the group of people with the right to make their own decisions and decide what is right and wrong for themselves.
Any moral legislation - any legislation at all that draws the line between *right* and *wrong* with regards to self-regarding actions and actions that exist between consenting adults is by its very nature exclusive of the people who do not hold those morals. Adults have the right to decide what is right and wrong for themselves as long as they do not harm people.
Whenever I make this argument, people invariably bring up murder / rape / theft, et al in hopes of a rebuttal. I will answer that now. Murder, rape, theft, et al are not actions that occur between consenting adults. In each of those cases, at least one person does not want it to happen. Marriage does occur between consenting adults, and so it does not fall into the same category, regardless of whether it is between homosexuals or a man and woman.
Nope. GNU and proprietary software can peacefully coexist and not bother each other. Microsoft will tell you otherwise, but there is nothing about the GNU GPL and other proprietary liscences that means that they can't coexist in the world together. That being said, I will grant that the liscences are incompatible (meaning you can't insert GPL code into a closed project, and you can't steal someone's code without a liscence to put into a GPL project), but being incompatible does not mean that the two paradigms are adversarial. GNU was created because people wanted something, not because they hated and wanted to destroy something. People who don't like the GNU GPL are free to not participate as they please, and that means you, too.
developers want to be *free* to publish *their own* software under the license they prefer, not be *forced* to use the GPL because some guy wants to be "free" to read SOMEONE ELSE's code...
Okay. Here's an easy question. Can I force you to release your software under the GPL? If you think that as a GNU developer I can force you to release your project under the GPL, how would I go about doing so? Is there a legal proceeding involved? Do I have to make you sign a contract you don't agree to? Nobody is holding you at gunpoint and commandeering your *freedom* to do anything.
But here's the key. You don't have to do anything, but you don't get something for nothing. For example, if you want to use a module written by Microsoft in one of your projects, you have to do something called liscencing it. A liscence is a contract that you enter into with Microsoft in order to use their code. In exchange for the ability to use their code legally, you would probably have to:
1.) pay them a royalty for every copy you sell
2.) sign a non-disclosure agreement (a contract that says you won't even talk to anyone else about what the source code is)
3.) agree to not redistribute the source code to anyone else and
4.) agree to not alter the code in any way.
These are all terms of the liscence contract you enter into when you decide to use Microsoft's code. The GNU GPL is a contract just like Microsoft's contracts, but the only difference is that terms of the agreement are different.
The point is that it's a contract. You don't have to agree to it if you don't like the terms. If you don't like the GNU GPL, then you don't have to agree to it. But not agreeing to and not complying with the GPL means that you can not use any GPL'd code in your project. Why is this okay? It's okay because you couldn't use the code before anyway. You aren't automatically entitled to any code I write. I hold the copyright to it which means that I get to decide the terms of redistribution. If you don't like the terms of my contract, you can write the source code yourself, and you are more than welcome to.
The same goes for Microsoft. If you don't like Microsoft's liscencing agreements then you don't have to use their code. You seem to be saying that just because a piece of source code is out there you should have to use it, whether or not you like the terms. People write different source code all the time to do the same things over and over again. And you can, too. But you can't use my code without agreeing to my terms.
My GBA has an open screen prone to scratching. Any scratch it has gotten was simply from humans trying to clean the screen using material that ended up scratching it. The DS does nothing to stop this.
You can never do much to stop user error. If someone uses the wrong material to clean the screen and scratches it, there's not much you can do about that. But! The DS has the same folding action as the GBA SP. So while travelling, neither screen will be exposed and prone to scratching.
As for battery life, the PSP has a much longer battery life than the GameGear had and doesn't require 6 AA batteries.
That may be true. I never had a Game Gear. Sony has quoted the battery life of the PSP to be 4-6 hours. Later, they made a press release saying that the battery life they quoted was not what consumers should expect, and that in games which utilize the system's capabilities fully, the battery life would be lower. They didn't say how much lower, but it's reasonable to expect that "lower" would mean at least a 1 hour hit. I would expect more like 2 hours. I remember hearing someone say that at E3 last year, the models holding PSP's had to go recharge the batteries every 2 hours. I'm sure the battery life will be better in the final version, but I don't expect it to be that much better, especially not when playing graphically intense games or playing movies (during which the drive will be spinning).
On a personal note, I am aware that Sony has lied in the past about the capabilities of their systems. The PS2 was supposed to render cutscene-quality graphics in real time. As we all know, that is far from the case. Sony seems to have a track record of lying, and so I am hesitant to simply trust their 4-6 hour figure. On the other hand, Nintendo quoted the SP's battery life at 8-10 hours with the backlight on, and mine has done over 12 playing the games I really enjoy (mostly strategy games). In this case, I will trust Nintendo's word since they seem to like to quote conservative figures.
Not to mention that Sony has a habit of making hardware that breaks down quite often. My PS2 is in horrible shape and sometime won't even read a game disc without me having to reset it two or three times. And this is a system which sits on a shelf in my house. I can't imagine what would happen to my PS2 if I carried it around with me and let it jostle. On the other hand, my launch Gamecube works as well as when I got it.
And on the games side, I am itching to play Advance Wars DS. The marriage of a strategy game and a mouse-like device on a portable system with wireless capabilities seems almost too good to be true. Not to down on the PSP, but the only game that has me remotely interested is the new MGS game, and after the fiasco that was MGS2, I don't think I'll be playing any more of those games (at least not for a while). On the other hand, Nintendo consistently makes fun and interest games which never cease to entertain me (Advance Wars and Fire Emblem, anyone?). I know that my personal tastes differ from other peoples' though, and that's cool. I am fully aware that there are people who can't do without a Gran Tourismo fix, and that's just fine. For the most part, I have no interest in the games on Sony's systems, but the *games* part of the decision should solely be up to a person's personal tastes.
Left-handed gamers have already been considered. The layout of the four buttons on the system's right side mirrors the position of the D-pad. In the Metroid Prime Hunters demo that they gave a few weeks ago, they demonstrated different control schemes that you could select for the game. Two of them were for left handed people, and made the right buttons behave as a D-pad and the D-pad as the right buttons. No worries!
I doubt that that sort of thing could happen technically since the game cartridge will have control of both spaces of video memory. If you wanted to display an ad and not conflict with the game then you'd have to build games with that feature pre-emptively. At this point, DS game developers would be aware of any such feature that existed in the DS libraries and would have made games accordingly or protested. Either way, I think we would have heard of it by now.
I have heard of a feature which will allow DS owners to walk into a game store with their system and download demos of new games using the wireless ethernet. This is similar, but again, the software will likely control both sections of memory and will not be able to display an ad properly. Besides, I don't mind watching an ad in a demo of a game since I'm not paying money for it and I'm not walking out of the store with it.
Yes, ridiculous comparison. By the time the US entered WWII, Germany and the Axis powers had clearly demonstrated two things:
1.) They had the power (the weapons) necessary to conquer other countries in the free world.
2.) They had the intent to. They were doing it.
America was staying out of the war at the time Pearl Harbor was bombed. We entered it because of that, but we were going against powers that we could reasonably say were dangerous and out to get us. The Bush administration has made the same claims about the powers in the middle east (i.e. they have weapons and they want to use them), and so far neither has been found to be true. Knowing that two fundamental facts are different, I think it's safe to say that the comparison should not be made.
Also, there are some who believe the holocaust was a hoax. So in their mind, they believe we went after Hitler over a lie.
Wow... Just wow.... Do you really think these two are the same things? We found proof of the holocaust when we went over there to look. We found bodies, we found gas chambers. We found tons of weapons. We've been to Iraq, and we've had a look, and there are no WMD's. We teach the holocaust in history textbooks to this day. Will we write that Iraq had thousands of scuds/nukes/biological weapons knowing now that it was a complete lie? A citizen of this country, regardless of political affiliation, should be appalled if they found out that there was a lie in our history textbooks. Regardless of what people want to believe, a lie is still a lie no matter how many times people claim it is true.
Also, last I checked, abortion is perfectly legal in the United States.
It is indeed, because many Americans support a woman's right to choose, and many more Americans (regardless of the stance they take on the issue) do not think the government should be allowed to make such a personal and emotionally charged decision for anybody.
Sure, abortion is still legal, but let's be honest with ourselves. Say you have someone in public office who does not like to listen to/ take advice from anyone else, and who (even though it is not their job to make laws) is incredibly active at creating new legislation and whose party controls both houses of Congress. Let us also say that this person sees absolutely no problem in making laws saying what consenting adults in this country can and can not do regardless of how the adults in this country feel. What do you think will happen? Are you suggesting that we simply ignore all those things?
It does not matter how positive things are if they tend negatively. Bush hangs out with the Pope and the Pope would really like it if women stayed in the household. We have abortion now but it will not matter if a year from now women do not have the right to have abortions, and also do not have the right to work. I'm not suggesting that women will lose any more of their rights. I'm trying to point out that it's the direction that is important, not what the current situation is. If I have a million dollars now, but don't invest the money or work to increase it, I will eventually lose all of it by spending. The rate will reduce my money to 0, no matter how much of it I start with. That's why Bush's tax refunds do absolutely no good if the tax rates keep increasing.
My feeling is that if you don't like the outcome, then convince (don't name call) your opponents to vote the other way. Use the system and get your views across, don't just throw your hands up and flee.
It is time to be Americans and use the American system to "improve" the country.
A good feeling to be sure. I'm sure that many liberals and many people who did not vote for Bush or don't like his policies feel the exact same way as you do. But there's a problem. Because of the people
The purpose of government is to tell people how to live their lives.
No. No. No. The purpose of government is to make sure that adults who have chosen different ways of living their lives can live in peace and harmony with one another despite how much they dislike the other's lifestyle. The government's job is to protect people who either 1.) can't make their own decisions or 2.) have decisions unlawfully made for them. If you want to be told how to live your life, there are many people who are happy to give you pointers. You can go to a church, you can ask your family or your parents if you have them. You have friends you can ask. But when it comes down to it, an adult has to decide for themselves where the line between right and wrong is. Drawing that line is an adult's right and duty. That's what being an adult means. An adult should have the right to make this choice for themselves, and consenting adults should be able to enter into relationships with one another that are consistent with the values that they have chosen for themselves. The reason we have government is to defend adults' rights to live according to the rules which they choose for themselves.
There is no reason to outlaw murder, if nobody wants to kill you. There is no reason to outlaw theft, if you have nothing worth stealing. There is no reason to outlaw child pornography if you have no children.
There is a reason to outlaw murder, theft and child pornography, but not gay marriage and drug use. Listen carefully. When I murder someone or steal from someone or make or watch child pornography I am not interacting with other consenting adults. They are either not adults (in the case of child pornography) or they are not consenting (in the case of murder or theft).
That is the difference between those three things and gay marriage, drug use, sodomy, etc. Marriage, regardless of who is being married, is a relationship that exists between two consenting adults and no one else. You can not get married to someone who is not an adult (although the ages vary from state to state), and you won't get married to someone who does not want to be married to you. If you were to marry someone against their will, most people would consider it a crime. Why do you think that is? As for drug use: when I use drugs in the safety of my own home, it is my own decision. As an adult, I should have the option of making that decision for myself. If I hurt myself, that is fine. It was my choice. I should be able to live my life the way I wish. The second I hurt another person, it stops being something I do for myself and could potentially become a crime.
It does not matter how you feel about gay marriage, drug use or whatever. Many people feel very differently about those issues, and that's fine. But the self-regarding vs. other-regarding action distinction is essential to being able to talk about them.
Some people in America feel that no one - not even the president himself should be allowed to draw their moral line for them. No one. Not parents, not friends, not the legislators in the House or Senate. Those very same people also believe that is it reasonable to make laws regarding things that affect non-consenting people or people not old enough to make decisions - these laws are about things like murder, rape, theft, etc. Drug use and gay marriage do not fall into that category, and many people are angry that the people in our government want to legislate those things since they are self-regarding actions.
These days it is considered a blasphemy to have a moral code and to judge other people's actions by it.
Everyone has their own moral code, and everyone makes judgements on others using it. That is fine. That is the way things are. But we have a different situation when one person tries to make a second person's personal actions adhere to their moral code. Adul
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The old GPL has several gray areas, hopefully the new GPL has more provisions.
In a document such as the GPL, gray areas might actually be more efficient at preserving the freeness of a body of code. If one were to give a list of what a "derivative work" is, for instance, an enterprising corporation may come up with a way of code integration that dodges all of the descriptitions in the list but which many software engineers would still clearly see as a derivation technique. In this case, having a vague descriptition helps matters because it allows each individual case to be judged as it comes along rather than any corporation or person being able to effectively "count their legal chickens" before doing something which most would consider derivation but is not covered in a legal document.
That being said, if the document can be improved by addressing more things then I'm all for it. I just think it would be stupid to abandon vagueness in favor of more specific descriptions in cases where it is nearly impossible for a person or a group of people to concieve of and keep track of every single specific instance of something. For that class of things ("derivative software" being one of them), I think vagueness is about the best one can do, especially considering that new software technology is constantly being developed.
I'm in.
Downloading movies from the Internet so you don't have to pay towards the costs of making them is certainly a comparable activity to the examples you mention.
And since the problems we have today are not comperable to the problems of yesterday, they must not be problems at all.
It doesn't take much moral sophistication to proclaim that killing others is bad. It does take a certain amount of moral and mental sophistication to consider the commandeering of copyright law by people who have much more money than any of us do to be a problem, and one that is threatening to not only pirates, but to people who do not engage in activity on P2P networks, and to the artists of the future.
If you intend to claim that copyright infringement and the Holocaust are in different classes of "bad things", then it is unfair to use the same criterion when deciding how bad each of them is.
Example (extreme, I know. But it illustrates the point): Say I sold my personal autonomy to someone. I then became legally bound to be a puppet for my master for the rest of my life and was not allowed to dictate my own actions or speech. Even though I am in this situation, I am fed well, given medicine and medical care when I need it, given a nice place to sleep and live and good clothes to wear, etc. etc. If I were to apply this same situation to the rhetorical statement you just made, I might get this:
"People before you had to live with famine, disease and poverty for their entire lives. Your position isn't even comperable to theirs since you get all of those things taken care of for you, so don't act like there's anything wrong with it."
Someone who said that to me would be right to say that our two positions (those of the people of the past and myself) are not comperable, but it *does not follow* that there is nothing wrong with my position just because our situations are different. Said another way, you can not use the same criterion to judge how bad two problems are when they are (as you are trying to point out) in completely different classes. Just because many people lack the forsight to see why the current copyright situation is dangerous does not make it any less dangerous.
By the way, before anyone decides to discount me as a pirate trying to justify piracy, please keep in mind that the ideas contained in this post are not made any less or more valid depending upon my status as a pirate or not.
The solution to this would be to have a clause in the copyright registration that requires the copyright holder to ensure that the material remains available in whatever the current distributed media is.
You're missing the entire point. Copyright was not meant to last for a hundred years at a time. Copyright was meant to be a temporary incentive someone had to produce new and original works. It would let someone have control over the work's distribution, but eventually it would be released into the public domain as fodder for the new artists of the day to use in their own works. I believe the length of copyright at that time was (creators life + 17 years) or something.
You're suggesting a method of fixing a problem with the copyright system, but that problem only exists because it was broken in the first place. Copyright is not meant to be perpetual at all and your suggestion basically assumes that infinite copyrights are okay and are the way things should be. Said another way, your suggestion is a way to *not making things so bad* rather than *admitting that things are bad* and then suggesting a way to *remove the badness*. It's like spraying water at the tip of a burning fire rather than at its base. It might make the fire burn less, but it won't get rid of the problem.
I might also add that while the condition for "keeping one's copyright" may be simple enough for a corporation, it poses real problems for individuals who do not have the financial resources to ensure that there's always books or CD's floating around the market. I know a lot of artists are stretching themselves thin already. Under the conditions you put forth, their copyright terms might wind up being shorter than they would have been at the advent of copyright law.
I am a serious gamer, and I do not own an Xbox. I do own a PS2 with about 5 games that rarely get played. I doubt I will be getting a PS3 or a PSP.
Nintendo's last off shoot from the game boy line led to a piece of shit. This one will most likely be considered in the same category in a year or so.
If i remember correctly, there were less than 20 games produced for the Virtual Boy during its entire life. At this point, I believe the DS has the support of over 50 (I think it's closer to 100) 3rd party developers. I'm willing to bet the story will be a little different this time.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what. Would *you* write something for someone else to claim? I wouldn't.
And the musicians whose songs you think you have a right to copy would quit recording and get real jobs. Authors would quit writing, sculptors would no longer sculpt, except in their spare time away from those meaningful jobs at Kroger and General Electric.
I don't think you understand the economics of the situation. When you ask an actual artist whether they think P2P hurts them, you are not guaranteed to get the same answer each time. Many artists don't care or even think it is a good thing, and many artists percieve it as hurting their overall sales. However, if you ask distributors of music and movies the same question, you will get a nearly unanimous answer. Why do you think this is the case?
The issue of copyright infringement is a distribution issue, as you pointed out. The difference now is that certain things can be very easily redistributed at no cost. The reason no one cared about someone copying a book in the past is that it was hard to do it, and in order to do it with any sort of economic impact, you would need to either 1.) employ a lot of people or 2.) have special equipment. On the other hand, it is easy to copy information nowadays. Whether you think copy protection and DRM restrictions are good or bad things, one fact remains true. Both of those things try to impose artificial scarcity on products which are not naturally scarce anymore (read: information, bits and bytes). That is why distributors are so pissed off but artists don't seem to care so much.
P2P networks put distributors in a position in which they can no longer control the supply chains for their products. DRM and copy protection schemes are methods they use to regain this control, but whether they are present or not in a market, the demand for the artist's skill will still be present.
Your argument assumes that the current methods of distribution are the only systems in which artists will be able to subsist. Even if our current distribution scheme goes away, the demand for music, movies, video games, etc will still exist. Artists will still be able to produce and will continue to make money at it, but the distribution system will more than likely not be one that you are used to. There are business models out there that take piracy into account, i.e. the amount of money that a business makes is not dependant on the amount of piracy by definition. Said another way, your argument only makes sense if you assume we have to use the current system or no system at all. That is simply not true.
Suppose it were no longer against the law to copy people's creative work however you wanted. Why, you could download a bunch of source code and put your own name on it. Wow, the AC Compiler. AC Linux. AC UNIX. AC Office.Org. And so on.
Please don't confuse law with economics. They don't always go hand in hand. The situation we're dealing with is an economic one, not a legal one. Filesharing networks will not get rid of copyright, and so the first part of your comment has no bearing on the discussion.
Now on to the second part.
First off, if I understand the GPL correctly, it is perfectly legal to redistribute GPL'd software as your own. Many people have done this, including all of the Debian-flavors-of-the-week. Second off (and this is the important point), you've missed the entire point of free software. GPL and BSD-style Free software is meant to be copied. Business models that revolve around free software *assume* that copying *will* and *does* occur on an *hourly* basis. If the makers of free software really feel like the redistribution of their software hurts them, then tell me why they themselves set up and maintain mirrors of their own software.
The fact of the matter is that busines
If I have to pay for my stuff, why should you get it for free?
0 2dltr0023.html. As you can see, everyone who buys blank media pays for piracy in one way or another, regardless of whether they actually do infringe on anyone's copyrights.
You may or may not know this, but there is a "piracy tax" on blank media that you buy which could be used to make copies of copyrighted material. Check out the section labeled "Audio Home Recording Act" near the bottom of this page: http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/20
On another note, you don't have to pay for your stuff. That is simply a choice you make.
wouldn't the more enlightened way to curb gun violence be to have gun training programs at every high school, and teach people how to be responsible assault rifle owners?
Two things. First, the statement you are making relies on situational ethics. You are attempting to say that the grandparent's methods of dealing with the problems associated with drug use and consensual sex would not work by applying his/ her methods to the problems associated with gun violence. But the fact is that drug use and consensual sex are fundamentally different from gun use in two (and probably more) ways.
Drug use and consensual sex are either 1.) carried out by a single person whose own body bears the consequences or 2.) carried out between one or more consenting adults. Said another way, only the people participating in the drug use or sex will bear the direct consequences of the actions - physical, emotional, mental, whatever. This is not true in a gunfight. It is possible to have bystander casualties, but more importantly, I doubt that any party participating in a conflict involving a gun is participating because they want to be shot. Simply put, gun violence (operation of a firearm in the direction of another person) is not something that occurs between consensual adults.
It is a fallacy to think that a method of solving one set of problems should be applied to another set of problems which are so fundamentally different. I think you intended to say that drug use, sex and gun violence should be grouped together because they all fall into some sort of "touchy issue" category.
That being said, I personally believe that more education regarding gun use can only be a positive thing. Education which teaches you how to keep from hurting yourself or others inadvertently, and education that deals with the times in which it is absolutely necessary to use a gun are both things which I think should be accessible to gun owners (although I have some misgivings about the last part - that is almost akin to moral teaching, and I don't know if I would trust a teacher to not let his/ her own politics cloud their lessons).
All that being said, gun education is not something that I think belongs in schools as a fair number of students will never wind up owning guns. It would take up too much time and resources to give education to students who would never wind up using it. On the other hand, I am willing to bet that most students wind up having sex eventually and will at some point be exposed to mind altering drugs. In that sense, education is very valuable.
when I buy blank CDs I am forced to pay a tax on it to 'help the artists'.
A friend of mine pointed out that there are pirates and non-pirates. And that by pirating music, he was making sure the non-pirates got the most out of their pirate tax.
Why pay for something if you're not going to use it?
They seem to like more interesting music over there.
I agree that non-US music is in general more interesting and fresher than the stuff we listen to here. I also think that it's evidence of the failings of a bloated system's inability to put out interesting music. But music from non-US countries may also sound interesting due to the fact that it is exotic in a lot of ways, and does not make the same cultural assumptions that US music does.
I can vouche for the 18-20 bucks for a new CD. I don't buy them (hell, 1 new CD is almost 1 new video game), but I can attest to their high prices. If the CD isn't one of the newer ones, the price may drop to 15, but that's the lower bound in my experience. Does anyone remember a time when prices were lower?
To me, it was like you were just going through the same repeating rooms over and over fighting endless hoards of monsters.
But now you get to do it with two guns!!!!1
we should get receipts showing how we voted for our own records.
We should absolutely not. Voting is supposed to be anonymous - that means that there can be nothing that links any of your identifying information to the vote you made.
What should happen is that after voting it prints a reciept that you get to see. After making sure everything is correct on the reciept, you can press a button, which puts your reciept (with no identifying information) into a box with the reciepts of the people who voted before you.
This solution is good since each voter gets to verify that their vote was counted correctly and we don't have to worry about there being ambiguity like what happened in Florida. I would add a system that would automatically take a pile of reciepts and read each one, tallying the votes. Like a scantron system. Of course, anywhere technology is involved, the firmware and hardware should be open and viewable by anyone so that we can see for ourselves that voting fraud is not occuring instead of having to trust a company that has consistently ignored warnings about vulnerabilites in their machines for what, four years? Longer? That simply will not do.
Voting is anonymous for a reason.
People lose information like this quite frequently. My ability to vote should not be dependant upon whether or not I can keep track of a slip of paper for 2 years.
And most importantly, we shouldn't need to impose a system such as this in the first place. We should have secure, open machines with a procedural protocol so that there is little room for a malicious person to tamper in the first place.
This idea tries to patch up problems caused by eVoting machines, but it only attacks the symptoms, not the cause.
not just 60% like down here
Wow. Only 60%? How lucky!
It's like socialism without all the benefits of socialism.
open up your eyes!
The Republicans are the party of inclusion. If this is true, then I have one question. Why is the Republican leadership pushing for a *Constitutional Amendment* that will exclude consenting homosexual adults from engaging in private relationships with each other?
Let us say for a moment that the Republican leadership really does have America's best interests in mind with this amendment. If this is true, then there must be a convincing reason why such an amendment is necessary and that it is the only efficient way of solving whatever problem we have.
Put another way, in order to argue that this is not exclusion, you must prove without a doubt that homosexual relationships pose a direct threat to the safety of our nation and/ or the health of its economy, and what's more, you must demonstrate that the threat to our nation is so great that amending the Constitution is the only way to fix the problem. This includes showing that any law passed by Congress will fall short of the mark.
Unless you can do both these things, you will not have proven that there is a convincing reason to have such an amendment. If no such reason exists, we must conclude that there is another motivation for pushing the amendment. Whatever that motivation is, if there is no reason why homosexual unions pose a direct threat to the safety of our country, then it follows that homosexuals are being excluded from the class of people who have the right to make their own marital and relational decisions without a convincing reason that this should be so.
I should take this opportunity to point out that "This is a Christian nation and homosexuality is a sin" does not count as a convincing reason to ban gay relationships. Whether it is a sin or not, it does not mean that our nation will be attacked or the economy will collapse. Leadership which truly embraces inclusion would adopt policies which embrace the different lifestyles people chose to adopt, regardless of what they are.
I would also like to add that if the ban on homosexual marriage / civil unions passes, then the Bush Administration will have passed the first amendment ever to actually exclude a group of citizens in our country from the group of people with the right to make their own decisions and decide what is right and wrong for themselves.
Any moral legislation - any legislation at all that draws the line between *right* and *wrong* with regards to self-regarding actions and actions that exist between consenting adults is by its very nature exclusive of the people who do not hold those morals. Adults have the right to decide what is right and wrong for themselves as long as they do not harm people.
Whenever I make this argument, people invariably bring up murder / rape / theft, et al in hopes of a rebuttal. I will answer that now. Murder, rape, theft, et al are not actions that occur between consenting adults. In each of those cases, at least one person does not want it to happen. Marriage does occur between consenting adults, and so it does not fall into the same category, regardless of whether it is between homosexuals or a man and woman.
GNU is born to defeat proprietary software.
Nope. GNU and proprietary software can peacefully coexist and not bother each other. Microsoft will tell you otherwise, but there is nothing about the GNU GPL and other proprietary liscences that means that they can't coexist in the world together. That being said, I will grant that the liscences are incompatible (meaning you can't insert GPL code into a closed project, and you can't steal someone's code without a liscence to put into a GPL project), but being incompatible does not mean that the two paradigms are adversarial. GNU was created because people wanted something, not because they hated and wanted to destroy something. People who don't like the GNU GPL are free to not participate as they please, and that means you, too.
developers want to be *free* to publish *their own* software under the license they prefer, not be *forced* to use the GPL because some guy wants to be "free" to read SOMEONE ELSE's code...
Okay. Here's an easy question. Can I force you to release your software under the GPL? If you think that as a GNU developer I can force you to release your project under the GPL, how would I go about doing so? Is there a legal proceeding involved? Do I have to make you sign a contract you don't agree to? Nobody is holding you at gunpoint and commandeering your *freedom* to do anything.
But here's the key. You don't have to do anything, but you don't get something for nothing. For example, if you want to use a module written by Microsoft in one of your projects, you have to do something called liscencing it. A liscence is a contract that you enter into with Microsoft in order to use their code. In exchange for the ability to use their code legally, you would probably have to:
1.) pay them a royalty for every copy you sell
2.) sign a non-disclosure agreement (a contract that says you won't even talk to anyone else about what the source code is)
3.) agree to not redistribute the source code to anyone else and
4.) agree to not alter the code in any way.
These are all terms of the liscence contract you enter into when you decide to use Microsoft's code. The GNU GPL is a contract just like Microsoft's contracts, but the only difference is that terms of the agreement are different.
The point is that it's a contract. You don't have to agree to it if you don't like the terms. If you don't like the GNU GPL, then you don't have to agree to it. But not agreeing to and not complying with the GPL means that you can not use any GPL'd code in your project. Why is this okay? It's okay because you couldn't use the code before anyway. You aren't automatically entitled to any code I write. I hold the copyright to it which means that I get to decide the terms of redistribution. If you don't like the terms of my contract, you can write the source code yourself, and you are more than welcome to.
The same goes for Microsoft. If you don't like Microsoft's liscencing agreements then you don't have to use their code. You seem to be saying that just because a piece of source code is out there you should have to use it, whether or not you like the terms. People write different source code all the time to do the same things over and over again. And you can, too. But you can't use my code without agreeing to my terms.
Preordered mine today! ^_^
My GBA has an open screen prone to scratching. Any scratch it has gotten was simply from humans trying to clean the screen using material that ended up scratching it. The DS does nothing to stop this.
You can never do much to stop user error. If someone uses the wrong material to clean the screen and scratches it, there's not much you can do about that. But! The DS has the same folding action as the GBA SP. So while travelling, neither screen will be exposed and prone to scratching.
As for battery life, the PSP has a much longer battery life than the GameGear had and doesn't require 6 AA batteries.
That may be true. I never had a Game Gear. Sony has quoted the battery life of the PSP to be 4-6 hours. Later, they made a press release saying that the battery life they quoted was not what consumers should expect, and that in games which utilize the system's capabilities fully, the battery life would be lower. They didn't say how much lower, but it's reasonable to expect that "lower" would mean at least a 1 hour hit. I would expect more like 2 hours. I remember hearing someone say that at E3 last year, the models holding PSP's had to go recharge the batteries every 2 hours. I'm sure the battery life will be better in the final version, but I don't expect it to be that much better, especially not when playing graphically intense games or playing movies (during which the drive will be spinning).
On a personal note, I am aware that Sony has lied in the past about the capabilities of their systems. The PS2 was supposed to render cutscene-quality graphics in real time. As we all know, that is far from the case. Sony seems to have a track record of lying, and so I am hesitant to simply trust their 4-6 hour figure. On the other hand, Nintendo quoted the SP's battery life at 8-10 hours with the backlight on, and mine has done over 12 playing the games I really enjoy (mostly strategy games). In this case, I will trust Nintendo's word since they seem to like to quote conservative figures.
Not to mention that Sony has a habit of making hardware that breaks down quite often. My PS2 is in horrible shape and sometime won't even read a game disc without me having to reset it two or three times. And this is a system which sits on a shelf in my house. I can't imagine what would happen to my PS2 if I carried it around with me and let it jostle. On the other hand, my launch Gamecube works as well as when I got it.
And on the games side, I am itching to play Advance Wars DS. The marriage of a strategy game and a mouse-like device on a portable system with wireless capabilities seems almost too good to be true. Not to down on the PSP, but the only game that has me remotely interested is the new MGS game, and after the fiasco that was MGS2, I don't think I'll be playing any more of those games (at least not for a while). On the other hand, Nintendo consistently makes fun and interest games which never cease to entertain me (Advance Wars and Fire Emblem, anyone?). I know that my personal tastes differ from other peoples' though, and that's cool. I am fully aware that there are people who can't do without a Gran Tourismo fix, and that's just fine. For the most part, I have no interest in the games on Sony's systems, but the *games* part of the decision should solely be up to a person's personal tastes.
Left-handed gamers have already been considered. The layout of the four buttons on the system's right side mirrors the position of the D-pad. In the Metroid Prime Hunters demo that they gave a few weeks ago, they demonstrated different control schemes that you could select for the game. Two of them were for left handed people, and made the right buttons behave as a D-pad and the D-pad as the right buttons. No worries!
I doubt that that sort of thing could happen technically since the game cartridge will have control of both spaces of video memory. If you wanted to display an ad and not conflict with the game then you'd have to build games with that feature pre-emptively. At this point, DS game developers would be aware of any such feature that existed in the DS libraries and would have made games accordingly or protested. Either way, I think we would have heard of it by now.
I have heard of a feature which will allow DS owners to walk into a game store with their system and download demos of new games using the wireless ethernet. This is similar, but again, the software will likely control both sections of memory and will not be able to display an ad properly. Besides, I don't mind watching an ad in a demo of a game since I'm not paying money for it and I'm not walking out of the store with it.
Ridiculous comparison, eh?
Yes, ridiculous comparison. By the time the US entered WWII, Germany and the Axis powers had clearly demonstrated two things:
1.) They had the power (the weapons) necessary to conquer other countries in the free world.
2.) They had the intent to. They were doing it.
America was staying out of the war at the time Pearl Harbor was bombed. We entered it because of that, but we were going against powers that we could reasonably say were dangerous and out to get us. The Bush administration has made the same claims about the powers in the middle east (i.e. they have weapons and they want to use them), and so far neither has been found to be true. Knowing that two fundamental facts are different, I think it's safe to say that the comparison should not be made.
Also, there are some who believe the holocaust was a hoax. So in their mind, they believe we went after Hitler over a lie.
Wow... Just wow.... Do you really think these two are the same things? We found proof of the holocaust when we went over there to look. We found bodies, we found gas chambers. We found tons of weapons. We've been to Iraq, and we've had a look, and there are no WMD's. We teach the holocaust in history textbooks to this day. Will we write that Iraq had thousands of scuds/nukes/biological weapons knowing now that it was a complete lie? A citizen of this country, regardless of political affiliation, should be appalled if they found out that there was a lie in our history textbooks. Regardless of what people want to believe, a lie is still a lie no matter how many times people claim it is true.
Also, last I checked, abortion is perfectly legal in the United States.
It is indeed, because many Americans support a woman's right to choose, and many more Americans (regardless of the stance they take on the issue) do not think the government should be allowed to make such a personal and emotionally charged decision for anybody.
Sure, abortion is still legal, but let's be honest with ourselves. Say you have someone in public office who does not like to listen to/ take advice from anyone else, and who (even though it is not their job to make laws) is incredibly active at creating new legislation and whose party controls both houses of Congress. Let us also say that this person sees absolutely no problem in making laws saying what consenting adults in this country can and can not do regardless of how the adults in this country feel. What do you think will happen? Are you suggesting that we simply ignore all those things?
It does not matter how positive things are if they tend negatively. Bush hangs out with the Pope and the Pope would really like it if women stayed in the household. We have abortion now but it will not matter if a year from now women do not have the right to have abortions, and also do not have the right to work. I'm not suggesting that women will lose any more of their rights. I'm trying to point out that it's the direction that is important, not what the current situation is. If I have a million dollars now, but don't invest the money or work to increase it, I will eventually lose all of it by spending. The rate will reduce my money to 0, no matter how much of it I start with. That's why Bush's tax refunds do absolutely no good if the tax rates keep increasing.
My feeling is that if you don't like the outcome, then convince (don't name call) your opponents to vote the other way. Use the system and get your views across, don't just throw your hands up and flee.
It is time to be Americans and use the American system to "improve" the country.
A good feeling to be sure. I'm sure that many liberals and many people who did not vote for Bush or don't like his policies feel the exact same way as you do. But there's a problem. Because of the people
You can kiss our collective ass.
You can stop speaking for me.
The purpose of government is to tell people how to live their lives.
No. No. No. The purpose of government is to make sure that adults who have chosen different ways of living their lives can live in peace and harmony with one another despite how much they dislike the other's lifestyle. The government's job is to protect people who either 1.) can't make their own decisions or 2.) have decisions unlawfully made for them. If you want to be told how to live your life, there are many people who are happy to give you pointers. You can go to a church, you can ask your family or your parents if you have them. You have friends you can ask. But when it comes down to it, an adult has to decide for themselves where the line between right and wrong is. Drawing that line is an adult's right and duty. That's what being an adult means. An adult should have the right to make this choice for themselves, and consenting adults should be able to enter into relationships with one another that are consistent with the values that they have chosen for themselves. The reason we have government is to defend adults' rights to live according to the rules which they choose for themselves.
There is no reason to outlaw murder, if nobody wants to kill you. There is no reason to outlaw theft, if you have nothing worth stealing. There is no reason to outlaw child pornography if you have no children.
There is a reason to outlaw murder, theft and child pornography, but not gay marriage and drug use. Listen carefully. When I murder someone or steal from someone or make or watch child pornography I am not interacting with other consenting adults. They are either not adults (in the case of child pornography) or they are not consenting (in the case of murder or theft).
That is the difference between those three things and gay marriage, drug use, sodomy, etc. Marriage, regardless of who is being married, is a relationship that exists between two consenting adults and no one else. You can not get married to someone who is not an adult (although the ages vary from state to state), and you won't get married to someone who does not want to be married to you. If you were to marry someone against their will, most people would consider it a crime. Why do you think that is? As for drug use: when I use drugs in the safety of my own home, it is my own decision. As an adult, I should have the option of making that decision for myself. If I hurt myself, that is fine. It was my choice. I should be able to live my life the way I wish. The second I hurt another person, it stops being something I do for myself and could potentially become a crime.
It does not matter how you feel about gay marriage, drug use or whatever. Many people feel very differently about those issues, and that's fine. But the self-regarding vs. other-regarding action distinction is essential to being able to talk about them.
Some people in America feel that no one - not even the president himself should be allowed to draw their moral line for them. No one. Not parents, not friends, not the legislators in the House or Senate. Those very same people also believe that is it reasonable to make laws regarding things that affect non-consenting people or people not old enough to make decisions - these laws are about things like murder, rape, theft, etc. Drug use and gay marriage do not fall into that category, and many people are angry that the people in our government want to legislate those things since they are self-regarding actions.
These days it is considered a blasphemy to have a moral code and to judge other people's actions by it.
Everyone has their own moral code, and everyone makes judgements on others using it. That is fine. That is the way things are. But we have a different situation when one person tries to make a second person's personal actions adhere to their moral code. Adul