1) Since a P2P network can and will be used for legitimate purposes it would seem to me that this narrow restriction would hardly hold up in court without running afoul of various rights of the individual.
2) A fine of 250,000 is obviously not commensurate with the crime. Even with the blantant number manipulation of the RIAA, it would be exceedingly difficult to show that simply running a P2P node would result in losses of that magnitude.
3) A number of P2P nodes are run by minors, I'd love to see what happens when they try to prosecute a 10 year old for this one. Especially if it is run without the knowledge of the parents (as so many are).
4) Good luck trying to apply this to folks outside the US.
I'm not arguing about the playing, I'm talking about the buying. I want my son to be able to go out and be able to buy any game he wants. You and congress are the ones wanting to override my parental perogative to say he can't. I'm his parent and morally neither you nor congress should have any say in the matter.
Games are *not* harmful. If you choose to believe that they are, that is your concern and within your perogative to teach your children. However, as far as I'm concerned this law would be equivalent to congress mandating that kids couldn't buy meat products because the vegan lobby has convinced them that meat is harmful (and frankly the vegans have a much better argument than Sen. Lieberman).
This is a parental issue, not one that congress needs to butt its nose into.
It's your right to feel as you do, just so you realize that I feel that my kid should be able to buy GTA or whatever is like it by the time he reaches that age.
See, now we disagree on this, yet congress is thinking of mandating your opinion as the correct one. How is that fair? Suddenly my parental rights are being trampled while your parental rights, which existed before any laws, are not.
So by what right do you think you and congress have the authority to raise my children in direct opposition to my values?
This is redundant. Parents are already responsible for this. This law *is* censorship because it prevents a class of people (folks under 16) from accessing a body of art/entertainment/literature (video games can be all three). As somebody further up mentioned, that fits under the blanket definition of censorship fairly easily, the real question is whether it is reasonable censorship.
The answer to that would depend on whether video games are harmful. Since there is no evidence that video games cause any harm, it seems a little ostentatious for congress to decide who can and can't play them. Rather that is a judgement call for a *parent*, not a government.
This isn't encouraging parental involvment at all. This makes store clerks be involved, not parents. Besides which, you're forgetting an important point:
Parents also have the right to raise their kids *by* letting them play video games. I put my son on Unreal all the time. The visuals are very stimulating and he's learned some important things by playing and having me explain some of the concepts to him. For instance, he understands that it's ok to shoot people in a game, but I've taken great pains to be sure he knows that in real life it's something he should not do until he is an adult (and preferably not even then).
The point being, that I don't want my kid to have to take me to the store to buy whatever games he wants when he is of an age when he could afford to buy games. For that matter, I don't want him dragging my wife to the store to buy a game for me on christmas. The myth of video game violence being bad is no reason for a law limiting their sale. If you don't like your kid playing those games, fine, don't let them. But stay the fuck out of my kid's life.
Not to mention all the paranoid folks that monitor all their traffic. The worm claims to send info back to the RIAA, just try to tell me that somebody who's a religious packet sniffer won't notice that.
I could be mistaken, but I think there is a common feeling that web logs are a sort of "inadvertent" tracking of people. Nobody I've ever met feels comfy with the idea that anybody can know everything they do.
People keep weblogs for a good reason, but that reason isn't to tattle on visitors. That weblogs can be used for that purpose is repugnant to many that keep such logs. This would then be perceived to be a corruption, by the government, of something that otherwise is relatively harmless.
Of course, in tune with your comment, there isn't currently (in the united states) any requirement that people maintain logs. However, those that do must legally provide them, should they be subpoena'd. That this is so is probably the point of contention, as it could be perceived as government snooping, especially since a site like cryptome is bound to have a wee bit of traffic that disagrees with the current administration's invasive tactics.
Debating whether the left or right tells more lies would really be pointless. At this point you're talking about religious war (religious as in linux vs. windows, not actual religion) and I'm quite certain that both of us could come up with some juicy morsels proving our points without ever convincing each other of anything.
I maintain my position that the religious right (in contrast to simply "conservative") tends to tell some big whoppers. Typically religion is not the friend of the scientific method, simply because there aren't any religions who's ideology can be supported by it. As a result, members of the religious right who feel obligated to defend/advance their causes tend to use the scientific method poorly (aka not at all).
Otherwise I think it's reasonable for me to retract any implication that conservatives lie more than liberals. To fall back to a more defensible position let's just agree that misrepresentation of facts in the pursuit of an ideological agenda is a bad thing. Agreed?
I think the title reflects the tendencies of the religious right to misrepresent or falsify scientific studies. While I'm by no means implying that there is no such effort by parts of the more liberal elements of society, their efforts at least tend to be a bit less outrageous. Trying to scientifically show that evolution is non-existent and that creationism can be supported using scientific methods would be only one prime example.
While I have seen liberals misrepresent scientific studies (it's easy to lie with statistics yadda yadda yadda), I have never seen outright lies from the liberal front along the lines of, say, "The Silent Scream". I believe this is because of an idealogical difference of approach. The religious right believes science to be a dangerous and biased opponent and has no qualms about outrageously falsifying it, whereas the liberal society is able to convince itself that the numbers it manipulates reflect "the truth".
This is a generalization of course, because there are undoubtedly some liberals who believe science is bunk and some religious conservatives who respect it. In general however, the majority of liberals respect the scientific method enough to at least consider conclusions reached using it.
My earliest memory is from around age 2-3, going to get ice cream with my Dad in Newark Delaware. I can accurately place the memory because I remember walking there from a specific house that we only lived in until I was about 3 1/2 (when my parents divorced). I have fragments of memory associated with that time, but I don't recall enough to know if they were before or after that.
As to why that's my first memory I don't have any explanation. According to my parents I had many previous memorable (to them) events occur that I have no recollection of. It may be that I was simply going through a phase where my ability to place thoughts into a memory schema were much improved from past efforts.
It's worth noting that the law seems to apply only to manufacturers/retailers. I'm sure that the day this hits the market there will be a conversion kit to disable it. I wonder how they plan on policing gun shows (assuming NJ has any after this law is enacted).
How long will it be before the first lawsuit based on the inability of a gun owner to use his gun to defend himself resulting in death or injury?
I'm also wondering what they do for antique enthusiasts. Just how do you put a fingerprint check on a flint lock?
Gun sales in the surrounding states will likely soar (no sales tax in Delaware even).
I could be wrong here, but wouldn't an ultraviolet laser be far more effective? Glass is not transparent to the UV spectrum so shouldn't it be able to "drill" right through it?
You're talking about a state where you aren't allowed to PUMP YOUR OWN GAS. No such thing as self serve in NJ. Personally I think NJ politicians have a dartboard with a bunch of random to create new legislation.
Well dipshit, I posted 9 minutes after the story itself. 8 minutes if you count the time it took to write the post and submit it. There weren't any informative posts around yet. It isn't clear from the news story that the idvd software has measures to prevent copying/altering WHICH IS WHY I WAS ASKING IN THE FIRST PLACE. Get off your damn high horse.
I'm not familiar with the mac systems, but how the hell is this circumvent copy protection? While Apple obviously has these folks by the balls (since they primarily sell macs), I would think that this threat would be empty if somebody else decided to do it. Anybody have more info?
Perhaps not "current customers" but "potential and future customers" is not such a stretch. I recommend reading Eric Flint's "Prime Palavers" at www.baen.com/library as his discussion is both more detailed and more precise (and less rambling)than what I'm inclined to answer with.
To sum up (pardon martha stewartisms), exposure is a good thing. Exposure doesn't happen at $17 for a random try at it, unless you're very rich and more than a little careless with your money (and since carelessness with money tends to lead to impoverishment, you'd have to be very damn lucky too).
Right now, the only means of "legitimate" exposure is concerts and radio. Concerts usually require $$ on the part of the listener, which is not going to happen unless they like the music anyway. Radio exposure is free for the listener (unless you do satellite radio) but tends to be... shall we say... a bit repetitive. It costs $$ for the major studios to buy airtime on the radio so in return they only promote music that seems to be a "safe bet" (aka bland shit by talentless teenieboppers with big tits and/or handsome boys that think that waving their arms around at the same time they lip sync somebody else's voice makes 'em cool). To boot, you typically only hear at most 40% of an album by listening to radio, not exactly a comprehensive disclosure.
Where was I? Oh ya, pirates. So why do people download music? To see what music they want to buy. Or, in the case of kids too young to have any money, to simply listen to it until they reach an age where they decide they want (and can afford) to have a "real" copy of the music.
Do you go out and buy movies you've never seen, just because the previews look cool? Then why should you go out and pay $17 for an album that you haven't listened to except for a few singles that are getting played on the radio 20 times a day?
Fact of the matter is (yes fact) that since napster died the RIAA has seen revenues for music sales drop. Yet when napster was in full swing, revenues were increasing... Why is that you ask? Because people were listening to more music and they were buying the music that they liked, knowing that they would be getting a good deal for their hard earned cash. What's more, the people who couldn't afford to buy any music at all (and thus wouldn't have contributed to sales anyway) also listened to a lot of good music and if/when they have surplus finances they'll go out and buy the music they listened used to listen to.
Imagine that... people listening to music for free, and making more money for the RIAA's studio friends...
But wait, it's piracy, let's round up the anarchist pirating cretins and shoot the lot of 'em, nevermind that it makes money and that it's a stupid idea.
Clue: anytime you see the word "pirate" in anything put out by the RIAA replace it with "future customer". Then you'll understand the sarcasm of my original post (although it's true that sometimes I wish I could shoot all my customers, it's just not likely that I would make any money doing so).
The only real pirates that are a menace to the RIAA are the ones that make and SELL copies of a legitimate artist's work (note the emphasis, we're not talking college guys making a few CDs for their buds). They are the ones passing off an inferior product for their own profit at the expense of the labels. You want pirates, go after those bozos, don't cut your own legs out from under you by persecuting your own customers.
I can't remember how many times I've said or thought "without the fucking customer, my life would be so much easier". I'm so glad to see somebody finally decided to just say "screw them" to all their customers and live the easy life.
The analogy of the internet to an "information superhighway" is flawed, as should have been evidenced by the fact that that's what Gore calls it.
A highway is something that allows people to get from point A to point B, hopefully faster than they would by walking, running or hang gliding (LA residents excepted).
The internet on the other hand doesn't allow people to go anywhere, yet is a vast resource of information and activity. A better name for the internet would have been the Information Superlibrary, although even that is flawed as the content in a library is fairly static in comparison and in most libraries you can't frag other people (legally).
Do libraries require "cops"? What about video games (tickets for spawn camping)? Trying to govern the internet removes the inherent benefits of it. If you have to get an OK to post an audio file, who's to say you'll go to the trouble of doing so. If you've got to get 32 character keys (per family member for 1 viewing) to post pictures of your 3 year old for your family wouldn't it be easier to just snail mail them a copy? The internet is *dynamic*. As such, it has a multitude of content that is constantly changing and that uses multiple formats to do so.
Even that aside, there's no proof that piracy even causes a loss of revenue. In order for that to occur you'd have to prove that people who pirate would actually make purchases if piracy was not an option. You'd also have to prove that piracy doesn't lead to an eventual sale of the pirated material.
There is in fact fairly significant evidence to the contrary. While napster was fully operational and free, record sales increased significantly. As per a recent slashdot post, Eric Flint has posted hard numbers showing that giving away his books on the Baen Free Library drastically increases his sales for those books (and his other books too).
Finally, you'd have to determine if any sort of regulatory oversight of the internet would actually be effective. What you have are millions of people trying to get content with a necessarily few people trying to stop them. No matter what method you use, unless you go extremely draconian (aka violating the rights of your constituents) there will be no way to possibly prevent content distrubution.
There is a need to be filled here. If Hollywood and the MPAA were smart, instead of fighting the net, they'd start using it. Instead of spending millions on people trying to find and promote (aka flood the airwaves) the next Britney Spears and Backstreet boys, they could be using sites like MP3.com to find out what people actually like and try selling that to people instead of the crap they do sell.
They why isn't there naked weathergirls on TV in the US? Just because we don't agree with the law doesn't make it wrong. What makes it (legally) wrong is that in a court's opinion it says it's wrong regardless of our personal views.
Are you trying to claim that naked weathergirls are wrong? To be honest I'm not sure where you're going with that particular analogy. I don't have a problem with naked weathergirls, although I seriously doubt that it would be a big fad. As far as what a court rules making an act "right" or "wrong", is irrelevant to this discussion. Bad laws have been passed before and will be passed in the future. Just because they are law doesn't mean they aren't stupid or immoral and should not be fought (and sometimes broken).
Close mindedness will never allow you or I to see another viewpoint. This self-limitation can only close off new ideas and thoughts which leads to and end of wisdom and learning. You and I can disagree on every single point of consideration. However, that does not preclude us from understanding each other's point of view. I understand that you think it's silly for someone to get addicted to porn. I think it's silly for someone to get addicted to nicotine. That does not mean I disregard smoking or chewing or people who do so.
I can hardly see how censorship is supposed to lead to anything other than "limitation can only close off new ideas and thoughts which leads to and end of wisdom and learning". While you are disparaging closemindedness, I find it ironic that you also seen to be promoting censorship. In my mind censorship is enforced closemindedness. Yes I am rather closeminded on the subject of censorship, I unilaterally hate it and believe that it is the most foolish response a group of people can make. Does this make me generally closeminded or simply opposed to foolishness?
You are also misinterpreting my response to what you said. I never claimed it was silly for people to become addicted to porn, i claimed that it was silly to state that porn is addictive. Undoubtedly millions of people see porn every day, yet only a vast minority find any addictive qualities to it. This is notably unlike nicotine addiction which causes a reproduceable chemical reaction in the body of one who consumes it that causes a dependency. Some people also find celebrities addictive and stalk them. By your arguments, we should censor celebrities in order to protect a minority from ruining their marriages by becoming stalkers.
However, having a government designed to protect me from drunk drivers is good. So there are some valid arguments for both sides of this fence.
Drunk drivers pose a danger to others, a clear case for trying to limit them. Porn... well that's not really a danger to all but a few who get obsessed with it and even then really doesn't produce the same results as several hundred pounds of metal travelling at high speeds into other people.
As far as there being valid arguments in favor of filterware, I disagree strongly. If there was a filtering program that permitted flawless filtering of porn and only porn then I really wouldn't give a damn if the government wanted to install them in the libraries. While sex is a healthy subject, porn isn't something we can really expect libraries to support (although sex education is) if there is a reasonable way to not support it. However, there is no way that existing or future filterware will be able to fulfill the requirement that it only block porn. Existing filterware can't even block all porn, let alone not block things that aren't porn. Filterware fails on the basic premise that it's even effective, thus I can find no redeeming arguments in its favor.
There are always going to be people who get addicted to things that they shouldn't be. However, this does not mean that the government should then be required to prevent anybody from accessing something that a few people find addictive.
Sex is healthy. Most porn is relatively harmless, even to curious children (since even children will someday grow up and probably end up having sex). This isn't to say that there isn't some vile porn out there that has no redeeming value except to psychopaths and it's not to say that some people won't find porn addictive.
However it is neither the governments job to censor it, nor is it the government's job to try to protect us from something that is harmless to the vast majority.
Somebody else's lack of control is not an excuse for somebody to censor me. If you are of the opinion that such an act is justified then I really have no regard for how many weeks of though you've put into your opinion. People trying to censor what I can and can't see tends to get me more than a little mad.
Slashdot Mirror
IANAL but:
1) Since a P2P network can and will be used for legitimate purposes it would seem to me that this narrow restriction would hardly hold up in court without running afoul of various rights of the individual.
2) A fine of 250,000 is obviously not commensurate with the crime. Even with the blantant number manipulation of the RIAA, it would be exceedingly difficult to show that simply running a P2P node would result in losses of that magnitude.
3) A number of P2P nodes are run by minors, I'd love to see what happens when they try to prosecute a 10 year old for this one. Especially if it is run without the knowledge of the parents (as so many are).
4) Good luck trying to apply this to folks outside the US.
I'm not arguing about the playing, I'm talking about the buying. I want my son to be able to go out and be able to buy any game he wants. You and congress are the ones wanting to override my parental perogative to say he can't. I'm his parent and morally neither you nor congress should have any say in the matter.
Games are *not* harmful. If you choose to believe that they are, that is your concern and within your perogative to teach your children. However, as far as I'm concerned this law would be equivalent to congress mandating that kids couldn't buy meat products because the vegan lobby has convinced them that meat is harmful (and frankly the vegans have a much better argument than Sen. Lieberman).
This is a parental issue, not one that congress needs to butt its nose into.
It's your right to feel as you do, just so you realize that I feel that my kid should be able to buy GTA or whatever is like it by the time he reaches that age.
See, now we disagree on this, yet congress is thinking of mandating your opinion as the correct one. How is that fair? Suddenly my parental rights are being trampled while your parental rights, which existed before any laws, are not.
So by what right do you think you and congress have the authority to raise my children in direct opposition to my values?
This is redundant. Parents are already responsible for this. This law *is* censorship because it prevents a class of people (folks under 16) from accessing a body of art/entertainment/literature (video games can be all three). As somebody further up mentioned, that fits under the blanket definition of censorship fairly easily, the real question is whether it is reasonable censorship.
The answer to that would depend on whether video games are harmful. Since there is no evidence that video games cause any harm, it seems a little ostentatious for congress to decide who can and can't play them. Rather that is a judgement call for a *parent*, not a government.
This isn't encouraging parental involvment at all. This makes store clerks be involved, not parents. Besides which, you're forgetting an important point:
Parents also have the right to raise their kids *by* letting them play video games. I put my son on Unreal all the time. The visuals are very stimulating and he's learned some important things by playing and having me explain some of the concepts to him. For instance, he understands that it's ok to shoot people in a game, but I've taken great pains to be sure he knows that in real life it's something he should not do until he is an adult (and preferably not even then).
The point being, that I don't want my kid to have to take me to the store to buy whatever games he wants when he is of an age when he could afford to buy games. For that matter, I don't want him dragging my wife to the store to buy a game for me on christmas. The myth of video game violence being bad is no reason for a law limiting their sale. If you don't like your kid playing those games, fine, don't let them. But stay the fuck out of my kid's life.
Not to mention all the paranoid folks that monitor all their traffic. The worm claims to send info back to the RIAA, just try to tell me that somebody who's a religious packet sniffer won't notice that.
I could be mistaken, but I think there is a common feeling that web logs are a sort of "inadvertent" tracking of people. Nobody I've ever met feels comfy with the idea that anybody can know everything they do.
People keep weblogs for a good reason, but that reason isn't to tattle on visitors. That weblogs can be used for that purpose is repugnant to many that keep such logs. This would then be perceived to be a corruption, by the government, of something that otherwise is relatively harmless.
Of course, in tune with your comment, there isn't currently (in the united states) any requirement that people maintain logs. However, those that do must legally provide them, should they be subpoena'd. That this is so is probably the point of contention, as it could be perceived as government snooping, especially since a site like cryptome is bound to have a wee bit of traffic that disagrees with the current administration's invasive tactics.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that read that and ended up thinking "Um... huh?"
Fair enough. My only words in my defense are that the religious right is a subset of the conservative lobby.
Debating whether the left or right tells more lies would really be pointless. At this point you're talking about religious war (religious as in linux vs. windows, not actual religion) and I'm quite certain that both of us could come up with some juicy morsels proving our points without ever convincing each other of anything.
I maintain my position that the religious right (in contrast to simply "conservative") tends to tell some big whoppers. Typically religion is not the friend of the scientific method, simply because there aren't any religions who's ideology can be supported by it. As a result, members of the religious right who feel obligated to defend/advance their causes tend to use the scientific method poorly (aka not at all).
Otherwise I think it's reasonable for me to retract any implication that conservatives lie more than liberals. To fall back to a more defensible position let's just agree that misrepresentation of facts in the pursuit of an ideological agenda is a bad thing. Agreed?
I think the title reflects the tendencies of the religious right to misrepresent or falsify scientific studies. While I'm by no means implying that there is no such effort by parts of the more liberal elements of society, their efforts at least tend to be a bit less outrageous. Trying to scientifically show that evolution is non-existent and that creationism can be supported using scientific methods would be only one prime example.
While I have seen liberals misrepresent scientific studies (it's easy to lie with statistics yadda yadda yadda), I have never seen outright lies from the liberal front along the lines of, say, "The Silent Scream". I believe this is because of an idealogical difference of approach. The religious right believes science to be a dangerous and biased opponent and has no qualms about outrageously falsifying it, whereas the liberal society is able to convince itself that the numbers it manipulates reflect "the truth".
This is a generalization of course, because there are undoubtedly some liberals who believe science is bunk and some religious conservatives who respect it. In general however, the majority of liberals respect the scientific method enough to at least consider conclusions reached using it.
My earliest memory is from around age 2-3, going to get ice cream with my Dad in Newark Delaware. I can accurately place the memory because I remember walking there from a specific house that we only lived in until I was about 3 1/2 (when my parents divorced). I have fragments of memory associated with that time, but I don't recall enough to know if they were before or after that.
As to why that's my first memory I don't have any explanation. According to my parents I had many previous memorable (to them) events occur that I have no recollection of. It may be that I was simply going through a phase where my ability to place thoughts into a memory schema were much improved from past efforts.
It's worth noting that the law seems to apply only to manufacturers/retailers. I'm sure that the day this hits the market there will be a conversion kit to disable it. I wonder how they plan on policing gun shows (assuming NJ has any after this law is enacted).
How long will it be before the first lawsuit based on the inability of a gun owner to use his gun to defend himself resulting in death or injury?
I'm also wondering what they do for antique enthusiasts. Just how do you put a fingerprint check on a flint lock?
Gun sales in the surrounding states will likely soar (no sales tax in Delaware even).
I could be wrong here, but wouldn't an ultraviolet laser be far more effective? Glass is not transparent to the UV spectrum so shouldn't it be able to "drill" right through it?
No, because he doesn't like people questioning authority. Affirmative action is the least of his issues.
Regardless of the context he has a very bad record of paying any heed to civil rights.
You're talking about a state where you aren't allowed to PUMP YOUR OWN GAS. No such thing as self serve in NJ. Personally I think NJ politicians have a dartboard with a bunch of random to create new legislation.
Well dipshit, I posted 9 minutes after the story itself. 8 minutes if you count the time it took to write the post and submit it. There weren't any informative posts around yet. It isn't clear from the news story that the idvd software has measures to prevent copying/altering WHICH IS WHY I WAS ASKING IN THE FIRST PLACE. Get off your damn high horse.
I'm not familiar with the mac systems, but how the hell is this circumvent copy protection? While Apple obviously has these folks by the balls (since they primarily sell macs), I would think that this threat would be empty if somebody else decided to do it. Anybody have more info?
Perhaps not "current customers" but "potential and future customers" is not such a stretch. I recommend reading Eric Flint's "Prime Palavers" at www.baen.com/library as his discussion is both more detailed and more precise (and less rambling)than what I'm inclined to answer with.
To sum up (pardon martha stewartisms), exposure is a good thing. Exposure doesn't happen at $17 for a random try at it, unless you're very rich and more than a little careless with your money (and since carelessness with money tends to lead to impoverishment, you'd have to be very damn lucky too).
Right now, the only means of "legitimate" exposure is concerts and radio. Concerts usually require $$ on the part of the listener, which is not going to happen unless they like the music anyway. Radio exposure is free for the listener (unless you do satellite radio) but tends to be... shall we say... a bit repetitive. It costs $$ for the major studios to buy airtime on the radio so in return they only promote music that seems to be a "safe bet" (aka bland shit by talentless teenieboppers with big tits and/or handsome boys that think that waving their arms around at the same time they lip sync somebody else's voice makes 'em cool). To boot, you typically only hear at most 40% of an album by listening to radio, not exactly a comprehensive disclosure.
Where was I? Oh ya, pirates. So why do people download music? To see what music they want to buy. Or, in the case of kids too young to have any money, to simply listen to it until they reach an age where they decide they want (and can afford) to have a "real" copy of the music.
Do you go out and buy movies you've never seen, just because the previews look cool? Then why should you go out and pay $17 for an album that you haven't listened to except for a few singles that are getting played on the radio 20 times a day?
Fact of the matter is (yes fact) that since napster died the RIAA has seen revenues for music sales drop. Yet when napster was in full swing, revenues were increasing... Why is that you ask? Because people were listening to more music and they were buying the music that they liked, knowing that they would be getting a good deal for their hard earned cash. What's more, the people who couldn't afford to buy any music at all (and thus wouldn't have contributed to sales anyway) also listened to a lot of good music and if/when they have surplus finances they'll go out and buy the music they listened used to listen to.
Imagine that... people listening to music for free, and making more money for the RIAA's studio friends...
But wait, it's piracy, let's round up the anarchist pirating cretins and shoot the lot of 'em, nevermind that it makes money and that it's a stupid idea.
Clue: anytime you see the word "pirate" in anything put out by the RIAA replace it with "future customer". Then you'll understand the sarcasm of my original post (although it's true that sometimes I wish I could shoot all my customers, it's just not likely that I would make any money doing so).
The only real pirates that are a menace to the RIAA are the ones that make and SELL copies of a legitimate artist's work (note the emphasis, we're not talking college guys making a few CDs for their buds). They are the ones passing off an inferior product for their own profit at the expense of the labels. You want pirates, go after those bozos, don't cut your own legs out from under you by persecuting your own customers.
I can't remember how many times I've said or thought "without the fucking customer, my life would be so much easier". I'm so glad to see somebody finally decided to just say "screw them" to all their customers and live the easy life.
I wonder if the MPAA is hiring...
The analogy of the internet to an "information superhighway" is flawed, as should have been evidenced by the fact that that's what Gore calls it.
A highway is something that allows people to get from point A to point B, hopefully faster than they would by walking, running or hang gliding (LA residents excepted).
The internet on the other hand doesn't allow people to go anywhere, yet is a vast resource of information and activity. A better name for the internet would have been the Information Superlibrary, although even that is flawed as the content in a library is fairly static in comparison and in most libraries you can't frag other people (legally).
Do libraries require "cops"? What about video games (tickets for spawn camping)? Trying to govern the internet removes the inherent benefits of it. If you have to get an OK to post an audio file, who's to say you'll go to the trouble of doing so. If you've got to get 32 character keys (per family member for 1 viewing) to post pictures of your 3 year old for your family wouldn't it be easier to just snail mail them a copy? The internet is *dynamic*. As such, it has a multitude of content that is constantly changing and that uses multiple formats to do so.
Even that aside, there's no proof that piracy even causes a loss of revenue. In order for that to occur you'd have to prove that people who pirate would actually make purchases if piracy was not an option. You'd also have to prove that piracy doesn't lead to an eventual sale of the pirated material.
There is in fact fairly significant evidence to the contrary. While napster was fully operational and free, record sales increased significantly. As per a recent slashdot post, Eric Flint has posted hard numbers showing that giving away his books on the Baen Free Library drastically increases his sales for those books (and his other books too).
Finally, you'd have to determine if any sort of regulatory oversight of the internet would actually be effective. What you have are millions of people trying to get content with a necessarily few people trying to stop them. No matter what method you use, unless you go extremely draconian (aka violating the rights of your constituents) there will be no way to possibly prevent content distrubution.
There is a need to be filled here. If Hollywood and the MPAA were smart, instead of fighting the net, they'd start using it. Instead of spending millions on people trying to find and promote (aka flood the airwaves) the next Britney Spears and Backstreet boys, they could be using sites like MP3.com to find out what people actually like and try selling that to people instead of the crap they do sell.
They why isn't there naked weathergirls on TV in the US? Just because we don't agree with the law doesn't make it wrong. What makes it (legally) wrong is that in a court's opinion it says it's wrong regardless of our personal views.
Are you trying to claim that naked weathergirls are wrong? To be honest I'm not sure where you're going with that particular analogy. I don't have a problem with naked weathergirls, although I seriously doubt that it would be a big fad. As far as what a court rules making an act "right" or "wrong", is irrelevant to this discussion. Bad laws have been passed before and will be passed in the future. Just because they are law doesn't mean they aren't stupid or immoral and should not be fought (and sometimes broken).
Close mindedness will never allow you or I to see another viewpoint. This self-limitation can only close off new ideas and thoughts which leads to and end of wisdom and learning. You and I can disagree on every single point of consideration. However, that does not preclude us from understanding each other's point of view. I understand that you think it's silly for someone to get addicted to porn. I think it's silly for someone to get addicted to nicotine. That does not mean I disregard smoking or chewing or people who do so.
I can hardly see how censorship is supposed to lead to anything other than "limitation can only close off new ideas and thoughts which leads to and end of wisdom and learning". While you are disparaging closemindedness, I find it ironic that you also seen to be promoting censorship. In my mind censorship is enforced closemindedness. Yes I am rather closeminded on the subject of censorship, I unilaterally hate it and believe that it is the most foolish response a group of people can make. Does this make me generally closeminded or simply opposed to foolishness?
You are also misinterpreting my response to what you said. I never claimed it was silly for people to become addicted to porn, i claimed that it was silly to state that porn is addictive. Undoubtedly millions of people see porn every day, yet only a vast minority find any addictive qualities to it. This is notably unlike nicotine addiction which causes a reproduceable chemical reaction in the body of one who consumes it that causes a dependency. Some people also find celebrities addictive and stalk them. By your arguments, we should censor celebrities in order to protect a minority from ruining their marriages by becoming stalkers.
However, having a government designed to protect me from drunk drivers is good. So there are some valid arguments for both sides of this fence.
Drunk drivers pose a danger to others, a clear case for trying to limit them. Porn... well that's not really a danger to all but a few who get obsessed with it and even then really doesn't produce the same results as several hundred pounds of metal travelling at high speeds into other people.
As far as there being valid arguments in favor of filterware, I disagree strongly. If there was a filtering program that permitted flawless filtering of porn and only porn then I really wouldn't give a damn if the government wanted to install them in the libraries. While sex is a healthy subject, porn isn't something we can really expect libraries to support (although sex education is) if there is a reasonable way to not support it. However, there is no way that existing or future filterware will be able to fulfill the requirement that it only block porn. Existing filterware can't even block all porn, let alone not block things that aren't porn. Filterware fails on the basic premise that it's even effective, thus I can find no redeeming arguments in its favor.
Actually it's two separate statements and not at all related to my .sig (my sig being related to my dislike of .sigs)
:)
statement 1
Don't be an idiot.
statement 2
Think before you post.
That said I'm sometimes hypocritical on both counts
There are always going to be people who get addicted to things that they shouldn't be. However, this does not mean that the government should then be required to prevent anybody from accessing something that a few people find addictive.
Sex is healthy. Most porn is relatively harmless, even to curious children (since even children will someday grow up and probably end up having sex). This isn't to say that there isn't some vile porn out there that has no redeeming value except to psychopaths and it's not to say that some people won't find porn addictive.
However it is neither the governments job to censor it, nor is it the government's job to try to protect us from something that is harmless to the vast majority.
Somebody else's lack of control is not an excuse for somebody to censor me. If you are of the opinion that such an act is justified then I really have no regard for how many weeks of though you've put into your opinion. People trying to censor what I can and can't see tends to get me more than a little mad.