I will say that that does happen; I've worked for companies that did that. In fact, I've worked for companies where it was the LEAST unethical thing that they did. They also put in their employment agreement that they can take your balls if you tell anyone any of the things they do...some even go so far as to say "even if it's the cops." (Not in those exact words--they say stuff like "Law enforcement agency without a signed affidavit in which you are specifically named.") In fact, one company, who I will in fact name for spite's sake (Convergys, Logan Utah, Sprint Account) overtly instructed us to lie to customers and corporate clients alike to make ourselves look better. (Anyone from Sprint reading? Ask some ex-employees about what they told us to tell you.) They even went so far as to explicitly tell us that the printed bullet points on their mousepads were there for the benefit of potential clients inspecting the premises and that the employees were absolutely not to follow them. (They cut into profits, you see.) Many corporations are very shady with how they control the public's perception of them.
On the other hand, I've seen people falsely accused of shillery plenty often too. What I haven't seen personally, interestingly enough, is a real shill being publicly accused of being a shill.
Usually, if a genuine shill gets accused of being a shill, they complain to the admins with a message about "Personal attacks and harassment" and a link to "Your own terms of service agreement" or posting policy, along with a demand that the post be deleted. People who actually aren't shills don't tend to go to such lengths...
So, you aspiring website admins, if you ever get an e-mail from someone demanding that a post accusing them of shillery be deleted...they're that much more likely to actually be shills.
On the other hand, if the post is full of gushing, superlative praise that is not even spelled correctly, it may well be real.
Point being, it's hard to tell when it happens, but it does happen. Thus, the innocent get harangued for posting their opinions due to the "Victimless" crime of corporate opinion-bombing...
I was speaking a bit rhetorically. Few people literally throw away the CDs unless they've got noxious DRM. I say "few" because I have known some who went so far as to toss them on the way out of the store, if only to make a point.
Everyone I know who actually bothers to pay for music buys it from the company, then throws the CD/DRM'ed file away and downloads an mp3 from a P2P. They buy the media simply to be a good citizen, not because they want the crippled files.
Um, actually, you [i]do[/i] make up the rules. Every rule is made up. The esteemed Cmdr didn't make up this particular rule, but someone did. They didn't come upon their naming policy through rigorous scientific method--they made it up.
You know what? Strikes are made up too. [i]Baseball is made up.[/i] You honestly [i]can[/i] give everyone four strikes if you feel like it. And if you own the field, you can [i]make everyone else play with four strikes.[/i] Suddenly saying that "3 strikes you're out, end of story" doesn't seem to matter.
Is it invalid to assume that 69% of workers will have gotten better at what they do?
Would it surprise you to learn that, according to the real laws, traditions and justifications underlying the formation of corporations, they do [i]not[/i] exist to make money? They're actually explicitly meant to promote the public good. Any corporation which intentionally benefits an elite few (the CEOs) over the public (the employees and consumers) is not fulfilling their obligation as a corporation.
Of course, we forgot this. Why? Because they paid off the enforcers for long enough that we all became dependant on them. It's hard to revoke a corporation's charter when they and their subsidiaries are bringing in a significant chunk of your state's total tax revenue, provide thousands of jobs (even if those jobs are complete shit) and--most crucially of all--control the media outlets which are the typical voter's only real source of information. We choose the lesser of two evils. That doesn't mean we should support their abuses.
To my medical knowledge, what you eat can have a significant effect on your mood, but it's not the only cause, or even necessarily the most common one. Refind sugars can have a depressant effect by leading to low blood sugar. The body shoots out insulin to deal with the sudden sugar spike, but since the spike is very short you're left with a ton of insulin that prevents you from maintaining a sufficient supply until it can be cleared out.
But even if you're just talking physical causes, there are others which can have the same effect--lack of sleep, exercise, and all that other "Health" stuff. Most people don't mentally link their state of mind with their state of body, because it's counterintuitive--most people think of their emotions, their thoughts, and their body as being distinct. They are not. That's why anti-depressants work in the first place. While they may ultimately be a band-aid for the effects of a persistant problem, we wear band-aids for a reason. Often the causes of depression are too difficult to ferret out, so we remove it's effects instead.
So, in short, you're right that sugar can affect mood but sugar isn't the whole story.
Why is your child allowed to forgo his daily prayers to Baal? Why is he allowed to frolick and talk to other children when they will clearly detract from his devotion to Our Dark God?
No, seriously. Tell me the difference.
In case the difference in your mind is "Because that is ridiculous," I will state my point in concrete terms.
The comparison to violence and violent video games is equally ridiculous. It is a sign of a fundamental failure in critical thinking. Assuming similarity between objects based solely on our associations is cognitively incompetent.
We believe video games will lead to violence...why? Because they look like violence. Because they take on the appearance of violence. So they must cause violence. That's retarded.
They're *not real.* You know what? They're not even violent; nobody is being harmed. You just call them violent because they sensorily resemble violence.
Case in point: Play a video game. Jump down a cliff. Then turn off the TV and look at your body. Are your bones broken? Are you lying shattered at the bottom of a ravine?
Why not?
Well, guess what. Eight year olds can answer that question just as fast as you can. Don't believe me? Ask one.
The Religious Reich commissions study after study where they stare down the surveyers and say "This study MUST PROVE THAT VIOLENT MEDIA CAUSES VIOLENCE. We are not asking a question here. Do we make ourselves clear?" And even under those circumstances, they all seem to say "Well, as far as we can tell, video games are no more encouraging of violence than baseball, go-fish or scripture reading." Why? Because of the miracle of the control group. With a control group, you have to go off of the math. You'll find that the studies that imply violence increases do not typically have one. Those that do cannot draw any meaningful correllation, or draw correllations that look really, really bad for the point they're trying to make. (Such as finding that children's aggression increases drastically after, for example, a one-hour session of scripture study)
The whole concept reeks of stupidity. Not just misconception; flat out stupidity. The same people who claim video games will turn kids into bloodthirsty sociopaths are also claiming that video games will turn kids into fat, unmotivated slobs who won't even get off the couch to put out a fire. Have you ever heard of a fat, unmotivated serial killer? Have you ever heard of a terrorist slacker? Have you ever met a bully? They're all jocks who beat up on kids who play video games. Yet nobody says that children should be protected from sports, because adults like sports and adults are hypocrites.
This is a cultural problem. Your cultural superstitions say video games are bad. My cultural superstitions say you're all retards. I figure, if I agree not to declare jyhad on you for contaminating our culture with senseless, fear-mongering memetic bullshit, it's only fair that you keep said bullshit and the neanderthal emotional logic that leads to it out of our shared legal system.
And if that didn't make sense, I'll leave you with this final statement: Impiety before Baal leads children to smoke, drink, and engage in premarital sex. There's no reason I should allow you to put my child at risk by allowing your children to skip their prayers to Baal.
And if enough people said that enough times, eventually people would vote for it, and eventually your child would be forced to worship Baal. That's the kind of culture you're encouraging here. Do you think it matters whether it's ridiculous? It obviously doesn't matter to you.
Why should I, as an adult, give a shit? Because I was a kid once. Because I, as an adult, see a whole lot of fascist parents who don't know their ass from their mouth who's children genuinely are sociopaths. In all cases, the children were forcefully sheltered from everything associated with being objectionable. Me
You're arguing semantics versus reality. You're saying it's not a universally safe speed because they don't use the term universally safe speed.
If there's a straight, wide open and well-maintained road with a professional driver in a brand new sports car who passes a 25mph speed limit sign anywhere in any country, you are wrong.
And your statement that the limit is absolutely the highest you should ever go...(personal comments deleted.) It's true that it is not a universally safe speed, but faster than that is not a universally unsafe speed either--it's not even a *typically* unsafe speed in many cases. There's roads in my hometown that had 25mph limits where people went 55 (because they were actually double-lane highway-style roads) and the number of accidents there were the same as the areas where they went 25. Why? Because science is not used to determine speed limits. They'll can study how much more a car will freak out at 20mph faster, but they have no context with which to determine the relevance of that difference, and those results only apply to circumstances surrounding the specific test anyway. If I pull the tires off of a car I can prove that they're unsafe and uncontrollable at 20 miles per hour. Put a NASCAR driver on the test course and you can prove that cars don't go out of control until they hit 180mph. There's no control groups or even a means of determining what risk is acceptable (as the very concept of acceptable loss is ultimately a personal preference), and there are far too many factors in causing an accident to ever ferret out how much the driver's speed was responsible (as opposed to his reaction time, his car's performance, his avoidance options, the visibility, the road surface, and events which were not in the least bit influenced by his speed, such as his tire exploding).
ANY assertion as to what constitutes a "Safe Speed" is going to be wrong, because speed is not the only major factor. You can't say a speed is safe because safety is not just a question of your speed. Since there's so much ambiguity, they make up a number that they figure is the best balance between practicality and safety--which means the speed limit is not an indicator of safety, it's an indicator of the person's perception of safety vs. practicality. An extremely fearful person who would rather everyone be late and never ever be injured will put every speed limit low. Someone with a "Shit happens" attitude will put the speed limits much higher. Questions as to the appropriateness of speed limits aside, the concept that they are in any way universal is ludicrous.
Criminal prosecution is just the term we use to describe throwing someone in a cage. Just about the most direct and literal stripping of freedom that there could ever possibly be.
Copyright infringement is just the term we use to describe someone who isn't giving money to a copyright holder, causing a percieved loss of profit.
Since assumedly the damage of infringement will continue unless something is done, the simple choice is presented: Continue to allow piracy or throw people in jail instead. The government literally must choose between the wealth of it's citizens and the freedom of it's citizens.
By choosing to prevent the monetary loss by throwing people in jail, the government makes a choice that money is more important to it than freedom.
Many students don't do their work because they don't care whether it gets done. They COULD do it, but they see it as a complete waste of their time.
And before you yell that they shouldn't (which is irrelevant, because it has about as much impact as arguing that people shouldn't die of old age) take a look at the position they're in. They are told that their toils are for their own good, so they'll learn. If they are told to do busywork based on something that isn't going to teach them anything or is meant to teach them something they already know, that work will appear to them to be utterly meaningless.
By your justification, they should not do the work, because it will not help them learn.
Mileage varies between schools, but during my public education experience a majority--not just some, but more than half--of all of the work we were assigned was meaningless BS. Crossword puzzles, word searches, worksheets filled with inaccurate or completely asinine information like when Thomas Jefferson's grandfather was born. We were told to do twenty minutes worth of self-esteem worksheets every day in which we were asked our opinions and then graded on whether the teacher agreed with them. (One guess as to what is wrong with that sequence of events.)
Most of us just didn't care. Those of us who cared about learning--such as myself--did so in direct defiance of our teachers. I was sent to detention for reading a history book in the history class that gave it to me. ("No reading ahead!")
My experience is that many schools are antithetical to learning. Don't blame the students. The last thing you can do is call them lazy when they put in more hours than many full-time workers. Half an hour on the bus, followed by eight straight hours of school, plus two hours of homework per day? That's ten and a half hours of overtime every week. And you're not paying them a cent, and it's debateable whether you're even teaching them anything.
In my opinion, we are falling behind due to assorted forms of academic incompetence. This includes teaching creationism (that's scientifically incompetent), handing out unnecessary work (that's academically incompetent, not to mention unethical considering it's compulsory) and emphasizing obedience and orderly conduct over learning (letting convenience totally trump your objective in importance, which guarantees failure in almost anything).
I am from Utah (SLC/Orem area) and have lived here all my life. Thus, while I can't speak for the rest of the country, I can say what it's really like here.
The primary characteristic of Utah is the one it's known for--Mormons. Mormons are painted as everything from neo-christian weirdos to pagan beastman-worshipping cultists, but in truth, they're basically a modernized spinoff of christianity. Most of what they believe is pretty straightforward, and the fact that it's different in the details from other religions (i.e. they don't believe in Hell) doesn't mean much to me since I think all such details are bunk no matter what religion you're talking about. But I digress. (Sufficed to say, I'm not Mormon myself, but my parents and most of my friends are.)
Mormonism and anti-mormonism tend to be the prevailing cultural influences here. There is actually a reasonable balance; most Mormons, believe it or not, respect that they should not make political decisions based on their religion, and should respect the views of others even when they're different. Of course, as with any society, there's a few authoritarian poo-guzzlers who try to ruin everything for everyone but themselves (Mormon AND non-Mormon) but there's just as many sociopathic anti-mormon hardliners, so they also tend to balance each other out.
The mormon majority, which would normally sound like a recipe for persecution, really isn't. You can't be discriminated against for not being Mormon unless you broadcast the fact--most people assume you're mormon unless you explicitly state otherwise. And the "non-members" (the closest thing we have to an epithet in this state) usually don't persecute the mormons simply because half of their own family is probably mormon, and if they aren't, chances are half of their friends are.
The Church officially preaches tolerance; while a few Mormons are elitist dicks, they are acting in contravention of their own doctrine when they do so. This doesn't stop them from giggling when they hear about the beliefs of other religions, of course...
Some mormons assume that all "non-members" are untrustworthy or misguided, and there is an obnoxious tendency to assume that if you're not mormon, you must have "done something"--the concept that you might not believe any of it is absurd to most of them. That is probably the most annoying thing about them, really. However, most of the smart ones make an effort not to do this, because they know they have that reputation, and they don't like it--a lot of them genuinely don't want to be dicks.
Politically, the Mormon Church does have too much influence. That I will say. However, it's no worse than any other heavily religious state--while 'tards in Kansas try unsuccessfully to ban teaching of Evolution, 'tards in Utah try unsuccessfully to ban porn. What keeps this from being an outrage is that if you go to a political forum about a religiously-motivated law, the people arguing the most fervently against it will often be mormons.
Ultimately, mormonism is a detail. Most mormons are actually about the same as non-mormons. The differences are whether they drink coffee and go to church on sunday. Both sides gossip and have their assorted cultural taboos, but mormonism really isn't as radical as most existing religions. The problem with Utah is the same problem every predominantly christian, conservative state has--people thinking their religiously-indoctrinated sense of morality is appropriate to apply to other people. That happens everywhere; Utah, Kansas, Missouri, Iran...
Social cliques being gimpy to one another happens everywhere too. Being non-mormon in Utah is similar to being a Republican in Manhattan--people see you as belonging to a different group, but when it comes right down to it, nobody really cares.
As for Utah being responsible for national decay, I'd say no. Utah is one of those places you can leave your door unlocked when you go on vacation. It's generally a very clean, safe, e
This is still only a general concept, not an ironclad rule. For example, if you run into something with your car, that's your fault, but if someone else runs into you, it's not. What it boils down to is who the cops think caused the accident, not who owned the respective cars.
And the statements that people should have licenses to use their computer and that spammers should be shot in the genitals are, loathe as we are to admit it, merely rhetorical venting.
Moral arguments don't play in. Capitalism is amoral by nature and the people involved are, for the most part, nothing more than components of the system.
I would assert the reverse--that the system is merely a component of the people.
We create "capitalism." It exists only in our minds, gaining real-world relevance only through our actions.
Though I think the distinction between what is real in our minds vs. what exists in the "real world" is something we're going to have to realize as we mature as a society. We're seeing a lot of signs of it right now; people don't all recognize what it is, but they're seeing hints of it's existance.
The reason the question of "When does capitalism justify an action?" is so hard to answer definitively is the very question is absurd. In the real world there is no capitalism, nor justification. As such, we have no basis of observation on which to form a hypothesis. Capitalism, morality and justification exist only in our minds. What does this mean? It means they are something we decide on, not observe. Unfortunately, most people don't know the difference between mind and world, so they think that because they hear the word "Capitalism" spoken in the real world, they think it's a real thing that exists outside of their imagination.
Why am I even talking about this?
Well, because it means morality applies as much to capitalism as it does to anything, because the physical effects of your actions do not change according to what you call them. You can stomp on a puppy and call it "Capitalism." The puppy is still dead and you're still a puppy-killing jerk. Likewise, you can feed a starving child and call it "Murder." The kid is still going to be healthier. The word you use doesn't change the nature of an act, nor does the "system" you used to determine whether you thought it was moral.
Words are powerful--so powerful that they often have more influence over our behavior than real life does. We must understand what they are--and more importantly, what they are not--in order to truly evaluate whether capitalism is or should be "moral."
(The reverse is also true--there's a certain power in realizing your mind doesn't have to follow any of the rules of "real life," but that's a discussion for another time...)
I'm not a fan of layoffs either but a company is there to make money, nothing else.
This is probably among the stupidest and most horrible justifications for an activity I have ever seen, which is why it's especially depressing that it's dogma.
Allow me to counter with the following statement:
"Cat-o-nine-tails exist to cause pain, nothing else."
Ergo, that justifies lashing a child with it to ensure his obedience, right? I mean, that's what the cat-o-nine-tails is for, right?
Isn't it comforting to know that our cultural addictions have reached such a fevered pitch that even non-profit organizations scream about lost revenue when confronted with something that can help people in their field for no appreciable cost to anyone?
I guess the original point of non-profits existing (helping a cause without having to obsess about the money side) went out of style once people heard it gives you tax breaks. I feel better now that non-profit is just another kind of startup that will attack anything that benefits the people at their expense.
I'm glad that they can pay salaries to their workers and themselves just like a normal corporation while I pick up their tax slack. I'm glad they can whine because they'll lose money if their cause is actually fulfilled by someone else and the government will actually step in to put a stop to that obvious injustice.
It's also nice to know that giving and helping people without getting literal cash in return is unthinkably un-American communist terrorism. I sure was getting sick of all that "Love thy brother, share and share alike" BS. Hoarding and expecting people to pay me for everything I (or they) do is much more fun.
I do not wish to endorse their prostitution by contributing to it. I refuse to play by their stilted rules. And in a way, that illustrates my point.
They say "If you don't like it, change it by doing A, B, or C." Which are all options that are loaded because they know they have a huge advantage in those arenas. So we can either dedicate our lives to A, B, or C, and make questionable headway, or we can choose F.
Rather than trying to win by their rules, we do the truly mutual thing and make them try to win by ours. They say "Why not just blow 14 hours out of every one of your days for six months trying to organize a campaign to undo the damage we've got sixty people working full time to perpetuate?" To which we say "Why not just sell songs for a nickel apiece online so we don't have any incentive to pirate them?"
Honestly, the situation as I see it has hit an equilibrium. Piracy and capitalistic abuse deserve each other; they are, in essence, reflections of one another. After all, all it comes down to is too much money vs. too little money. When you average out the effects of too much and too little, you tend to get around the right amount.
The problem is that there is always confict because the "too much" crowd doesn't want it to be balanced, so they are constantly upping the pitch of the battle--and if we fought their way, they'd win. The whole problem is we won't.
It would be hard to convince me that trying to match the RIAA dollar for dollar is more effective than just downloading Azureus.
(The irony is I don't typically pirate music OR buy it, which is why I can openly support the pirates without worrying about getting sued. I also work in the entertainment field, so I know the arguments and think most of them are complete bullshit.)
I will explain. What it comes down to is the popular vote does not determine who is president--the Electoral vote does. They say electoral votes are determined by the popular vote, but that's a very dodgy assertion to make--technically they are, but not in any sort of reflective way.
In the last two elections, I voted for the Libertarian candidate (Brown and Badnarik, respectively). In both of those elections, they ended up with 0 electoral votes total, meaning they recieved 0 votes in the real vote for president. The electors for my state did not represent my vote at all; therefore, my vote did not count.
If the police had half a brain, they'd realize that someone surfing kiddie porn from a library is not always going to be using their own genuine account. Whereas if they don't have a brain, giving them more power is not a good idea.
I paint a different nightmare scenario for you. Some guy comes in during the day with a copy of your library card. He does the finger-scan thing and it gives the wrong number. Chances are this is not an unheard of occurrence, so the nice librarian lets him in anyway. He then goes and surfs child porn. This time, the cops can claim they have your fingerprint, proving it was definately, certainly, absolutely no one but you--since the fingerprinting machine doesn't keep records on you, you have no way to claim that they don't.
You think that kind of crap doesn't happen? When I was in high school I had people say they caught me on camera for stuff that I not only didn't do, but our school had exactly TWO CAMERAS, both of which were directly in front of the office, where they'd be accusing me of setting fire to something in the gym. Of course, they systematically refuse to show the "tapes," claiming that the evidence is so strong they shouldn't have to. Don't laugh, a lot of authority-minded people THINK like that. In their mind they're doing the right thing, so it doesn't matter how irrational they are.
Haven't you ever had someone just flat out get mad at you for no reason? Watch them convince themselves that you did something? Imagine if that person was a cop. Imagine it's an airport security guy. And imagine he doesn't think anything he does to you or pins on you could be wrong, because in his mind you're guilty of something.
The reason that we limit security and police authority in the name of freedom is to protect the innocent from security forces and police. People are corrupt, self-centered, irrational idiots. That means that criminals and coppers alike will also be corrupt, self-centered, irrational idiots. Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, but those aren't the people you need to worry about.
In this case in particular, I don't see why you need this kind of security in a library. I fear an ulterior motive; they may say it's to prevent book theft or whatever now, but in two years congress will pass a law enabling the FBI to use it in surveillance. This also happens. A lot. So I say if there isn't a clear, pressing need that it addresses efficiently without collateral damage, do not do it. I see no need (you can't exactly get anthrax at a library) and I do see danger.
As the saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat.
The law won't be changed by any means that is within the reasonable capacities of the average Slashdotter. The majority of us have no political authority or influence. At all. I write letters to Orin Hatch every year, and sure enough, every year he turns around and tells everyone that my state is very supportive of putting a death penalty on owning an mp3 player. I vote in every presidential election, and every time the presidential candidate whom I voted for ends up with 0 votes *total*. (Which is why I like to slap people who say "Every Vote Counts!")
However, there are other ways to fight stupid and immoral laws, and one of them is to make sure they're unenforceable. Sure, that won't fix the law, but will fix it's effects and it's our only option. That's why the P2P arms race took place to begin with. We have no political authority, but we have a lot of combined technical knowhow.
Anybody knows that you don't win a battle by fighting the enemy where he is the strongest. Legislators have no reason to listen to us. They have hundreds of thousands of crisp, green reasons to listen to the **AA-holes. Lobbyists get paid handsome salaries to push their rhetoric 7 days a week for years at a time. We'd have to finance it out of our own pocket. Can you afford to take three straight years off and lobby for what you think is fair?
However, we control our own computers. Therefore, if we fight a war of software, the advantage goes to us. That's why they fight with more assheaded draconian laws whereas we fight with more robust and untrackable P2P apps. Sure, they sometimes try to write P2P tracking applications to find filesharers, and we sometimes write letters to our congresscowards. Neither one makes any appreciable dent. Each of us, therefore, tries to pull the battlefield closer to our respective power bases--we try to ensure they can't find filesharers to prosecute by making sure it's as big of a pain in the ass as possible, whereas they try to ensure they can find them by pushing laws that ensure they can demand any info they want out of ISPs at the drop of a hat.
What it comes down to is the same thing you've heard a million times before. Many people do not consider copyright infringement to be wrong. I know I don't. I think the whole concept is assheaded and there's abundant proof that every statement they make in defense of it is wrong at this point, ESPECIALLY in the entertainment industry. Likewise, there's people like you who swear up and down that it's theft. And since we cannot agree to disagree and just ignore each other, we fight.
We care because there has never historically been a government power that has not been abused at some point.
Imagine, for a moment, if your worst enemy--the person you loathe more than anyone in the world, and who makes no secret of the fact that he delights in doing things that hurt you for their own sake--is placed in a position of authority over federally-mandated security cards.
He can make sure you never get one. He can place you on all manner of government watch lists preventing you from doing just about anything. After making sure you don't have an ID, he can give the cops a tip to pull you over and get you arrested for not carrying one. Don't laugh--I have personally KNOWN people like this.
Power is dangerous. Authority is a form of power. What does a law like this do? Well, it lets them punish (read: Cause harm to) people for not carrying a card around; a card over which they have complete control. And when it comes down to handing out harm, they're not going to care whether the situation was justified or whether they're doing anyone any good; to most people, the fact that it's "The Law" is excuse enough to cause all the mayhem and real life hurt you want.
As such, you must assume the law will lash out anywhere it is able, because people who are petty and corrupt will actively seek out positions that allow them to indulge that pettyness and corruption. If through law we create those positions, they will be filled by those kinds of people. If you do not have a clear, present, and pressing need for a law, it is dangerous, irresponsible and, if I dare use the term, un-American to pass it anyway.
And in my mind this whole "Rider" bullshit is unconscionable--it is intentionally undermining the democratic process by end-running around it. People who see democracy as an obstacle should not be our leaders under any circumstances. I wouldn't mind if they declared it treason.
And if they're willing to shitcan democracy for the convenience of their personal agenda, their motives should be PLACED VERY HIGHLY IN QUESTION.
The reasons you state are why I figure patents are an untenable system in the first place. They don't protect the little guy, as intended, nor do they increase the profitability of invention, as intended. For every benefit they give one person, they provide an equal or greater detriment to ten others. (i.e. for every person who patents JPEG, there's nine people who can't patent their own algorithm, even if they came up with it on their own.)
I don't think there's any such thing as a "Conceptual Hurdle." Everybody has a jillion ideas for the perfect MMORPG design or a way to convert thought into energy or a way to solve all world hunger forever. The problem is they don't mean crap, because actually implementing an idea is 99.9% non-idea-related details and work. The idea itself is completely worthless, and chances are pretty much every creative person in the world has had it. The footwork of coming down with concrete applications of the "Idea" is the only thing that matters, yet it's what we care about the least.
We're willing to bend over for the guy who spent ten seconds thinking "Hey, you know what would be neat? A cart with an engine on it instead of horses!" but we don't give two shits anymore about the guy who spent four straight years building a factory, hiring the workers, making an actual design and building them. In our eyes he's just a filthy thief because he didn't have legal dibs on the "Idea."
Even more destructive is the fact that if the guy who invented the wheel was being "justly compensated" for his invention, there wouldn't be fricking carts in the first place--people would have sleds because sled tracks don't require a licensing fee.
Of course, I think the whole concept of owning information is pathological greed at best and delusional psychosis at worst.
Therein lies the biggest problem, though--if they don't know you have a patent on the idea, they probably didn't get it from you, meaning it was THEIR idea.
They always paint these images of inventors having their hard work stolen by unscrupulous industrialists, but I would paint a different picture:
A person pours a good chunk of his life and money establishing something new; some new way to accomplish a process. He came up with all the algorithms himself, built the prototypes, and made a business out of his own blood and cash that he got from working his day job. When he finally begins to reap the fruits of his success, somebody sues him, claiming that the process he came up with was patented two years earlier.
A doomsday scenario that, if the headlines here (or my personal experience) are any indication, actually happens a lot.
Where's the fear of that? Why is it people are only afraid of things that MIGHT harm innovators and hard workers, but we don't care about things that actually do it on a daily basis?
I can't speak for the groupthink, but my problem has always been that most people are the opposite way--they think that making money from something negates it's evil.
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I will say that that does happen; I've worked for companies that did that. In fact, I've worked for companies where it was the LEAST unethical thing that they did. They also put in their employment agreement that they can take your balls if you tell anyone any of the things they do...some even go so far as to say "even if it's the cops." (Not in those exact words--they say stuff like "Law enforcement agency without a signed affidavit in which you are specifically named.") In fact, one company, who I will in fact name for spite's sake (Convergys, Logan Utah, Sprint Account) overtly instructed us to lie to customers and corporate clients alike to make ourselves look better. (Anyone from Sprint reading? Ask some ex-employees about what they told us to tell you.) They even went so far as to explicitly tell us that the printed bullet points on their mousepads were there for the benefit of potential clients inspecting the premises and that the employees were absolutely not to follow them. (They cut into profits, you see.) Many corporations are very shady with how they control the public's perception of them.
On the other hand, I've seen people falsely accused of shillery plenty often too. What I haven't seen personally, interestingly enough, is a real shill being publicly accused of being a shill.
Usually, if a genuine shill gets accused of being a shill, they complain to the admins with a message about "Personal attacks and harassment" and a link to "Your own terms of service agreement" or posting policy, along with a demand that the post be deleted. People who actually aren't shills don't tend to go to such lengths...
So, you aspiring website admins, if you ever get an e-mail from someone demanding that a post accusing them of shillery be deleted...they're that much more likely to actually be shills.
On the other hand, if the post is full of gushing, superlative praise that is not even spelled correctly, it may well be real.
Point being, it's hard to tell when it happens, but it does happen. Thus, the innocent get harangued for posting their opinions due to the "Victimless" crime of corporate opinion-bombing...
I was speaking a bit rhetorically. Few people literally throw away the CDs unless they've got noxious DRM. I say "few" because I have known some who went so far as to toss them on the way out of the store, if only to make a point.
Everyone I know who actually bothers to pay for music buys it from the company, then throws the CD/DRM'ed file away and downloads an mp3 from a P2P. They buy the media simply to be a good citizen, not because they want the crippled files.
Um, actually, you [i]do[/i] make up the rules. Every rule is made up. The esteemed Cmdr didn't make up this particular rule, but someone did. They didn't come upon their naming policy through rigorous scientific method--they made it up.
You know what? Strikes are made up too. [i]Baseball is made up.[/i] You honestly [i]can[/i] give everyone four strikes if you feel like it. And if you own the field, you can [i]make everyone else play with four strikes.[/i] Suddenly saying that "3 strikes you're out, end of story" doesn't seem to matter.
Is it invalid to assume that 69% of workers will have gotten better at what they do?
Would it surprise you to learn that, according to the real laws, traditions and justifications underlying the formation of corporations, they do [i]not[/i] exist to make money? They're actually explicitly meant to promote the public good. Any corporation which intentionally benefits an elite few (the CEOs) over the public (the employees and consumers) is not fulfilling their obligation as a corporation.
Of course, we forgot this. Why? Because they paid off the enforcers for long enough that we all became dependant on them. It's hard to revoke a corporation's charter when they and their subsidiaries are bringing in a significant chunk of your state's total tax revenue, provide thousands of jobs (even if those jobs are complete shit) and--most crucially of all--control the media outlets which are the typical voter's only real source of information. We choose the lesser of two evils. That doesn't mean we should support their abuses.
To my medical knowledge, what you eat can have a significant effect on your mood, but it's not the only cause, or even necessarily the most common one. Refind sugars can have a depressant effect by leading to low blood sugar. The body shoots out insulin to deal with the sudden sugar spike, but since the spike is very short you're left with a ton of insulin that prevents you from maintaining a sufficient supply until it can be cleared out.
But even if you're just talking physical causes, there are others which can have the same effect--lack of sleep, exercise, and all that other "Health" stuff. Most people don't mentally link their state of mind with their state of body, because it's counterintuitive--most people think of their emotions, their thoughts, and their body as being distinct. They are not. That's why anti-depressants work in the first place. While they may ultimately be a band-aid for the effects of a persistant problem, we wear band-aids for a reason. Often the causes of depression are too difficult to ferret out, so we remove it's effects instead.
So, in short, you're right that sugar can affect mood but sugar isn't the whole story.
Why is your child allowed to forgo his daily prayers to Baal? Why is he allowed to frolick and talk to other children when they will clearly detract from his devotion to Our Dark God?
No, seriously. Tell me the difference.
In case the difference in your mind is "Because that is ridiculous," I will state my point in concrete terms.
The comparison to violence and violent video games is equally ridiculous. It is a sign of a fundamental failure in critical thinking. Assuming similarity between objects based solely on our associations is cognitively incompetent.
We believe video games will lead to violence...why? Because they look like violence. Because they take on the appearance of violence. So they must cause violence. That's retarded.
They're *not real.* You know what? They're not even violent; nobody is being harmed. You just call them violent because they sensorily resemble violence.
Case in point: Play a video game. Jump down a cliff. Then turn off the TV and look at your body. Are your bones broken? Are you lying shattered at the bottom of a ravine?
Why not?
Well, guess what. Eight year olds can answer that question just as fast as you can. Don't believe me? Ask one.
The Religious Reich commissions study after study where they stare down the surveyers and say "This study MUST PROVE THAT VIOLENT MEDIA CAUSES VIOLENCE. We are not asking a question here. Do we make ourselves clear?" And even under those circumstances, they all seem to say "Well, as far as we can tell, video games are no more encouraging of violence than baseball, go-fish or scripture reading." Why? Because of the miracle of the control group. With a control group, you have to go off of the math. You'll find that the studies that imply violence increases do not typically have one. Those that do cannot draw any meaningful correllation, or draw correllations that look really, really bad for the point they're trying to make. (Such as finding that children's aggression increases drastically after, for example, a one-hour session of scripture study)
The whole concept reeks of stupidity. Not just misconception; flat out stupidity. The same people who claim video games will turn kids into bloodthirsty sociopaths are also claiming that video games will turn kids into fat, unmotivated slobs who won't even get off the couch to put out a fire. Have you ever heard of a fat, unmotivated serial killer? Have you ever heard of a terrorist slacker? Have you ever met a bully? They're all jocks who beat up on kids who play video games. Yet nobody says that children should be protected from sports, because adults like sports and adults are hypocrites.
This is a cultural problem. Your cultural superstitions say video games are bad. My cultural superstitions say you're all retards. I figure, if I agree not to declare jyhad on you for contaminating our culture with senseless, fear-mongering memetic bullshit, it's only fair that you keep said bullshit and the neanderthal emotional logic that leads to it out of our shared legal system.
And if that didn't make sense, I'll leave you with this final statement: Impiety before Baal leads children to smoke, drink, and engage in premarital sex. There's no reason I should allow you to put my child at risk by allowing your children to skip their prayers to Baal.
And if enough people said that enough times, eventually people would vote for it, and eventually your child would be forced to worship Baal. That's the kind of culture you're encouraging here. Do you think it matters whether it's ridiculous? It obviously doesn't matter to you.
Why should I, as an adult, give a shit? Because I was a kid once. Because I, as an adult, see a whole lot of fascist parents who don't know their ass from their mouth who's children genuinely are sociopaths. In all cases, the children were forcefully sheltered from everything associated with being objectionable. Me
You're arguing semantics versus reality. You're saying it's not a universally safe speed because they don't use the term universally safe speed.
If there's a straight, wide open and well-maintained road with a professional driver in a brand new sports car who passes a 25mph speed limit sign anywhere in any country, you are wrong.
And your statement that the limit is absolutely the highest you should ever go...(personal comments deleted.) It's true that it is not a universally safe speed, but faster than that is not a universally unsafe speed either--it's not even a *typically* unsafe speed in many cases. There's roads in my hometown that had 25mph limits where people went 55 (because they were actually double-lane highway-style roads) and the number of accidents there were the same as the areas where they went 25. Why? Because science is not used to determine speed limits. They'll can study how much more a car will freak out at 20mph faster, but they have no context with which to determine the relevance of that difference, and those results only apply to circumstances surrounding the specific test anyway. If I pull the tires off of a car I can prove that they're unsafe and uncontrollable at 20 miles per hour. Put a NASCAR driver on the test course and you can prove that cars don't go out of control until they hit 180mph. There's no control groups or even a means of determining what risk is acceptable (as the very concept of acceptable loss is ultimately a personal preference), and there are far too many factors in causing an accident to ever ferret out how much the driver's speed was responsible (as opposed to his reaction time, his car's performance, his avoidance options, the visibility, the road surface, and events which were not in the least bit influenced by his speed, such as his tire exploding).
ANY assertion as to what constitutes a "Safe Speed" is going to be wrong, because speed is not the only major factor. You can't say a speed is safe because safety is not just a question of your speed. Since there's so much ambiguity, they make up a number that they figure is the best balance between practicality and safety--which means the speed limit is not an indicator of safety, it's an indicator of the person's perception of safety vs. practicality. An extremely fearful person who would rather everyone be late and never ever be injured will put every speed limit low. Someone with a "Shit happens" attitude will put the speed limits much higher. Questions as to the appropriateness of speed limits aside, the concept that they are in any way universal is ludicrous.
Criminal prosecution is just the term we use to describe throwing someone in a cage. Just about the most direct and literal stripping of freedom that there could ever possibly be.
Copyright infringement is just the term we use to describe someone who isn't giving money to a copyright holder, causing a percieved loss of profit.
Since assumedly the damage of infringement will continue unless something is done, the simple choice is presented: Continue to allow piracy or throw people in jail instead. The government literally must choose between the wealth of it's citizens and the freedom of it's citizens.
By choosing to prevent the monetary loss by throwing people in jail, the government makes a choice that money is more important to it than freedom.
Just a bit of perspective.
Don't mistake indifference for laziness.
Many students don't do their work because they don't care whether it gets done. They COULD do it, but they see it as a complete waste of their time.
And before you yell that they shouldn't (which is irrelevant, because it has about as much impact as arguing that people shouldn't die of old age) take a look at the position they're in. They are told that their toils are for their own good, so they'll learn. If they are told to do busywork based on something that isn't going to teach them anything or is meant to teach them something they already know, that work will appear to them to be utterly meaningless.
By your justification, they should not do the work, because it will not help them learn.
Mileage varies between schools, but during my public education experience a majority--not just some, but more than half--of all of the work we were assigned was meaningless BS. Crossword puzzles, word searches, worksheets filled with inaccurate or completely asinine information like when Thomas Jefferson's grandfather was born. We were told to do twenty minutes worth of self-esteem worksheets every day in which we were asked our opinions and then graded on whether the teacher agreed with them. (One guess as to what is wrong with that sequence of events.)
Most of us just didn't care. Those of us who cared about learning--such as myself--did so in direct defiance of our teachers. I was sent to detention for reading a history book in the history class that gave it to me. ("No reading ahead!")
My experience is that many schools are antithetical to learning. Don't blame the students. The last thing you can do is call them lazy when they put in more hours than many full-time workers. Half an hour on the bus, followed by eight straight hours of school, plus two hours of homework per day? That's ten and a half hours of overtime every week. And you're not paying them a cent, and it's debateable whether you're even teaching them anything.
In my opinion, we are falling behind due to assorted forms of academic incompetence. This includes teaching creationism (that's scientifically incompetent), handing out unnecessary work (that's academically incompetent, not to mention unethical considering it's compulsory) and emphasizing obedience and orderly conduct over learning (letting convenience totally trump your objective in importance, which guarantees failure in almost anything).
I am from Utah (SLC/Orem area) and have lived here all my life. Thus, while I can't speak for the rest of the country, I can say what it's really like here.
The primary characteristic of Utah is the one it's known for--Mormons. Mormons are painted as everything from neo-christian weirdos to pagan beastman-worshipping cultists, but in truth, they're basically a modernized spinoff of christianity. Most of what they believe is pretty straightforward, and the fact that it's different in the details from other religions (i.e. they don't believe in Hell) doesn't mean much to me since I think all such details are bunk no matter what religion you're talking about. But I digress. (Sufficed to say, I'm not Mormon myself, but my parents and most of my friends are.)
Mormonism and anti-mormonism tend to be the prevailing cultural influences here. There is actually a reasonable balance; most Mormons, believe it or not, respect that they should not make political decisions based on their religion, and should respect the views of others even when they're different. Of course, as with any society, there's a few authoritarian poo-guzzlers who try to ruin everything for everyone but themselves (Mormon AND non-Mormon) but there's just as many sociopathic anti-mormon hardliners, so they also tend to balance each other out.
The mormon majority, which would normally sound like a recipe for persecution, really isn't. You can't be discriminated against for not being Mormon unless you broadcast the fact--most people assume you're mormon unless you explicitly state otherwise. And the "non-members" (the closest thing we have to an epithet in this state) usually don't persecute the mormons simply because half of their own family is probably mormon, and if they aren't, chances are half of their friends are.
The Church officially preaches tolerance; while a few Mormons are elitist dicks, they are acting in contravention of their own doctrine when they do so. This doesn't stop them from giggling when they hear about the beliefs of other religions, of course...
Some mormons assume that all "non-members" are untrustworthy or misguided, and there is an obnoxious tendency to assume that if you're not mormon, you must have "done something"--the concept that you might not believe any of it is absurd to most of them. That is probably the most annoying thing about them, really. However, most of the smart ones make an effort not to do this, because they know they have that reputation, and they don't like it--a lot of them genuinely don't want to be dicks.
Politically, the Mormon Church does have too much influence. That I will say. However, it's no worse than any other heavily religious state--while 'tards in Kansas try unsuccessfully to ban teaching of Evolution, 'tards in Utah try unsuccessfully to ban porn. What keeps this from being an outrage is that if you go to a political forum about a religiously-motivated law, the people arguing the most fervently against it will often be mormons.
Ultimately, mormonism is a detail. Most mormons are actually about the same as non-mormons. The differences are whether they drink coffee and go to church on sunday. Both sides gossip and have their assorted cultural taboos, but mormonism really isn't as radical as most existing religions. The problem with Utah is the same problem every predominantly christian, conservative state has--people thinking their religiously-indoctrinated sense of morality is appropriate to apply to other people. That happens everywhere; Utah, Kansas, Missouri, Iran...
Social cliques being gimpy to one another happens everywhere too. Being non-mormon in Utah is similar to being a Republican in Manhattan--people see you as belonging to a different group, but when it comes right down to it, nobody really cares.
As for Utah being responsible for national decay, I'd say no. Utah is one of those places you can leave your door unlocked when you go on vacation. It's generally a very clean, safe, e
This is still only a general concept, not an ironclad rule. For example, if you run into something with your car, that's your fault, but if someone else runs into you, it's not. What it boils down to is who the cops think caused the accident, not who owned the respective cars.
And the statements that people should have licenses to use their computer and that spammers should be shot in the genitals are, loathe as we are to admit it, merely rhetorical venting.
Moral arguments don't play in. Capitalism is amoral by nature and the people involved are, for the most part, nothing more than components of the system.
I would assert the reverse--that the system is merely a component of the people.
We create "capitalism." It exists only in our minds, gaining real-world relevance only through our actions.
Though I think the distinction between what is real in our minds vs. what exists in the "real world" is something we're going to have to realize as we mature as a society. We're seeing a lot of signs of it right now; people don't all recognize what it is, but they're seeing hints of it's existance.
The reason the question of "When does capitalism justify an action?" is so hard to answer definitively is the very question is absurd. In the real world there is no capitalism, nor justification. As such, we have no basis of observation on which to form a hypothesis. Capitalism, morality and justification exist only in our minds. What does this mean? It means they are something we decide on, not observe. Unfortunately, most people don't know the difference between mind and world, so they think that because they hear the word "Capitalism" spoken in the real world, they think it's a real thing that exists outside of their imagination.
Why am I even talking about this?
Well, because it means morality applies as much to capitalism as it does to anything, because the physical effects of your actions do not change according to what you call them. You can stomp on a puppy and call it "Capitalism." The puppy is still dead and you're still a puppy-killing jerk. Likewise, you can feed a starving child and call it "Murder." The kid is still going to be healthier. The word you use doesn't change the nature of an act, nor does the "system" you used to determine whether you thought it was moral.
Words are powerful--so powerful that they often have more influence over our behavior than real life does. We must understand what they are--and more importantly, what they are not--in order to truly evaluate whether capitalism is or should be "moral."
(The reverse is also true--there's a certain power in realizing your mind doesn't have to follow any of the rules of "real life," but that's a discussion for another time...)
Ironic or not, it's still anal.
So wait--placing limits on governmental power is un-American now?
I'm not a fan of layoffs either but a company is there to make money, nothing else.
This is probably among the stupidest and most horrible justifications for an activity I have ever seen, which is why it's especially depressing that it's dogma.
Allow me to counter with the following statement:
"Cat-o-nine-tails exist to cause pain, nothing else."
Ergo, that justifies lashing a child with it to ensure his obedience, right? I mean, that's what the cat-o-nine-tails is for, right?
Isn't it comforting to know that our cultural addictions have reached such a fevered pitch that even non-profit organizations scream about lost revenue when confronted with something that can help people in their field for no appreciable cost to anyone?
I guess the original point of non-profits existing (helping a cause without having to obsess about the money side) went out of style once people heard it gives you tax breaks. I feel better now that non-profit is just another kind of startup that will attack anything that benefits the people at their expense.
I'm glad that they can pay salaries to their workers and themselves just like a normal corporation while I pick up their tax slack. I'm glad they can whine because they'll lose money if their cause is actually fulfilled by someone else and the government will actually step in to put a stop to that obvious injustice.
It's also nice to know that giving and helping people without getting literal cash in return is unthinkably un-American communist terrorism. I sure was getting sick of all that "Love thy brother, share and share alike" BS. Hoarding and expecting people to pay me for everything I (or they) do is much more fun.
I do not wish to endorse their prostitution by contributing to it. I refuse to play by their stilted rules. And in a way, that illustrates my point.
They say "If you don't like it, change it by doing A, B, or C." Which are all options that are loaded because they know they have a huge advantage in those arenas. So we can either dedicate our lives to A, B, or C, and make questionable headway, or we can choose F.
Rather than trying to win by their rules, we do the truly mutual thing and make them try to win by ours. They say "Why not just blow 14 hours out of every one of your days for six months trying to organize a campaign to undo the damage we've got sixty people working full time to perpetuate?" To which we say "Why not just sell songs for a nickel apiece online so we don't have any incentive to pirate them?"
Honestly, the situation as I see it has hit an equilibrium. Piracy and capitalistic abuse deserve each other; they are, in essence, reflections of one another. After all, all it comes down to is too much money vs. too little money. When you average out the effects of too much and too little, you tend to get around the right amount.
The problem is that there is always confict because the "too much" crowd doesn't want it to be balanced, so they are constantly upping the pitch of the battle--and if we fought their way, they'd win. The whole problem is we won't.
It would be hard to convince me that trying to match the RIAA dollar for dollar is more effective than just downloading Azureus.
(The irony is I don't typically pirate music OR buy it, which is why I can openly support the pirates without worrying about getting sued. I also work in the entertainment field, so I know the arguments and think most of them are complete bullshit.)
I will explain. What it comes down to is the popular vote does not determine who is president--the Electoral vote does. They say electoral votes are determined by the popular vote, but that's a very dodgy assertion to make--technically they are, but not in any sort of reflective way.
In the last two elections, I voted for the Libertarian candidate (Brown and Badnarik, respectively). In both of those elections, they ended up with 0 electoral votes total, meaning they recieved 0 votes in the real vote for president. The electors for my state did not represent my vote at all; therefore, my vote did not count.
If the police had half a brain, they'd realize that someone surfing kiddie porn from a library is not always going to be using their own genuine account. Whereas if they don't have a brain, giving them more power is not a good idea.
I paint a different nightmare scenario for you. Some guy comes in during the day with a copy of your library card. He does the finger-scan thing and it gives the wrong number. Chances are this is not an unheard of occurrence, so the nice librarian lets him in anyway. He then goes and surfs child porn. This time, the cops can claim they have your fingerprint, proving it was definately, certainly, absolutely no one but you--since the fingerprinting machine doesn't keep records on you, you have no way to claim that they don't.
You think that kind of crap doesn't happen? When I was in high school I had people say they caught me on camera for stuff that I not only didn't do, but our school had exactly TWO CAMERAS, both of which were directly in front of the office, where they'd be accusing me of setting fire to something in the gym. Of course, they systematically refuse to show the "tapes," claiming that the evidence is so strong they shouldn't have to. Don't laugh, a lot of authority-minded people THINK like that. In their mind they're doing the right thing, so it doesn't matter how irrational they are.
Haven't you ever had someone just flat out get mad at you for no reason? Watch them convince themselves that you did something? Imagine if that person was a cop. Imagine it's an airport security guy. And imagine he doesn't think anything he does to you or pins on you could be wrong, because in his mind you're guilty of something.
The reason that we limit security and police authority in the name of freedom is to protect the innocent from security forces and police. People are corrupt, self-centered, irrational idiots. That means that criminals and coppers alike will also be corrupt, self-centered, irrational idiots. Sure, there are plenty of exceptions, but those aren't the people you need to worry about.
In this case in particular, I don't see why you need this kind of security in a library. I fear an ulterior motive; they may say it's to prevent book theft or whatever now, but in two years congress will pass a law enabling the FBI to use it in surveillance. This also happens. A lot. So I say if there isn't a clear, pressing need that it addresses efficiently without collateral damage, do not do it. I see no need (you can't exactly get anthrax at a library) and I do see danger.
As the saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat.
The law won't be changed by any means that is within the reasonable capacities of the average Slashdotter. The majority of us have no political authority or influence. At all. I write letters to Orin Hatch every year, and sure enough, every year he turns around and tells everyone that my state is very supportive of putting a death penalty on owning an mp3 player. I vote in every presidential election, and every time the presidential candidate whom I voted for ends up with 0 votes *total*. (Which is why I like to slap people who say "Every Vote Counts!")
However, there are other ways to fight stupid and immoral laws, and one of them is to make sure they're unenforceable. Sure, that won't fix the law, but will fix it's effects and it's our only option. That's why the P2P arms race took place to begin with. We have no political authority, but we have a lot of combined technical knowhow.
Anybody knows that you don't win a battle by fighting the enemy where he is the strongest. Legislators have no reason to listen to us. They have hundreds of thousands of crisp, green reasons to listen to the **AA-holes. Lobbyists get paid handsome salaries to push their rhetoric 7 days a week for years at a time. We'd have to finance it out of our own pocket. Can you afford to take three straight years off and lobby for what you think is fair?
However, we control our own computers. Therefore, if we fight a war of software, the advantage goes to us. That's why they fight with more assheaded draconian laws whereas we fight with more robust and untrackable P2P apps. Sure, they sometimes try to write P2P tracking applications to find filesharers, and we sometimes write letters to our congresscowards. Neither one makes any appreciable dent. Each of us, therefore, tries to pull the battlefield closer to our respective power bases--we try to ensure they can't find filesharers to prosecute by making sure it's as big of a pain in the ass as possible, whereas they try to ensure they can find them by pushing laws that ensure they can demand any info they want out of ISPs at the drop of a hat.
What it comes down to is the same thing you've heard a million times before. Many people do not consider copyright infringement to be wrong. I know I don't. I think the whole concept is assheaded and there's abundant proof that every statement they make in defense of it is wrong at this point, ESPECIALLY in the entertainment industry. Likewise, there's people like you who swear up and down that it's theft. And since we cannot agree to disagree and just ignore each other, we fight.
We care because there has never historically been a government power that has not been abused at some point.
Imagine, for a moment, if your worst enemy--the person you loathe more than anyone in the world, and who makes no secret of the fact that he delights in doing things that hurt you for their own sake--is placed in a position of authority over federally-mandated security cards.
He can make sure you never get one. He can place you on all manner of government watch lists preventing you from doing just about anything. After making sure you don't have an ID, he can give the cops a tip to pull you over and get you arrested for not carrying one. Don't laugh--I have personally KNOWN people like this.
Power is dangerous. Authority is a form of power. What does a law like this do? Well, it lets them punish (read: Cause harm to) people for not carrying a card around; a card over which they have complete control. And when it comes down to handing out harm, they're not going to care whether the situation was justified or whether they're doing anyone any good; to most people, the fact that it's "The Law" is excuse enough to cause all the mayhem and real life hurt you want.
As such, you must assume the law will lash out anywhere it is able, because people who are petty and corrupt will actively seek out positions that allow them to indulge that pettyness and corruption. If through law we create those positions, they will be filled by those kinds of people. If you do not have a clear, present, and pressing need for a law, it is dangerous, irresponsible and, if I dare use the term, un-American to pass it anyway.
And in my mind this whole "Rider" bullshit is unconscionable--it is intentionally undermining the democratic process by end-running around it. People who see democracy as an obstacle should not be our leaders under any circumstances. I wouldn't mind if they declared it treason.
And if they're willing to shitcan democracy for the convenience of their personal agenda, their motives should be PLACED VERY HIGHLY IN QUESTION.
The reasons you state are why I figure patents are an untenable system in the first place. They don't protect the little guy, as intended, nor do they increase the profitability of invention, as intended. For every benefit they give one person, they provide an equal or greater detriment to ten others. (i.e. for every person who patents JPEG, there's nine people who can't patent their own algorithm, even if they came up with it on their own.)
I don't think there's any such thing as a "Conceptual Hurdle." Everybody has a jillion ideas for the perfect MMORPG design or a way to convert thought into energy or a way to solve all world hunger forever. The problem is they don't mean crap, because actually implementing an idea is 99.9% non-idea-related details and work. The idea itself is completely worthless, and chances are pretty much every creative person in the world has had it. The footwork of coming down with concrete applications of the "Idea" is the only thing that matters, yet it's what we care about the least.
We're willing to bend over for the guy who spent ten seconds thinking "Hey, you know what would be neat? A cart with an engine on it instead of horses!" but we don't give two shits anymore about the guy who spent four straight years building a factory, hiring the workers, making an actual design and building them. In our eyes he's just a filthy thief because he didn't have legal dibs on the "Idea."
Even more destructive is the fact that if the guy who invented the wheel was being "justly compensated" for his invention, there wouldn't be fricking carts in the first place--people would have sleds because sled tracks don't require a licensing fee.
Of course, I think the whole concept of owning information is pathological greed at best and delusional psychosis at worst.
Therein lies the biggest problem, though--if they don't know you have a patent on the idea, they probably didn't get it from you, meaning it was THEIR idea.
They always paint these images of inventors having their hard work stolen by unscrupulous industrialists, but I would paint a different picture:
A person pours a good chunk of his life and money establishing something new; some new way to accomplish a process. He came up with all the algorithms himself, built the prototypes, and made a business out of his own blood and cash that he got from working his day job. When he finally begins to reap the fruits of his success, somebody sues him, claiming that the process he came up with was patented two years earlier.
A doomsday scenario that, if the headlines here (or my personal experience) are any indication, actually happens a lot.
Where's the fear of that? Why is it people are only afraid of things that MIGHT harm innovators and hard workers, but we don't care about things that actually do it on a daily basis?
I can't speak for the groupthink, but my problem has always been that most people are the opposite way--they think that making money from something negates it's evil.