Being sued for a public performance is a small price to pay for that kind of entertainment. Really to me the most amusing thing is an average* college student armed with economics knowledge could easily replace the RIAA business model and send them soaring into record profits. These dinosaurs would rather spend mountains of money litigating a losing battle. Sure, they may get the law on their side, but how long was the Catholic Church (arguably much more powerful in its time) able to insist through 'legal' means that the earth was flat, that the earth was the center of the universe, that the earth didn't spin, and so on. Regardless of the copyright issues and downloading nonsense, they really are spending a disturbing amount of money propping up a house of cards destined to fall. The upshot is over a long enough period terminally stupid behavior does indeed become terminal.
*average - Reasonably intelligent. We have all seen what happens when we put an "average" "C Student" in a position of power.
Wow...Well don't take this the wrong way, but the saddest thing here is that your other comment got +insightful (which I suppose is the dumb part, not so much your comment, and my issue is then with the dumb moderators), but that your very well written response is probably going to see precious little mods (here's hoping some smart mods come along).
That said, I do have some hopefully interesting information to add for you. They CD didn't slip past, go to the store and look. There are Data and Music CDRs. The only difference is the Music CDRs have that stupid spiral pattern or whatever it is so that SCMS compliant CD copiers can verify that you purchased a RIAA approved and taxed CD. Audio Home Recording Act detailed what type of hardware was allowed to burn music discs and forced the consumer to purchase RIAA taxed blanks to make copies. The problem here was that the AHRA happened in 1992 and didn't really account for the explosion in PC CDR technology. In CDR drives for PCs SCMS compliance would make it impossible to burn data backups on anything but RIAA taxed Music CDRs, and thus the floodgates opened. The RIAA had a plan that, while decent for a brief time, required the world to stop. Any surprise there?
As far as the Xerox infringement issue. I think the only reason the college book publishing scam artists haven't been hung out to dry yet is that not enough people go to college to understand how much of a scam the "Books" part of "Books & Tuition" is. Interestingly enough...go look up the CIA and Xerox story during the Cold War. That in mind, technically the government could get burned on copyright violation for making unauthorized copies of copies. Even if the paper said "you are allowed to copy for XYZ purpose" the government spy camera copy would most certainly not be used for the stated purpose and would then run them afoul of the ruling. Though I suppose it is a bit of a dream to assume the government doesn't act as if it were above the law anyways, but it would otherwise certainly throw an interesting twist into the problem.
On that note...government wiretaps should be defeated by playing RIAA music in the background and then letting the RIAA sue the government for supporting terrorism by stealing music. When the CIA shares it with the FBI they all get shut down! I mean really...I think the only thing better than watching that go to secret court would be watching half of Congress spontaneously combust trying to figure out if draconian copyright laws or police state wiretap laws take precedence.
Xerox ships copyrighted books with their devices for you to copy? By your logic everyone owning a computer should be getting arrested. Really even pens and pencils ownership will consist of a violation. Oh wait...they got in trouble for digitally advertising copyrighted works even if noone actually downloaded them...well that is a whole lot different than owning a device than could potentially copy something. That is owning a device that could copy something, and putting up a sign that says "Free copies of the following copyrighted works". Bit different eh?
Please don't be so deliberately dumb. Look, the ruling sucks, it is going to crush those people. The unfortunate truth is that the judge is most likely correct. If you want to blame anyone blame Kazaa n crew for going out and trying to share everything on your drive when you install it. That is sort of the problem with civil disobedience, people get busted and get fined or go to jail. The law in many cases is on the RIAAs side. The lesson learned here...don't install shit that is mean for copying music you don't own...and don't give me that "but it was for a backup" bullshit because we ALL know that the file sharing software is 99% copyright violation 1% backup, and I'm pretty sure I am rounding up that 1%. Don't like the law, change it or live with it.
They only need the hose long enough to fill the bucket they are going to use to waterboard our terrorist intellectual property stealing ass! Rememeber kids, illegal downloading of movies, music, and software supports terrorism.
I don't really mean they go under completely because of that directly. I mean the loss in capital puts their competitors ahead and they may just get shut out of the market. Competition isn't about quality/price as much these days it seems, and more about who games the system the best.
To a degree the stock thing works but it depends on the company. Which really just boils down to doing research instead of just watching prices rise and fall. The problem is, say that company announces a bad quarter, can that company survive a bunch of people dumping their stock? Can they recover from the stigma of a bad quarter? Because infinite growth quarterly profits are what is being demanded by all these get rich quick investors. This nonsense behavior is what leads all these companies to cook books or otherwise skew their reporting. The real problem lies in having so much based on imaginary money, that if something bad were to happen it could trigger a run on the system. Fear rules us right now, look at the paranoia in the political realm of crying for government protection from anything offensive down to terrorist boogeymen. The first to call their debts is the most likely to actually get their money back. But then anyone who owes them imaginary money has to call their debts, and so on down the line. You can bet your ass that it is going to be the middle class and below that feel the pain of that one.
This isn't to say all debt is a bad thing. Look at the regulations on how banks can loan money to "create wealth" and compare that to the credit companies. Not that any system is fool proof, but the banks by and large have had more stability because it happened once and they learned some lessons in how to try to avoid it again. Another great depression would be hell for everyone here except for the few that can afford to bail out and leave.
I didn't quote it because I couldn't remember what he actually said specifically. He was some PR jackass type, and I imagine even a lawyers tongue would erupt in flame with such a moronic statement. PR/Marketing people seem to be the only class of people that are capable of saying such nonsense without their tongues catching fire or their heads exploding. (Politicians are a special subset of PR so they qualify too).
As far as Unauthorized copying, it certainly is a much more accurate description. My only concern would be that using synonyms or words that are just a hair apart (act vs offense) in a rather complex legal problem is only going to buy lawyers room to tapdance and bamboozle. Force the lawyers to describe things in a simple and common way and take away the bamboozle factor. Copyright is the right to copy, he copied without the right and thus violated the copyright. Copyleft is a cute and clever term, but only serves to muddy the meaning of copyright leaving more room for bamboozling.
When the laws are so complex that the common man cannot hope to defend himself or exercise his rights we have a failure of liberty and a dependance on a certain special class of people.
I think it is a different mentality altogether that causes it. We live in capitalism run amok. Government regulation causes more problems than it solves, and the market can't behave anything like it should so long as the rich n powerful types are allowed to act above the law. Greed and Apathy.
The problem with pricing is that credit artificially allows people to pay higher prices. They get new cards, they transfer balances, they get home equity loans and drain all the value back out of their house. Then if they don't stop before they can't make the monthly payments they go bankrupt and start the process over again. Poor credit scores should stop you from getting credit, it doesnt, it just gets you credit at insane interest rates. Given how poor people understand basic math these days...well...you can see where that goes. It just gives em a bigger shovel to start digging their new hole.
While I think you are correct in the idea that the increased spending is limited by the mathmatical reality that they can only overspend, I disagree with the term of effect being 2-3 years. That would be the case if it was only the TV they did that with. But they did it with the TV, the 2 cars, the new appliances, the computers, etc, etc, etc... Now its $70,000 or more in debt. Credit cards and loans aren't really a new phenomena. How easy they are to get because they keep lowering the bar to try to keep fueling an economy demanding instant and infinite quarterly returns that is running on fumes. The problem is magnified by the fact that so much of the money goes overseas because we have been destroying our own industrial capabilities in favor of offshoring for..drum roll....immediate quarterly improvements instead of long term stability. We be hosed.
I don't know that any of the stuff I have looked at covers housing because people do mistakenly treat that as an investment. Most of what I have looked at covered the credit card/personal/car loan stuff. You know that payday loans can charge up to 385% interest in some places, and frequently do. That is a never ending cycle of loss right there. I have seen young kids get swindled into 19-80% loans on their first cars. Most of the credit cards I see are 19-25% unless you have stellar credit already and then you might get 9-12%
They keep lowering interest rates to make it easy to borrow to get people to spend money they don't have, to try and keep the economy moving forward. It was the stupid quest that immediate quarterly profits that drove us here, and the abandonment of the idea that slow growth and long term stability were better. Get rich quick! Buy now pay later! If a company shows an unfavorable quarter the investors jump ship and rush to the new big thing. See the tech bubble. More and more investors are just dumb get rich quick fools throwing money whichever direction the wind blows.
You are obviously not following. I did not call it stealing. EVER. I typed the word stealing because that is what their jackass spokesman calls it. I then go on about why their economic claims are so stupid because IT IS NOT STEALING. Though I did not actually use the word stealing because it IS NOT STEALING. I explained that their claims of lost sales (what they call stealing) is bogus because supply/demand shows that at the higher price fewer people will want the product, and the demand for the product changes at different price levels. Unauthorized copying is certainly more accurate in its description, but we already have "copyright violation" to describe it and we need to stop inventing new terms because thats how these fools get away with calling it stealing (their fault, cuz it sounds worse), or pirating (our fault, cuz it sounds cooler), or whatever.
I think you may misunderstand me, or maybe just adding to my point, but that wasn't my argument. Your browser may have parsed incorrectly for you. It was one of those racketeering bastard's spokesman that made the claim the police should stop going after real criminals and instead chase down movie downloaders because they are stealing more "money" than is being stolen from banks. Even to someone who flunked out of economics class the lie here should be painfully obvious that a download is not the same as sale. Tons of people will want a good regardless how craptastic it is when its price approaches 0, but as the craptastic CD or DVD approaches $20 not as many people want it, so to take the numbers of people getting the good at $0 and claim that they all would purchase the same good at $20 is fucking stupid at best, lying sacks of shit at worse, and anyone that falls for that line needs to at least attend the first few weeks of a basic Microeconomics course to understand how moronic the argument is.
1. It is still a stupid and overblown punishment and a waste of time and money to go after these kinds of things with such zealotry. Now, that isn't to say I think he shouldn't be punished in some fashion, but this is just insane.
2. It is not definitely less than what a murderer would serve. There have been TONS of cases where rapists, child molesters and murderers get out to do it all again, repeatedly, and frequently in less than a year. It has been shown over and over that crimes against citizens are not the same thing as crimes against big money moving entities.
When I don't have to worry about what part of town I am driving through at what time of night and what color my skin might be, THEN I will be interested in tracking down music/movie uploaders. He is going to serve more punishment than good ol Scooter. The system is so insanely unbalanced chasing down this kind of crap is insane. Hell they had that asshole talk about how they should quit going after murderers and bank robbers because music/movie stealing was SOOO much worse for the economy.
Uhm, all the charts I have seen show the average American saves negative dollars per year. I have never seen anything stating that our savings rate was positive. That is the problem, there is a very large section of our society purchasing a lifestyle well above their means and its kinda screwing the whole thing up.
Go look at what the average debt is, go look at the rise in bankruptcy. A SANE American does the math just like you said. They understand the eventual payback. The AVERAGE American is spending themselves into a fake middleclass lifestyle. It is not a sudden new phase. Look at the trends. The average debt per person is climbing considerably faster than anything inflation could account for.
Yeah, damn dirty rapist murdering prick...oh wait...he uploaded the new Star Wars. Well, I guess this is the joy of treating copyright infringement as a criminal offense. Unless of course the infringement wasn't the offense, and that subjecting that many people to the latest Star Wars is considered a crime against humanity.
You may be on to something. Maybe he isn't trying to sell books! Maybe he is trying to get enough PR on his quackery science that the current administration will hire him!
I do want to point out that I think we are both correct on this because it is all relative to what *now* and *later* means. I don't believe for one second that the current way of things will last long, look at the rise in bankrupcy and the laws the credit companies are lobbying to try and stop it from happening so they can squeeze blood from stones. The *later* that you speak of is coming, where the recoil happens, where people realize they dug themselves into unrealistic debt and the collapse comes. I don't think it will be some earth shattering global economic collapse or anything, but I think things will be really rough for a while as things have to restabalize in reality instead of fantasy credit spending land.
Look at modern American business, look at the scandals, the corruption, and all the stupid business decisions questing for immediate spikes in quarterly profits instead of long term slow growth. Arther Anderson, THE accounting firm, held the belief "our loyalty lies to the auditors, not to our customers" and they got HUGE, the largest and most respected firm because you could be sure they would do things right. Then, the founder is gone, the next generation is at the helm, and then come the scandals, lots of them, cooking the books to show unrealistic profits on the short term, ultimately the destruction of the largest and most respected accounting firm over stupid scandles designed to inflate quarterly profits. Lately you can catch Warren Buffet talking about this, how these stupid attempts to boost immediate profits hurt long term profits. It really is interesting to listen to him talk about business if you haven't caught any of his talks. The most entertaining is when he talks about how he doesn't really desire money, he just really likes the business game, and money is how you keep score. People like that are FAR more important to the survival of our economy than the people who really are just trying to chase the dollar.
That only is true if the credit companies stop issuing cards to people. The reality is people get another card, transfer the balance, keep moving. Until the bankruptcy of course. The problem is people believe $100/mo for 48 months is a better deal than $200/mo for 12 months because its $100 less per month. People don't generally think in terms of how much interest they are paying, they think in terms of monthly payments. Turn on the radio, in some place/time slots it is almost impossible to go more than 30 minutes without hearing another ad for a debt consolidation agency or some other kind harded group trying to get you out of debt fast.
The reason it affects prices is because of demand. There is enough demand and floating credit to support a $3000 TV. I personally won't purchase that TV until its at least down to $1500 because I am going to pay cash and not wind up paying $5000 for a $3000 TV that will be worth $500 by the time it is paid off using some 25% interest rate card.
I think you are operating on the theory that people actually understand what you said that credit means you have less money to spend. 90% of people don't understand that concept, they don't understand they are paying it back at rates around 15-25% interest. They only understand they got their super wizbang plus megathing for only $59.99/month! They don't understand that extending their payments to infinity and beyond to lower the payment causes them to pay EVEN MORE in interest, they just understand the painful monthly payment is smaller. Most people don't think in the long term, they think in the immediate now. It winds up screwing people that DO get it because now that $1500 TV has a $3000 price tag on it because the majority of fools will slap that on their card and pay $80/month for the rest of eternity to pay for it.
A bit off topic, but I figure it may be deep enough in the thread to not matter much. I just want to welcome you to the club. It was explained to me here that I was a racist for "trying to be so racially blind in a society that is obviously not racially blind, that in fact means you are not racially blind. If you don't like being called a racist quit being racist" This all because I think hate crime legislation is stupid emotional extra baggage to tack on to some act that was already a crime to make it a thoughtcrime too and only serves to further racism. This coming from a person who further explained that most whites in America were rich immigrants looking for more and all black immigrants were slaves on boats. So once again, welcome to the Slashdot Bigots Club. We aren't quite sure how we got here, but at our next meeting we will be discussing a lawsuit against the AT&T for use of the SBC trademark.
Personally I read that gay sex part as starting a new list of potentially offensive types of sex, not a progression of more offensive things. I rather dislike the bleeding heart kneejerk reaction that seems to be ruling our society these days, but seems that is the way it goes these days. So in closing... Welcome! Stand tall and proud you fucking bigot! Once the confusion of how you got here passes you will find that it is actually a pretty nice club.
Thank you! I mean if you wanna make Goat Rapist XIII the video game, kudos to you, I wish you the best of luck, that doesn't mean Sony or Nintendo has to do business with you in any fashion, nor does it give you any reason to cry foul about how the ESRB is censoring you. You are still free to publish on your own and take the financial risk involved in making an obscene game. This Rockstar shit isn't about freedom of speech or anything, it is about market forces, and Rockstar is trying desparately to manipulate the system and is making the whole thing FAR worse. Like you said, we self regulate or allow the Jack Thompsons explain to the non technosavy why they need the government do it for them. In the meantime Rockstar is busy blaming the hackers for the Hot Coffee debacle, backs out, says "ok yeah we kinda lied about the hackers" and even the geeks are defending these assholes. Fox, MSNBC, CNN, or any other media outlet runs a "hackers" story and they come out of the woodwork condemning them for ruining our name as hackers, Rockstar tries to make hackers the scapegoat in their pathetic bullshit, and the geeks flock back to them for some unknown reason.
I don't even think its terribly offensive, at least the content, I think most of their games are rather intellectually offensive, but some of them have certainly been fun. I spent hours playing the original GT in multiplayer mode, the underlying concept of the game is basically the same as their later releases. They just keep trying to ratchet it up each time, and find it offensive or not, you cannot look at me with a straight face and tell me that they aren't deliberatlely trying to be offensive as possible to sell their games.
As far as finding things offensive, I don't think porn is offensive, but I don't think it is appropriate for it to be sold bottom shelf at a childrens bookstore either. If some childrens book publisher started trying to print sex books for 6yr olds (specially if it was part of their gimmic to be be as graphic and/or offensive as possible like RockStar does) I would fully expect most retailers to not carry their crap.
Rockstar did this to themselves and they really have noone else to blame. I don't care that AO is the "kiss of death" because suddenly it is hard to purchase from your local store, or that console makers won't associate with it. Its not like they are giving AO to Barney the Purple Dinosaur. As far as worthless sloven morals...well...where is the cutoff? At what point do you stop games about simulating criminal acts? I mean, technically most games involve blasting and exploding and killing...but then RockStar games goes a little bit beyond that...I mean...maybe we just need underage girl rape games imported as something less than AO to make it seem all ok.
I am terribly ammused by offensiveness for the sake of being offensive. Politically incorrect is a wonderful concept. I think it is entertaining to watch the little puritans squirm with discomfort. I don't expect certain offensive things to be accepted as normal. Gay rights...amuses me that people find this offensive. Raping and beating hookers for money...no...I think most reasonable people can agree that this is truely offensive behavior (not that joking about it can't be funny). I don't have a problem with what Rockstar creates and sells, I have a problem with them crying like little pussies when people get offended and slap them back. If you are going to be deliberately offensive you had better be prepared for someone to hit you back at some point.
Welcome to the disease that is killing our economy. People cry about inflation but this is where it comes from. Simple economics show that supply/demand affect price, and when people can purchase with large ammounts of imaginary "buy now pay later" money, they will pay higher prices for things. If noone had large ammounts of credit at their disposal cars would be cheaper, houses would be cheaper, and day to day goods would be cheaper, because noone would be willing to pay the high prices. Unfortunately even house pets can get credit cards in their names (look at the stories of those stupid preapproved cards). It allows prices to stay artificially high, it will continue this way until the credit system collapses. Companies can only work with imaginary money for so long before people start wanting their funds.
So? This isn't censorship and I am so sick of people crying foul on this. This is market forces. Show me where Nintendo or Sony or whoever is forced to allow anyone to develop for their console. For christ's sake even the various incarnations of GPL limit how people are allowed to develop software, but frequently noone is crying foul about that.
If those poor bastards really want to sell over the top games then they can go build their own damn console or build for PC. I swear to god I am so sick of hearing about poor little ol Rockstar. They knew what they were doing when they pulled the Hot Coffee stunt, they knew what they were doing when they made the Manhunt games, they knew what they were doing when they made each and every piece of software that they knew full damn well most people would find offensive. And now they are crying about it? Look I don't really care, its a video game, whatever, I can live without it, not the end of my world.
Walmart can choose to not sell hardcore pornography, Sony/Nintendo/etc can choose not to license "offensive" video games. Too bad, so sad, try again. Welcome to the real world and market forces. If Sony/Nintendo/etc believed the reward to be worth the risk of signing on with those clowns then they probably would, but they have seen their shenannagins and said "Uhm, yeah, go away, we don't want your stink on us, thanks."
Strictly speaking, there is no limit and for good reason. There is this horribly flawed idea that the 2nd Ammendment has ANYTHING to do with defending yourself against your fellow citizens, or even outside states. The 2nd Ammendment is there to ensure that the people can always defend themselves from the government. It was put there because it is part of the handbook on government oppression to take the peoples weapons away to enforce oppression, it has happened over and over and over. Thomas Jefferson said "The beauty of the 2nd ammendment is that you don't need it until the government tries to take it away".
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Being sued for a public performance is a small price to pay for that kind of entertainment. Really to me the most amusing thing is an average* college student armed with economics knowledge could easily replace the RIAA business model and send them soaring into record profits. These dinosaurs would rather spend mountains of money litigating a losing battle. Sure, they may get the law on their side, but how long was the Catholic Church (arguably much more powerful in its time) able to insist through 'legal' means that the earth was flat, that the earth was the center of the universe, that the earth didn't spin, and so on. Regardless of the copyright issues and downloading nonsense, they really are spending a disturbing amount of money propping up a house of cards destined to fall. The upshot is over a long enough period terminally stupid behavior does indeed become terminal.
*average - Reasonably intelligent. We have all seen what happens when we put an "average" "C Student" in a position of power.
Wow...Well don't take this the wrong way, but the saddest thing here is that your other comment got +insightful (which I suppose is the dumb part, not so much your comment, and my issue is then with the dumb moderators), but that your very well written response is probably going to see precious little mods (here's hoping some smart mods come along).
That said, I do have some hopefully interesting information to add for you. They CD didn't slip past, go to the store and look. There are Data and Music CDRs. The only difference is the Music CDRs have that stupid spiral pattern or whatever it is so that SCMS compliant CD copiers can verify that you purchased a RIAA approved and taxed CD. Audio Home Recording Act detailed what type of hardware was allowed to burn music discs and forced the consumer to purchase RIAA taxed blanks to make copies. The problem here was that the AHRA happened in 1992 and didn't really account for the explosion in PC CDR technology. In CDR drives for PCs SCMS compliance would make it impossible to burn data backups on anything but RIAA taxed Music CDRs, and thus the floodgates opened. The RIAA had a plan that, while decent for a brief time, required the world to stop. Any surprise there?
As far as the Xerox infringement issue. I think the only reason the college book publishing scam artists haven't been hung out to dry yet is that not enough people go to college to understand how much of a scam the "Books" part of "Books & Tuition" is. Interestingly enough...go look up the CIA and Xerox story during the Cold War. That in mind, technically the government could get burned on copyright violation for making unauthorized copies of copies. Even if the paper said "you are allowed to copy for XYZ purpose" the government spy camera copy would most certainly not be used for the stated purpose and would then run them afoul of the ruling. Though I suppose it is a bit of a dream to assume the government doesn't act as if it were above the law anyways, but it would otherwise certainly throw an interesting twist into the problem.
On that note...government wiretaps should be defeated by playing RIAA music in the background and then letting the RIAA sue the government for supporting terrorism by stealing music. When the CIA shares it with the FBI they all get shut down! I mean really...I think the only thing better than watching that go to secret court would be watching half of Congress spontaneously combust trying to figure out if draconian copyright laws or police state wiretap laws take precedence.
Xerox ships copyrighted books with their devices for you to copy? By your logic everyone owning a computer should be getting arrested. Really even pens and pencils ownership will consist of a violation. Oh wait...they got in trouble for digitally advertising copyrighted works even if noone actually downloaded them...well that is a whole lot different than owning a device than could potentially copy something. That is owning a device that could copy something, and putting up a sign that says "Free copies of the following copyrighted works". Bit different eh?
Please don't be so deliberately dumb. Look, the ruling sucks, it is going to crush those people. The unfortunate truth is that the judge is most likely correct. If you want to blame anyone blame Kazaa n crew for going out and trying to share everything on your drive when you install it. That is sort of the problem with civil disobedience, people get busted and get fined or go to jail. The law in many cases is on the RIAAs side. The lesson learned here...don't install shit that is mean for copying music you don't own...and don't give me that "but it was for a backup" bullshit because we ALL know that the file sharing software is 99% copyright violation 1% backup, and I'm pretty sure I am rounding up that 1%. Don't like the law, change it or live with it.
They only need the hose long enough to fill the bucket they are going to use to waterboard our terrorist intellectual property stealing ass! Rememeber kids, illegal downloading of movies, music, and software supports terrorism.
I don't really mean they go under completely because of that directly. I mean the loss in capital puts their competitors ahead and they may just get shut out of the market. Competition isn't about quality/price as much these days it seems, and more about who games the system the best.
To a degree the stock thing works but it depends on the company. Which really just boils down to doing research instead of just watching prices rise and fall. The problem is, say that company announces a bad quarter, can that company survive a bunch of people dumping their stock? Can they recover from the stigma of a bad quarter? Because infinite growth quarterly profits are what is being demanded by all these get rich quick investors. This nonsense behavior is what leads all these companies to cook books or otherwise skew their reporting. The real problem lies in having so much based on imaginary money, that if something bad were to happen it could trigger a run on the system. Fear rules us right now, look at the paranoia in the political realm of crying for government protection from anything offensive down to terrorist boogeymen. The first to call their debts is the most likely to actually get their money back. But then anyone who owes them imaginary money has to call their debts, and so on down the line. You can bet your ass that it is going to be the middle class and below that feel the pain of that one.
This isn't to say all debt is a bad thing. Look at the regulations on how banks can loan money to "create wealth" and compare that to the credit companies. Not that any system is fool proof, but the banks by and large have had more stability because it happened once and they learned some lessons in how to try to avoid it again. Another great depression would be hell for everyone here except for the few that can afford to bail out and leave.
I didn't quote it because I couldn't remember what he actually said specifically. He was some PR jackass type, and I imagine even a lawyers tongue would erupt in flame with such a moronic statement. PR/Marketing people seem to be the only class of people that are capable of saying such nonsense without their tongues catching fire or their heads exploding. (Politicians are a special subset of PR so they qualify too).
As far as Unauthorized copying, it certainly is a much more accurate description. My only concern would be that using synonyms or words that are just a hair apart (act vs offense) in a rather complex legal problem is only going to buy lawyers room to tapdance and bamboozle. Force the lawyers to describe things in a simple and common way and take away the bamboozle factor. Copyright is the right to copy, he copied without the right and thus violated the copyright. Copyleft is a cute and clever term, but only serves to muddy the meaning of copyright leaving more room for bamboozling.
When the laws are so complex that the common man cannot hope to defend himself or exercise his rights we have a failure of liberty and a dependance on a certain special class of people.
I think it is a different mentality altogether that causes it. We live in capitalism run amok. Government regulation causes more problems than it solves, and the market can't behave anything like it should so long as the rich n powerful types are allowed to act above the law. Greed and Apathy. The problem with pricing is that credit artificially allows people to pay higher prices. They get new cards, they transfer balances, they get home equity loans and drain all the value back out of their house. Then if they don't stop before they can't make the monthly payments they go bankrupt and start the process over again. Poor credit scores should stop you from getting credit, it doesnt, it just gets you credit at insane interest rates. Given how poor people understand basic math these days...well...you can see where that goes. It just gives em a bigger shovel to start digging their new hole.
While I think you are correct in the idea that the increased spending is limited by the mathmatical reality that they can only overspend, I disagree with the term of effect being 2-3 years. That would be the case if it was only the TV they did that with. But they did it with the TV, the 2 cars, the new appliances, the computers, etc, etc, etc... Now its $70,000 or more in debt. Credit cards and loans aren't really a new phenomena. How easy they are to get because they keep lowering the bar to try to keep fueling an economy demanding instant and infinite quarterly returns that is running on fumes. The problem is magnified by the fact that so much of the money goes overseas because we have been destroying our own industrial capabilities in favor of offshoring for..drum roll....immediate quarterly improvements instead of long term stability. We be hosed.
I don't know that any of the stuff I have looked at covers housing because people do mistakenly treat that as an investment. Most of what I have looked at covered the credit card/personal/car loan stuff. You know that payday loans can charge up to 385% interest in some places, and frequently do. That is a never ending cycle of loss right there. I have seen young kids get swindled into 19-80% loans on their first cars. Most of the credit cards I see are 19-25% unless you have stellar credit already and then you might get 9-12%
They keep lowering interest rates to make it easy to borrow to get people to spend money they don't have, to try and keep the economy moving forward. It was the stupid quest that immediate quarterly profits that drove us here, and the abandonment of the idea that slow growth and long term stability were better. Get rich quick! Buy now pay later! If a company shows an unfavorable quarter the investors jump ship and rush to the new big thing. See the tech bubble. More and more investors are just dumb get rich quick fools throwing money whichever direction the wind blows.
You are obviously not following. I did not call it stealing. EVER. I typed the word stealing because that is what their jackass spokesman calls it. I then go on about why their economic claims are so stupid because IT IS NOT STEALING. Though I did not actually use the word stealing because it IS NOT STEALING. I explained that their claims of lost sales (what they call stealing) is bogus because supply/demand shows that at the higher price fewer people will want the product, and the demand for the product changes at different price levels. Unauthorized copying is certainly more accurate in its description, but we already have "copyright violation" to describe it and we need to stop inventing new terms because thats how these fools get away with calling it stealing (their fault, cuz it sounds worse), or pirating (our fault, cuz it sounds cooler), or whatever.
I think you may misunderstand me, or maybe just adding to my point, but that wasn't my argument. Your browser may have parsed incorrectly for you. It was one of those racketeering bastard's spokesman that made the claim the police should stop going after real criminals and instead chase down movie downloaders because they are stealing more "money" than is being stolen from banks. Even to someone who flunked out of economics class the lie here should be painfully obvious that a download is not the same as sale. Tons of people will want a good regardless how craptastic it is when its price approaches 0, but as the craptastic CD or DVD approaches $20 not as many people want it, so to take the numbers of people getting the good at $0 and claim that they all would purchase the same good at $20 is fucking stupid at best, lying sacks of shit at worse, and anyone that falls for that line needs to at least attend the first few weeks of a basic Microeconomics course to understand how moronic the argument is.
1. It is still a stupid and overblown punishment and a waste of time and money to go after these kinds of things with such zealotry. Now, that isn't to say I think he shouldn't be punished in some fashion, but this is just insane.
2. It is not definitely less than what a murderer would serve. There have been TONS of cases where rapists, child molesters and murderers get out to do it all again, repeatedly, and frequently in less than a year. It has been shown over and over that crimes against citizens are not the same thing as crimes against big money moving entities.
When I don't have to worry about what part of town I am driving through at what time of night and what color my skin might be, THEN I will be interested in tracking down music/movie uploaders. He is going to serve more punishment than good ol Scooter. The system is so insanely unbalanced chasing down this kind of crap is insane. Hell they had that asshole talk about how they should quit going after murderers and bank robbers because music/movie stealing was SOOO much worse for the economy.
Uhm, all the charts I have seen show the average American saves negative dollars per year. I have never seen anything stating that our savings rate was positive. That is the problem, there is a very large section of our society purchasing a lifestyle well above their means and its kinda screwing the whole thing up.
Go look at what the average debt is, go look at the rise in bankruptcy. A SANE American does the math just like you said. They understand the eventual payback. The AVERAGE American is spending themselves into a fake middleclass lifestyle. It is not a sudden new phase. Look at the trends. The average debt per person is climbing considerably faster than anything inflation could account for.
Yeah, damn dirty rapist murdering prick...oh wait...he uploaded the new Star Wars. Well, I guess this is the joy of treating copyright infringement as a criminal offense. Unless of course the infringement wasn't the offense, and that subjecting that many people to the latest Star Wars is considered a crime against humanity.
You may be on to something. Maybe he isn't trying to sell books! Maybe he is trying to get enough PR on his quackery science that the current administration will hire him!
I do want to point out that I think we are both correct on this because it is all relative to what *now* and *later* means. I don't believe for one second that the current way of things will last long, look at the rise in bankrupcy and the laws the credit companies are lobbying to try and stop it from happening so they can squeeze blood from stones. The *later* that you speak of is coming, where the recoil happens, where people realize they dug themselves into unrealistic debt and the collapse comes. I don't think it will be some earth shattering global economic collapse or anything, but I think things will be really rough for a while as things have to restabalize in reality instead of fantasy credit spending land.
Look at modern American business, look at the scandals, the corruption, and all the stupid business decisions questing for immediate spikes in quarterly profits instead of long term slow growth. Arther Anderson, THE accounting firm, held the belief "our loyalty lies to the auditors, not to our customers" and they got HUGE, the largest and most respected firm because you could be sure they would do things right. Then, the founder is gone, the next generation is at the helm, and then come the scandals, lots of them, cooking the books to show unrealistic profits on the short term, ultimately the destruction of the largest and most respected accounting firm over stupid scandles designed to inflate quarterly profits. Lately you can catch Warren Buffet talking about this, how these stupid attempts to boost immediate profits hurt long term profits. It really is interesting to listen to him talk about business if you haven't caught any of his talks. The most entertaining is when he talks about how he doesn't really desire money, he just really likes the business game, and money is how you keep score. People like that are FAR more important to the survival of our economy than the people who really are just trying to chase the dollar.
That only is true if the credit companies stop issuing cards to people. The reality is people get another card, transfer the balance, keep moving. Until the bankruptcy of course. The problem is people believe $100/mo for 48 months is a better deal than $200/mo for 12 months because its $100 less per month. People don't generally think in terms of how much interest they are paying, they think in terms of monthly payments. Turn on the radio, in some place/time slots it is almost impossible to go more than 30 minutes without hearing another ad for a debt consolidation agency or some other kind harded group trying to get you out of debt fast.
The reason it affects prices is because of demand. There is enough demand and floating credit to support a $3000 TV. I personally won't purchase that TV until its at least down to $1500 because I am going to pay cash and not wind up paying $5000 for a $3000 TV that will be worth $500 by the time it is paid off using some 25% interest rate card.
I think you are operating on the theory that people actually understand what you said that credit means you have less money to spend. 90% of people don't understand that concept, they don't understand they are paying it back at rates around 15-25% interest. They only understand they got their super wizbang plus megathing for only $59.99/month! They don't understand that extending their payments to infinity and beyond to lower the payment causes them to pay EVEN MORE in interest, they just understand the painful monthly payment is smaller. Most people don't think in the long term, they think in the immediate now. It winds up screwing people that DO get it because now that $1500 TV has a $3000 price tag on it because the majority of fools will slap that on their card and pay $80/month for the rest of eternity to pay for it.
A bit off topic, but I figure it may be deep enough in the thread to not matter much. I just want to welcome you to the club. It was explained to me here that I was a racist for "trying to be so racially blind in a society that is obviously not racially blind, that in fact means you are not racially blind. If you don't like being called a racist quit being racist" This all because I think hate crime legislation is stupid emotional extra baggage to tack on to some act that was already a crime to make it a thoughtcrime too and only serves to further racism. This coming from a person who further explained that most whites in America were rich immigrants looking for more and all black immigrants were slaves on boats. So once again, welcome to the Slashdot Bigots Club. We aren't quite sure how we got here, but at our next meeting we will be discussing a lawsuit against the AT&T for use of the SBC trademark.
Personally I read that gay sex part as starting a new list of potentially offensive types of sex, not a progression of more offensive things. I rather dislike the bleeding heart kneejerk reaction that seems to be ruling our society these days, but seems that is the way it goes these days. So in closing... Welcome! Stand tall and proud you fucking bigot! Once the confusion of how you got here passes you will find that it is actually a pretty nice club.
Thank you! I mean if you wanna make Goat Rapist XIII the video game, kudos to you, I wish you the best of luck, that doesn't mean Sony or Nintendo has to do business with you in any fashion, nor does it give you any reason to cry foul about how the ESRB is censoring you. You are still free to publish on your own and take the financial risk involved in making an obscene game. This Rockstar shit isn't about freedom of speech or anything, it is about market forces, and Rockstar is trying desparately to manipulate the system and is making the whole thing FAR worse. Like you said, we self regulate or allow the Jack Thompsons explain to the non technosavy why they need the government do it for them. In the meantime Rockstar is busy blaming the hackers for the Hot Coffee debacle, backs out, says "ok yeah we kinda lied about the hackers" and even the geeks are defending these assholes. Fox, MSNBC, CNN, or any other media outlet runs a "hackers" story and they come out of the woodwork condemning them for ruining our name as hackers, Rockstar tries to make hackers the scapegoat in their pathetic bullshit, and the geeks flock back to them for some unknown reason.
I don't even think its terribly offensive, at least the content, I think most of their games are rather intellectually offensive, but some of them have certainly been fun. I spent hours playing the original GT in multiplayer mode, the underlying concept of the game is basically the same as their later releases. They just keep trying to ratchet it up each time, and find it offensive or not, you cannot look at me with a straight face and tell me that they aren't deliberatlely trying to be offensive as possible to sell their games.
As far as finding things offensive, I don't think porn is offensive, but I don't think it is appropriate for it to be sold bottom shelf at a childrens bookstore either. If some childrens book publisher started trying to print sex books for 6yr olds (specially if it was part of their gimmic to be be as graphic and/or offensive as possible like RockStar does) I would fully expect most retailers to not carry their crap.
Rockstar did this to themselves and they really have noone else to blame. I don't care that AO is the "kiss of death" because suddenly it is hard to purchase from your local store, or that console makers won't associate with it. Its not like they are giving AO to Barney the Purple Dinosaur. As far as worthless sloven morals...well...where is the cutoff? At what point do you stop games about simulating criminal acts? I mean, technically most games involve blasting and exploding and killing...but then RockStar games goes a little bit beyond that...I mean...maybe we just need underage girl rape games imported as something less than AO to make it seem all ok.
I am terribly ammused by offensiveness for the sake of being offensive. Politically incorrect is a wonderful concept. I think it is entertaining to watch the little puritans squirm with discomfort. I don't expect certain offensive things to be accepted as normal. Gay rights...amuses me that people find this offensive. Raping and beating hookers for money...no...I think most reasonable people can agree that this is truely offensive behavior (not that joking about it can't be funny). I don't have a problem with what Rockstar creates and sells, I have a problem with them crying like little pussies when people get offended and slap them back. If you are going to be deliberately offensive you had better be prepared for someone to hit you back at some point.
Sen Ted Stevens to the rescue! It is a series of tubes! They understand tubes! We are saved, all hail Sen Stevens.
Welcome to the disease that is killing our economy. People cry about inflation but this is where it comes from. Simple economics show that supply/demand affect price, and when people can purchase with large ammounts of imaginary "buy now pay later" money, they will pay higher prices for things. If noone had large ammounts of credit at their disposal cars would be cheaper, houses would be cheaper, and day to day goods would be cheaper, because noone would be willing to pay the high prices. Unfortunately even house pets can get credit cards in their names (look at the stories of those stupid preapproved cards). It allows prices to stay artificially high, it will continue this way until the credit system collapses. Companies can only work with imaginary money for so long before people start wanting their funds.
So? This isn't censorship and I am so sick of people crying foul on this. This is market forces. Show me where Nintendo or Sony or whoever is forced to allow anyone to develop for their console. For christ's sake even the various incarnations of GPL limit how people are allowed to develop software, but frequently noone is crying foul about that.
If those poor bastards really want to sell over the top games then they can go build their own damn console or build for PC. I swear to god I am so sick of hearing about poor little ol Rockstar. They knew what they were doing when they pulled the Hot Coffee stunt, they knew what they were doing when they made the Manhunt games, they knew what they were doing when they made each and every piece of software that they knew full damn well most people would find offensive. And now they are crying about it? Look I don't really care, its a video game, whatever, I can live without it, not the end of my world.
Walmart can choose to not sell hardcore pornography, Sony/Nintendo/etc can choose not to license "offensive" video games. Too bad, so sad, try again. Welcome to the real world and market forces. If Sony/Nintendo/etc believed the reward to be worth the risk of signing on with those clowns then they probably would, but they have seen their shenannagins and said "Uhm, yeah, go away, we don't want your stink on us, thanks."
Strictly speaking, there is no limit and for good reason. There is this horribly flawed idea that the 2nd Ammendment has ANYTHING to do with defending yourself against your fellow citizens, or even outside states. The 2nd Ammendment is there to ensure that the people can always defend themselves from the government. It was put there because it is part of the handbook on government oppression to take the peoples weapons away to enforce oppression, it has happened over and over and over. Thomas Jefferson said "The beauty of the 2nd ammendment is that you don't need it until the government tries to take it away".