So what about book stores, they let you read books in the store. They want to be friendly with the customers that enjoy books.
What about them? As we say on Slashdot, why would I buy something unless I got to at least take a look at it first and make sure it's what I want? I'm not sure what you're suggesting here or how it relates to my post.
Sure, sit down, have some coffee. Read up on all the things that you want. But if you want the convience of reading at home, then you need to buy the book.
This is just like the library, only you're purchasing the book and keeping it instead of borrowing it for two weeks and bringing it back.
I don't think that its a horrible idea that google be able to scan every line and have it stored, but I do think that they should have to put up a bond and be audited to make sure that people aren't being kept from actually purchasing the book.
I don't know what the legal aspect of this is. Scanning the book is an act of reproduction and for most books, it's reproduction of a copyrighted work. Depending on how Google plans to use their reproduction of a copyrighted work, they may have the legally right to do what they are doing under the Fair Use doctrine. This will go to and be decided in court, mark my words. The Supreme Court has said repeatedly that the Fair Use doctrine is impossible to broadly define and limit in legal code and must be understood and determined on a case-by-case basis.
I'm not trying to pass any judgment on Google's activity or idea, I mostly am interested in the legal aspect of it.
I don't think the motive behind libraries were ever to give a sample to coax people into buy books.
I think the goal was more along the lines of cultural enrichment, but perhaps that is an outdated idea.
The original motivation for libraries was to keep books in them. The only copy. Since copying books was a long, expensive, and laborious process for all but the last 600 years of human history.
The modern purpose of libraries depends on who set up the library and why, but among the typical motivations are:
Contributing to the ability of a society to self-enlighten.
Contributing to the ability of a university and its educators to teach and instruct
Establishing a public commodity through which all members of the community have equal access to intellectual enrichment.
Providing a central storehouse for information in all forms and for all purposes.
There's a theme here. The public library exists to provide access to knowledge and information. I've never heard it said that libraries exist as an extension of the publishing industry. In truth, something like a library is a bit misplaced in a capitalistic society, but we've determined that the benefits of its existance far outweigh the hassle it is to deal with in our economy.
The internet, however, has changed that formula. You are not permitted to check a book out from the library and make 1,000 copies of it. You are also not permitted to distribute digital copies of the contents.
Again, there is no fundamental difference between what the Internet has done to these issues and was possible before. The Internet and digitalization technologies have merely reduced to the energy barrier so far that near-perfect replicas of most media can be created with literally the push of a button, and distributed nearly as easily.
Unfortunately for the copyright owners, this seriously threatens a business model that has served them well for generations and they must find a way to protect their property. Unfortunately for us, the way most have chosen is suiting us into oblivion and trying to jam legislation through our government that is intended to deter criminal behavior but mostly just makes life inconvenient and annoying for the majority of us who are doing no wrong.
When the innocent masses must compromise their liberty at the whims of a few powerful individuals who are motivated by "stopping the bad guys," we've taken the first step onto a bad road.
Yeah, just like I was supposed to have a flying car, affordable robot that can clean, cook, mow the lawn, and feed the pets, AND my fully-automated home by 2000?
If Apple can build a proprietary commercial-grade GUI on top of an open-source kernel based on NetBSD, why can't Microsoft build a proprietary commercial-grade GUI on top of an open-source kernel based on Linux?
Some of the buzz surrounding AJAX has been generated by Web designers as well as programmers. AJAX's flexibility is invigorating for Web designers because JavaScript can control any aspect of any images or type on a page. Fonts can grow or shrink. Tables can add or lose lines. Colors can change. Although none of these capabilities are new to programmers accustomed to building client applications -- or, for that matter, Java applets -- they are novelties to Web designers who would otherwise be forced to rely on Macromedia (Profile, Products, Articles) Flash.
I've never build web pages with any Macromedia project, and yet through the magic of style sheet and JavaScript, I've had all of these capabilities in my pages for years upon years. Am I misunderstanding the point? I assume I must be.
(insert flawed analogy here that will be mercilessly seized and picked to pieces by responding commenters)
What I am confused about is, although those booth babes are being horribly mistreated and exploited, I haven't heard one of them complain.....
This is one of my platitudes about life and politics: everybody has strong principles until it's their own money that's at stake.
Everybody has grand ideas for how YOU should spend your money, what YOU should get paid for, how much your employer can afford, how much Wal*Mart should pay their people, how high taxes should be, blah blah blah. Everybody has a very high-principled ideal of what people should and should not do (or be allowed to do) for money.
Until somebody waves $5,000 in front of you and says, "Wear this wizard costume for two days and tolerate the clumsy pawing and slack-jawed stares of overweight men."
The issue isn't about making women into sex objects this way, the issue is WHY here in video gaming? This isn't the movie industry where the females are always the 'damsel in distress', no this is the video game industry where the women can sometimes kick ass better than the males (Samus from Metroid? MMO games? Garnet/Dagger from FFIX who runs away from home/gets 'kidnapped'?)
Why must female sexuality be mutually exclusive with "kicking ass"? Or being smart? Or being successful? Or anything other than sexual objectificiation? Why is it that any display of female sexuality is instantly branded as somehow belittling women and reducing them to nothing but their reproductive capacity? Why can't a woman be intelligent, able to kick your ass in a sparring match, and be sexy? Why is it that our response to all attractive, sexy women is to immediately go on the defensive on their behalf for how they are being exloited for their looks and used?
This isn't the movie industry where the females are always the 'damsel in distress', no this is the video game industry where the women can sometimes kick ass better than the males
So what? There's all kinds of movies about the myth of the "women who can kick ass." And they're always hot, too. Why is that ok for the movies but not for video games?
If this was a car show I could see booth babes being around, but video games?
What do sexy women have to do with cars, beyond wealthy unattractive men trying to win them over by buying expensive foreign roadsters?
If this is the kind of perception gaming developers and producers have of gamers
What, that your typical gamer is a sexually repressed male between the ages of 15 and 35? I don't think they're far off.
Casual gamers don't care about booth babes.
Casual gamers don't attend E3. They've never even heard of it.
Hardcore gamers may stare for a little bit but even they know that it all comes down to gameplay.
I'm glad you speak for the entire community of "hardcore" gamers, they appreciate your representation.
What kind of jobless losers are these developers try to attract with booth babes?
They're trying to attract everybody who is there. You are almost violently offended by this, and your reaction suggests, to me, a level of discomfort with female sexuality in "your" corner of the entertainment industry.
You could say that the old way was unfair, but I think if you do business in a state you should be subject to its laws.
Yes, you should and if I live in Missouri and am doing business with your company in Missouri, and I sue you, then the case is handled in Missouri barring a change of venue.
But if me and 50,000 other people from 9 different states sue your company, it's ridiculous to allow the attorneys to pick a plaintiff-friendly state to maximize damages, out of which they'll take the largest bite.
It's certainly more fair than all these companies incorporated in Delaware, where they have no customers but lots of friendly courts.
Companies incorporate in Delaware because the Chancery has written most of the nation's corporate law and is regarded by almost any legal expert on business and corporate law as an expert body on business matters. In short, yes, the state government is very friendly to businesses. Small businesses like to incorporate in Delaware due to relaxed personal information requirements (which we on Slashdot are always in favor of, remember? Personal privacy and information security is important!). The state doesn't tax revenue earned outside of its borders either, which is awful nice of them.
Why is this a problem in your eyes, and what would you to do fix it? Have the federal government step in and tell Delaware what its laws about incorporation will be? Why bother having states if that's the direction we're moving?
Also, it makes no sense to claim that the President can't be responsible for a law.
I agree. Good thing I didn't claim that.
I don't know how hard he pushed this particular bill, but he's the most powerful person in the country and the leader of the majority party.
I'm guessing he cut some deals. This particular president is legendary for lavishing rewards upon loyal party hacks.
His support makes a huge difference in whether a bill gets passed, as he or any member of Congress will tell you.
Yes, I'm sure he would. However, your primary grievance, if you dislike this legislation, is with these men, who wrote and sponsored the legislation.
Charles Grassley (R. Iowa, Chairman, Senate Finance Committee)
Herb Kohl (D. Wisconsin)
Orrin Hatch (R. Utah)
Tom Carpenter (R. Delaware)
Arlen Specter (R. Pennsylvania)
Zell Miller (D. Georgia)
Lincoln Chafee (R. Rhode Island)
Rich Lugar (R. Indiana)r
Once you're done with them, your beef is with the Senate and eventually the President who could have vetoed it and did not, and finally the courts for failing to see it the way you do.
Although the executive office is very powerful at this moment in history, there are other cogs in the wheel of government towards whom you should deservingly direct your ire.
I don't know anything about this, but I have to point out the entire point of class action lawsuits is for groups of 'marginally damaged people' to come together and sue a company that insists on continuing to damage people in small ways.
That's not strictly true. A class-action lawsuit is, at its most basic, a lawsuit filed on behalf of a large number of injured parties who share a common complaint, generally with a common defendant. The group of injured individuals doesn't necessarily need to be identified individually for the lawsuit to be filed on their behalf. I can benefit from a class action lawsuit without having ever even known it took place, because a group of people went forward on behalf of all injured parties, with or without their consent. The severity of the injury is irrelevent.
And, in truth, it's also irrelevent in my post. The plaintiffs could be marginally damaged or severely, it's not really the point. The point is that where groups of commonly-injured plaintiffs would at one time self-organize and hire counsel, now the counsel finds injuries and solicits for lawsuits. The system had been previously organized such that counsel could cherry-pick soft targets in the state courts that would award massive and (sometimes) disproportionate damages. Counsel would often chew through an alarmingly high percentage of that, leaving the truely damaged parties with little or nothing (and sometimes in the hole!) while the true award went to counsel.
The changes to the class action lawsuit system were intended to mitigate this problem in the case of large suits that involve multistate plaintiffs. The issue is then given original jurisdiction in the federal district courts. Note that counsel can still move for a change of venue, and, as far as I know, get the case moved back to the state, whereas before it was almost impossible to do the opposite.
This could result in, say 15,000 injured parties in California being represented in New Mexico state courts over something that happened in Colorado, because the attorneys hand-picked a generous and sympathetic court that they felt was likely to decide in their favor and decide big. And we all know that the courts can be effective legislative instruments. There has never been any legislation passed to specifically allow or ban abortion, and yet it's unquestionably legal; not through an act of Congress, but through the court system.
Maybe that's more clear, I don't know.:)
But the fact you think it's somehow bad that, recently, large groups of slightly harmed people have started suing companies shows you don't know that's exactly what class action suits are for.
I don't think that's bad, and I never said or implied I did, you read that from my post due to your own bias as a reader. I did not pass any kind of judgment on the idea of the class action lawsuit. I also further submit that you don't truly understand the purpose of the class action lawsuit. It is not to benefit marginally damaged people. That's what small claims courts are far (and they're structure to discourage legal action for minor damaged, instead encouraging citizens to work it out on their own as far as possible). It's so that a large (and often unidentified) body of injured parties who share a common injury/interest/agenda can be represented by a sample of plaintiffs.
come together and sue a company that insists on continuing to damage people in small ways.
Also not true. The company need not still be causing damaged. In fact, it may have ceased causing any damage quite some time ago (I am unclear as to how statutes of limitations apply in class action cases). The company could still be found liable. McDonald's put HOT labels on their coffee, and they still lost the case with the elderly woman who scorched herself. The tobacco industry has been putting warning labels on cigarettes for ages and they still lost. Wrongdoing needn't be current and ongoing.
Then you're not paying attention [google.com]. Don't bother responding, though, I suspect your opinion will be ill-informed.
Ah! Yes, the filibuster. I'll summarize this the best that I can.
The President is nominating judges for various vacancies in our various court systems. Some/many of them are considered by the minority party to be too extreme and thus unqualified for the offices to which they are being appointed. The names of these judges have been enumerated by the Democrats, and they have threatened to filibuster the nominations if they leave committee.
The Republicans have responded to this by threatening to change the senate rules regarding the filibuster of judicial nominations unless the Democrats allow a floor vote on the Senate on these judges. I'm unsure if they wish to disallow the filibustering of judges entirely or change the number of votes required for cloture.
Democrats responded to that by claiming that Republicans are threatening to break with Senate tradition, and frequently cite that Bush has had a very high percentage of nominations approved.
Republicans respond by claiming that it's the Democrats who are breaking tradition by filibustering judges, which has never been done, and that the approval rating quoted by Democrats for Bush is misleading because they're ignoring appelate court nominations.
The Democrats counter that Republicans blocked Clinton's nominations. The Republicans counter that they just voted them down or didn't allow them out of committee, which is somehow different from filibustering.
So basically, everybody is pointing fingers at what a douchebag the guys on the other side are and how nobody is getting their way so the other side is just a bunch of big meany doodie heads.
I have not observed, in any of this political onanism in the Senate, a genuine threat to our system of checks and balances. Judges require a majority of the Senate to approve the nomination. If they go to a floor vote (i.e., the Republicans change the rules to break the filibuster without cloture), they will still need a majority of votes for the nomination to become a nominee. It's possible that the Republicans could trigger this "nuclear option" and still not get the appointments made. I do not, therefor, see a threat to checks and balances. I see a part that held power in the legislature for forty years acting like children because they're not getting their way anymore, and I see the party that has recently come into power having no clue how to conduct business as the majority, or how to engage in the least bit of diplomacy or debate.
If you wish to label my opinion as "ill-informed" simply because I don't agree with you, feel free. The smug intellectual superiority in that comment is sufficient for me to conclude that you're not really interesting in discussing or debating anything either. Most likely, you're a well-intentioned liberal who is angry first at the Republicans for the various atrocities of public policy they have visited (or are threatening to visit) upon our society, and secondly you're angry at the sheer incompetance of the Democrats, their inability to win elections, and the utter vacuum in that party of any leadership, intellectualism, ideas, or the semblance of a platform.
So don't worry. You're angry at your dad, basically, not me. I won't take it personally.
When they can isolate the part of the brain that causes people to misindentify bad luck, coincidence, and poetic justice as irony, we'll have made a major step towards an educated and enlightened society.
Yes, I am. Could you elaborate on this groupthink you describe?
There's a subset of primarily socialist idealogy and political correctness that is mandated. You needed agree with it, just not articulate any criticms or opposition to it. Silence is as acceptable as consent in academia.
Could you for example provide some examples of things you yourself have experienced? Personally?
Yes. As a student I was forced to change class sessions due to my gender. I appealed this on the grounds that it violated the university's non-discrimination policy, but I was told, "that's to protect minorities." I complained about this was well and was eventually told to change schools or degrees if I didn't like it. As a tutor in the math department I was threatened with dismissal and possible expulsion from my degree program if I did not cease my criticism of department policy of gender-specific and race-specific classes on my web site (which wasn't even located at the school or on its computers). I'm happy to say that I experienced no monotony of thought when I was a lab monitor. I later worked at the university hospital on some software projects for the med students, and heard story after story after story of people being told what they can and cannot say, and most of it was ideological in nature. My boss disagreed with the hopsital's policy of distributing condoms (she was a liberal Catholic) and was threatened with dismissal if she didn't comply and stop articulating her disagreement. The manager of our project was a visiting professor told me once that if he could do it other again he'd have established himself in the private sector. He was actually mostly liberal and agreed with most of the university's standard line, but he was weary of the monotony of opinion that surrounded him. For an institution founded on the exchange of ideas, he thought that there was a remarkable lack of diversity among the faculty. That was until he discovered that a number of them held a variety of opinions and ideas on things but had been threatened with demotion, reduction in funding/resources, and in a few isolated cases, dismissal, if they articulated some of those opinions (mostly pseudoreligious in nature).
I hear a lot about how PC we allegedly are, but it's mostly stories people have heard about some unnamed university somewhere.
I'm talking about the University of Iowa, and the UI Hospitals and Clinics, as well as the Mathematics and Computer Science Department, and this would be 1996-1999. Despite my ranting, I loved my time there and would attend again in a heartbeat.
Not direct experience, but things people have heard or read. Seriously, I have encountered no "groupthink" or hegemony to which I am forced to subscribe to keep my job.
So your single anecdotal example of yourself should be acceptable to me as an effective counter to my argument? Whereas my anecdotal example of myself isn't enough? Ten four. I bet you only ever buy stuff you download too, therefore piracy isn't really a problem, right?
No offense, but your post sounds like the standard vague rant I hear from people who learn about colleges by reading John Leo columns in US News.
Never heard of John Leo, but your dismissive tone suggests that I'm not missing much.
No, I don't have to dedicate myself to some accepted philosophy. Nor do my colleagues. From my limited experience, my colleagues are free to speak their mind and criticize the status quo, and they do.
I agree with your first two sentences, but not your last. You don't have to agree. Just do not articulate your dissent.
Perhaps some concrete examples would help me see your point of view
Ask this guy. He also picked a bone with me on this opinion but agreed with my characterization of the pressure that faculty get to obediently recite the university's line.
Oops, I forgot Bush ruined class action lawsuits by forcing them to be in federal courts, which are more friendly to businesses.
I don't like Bush's policies either, but let's not just make things up, ok? First, not all class action suits are "forced" to federal court, only very large suits.
Second, they're moved to federal court not because federal courts are more business-friendly, but because of procedural differences in state court vs federal court. State courts tend to be more relaxed in due process procedures, and award ridiculous damages that are confiscated by private law firms. The ease with which a class action suit can be won in a small jurisdiction for enormous rewards has caused capitalistic law firms to seek out groups of marginally damaged people and organize them for a suit. This has caused a tenfold increase in class action lawsuits over the last decade.
Meanwhile, plaintiffs from multiple states with complaints against the same defendant could not organize on a federal level and file in federal court, due to procedural restrictions that prevented class action suits from being moved out of state. Thus you had the dangerous situation of one state's courts determining a case that would have national prescedent ramifications, and this seriously violates the principles of federalism. For a guy who bitched in his post about removing checks and balances, you're also complaining about legislation that was intended to prevent one state from determining national policy via state courts that are cherry-picked by millionaire attorneys.
The legislation in question removed some of the roadblocks to moving large cases with multistate plaintiffs to federal court by granting original jurisdiction of a case to the District Courts instead of the state courts for large suits in which there are multistate plaintiffs.
You then characaterize all this in your tired anti-Bush ranting as some pro-business move that Bush enacted for his cronies. First, that's not how a bill becomes a law, and you ought to know that by now. Presidents do not sponsor legislation in committee, nor vote on them in congress. They sign them.
There are a shitload of legitimate things to criticize President Bush about, but I'm tired of this hate-filled ranting that's misinformed. It's really hard to push for social evolution and progress when most of the people on your side are ignorant and more concerned with politics than anything else.
Oops, I forgot our legislature is too busy removing checks and balances (Senate) and debating corrupt members (House) to get anything else done.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here, so I can't really respond to you. The only major battle I know of in the Senate is over appelate court nominations, and I haven't read anything yet about changes to how nominations are handled.
It's the blind spot of psychology. There's a spot where your retina attached to your optic nerve (or whatever), and your eye can't actually see that little spot in front of you. Luckily, your other eye covers that ground. What if you close one eye? Then you can actually detect the "blind spot" but it's not straightforward. Your brains "fills in" the missing data, and there are various tricks you can play to make this happen and observe it.
What you've encountered here is akin to that phenomenon, only on a word-association level. You saw "W----s unstable" and your brain said, "WINDOWS!" This phenomenon is especially prevelent in males ages 9 through 120, who readily associate almost anything they encounter with their own genitals or breasts.
I'm curious as to how much Bull our own government is going to put up with until we realize how much idiotic the liberals' ideas are....
This is complete off-topic, but I feel compelled to respond.
The ideas of a true liberal are generally compelling, progressive, forward-thinking and in the best interests of the most people. The ideas of a true liberal have to do with securing the maximum amount of freedom and liberty for the most people. The problem is that in America, there are no liberals; or rather, the only group of people that really seems to embrace any liberal ideas are the Republicans. The Republicans also brace a disturbing number of authoritarian ideas. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" have been oddly redefined in America, so that "conservatives" stand for social evolution, small government, and personal freedom, and "liberal" is almost synonymous with "socialists."
I really don't know how it got to be that way. My opinion is that John F. Kennedy was the last true liberal in America, and that if he were in politics today, he'd be a Republican. Not because the Republicans are right/good/progressive/smart, but just because joining the Democratic party right now is political suicide, and the Republicans embrace a handful of liberal ideals that a true liberal would also embrace. True liberal intellectuals are abandoning the Democratic party in droves (and I think true conservatives are abandoning the Republicans). We're on the verge of a major, major socio-political upheaval in the United States that will redefine our political identities and party system. The election of 2008 is likely to be contentious as 2000 and 2004 were, but I think 2008 will go down in history as the last election of an era in American history, and the electin of 2012 will be like nothing we've ever seen before.
I think the Democratic party is going to finish itself off in in 2008 and the Republican party is going to occupy the vacuum they've left. Two new political organizations will rise, one may claim the "Democrat" label, I suppose. But I really do think that we're seeing the end of the Republicans/Democrats as we've known them for the last 70 years.
The American "Revolution" that didn't take place in a whole country and totally changed the way of government for it, but instead happened on a different continent, and didn't scratch the British monarchy in the slightest? Maybe you take your little uprising in the backwoods a tad too seriously? Ignoring how that would have ended if the French hadn't helped you...
What does that have to do with my point? Which was that France is not on the cutting edge of progress in the world, nor does it have a history of being so. It sometimes is, sometimes is not. It sometimes is successful and sometimes missteps. Every nation has in its history abundant examples of bad decisions, poor leadership, and difficult periods. To imply that any nation is and always has been the example that the rest of the world is trying to catch up to is asinine. I can pretty much cut and paste this comment to every response to my post, since it's typical Slashdot fare of attacking ancillary data in a manner that does not invalidate my point.
If somebody disagrees with me point, provide counter-arguments.
didn't scratch the British monarchy in the slightest?
This statement is laughable. Provide some support for this?
Maybe you take your little uprising in the backwoods a tad too seriously?
Well, it did lead to the founding of the country that I live in, so, yeah, I don't feel compelled to wave my hand dismissively at it. I'm puzzled as to why you seem to cavalier in doing so. Do you really think that the United States and its impact on the world can be summed up as a negligable wave in the history of humanity, summed up as a "backwoods uprising" in an empire? Your post is indeed interesting in its blind naivete.
Ever since France has been at the forefront of social development with it's Revolution, it's always been sait that "it's out on a limb" by other less-advanced countries.
Which forefront are you talking about? The Revolution of 1789, which took place 14 years after the English colonies in North America had their revolution? Or when Napolean took over the Republic and abandoned it for another monarchy with his family in charge? Or when his son dissolved the second Republic and declared the French Empire? Or maybe you're thinking of the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis?
France is many things, but a model of how to run a liberal utopia it is not. It's a nation with as complicated, confused, and self-contradictory a history as any other. It deserves neither the unqualified praise you imply in your post, nor the unqualified derision it receives from the American right.
This really begs the question: Why do they need to know who that the person in front of the computer is who they say they are? What purpose does this serve?
To cover their asses legally when Hous bin Pharteen bombs the hell out of something and coordinates his efforts with other terrorists by logging in anonymously from public workstations.
This whole thing comes down to legal/financial liability.
I'm very sad that you perceive that there is no difference between a university and a company. Not because you're wrong, but because you might be right.
Universities are companies. They are run like companies. They have budgets, they have employees, they pay taxes, they own land, they hire people, they fire people, and they are incorporating in increasing numbers.
I'm not saying it's right. Only that it's reality. And yes, branches of government can incorporate. Ever heard of the FDIC or the PBGC? They're run differently from other branches of the government, but they're government offices nontheless.
The line between public and private sector has long been blurring. The worrisome thing here, to me, is that a non-government corporation was able to so easily influence a government organization.
Obviously no Free Speech rights in Spain -- even in the university system.
Nobody stopped him from saying what he wanted to say. They stopped him from organizing an audience for it on their facilities. Don't confuse the right to speak your mind with the right to be heard. Nobody has a right to an audience of 500 kids on a college campus to hear their views.
And, freedom of speech is not synonymous with "freedom from consequences." You have the right to say whatever you want and, with some exceptions ("fire" in a theatre), not be jailed for it. That doesn't mean that there are no consequences. Just look at the Harvard professor who expressed that perhaps men are genetically predisposed towards math and science and women are not. The guy caught unreal heat for it and has all but taken back the suggestion that we look into it. Was his freedom of speech denied? Absolutely not. He said it, didn't he? Nobody stopped him. He hasn't been arrested for it or stopped from saying it again.
But there are consequences. When people say "free of speech" they confuse it with "freedom from consequences." The issue is muddled here because it's a university, an arm of the government, so by enacting penalties, isn't the "government" effectively limiting free speech? Hard to say, that's a grey area. My opinion is no, the guy is an employee and his employer has ever right to control what he says, especially when he says it on his employee's dime and on his employee's property.
The fact that this impetus against the professor was fomented by corporate lobbyists is more worrisome, but I don't know anything about Spanish law on such matters.
The fact that a university would try to stop such a lecture is beyond the pale. These are supposed to be institutions of academic freedom, not shills for the recording industry. It's a dark day for academia when cowardly administrators pull stunts like this.
This happens all the time. It's not always under pressure from corporate cartels but usually other staff members backstabbing and hamstringing each other over access to funding and resources. If you think colleges and universities are bastions of anything but political infighting, you're kidding yourself. A university, from the faculty point of view, looks alarmingly like upper corporate management. It's a bunch of dishonest, unethical people making it difficult for somebody else to do anything good for the organization, and anybody with a spark of principle is horrified at the spectacle and gets out.
The proud history of universities is that they are supposed to be places for the sharing of information, not places for censorship.
Bahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oh man. *wipes tear from eye* *snickler* Pmmffff. I can't help it. Bahahahahahahahahahah HA!
Universities.... sharing information and ideas....no censorship....
Bahahahahahahahaha!
Oh man. Sorry. Eh heeee! Have you ever been to a university? And even more important, have you ever been part of the faculty at one? There is a conformity and monotony of thought presence that defies description. And if you dare to not subscribe to university groupthink, you may as well resign because you're never going to get anywhere. You hold your cards close to your chest at any American university unless you are willing to completely dedicate yourself to the accepted philosophy.
It's not as bad for the students, there's a lot of heterogeneity in terms of ideas among students, but it's alarmingly absent in faculty, and those who express political, social, or philosophical ideas outside of the accepted thinking are run out of town. And god forbid you say anything publically, they'll be demanding your resignation for "embarassing" the university with your extremist views.
Note: this is not a neocon rant about leftists in school. You can express leftist ideas that aren't the right leftist ideas and still get blasted. One of the great ironies of American academia is that the people running it are probably among the most markedly anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian as educated people can be, and yet they fiercely defend the power heirarchy in place. It's unreal.
Slashdot Mirror
What about them? As we say on Slashdot, why would I buy something unless I got to at least take a look at it first and make sure it's what I want? I'm not sure what you're suggesting here or how it relates to my post.
Sure, sit down, have some coffee. Read up on all the things that you want. But if you want the convience of reading at home, then you need to buy the book.
This is just like the library, only you're purchasing the book and keeping it instead of borrowing it for two weeks and bringing it back.
I don't think that its a horrible idea that google be able to scan every line and have it stored, but I do think that they should have to put up a bond and be audited to make sure that people aren't being kept from actually purchasing the book.
I don't know what the legal aspect of this is. Scanning the book is an act of reproduction and for most books, it's reproduction of a copyrighted work. Depending on how Google plans to use their reproduction of a copyrighted work, they may have the legally right to do what they are doing under the Fair Use doctrine. This will go to and be decided in court, mark my words. The Supreme Court has said repeatedly that the Fair Use doctrine is impossible to broadly define and limit in legal code and must be understood and determined on a case-by-case basis.
I'm not trying to pass any judgment on Google's activity or idea, I mostly am interested in the legal aspect of it.
The original motivation for libraries was to keep books in them. The only copy. Since copying books was a long, expensive, and laborious process for all but the last 600 years of human history.
The modern purpose of libraries depends on who set up the library and why, but among the typical motivations are:
There's a theme here. The public library exists to provide access to knowledge and information. I've never heard it said that libraries exist as an extension of the publishing industry. In truth, something like a library is a bit misplaced in a capitalistic society, but we've determined that the benefits of its existance far outweigh the hassle it is to deal with in our economy.
The internet, however, has changed that formula. You are not permitted to check a book out from the library and make 1,000 copies of it. You are also not permitted to distribute digital copies of the contents.
Again, there is no fundamental difference between what the Internet has done to these issues and was possible before. The Internet and digitalization technologies have merely reduced to the energy barrier so far that near-perfect replicas of most media can be created with literally the push of a button, and distributed nearly as easily.
Unfortunately for the copyright owners, this seriously threatens a business model that has served them well for generations and they must find a way to protect their property. Unfortunately for us, the way most have chosen is suiting us into oblivion and trying to jam legislation through our government that is intended to deter criminal behavior but mostly just makes life inconvenient and annoying for the majority of us who are doing no wrong.
When the innocent masses must compromise their liberty at the whims of a few powerful individuals who are motivated by "stopping the bad guys," we've taken the first step onto a bad road.
If Apple can build a proprietary commercial-grade GUI on top of an open-source kernel based on NetBSD, why can't Microsoft build a proprietary commercial-grade GUI on top of an open-source kernel based on Linux?
The next generation of Windows after Longhorn will have a Linux kernel (or other UNIX-like kernel). Expect it by 2015.
I've never build web pages with any Macromedia project, and yet through the magic of style sheet and JavaScript, I've had all of these capabilities in my pages for years upon years. Am I misunderstanding the point? I assume I must be.
(insert flawed analogy here that will be mercilessly seized and picked to pieces by responding commenters)
This is one of my platitudes about life and politics: everybody has strong principles until it's their own money that's at stake.
Everybody has grand ideas for how YOU should spend your money, what YOU should get paid for, how much your employer can afford, how much Wal*Mart should pay their people, how high taxes should be, blah blah blah. Everybody has a very high-principled ideal of what people should and should not do (or be allowed to do) for money.
Until somebody waves $5,000 in front of you and says, "Wear this wizard costume for two days and tolerate the clumsy pawing and slack-jawed stares of overweight men."
Why must female sexuality be mutually exclusive with "kicking ass"? Or being smart? Or being successful? Or anything other than sexual objectificiation? Why is it that any display of female sexuality is instantly branded as somehow belittling women and reducing them to nothing but their reproductive capacity? Why can't a woman be intelligent, able to kick your ass in a sparring match, and be sexy? Why is it that our response to all attractive, sexy women is to immediately go on the defensive on their behalf for how they are being exloited for their looks and used?
This isn't the movie industry where the females are always the 'damsel in distress', no this is the video game industry where the women can sometimes kick ass better than the males
So what? There's all kinds of movies about the myth of the "women who can kick ass." And they're always hot, too. Why is that ok for the movies but not for video games?
If this was a car show I could see booth babes being around, but video games?
What do sexy women have to do with cars, beyond wealthy unattractive men trying to win them over by buying expensive foreign roadsters?
If this is the kind of perception gaming developers and producers have of gamers
What, that your typical gamer is a sexually repressed male between the ages of 15 and 35? I don't think they're far off.
Casual gamers don't care about booth babes.
Casual gamers don't attend E3. They've never even heard of it.
Hardcore gamers may stare for a little bit but even they know that it all comes down to gameplay.
I'm glad you speak for the entire community of "hardcore" gamers, they appreciate your representation.
What kind of jobless losers are these developers try to attract with booth babes?
They're trying to attract everybody who is there. You are almost violently offended by this, and your reaction suggests, to me, a level of discomfort with female sexuality in "your" corner of the entertainment industry.
Yes, you should and if I live in Missouri and am doing business with your company in Missouri, and I sue you, then the case is handled in Missouri barring a change of venue.
But if me and 50,000 other people from 9 different states sue your company, it's ridiculous to allow the attorneys to pick a plaintiff-friendly state to maximize damages, out of which they'll take the largest bite.
It's certainly more fair than all these companies incorporated in Delaware, where they have no customers but lots of friendly courts.
Companies incorporate in Delaware because the Chancery has written most of the nation's corporate law and is regarded by almost any legal expert on business and corporate law as an expert body on business matters. In short, yes, the state government is very friendly to businesses. Small businesses like to incorporate in Delaware due to relaxed personal information requirements (which we on Slashdot are always in favor of, remember? Personal privacy and information security is important!). The state doesn't tax revenue earned outside of its borders either, which is awful nice of them.
Why is this a problem in your eyes, and what would you to do fix it? Have the federal government step in and tell Delaware what its laws about incorporation will be? Why bother having states if that's the direction we're moving?
Also, it makes no sense to claim that the President can't be responsible for a law.
I agree. Good thing I didn't claim that.
I don't know how hard he pushed this particular bill, but he's the most powerful person in the country and the leader of the majority party.
I'm guessing he cut some deals. This particular president is legendary for lavishing rewards upon loyal party hacks.
His support makes a huge difference in whether a bill gets passed, as he or any member of Congress will tell you.
Yes, I'm sure he would. However, your primary grievance, if you dislike this legislation, is with these men, who wrote and sponsored the legislation.
Once you're done with them, your beef is with the Senate and eventually the President who could have vetoed it and did not, and finally the courts for failing to see it the way you do.
Although the executive office is very powerful at this moment in history, there are other cogs in the wheel of government towards whom you should deservingly direct your ire.
That's not strictly true. A class-action lawsuit is, at its most basic, a lawsuit filed on behalf of a large number of injured parties who share a common complaint, generally with a common defendant. The group of injured individuals doesn't necessarily need to be identified individually for the lawsuit to be filed on their behalf. I can benefit from a class action lawsuit without having ever even known it took place, because a group of people went forward on behalf of all injured parties, with or without their consent. The severity of the injury is irrelevent.
And, in truth, it's also irrelevent in my post. The plaintiffs could be marginally damaged or severely, it's not really the point. The point is that where groups of commonly-injured plaintiffs would at one time self-organize and hire counsel, now the counsel finds injuries and solicits for lawsuits. The system had been previously organized such that counsel could cherry-pick soft targets in the state courts that would award massive and (sometimes) disproportionate damages. Counsel would often chew through an alarmingly high percentage of that, leaving the truely damaged parties with little or nothing (and sometimes in the hole!) while the true award went to counsel.
The changes to the class action lawsuit system were intended to mitigate this problem in the case of large suits that involve multistate plaintiffs. The issue is then given original jurisdiction in the federal district courts. Note that counsel can still move for a change of venue, and, as far as I know, get the case moved back to the state, whereas before it was almost impossible to do the opposite.
This could result in, say 15,000 injured parties in California being represented in New Mexico state courts over something that happened in Colorado, because the attorneys hand-picked a generous and sympathetic court that they felt was likely to decide in their favor and decide big. And we all know that the courts can be effective legislative instruments. There has never been any legislation passed to specifically allow or ban abortion, and yet it's unquestionably legal; not through an act of Congress, but through the court system.
Maybe that's more clear, I don't know. :)
But the fact you think it's somehow bad that, recently, large groups of slightly harmed people have started suing companies shows you don't know that's exactly what class action suits are for.
I don't think that's bad, and I never said or implied I did, you read that from my post due to your own bias as a reader. I did not pass any kind of judgment on the idea of the class action lawsuit. I also further submit that you don't truly understand the purpose of the class action lawsuit. It is not to benefit marginally damaged people. That's what small claims courts are far (and they're structure to discourage legal action for minor damaged, instead encouraging citizens to work it out on their own as far as possible). It's so that a large (and often unidentified) body of injured parties who share a common injury/interest/agenda can be represented by a sample of plaintiffs.
come together and sue a company that insists on continuing to damage people in small ways.
Also not true. The company need not still be causing damaged. In fact, it may have ceased causing any damage quite some time ago (I am unclear as to how statutes of limitations apply in class action cases). The company could still be found liable. McDonald's put HOT labels on their coffee, and they still lost the case with the elderly woman who scorched herself. The tobacco industry has been putting warning labels on cigarettes for ages and they still lost. Wrongdoing needn't be current and ongoing.
Ah! Yes, the filibuster. I'll summarize this the best that I can.
The President is nominating judges for various vacancies in our various court systems. Some/many of them are considered by the minority party to be too extreme and thus unqualified for the offices to which they are being appointed. The names of these judges have been enumerated by the Democrats, and they have threatened to filibuster the nominations if they leave committee.
The Republicans have responded to this by threatening to change the senate rules regarding the filibuster of judicial nominations unless the Democrats allow a floor vote on the Senate on these judges. I'm unsure if they wish to disallow the filibustering of judges entirely or change the number of votes required for cloture.
Democrats responded to that by claiming that Republicans are threatening to break with Senate tradition, and frequently cite that Bush has had a very high percentage of nominations approved.
Republicans respond by claiming that it's the Democrats who are breaking tradition by filibustering judges, which has never been done, and that the approval rating quoted by Democrats for Bush is misleading because they're ignoring appelate court nominations.
The Democrats counter that Republicans blocked Clinton's nominations. The Republicans counter that they just voted them down or didn't allow them out of committee, which is somehow different from filibustering.
So basically, everybody is pointing fingers at what a douchebag the guys on the other side are and how nobody is getting their way so the other side is just a bunch of big meany doodie heads.
I have not observed, in any of this political onanism in the Senate, a genuine threat to our system of checks and balances. Judges require a majority of the Senate to approve the nomination. If they go to a floor vote (i.e., the Republicans change the rules to break the filibuster without cloture), they will still need a majority of votes for the nomination to become a nominee. It's possible that the Republicans could trigger this "nuclear option" and still not get the appointments made. I do not, therefor, see a threat to checks and balances. I see a part that held power in the legislature for forty years acting like children because they're not getting their way anymore, and I see the party that has recently come into power having no clue how to conduct business as the majority, or how to engage in the least bit of diplomacy or debate.
If you wish to label my opinion as "ill-informed" simply because I don't agree with you, feel free. The smug intellectual superiority in that comment is sufficient for me to conclude that you're not really interesting in discussing or debating anything either. Most likely, you're a well-intentioned liberal who is angry first at the Republicans for the various atrocities of public policy they have visited (or are threatening to visit) upon our society, and secondly you're angry at the sheer incompetance of the Democrats, their inability to win elections, and the utter vacuum in that party of any leadership, intellectualism, ideas, or the semblance of a platform.
So don't worry. You're angry at your dad, basically, not me. I won't take it personally.
When they can isolate the part of the brain that causes people to misindentify bad luck, coincidence, and poetic justice as irony, we'll have made a major step towards an educated and enlightened society.
There's a subset of primarily socialist idealogy and political correctness that is mandated. You needed agree with it, just not articulate any criticms or opposition to it. Silence is as acceptable as consent in academia.
Could you for example provide some examples of things you yourself have experienced? Personally?
Yes. As a student I was forced to change class sessions due to my gender. I appealed this on the grounds that it violated the university's non-discrimination policy, but I was told, "that's to protect minorities." I complained about this was well and was eventually told to change schools or degrees if I didn't like it. As a tutor in the math department I was threatened with dismissal and possible expulsion from my degree program if I did not cease my criticism of department policy of gender-specific and race-specific classes on my web site (which wasn't even located at the school or on its computers). I'm happy to say that I experienced no monotony of thought when I was a lab monitor. I later worked at the university hospital on some software projects for the med students, and heard story after story after story of people being told what they can and cannot say, and most of it was ideological in nature. My boss disagreed with the hopsital's policy of distributing condoms (she was a liberal Catholic) and was threatened with dismissal if she didn't comply and stop articulating her disagreement. The manager of our project was a visiting professor told me once that if he could do it other again he'd have established himself in the private sector. He was actually mostly liberal and agreed with most of the university's standard line, but he was weary of the monotony of opinion that surrounded him. For an institution founded on the exchange of ideas, he thought that there was a remarkable lack of diversity among the faculty. That was until he discovered that a number of them held a variety of opinions and ideas on things but had been threatened with demotion, reduction in funding/resources, and in a few isolated cases, dismissal, if they articulated some of those opinions (mostly pseudoreligious in nature).
I hear a lot about how PC we allegedly are, but it's mostly stories people have heard about some unnamed university somewhere.
I'm talking about the University of Iowa, and the UI Hospitals and Clinics, as well as the Mathematics and Computer Science Department, and this would be 1996-1999. Despite my ranting, I loved my time there and would attend again in a heartbeat.
Not direct experience, but things people have heard or read. Seriously, I have encountered no "groupthink" or hegemony to which I am forced to subscribe to keep my job.
So your single anecdotal example of yourself should be acceptable to me as an effective counter to my argument? Whereas my anecdotal example of myself isn't enough? Ten four. I bet you only ever buy stuff you download too, therefore piracy isn't really a problem, right?
No offense, but your post sounds like the standard vague rant I hear from people who learn about colleges by reading John Leo columns in US News.
Never heard of John Leo, but your dismissive tone suggests that I'm not missing much.
No, I don't have to dedicate myself to some accepted philosophy. Nor do my colleagues. From my limited experience, my colleagues are free to speak their mind and criticize the status quo, and they do.
I agree with your first two sentences, but not your last. You don't have to agree. Just do not articulate your dissent.
Perhaps some concrete examples would help me see your point of view
Ask this guy. He also picked a bone with me on this opinion but agreed with my characterization of the pressure that faculty get to obediently recite the university's line.
I don't like Bush's policies either, but let's not just make things up, ok? First, not all class action suits are "forced" to federal court, only very large suits.
Second, they're moved to federal court not because federal courts are more business-friendly, but because of procedural differences in state court vs federal court. State courts tend to be more relaxed in due process procedures, and award ridiculous damages that are confiscated by private law firms. The ease with which a class action suit can be won in a small jurisdiction for enormous rewards has caused capitalistic law firms to seek out groups of marginally damaged people and organize them for a suit. This has caused a tenfold increase in class action lawsuits over the last decade.
Meanwhile, plaintiffs from multiple states with complaints against the same defendant could not organize on a federal level and file in federal court, due to procedural restrictions that prevented class action suits from being moved out of state. Thus you had the dangerous situation of one state's courts determining a case that would have national prescedent ramifications, and this seriously violates the principles of federalism. For a guy who bitched in his post about removing checks and balances, you're also complaining about legislation that was intended to prevent one state from determining national policy via state courts that are cherry-picked by millionaire attorneys.
The legislation in question removed some of the roadblocks to moving large cases with multistate plaintiffs to federal court by granting original jurisdiction of a case to the District Courts instead of the state courts for large suits in which there are multistate plaintiffs.
You then characaterize all this in your tired anti-Bush ranting as some pro-business move that Bush enacted for his cronies. First, that's not how a bill becomes a law, and you ought to know that by now. Presidents do not sponsor legislation in committee, nor vote on them in congress. They sign them.
There are a shitload of legitimate things to criticize President Bush about, but I'm tired of this hate-filled ranting that's misinformed. It's really hard to push for social evolution and progress when most of the people on your side are ignorant and more concerned with politics than anything else.
Oops, I forgot our legislature is too busy removing checks and balances (Senate) and debating corrupt members (House) to get anything else done.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here, so I can't really respond to you. The only major battle I know of in the Senate is over appelate court nominations, and I haven't read anything yet about changes to how nominations are handled.
What you've encountered here is akin to that phenomenon, only on a word-association level. You saw "W----s unstable" and your brain said, "WINDOWS!" This phenomenon is especially prevelent in males ages 9 through 120, who readily associate almost anything they encounter with their own genitals or breasts.
This is complete off-topic, but I feel compelled to respond.
The ideas of a true liberal are generally compelling, progressive, forward-thinking and in the best interests of the most people. The ideas of a true liberal have to do with securing the maximum amount of freedom and liberty for the most people. The problem is that in America, there are no liberals; or rather, the only group of people that really seems to embrace any liberal ideas are the Republicans. The Republicans also brace a disturbing number of authoritarian ideas. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" have been oddly redefined in America, so that "conservatives" stand for social evolution, small government, and personal freedom, and "liberal" is almost synonymous with "socialists."
I really don't know how it got to be that way. My opinion is that John F. Kennedy was the last true liberal in America, and that if he were in politics today, he'd be a Republican. Not because the Republicans are right/good/progressive/smart, but just because joining the Democratic party right now is political suicide, and the Republicans embrace a handful of liberal ideals that a true liberal would also embrace. True liberal intellectuals are abandoning the Democratic party in droves (and I think true conservatives are abandoning the Republicans). We're on the verge of a major, major socio-political upheaval in the United States that will redefine our political identities and party system. The election of 2008 is likely to be contentious as 2000 and 2004 were, but I think 2008 will go down in history as the last election of an era in American history, and the electin of 2012 will be like nothing we've ever seen before.
I think the Democratic party is going to finish itself off in in 2008 and the Republican party is going to occupy the vacuum they've left. Two new political organizations will rise, one may claim the "Democrat" label, I suppose. But I really do think that we're seeing the end of the Republicans/Democrats as we've known them for the last 70 years.
He ripped off that Next Generation episode where that goofball doctor transferred his mind into Data. This is OLD NEWS!
What does that have to do with my point? Which was that France is not on the cutting edge of progress in the world, nor does it have a history of being so. It sometimes is, sometimes is not. It sometimes is successful and sometimes missteps. Every nation has in its history abundant examples of bad decisions, poor leadership, and difficult periods. To imply that any nation is and always has been the example that the rest of the world is trying to catch up to is asinine. I can pretty much cut and paste this comment to every response to my post, since it's typical Slashdot fare of attacking ancillary data in a manner that does not invalidate my point.
If somebody disagrees with me point, provide counter-arguments.
didn't scratch the British monarchy in the slightest?
This statement is laughable. Provide some support for this?
Maybe you take your little uprising in the backwoods a tad too seriously?
Well, it did lead to the founding of the country that I live in, so, yeah, I don't feel compelled to wave my hand dismissively at it. I'm puzzled as to why you seem to cavalier in doing so. Do you really think that the United States and its impact on the world can be summed up as a negligable wave in the history of humanity, summed up as a "backwoods uprising" in an empire? Your post is indeed interesting in its blind naivete.
Which forefront are you talking about? The Revolution of 1789, which took place 14 years after the English colonies in North America had their revolution? Or when Napolean took over the Republic and abandoned it for another monarchy with his family in charge? Or when his son dissolved the second Republic and declared the French Empire? Or maybe you're thinking of the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis?
France is many things, but a model of how to run a liberal utopia it is not. It's a nation with as complicated, confused, and self-contradictory a history as any other. It deserves neither the unqualified praise you imply in your post, nor the unqualified derision it receives from the American right.
It's not the computer, it's the network! Blame Al Gore!
To cover their asses legally when Hous bin Pharteen bombs the hell out of something and coordinates his efforts with other terrorists by logging in anonymously from public workstations.
This whole thing comes down to legal/financial liability.
I'm not saying it's right. Only that it's reality. And yes, branches of government can incorporate. Ever heard of the FDIC or the PBGC? They're run differently from other branches of the government, but they're government offices nontheless.
The line between public and private sector has long been blurring. The worrisome thing here, to me, is that a non-government corporation was able to so easily influence a government organization.
Nobody stopped him from saying what he wanted to say. They stopped him from organizing an audience for it on their facilities. Don't confuse the right to speak your mind with the right to be heard. Nobody has a right to an audience of 500 kids on a college campus to hear their views.
And, freedom of speech is not synonymous with "freedom from consequences." You have the right to say whatever you want and, with some exceptions ("fire" in a theatre), not be jailed for it. That doesn't mean that there are no consequences. Just look at the Harvard professor who expressed that perhaps men are genetically predisposed towards math and science and women are not. The guy caught unreal heat for it and has all but taken back the suggestion that we look into it. Was his freedom of speech denied? Absolutely not. He said it, didn't he? Nobody stopped him. He hasn't been arrested for it or stopped from saying it again.
But there are consequences. When people say "free of speech" they confuse it with "freedom from consequences." The issue is muddled here because it's a university, an arm of the government, so by enacting penalties, isn't the "government" effectively limiting free speech? Hard to say, that's a grey area. My opinion is no, the guy is an employee and his employer has ever right to control what he says, especially when he says it on his employee's dime and on his employee's property.
The fact that this impetus against the professor was fomented by corporate lobbyists is more worrisome, but I don't know anything about Spanish law on such matters.
This happens all the time. It's not always under pressure from corporate cartels but usually other staff members backstabbing and hamstringing each other over access to funding and resources. If you think colleges and universities are bastions of anything but political infighting, you're kidding yourself. A university, from the faculty point of view, looks alarmingly like upper corporate management. It's a bunch of dishonest, unethical people making it difficult for somebody else to do anything good for the organization, and anybody with a spark of principle is horrified at the spectacle and gets out.
Them: Don't do that.
Him: (does it)
Them: I said, don't do that.
Him: (does it)
Them: WTF? We've told you NOT TO DO THAT twice. We're the boss. Stop it.
Him: (does it)
Them: *sigh* I want your resignation.
Him: Damn!
Slashdot: PROFESSOR FIRED FOR TALKING ABOUT P2P NETWORKS!
Comments: OMG WTF CORPORATE GREED WTF OMG BULLSHIT HE WAS FIRED FOR P2P!!!!! TEH GHEY.
Come on, guys. Just once can we have an honest lead?
Bahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Oh man. *wipes tear from eye* *snickler* Pmmffff. I can't help it. Bahahahahahahahahahah HA!
Universities.... sharing information and ideas....no censorship....
Bahahahahahahahaha!
Oh man. Sorry. Eh heeee! Have you ever been to a university? And even more important, have you ever been part of the faculty at one? There is a conformity and monotony of thought presence that defies description. And if you dare to not subscribe to university groupthink, you may as well resign because you're never going to get anywhere. You hold your cards close to your chest at any American university unless you are willing to completely dedicate yourself to the accepted philosophy.
It's not as bad for the students, there's a lot of heterogeneity in terms of ideas among students, but it's alarmingly absent in faculty, and those who express political, social, or philosophical ideas outside of the accepted thinking are run out of town. And god forbid you say anything publically, they'll be demanding your resignation for "embarassing" the university with your extremist views.
Note: this is not a neocon rant about leftists in school. You can express leftist ideas that aren't the right leftist ideas and still get blasted. One of the great ironies of American academia is that the people running it are probably among the most markedly anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian as educated people can be, and yet they fiercely defend the power heirarchy in place. It's unreal.