As a potential customer, I don't give a damn about what the movie industry "wants" - except so far as get pissed off that they aren't selling me what *I* want, and seem to think that they have the "right" to control as much of my media flow as they can get their greed-stained hands on.
I strongly believe that it will be highly beneficial to society in the long-run if those industries who depend on the artificial monopoly of "intellectual property" to allow them to parasitically suck money out of the economy are destroyed, and the pieces are used to reconstruct alternatives that are more in tune with free markets & private property rights.
See, you have the wrong viewpoint to be associated with this U.S. administration. "Preemptive intervention" means that to defend, you've got to attack.
Or the Bush government agency appointees who make propaganda ads that look exactly like newscasts, then pass them on to friendly "media outlets" who run them without telling their customers that they are actually ads.
Nice emotional appeal there, but so what? Every craftsperson has that problem - just about any kind of craft requires learning, skill (and in many cases tools a helluva lot more expensive than what any musician or artist requires). Anything they create can be reproduced by someone (or something) else. But most craftspeople recognize that they have to keep producing new work in order to keep getting paid.
There's nothing special about what musicians or artists do that requires that they deserve being giving special privileges to override other people's private property rights. They don't necessarily work harder than the other craftspeople who make a living. Their "product" isn't necessarily worth more, either. If they want to get paid, then they have to provide something at a price that people are willing to pay for, like composing a new song or doing a performance. If they can't do it often enough, or with enough value so that they can make a living at it, well then tough - they weren't providing enough value to their customers to make it worthwhile for their customers to support them.
It sure would be nice to get special laws passed to support my preferred lifestyle, but I don't get those privileges - and there's no long-term benefit to giving those privileges to _anyone_, musicians & artists or otherwise.
Please explain to me why "intellectual property" laws should trump personal property rights (i.e., the right to use one's own personal property the way one sees fit as long as it doesn not directly hurt someone else)? Why should "intellectual property owners" be able to get the government to enforce a business model which wouldn't be possible in a real free market?
my question is "how?" -- would you tax everybody who uses the Internet, and monitor network traffic at the ISP level?
And my response is Why? People already pay their local service providers for access to the Internet. What they do with that connection isn't hurting anybody, so isn't anybody's business but their own.
Trying to find a relation between downloaded music & "lost" sales is a useless exercise, and only distorts the situation to the benefit of the people who are trying to steer the conversation in their favor.
There is no such thing as a "lost sale", unless you count a situation where somebody has backed out of a contract. Either a sale occurred or it didn't, and if it didn't, then you didn't LOSE it - it never happened in the first place.
It would be just as accurate (or more so) to say that every downloaded song represents a POSSIBLE sale.
The problem is the culture that encourages misuse of these tools, rather than a respect for them.
What misuse? People know what P2P does. They think it's a pretty convenient service. They use it. There's no misuse there, except in the minds of people who think they are somehow deserve to get money even though they didn't do any additional work past the initial act of creation to deserve it.
You'll seldom, if ever, hear anything similar when it comes to p2p...
When P2P apps kill people due to "misuse", please let me know.
imagine your mind was put together seconds ago, but the atoms in your body were configured in such a way that you had a continuous memory, and didn't know you had just been created at all.
So, in that scenario, God would be the ultimate deceiver.
But can we please have respect for others' beliefs?
I respect those who 1) accept reality instead of trying to redefine it, 2) use rational thought processes to prove their point, and 3) don't try to ram their beliefs down my throat.
If these three conditions aren't met, then I don't see any reason why I should respect someone's beliefs.
which was that it only explained small-scale changes in a single species
That's because people who use that argument want you think of small STRUCTURAL changes, but that's not how DNA mutations work. DNA mutations tend to work with small PROTEIN changes (or small changes in the order of whether certain genes are turned on or off) - but a small change in a protein which is replicated throughout an entire organism can cause MASSIVE changes in the structure of that organism.
This is supported by the knowledge that the contents of our DNA (if not the implementation) is 90%+ similar to just about every complex multicellular animal lifeform on the planet.
If a company's first priority wasn't making money, then its other priorities would be irrelevant, because the company would go bankrupt and cease to exist.
From the society's point of view, if the company does more damage to the society than it provides benefit, then it might be necessary for the society to make SURE that the company ceases to exist.
You can't "damage society", only individuals or property.
If you cause a little bit of damage to a large enough number of members of society, then there's probably a reasonable argument that you have "damaged society" (at least it would make commom sense to most people). How MUCH damage is a whole other issue.
Murder the CEO of a company, you are disrupting business.
Actually, if it weren't for all the publicity that would occur, I suspect that most well-organized businesses would recover from a CEO's murder with little or no difficulty. All of the day-to-day work is taken care of by the real workers, and the executives only real job is to figure out where the company is supposed to waste its money.
All you geeks are ranting about how you basically shouldn't be able to patent anything.
That's right.
It doesn't matter what the product is that you're making, you should be able to patent a novel process.
Why?
If I figure out a way to synthesize a new drug I should be able to patent that process.
Why? Are you so special that if someone else works out how to synthesize that drug independently of you, that you should be able to stop them from taking advantage of their own research?
You're free to clone their product and compete with them, you just have to come up with your own process to do it.
If their "process" is so braindead that a chimpanzee can imitate the process after viewing it once, why in the hell should they be granted a patent on it?
That's the justification for patents
Too bad the so-called justification is without merit
and without it we wouldn't have all the innovative technology we use every day.
B.S. We'd have innovation coming out of our eyeballs if big companies weren't using "intellectual property" laws to squash their competition.
patents are not about incentives, they're about outright survival in a competitive market place.
If a company can't survive in a marketplace without being granted a government-enforced monopoly, then THEY DON'T DESERVE TO SURVIVE. Propping up failing companies is called corporate welfare, and prevents more economically-beneficial entities from taking their place.
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As a potential customer, I don't give a damn about what the movie industry "wants" - except so far as get pissed off that they aren't selling me what *I* want, and seem to think that they have the "right" to control as much of my media flow as they can get their greed-stained hands on.
I strongly believe that it will be highly beneficial to society in the long-run if those industries who depend on the artificial monopoly of "intellectual property" to allow them to parasitically suck money out of the economy are destroyed, and the pieces are used to reconstruct alternatives that are more in tune with free markets & private property rights.
They could always do the typical "Open Source" complaint: "This device not supported because manufacturer is being a butthead".
See, you have the wrong viewpoint to be associated with this U.S. administration. "Preemptive intervention" means that to defend, you've got to attack.
Except that the rich & powerful like to change the laws so that everyone still has to obey the law except for them.
Or the Bush government agency appointees who make propaganda ads that look exactly like newscasts, then pass them on to friendly "media outlets" who run them without telling their customers that they are actually ads.
What crime? Having files be named after popular songs/artists? That's not a crime, as far as I know.
I'll point out that the *AA organizations are not the "authorities", even if they like to think they are.
Nice emotional appeal there, but so what? Every craftsperson has that problem - just about any kind of craft requires learning, skill (and in many cases tools a helluva lot more expensive than what any musician or artist requires). Anything they create can be reproduced by someone (or something) else. But most craftspeople recognize that they have to keep producing new work in order to keep getting paid.
There's nothing special about what musicians or artists do that requires that they deserve being giving special privileges to override other people's private property rights. They don't necessarily work harder than the other craftspeople who make a living. Their "product" isn't necessarily worth more, either. If they want to get paid, then they have to provide something at a price that people are willing to pay for, like composing a new song or doing a performance. If they can't do it often enough, or with enough value so that they can make a living at it, well then tough - they weren't providing enough value to their customers to make it worthwhile for their customers to support them.
It sure would be nice to get special laws passed to support my preferred lifestyle, but I don't get those privileges - and there's no long-term benefit to giving those privileges to _anyone_, musicians & artists or otherwise.
Heh - you know what happens when a student transfers to MIT from Caltech? The GPA goes up in both places...
You'll note that I said "just as accurate" - which was my not-so-sly way of indicating that it probably wasn't accurate all :-)
Yes, it's unfortunate that the earth is like a big balloon. Oh wait a minute, it's not. Never mind.
Please explain to me why "intellectual property" laws should trump personal property rights (i.e., the right to use one's own personal property the way one sees fit as long as it doesn not directly hurt someone else)? Why should "intellectual property owners" be able to get the government to enforce a business model which wouldn't be possible in a real free market?
And my response is Why? People already pay their local service providers for access to the Internet. What they do with that connection isn't hurting anybody, so isn't anybody's business but their own.
Trying to find a relation between downloaded music & "lost" sales is a useless exercise, and only distorts the situation to the benefit of the people who are trying to steer the conversation in their favor.
There is no such thing as a "lost sale", unless you count a situation where somebody has backed out of a contract. Either a sale occurred or it didn't, and if it didn't, then you didn't LOSE it - it never happened in the first place.
It would be just as accurate (or more so) to say that every downloaded song represents a POSSIBLE sale.
What misuse? People know what P2P does. They think it's a pretty convenient service. They use it. There's no misuse there, except in the minds of people who think they are somehow deserve to get money even though they didn't do any additional work past the initial act of creation to deserve it.
When P2P apps kill people due to "misuse", please let me know.
So, in that scenario, God would be the ultimate deceiver.
What a bastard.
I respect those who 1) accept reality instead of trying to redefine it, 2) use rational thought processes to prove their point, and 3) don't try to ram their beliefs down my throat.
If these three conditions aren't met, then I don't see any reason why I should respect someone's beliefs.
That's because people who use that argument want you think of small STRUCTURAL changes, but that's not how DNA mutations work. DNA mutations tend to work with small PROTEIN changes (or small changes in the order of whether certain genes are turned on or off) - but a small change in a protein which is replicated throughout an entire organism can cause MASSIVE changes in the structure of that organism.
This is supported by the knowledge that the contents of our DNA (if not the implementation) is 90%+ similar to just about every complex multicellular animal lifeform on the planet.
Seen that in action. For all but the most straightforward problems, that support is worthless.
To get to anyone knowledgeable for MS products, you've got to pay through the nose.
From the society's point of view, if the company does more damage to the society than it provides benefit, then it might be necessary for the society to make SURE that the company ceases to exist.
I think you meant the handbook of every single right-wing talk radio host. Moore's a total amateur compared to the neocon spin machine.
If you cause a little bit of damage to a large enough number of members of society, then there's probably a reasonable argument that you have "damaged society" (at least it would make commom sense to most people). How MUCH damage is a whole other issue.
Puppies aren't expected to use logic to reason why they should adjust their own behavior.
(That being said, I highly suspect quite a few human beings of being immune to logic with regards to their behavior patterns...)
No, murder implies that the killing was done on purpose. Most people would differentiate between an act like that, and killing somebody by accident.
That being said, I find it hard to believe that those two girls killed that security guard by accident...
Actually, if it weren't for all the publicity that would occur, I suspect that most well-organized businesses would recover from a CEO's murder with little or no difficulty. All of the day-to-day work is taken care of by the real workers, and the executives only real job is to figure out where the company is supposed to waste its money.
Disclaimer: IANAL. The "corporate shield" does not protect individuals from criminal liability - only civil liability.
That's right.
Why?
Why? Are you so special that if someone else works out how to synthesize that drug independently of you, that you should be able to stop them from taking advantage of their own research?
If their "process" is so braindead that a chimpanzee can imitate the process after viewing it once, why in the hell should they be granted a patent on it?
Too bad the so-called justification is without merit
B.S. We'd have innovation coming out of our eyeballs if big companies weren't using "intellectual property" laws to squash their competition.
If a company can't survive in a marketplace without being granted a government-enforced monopoly, then THEY DON'T DESERVE TO SURVIVE. Propping up failing companies is called corporate welfare, and prevents more economically-beneficial entities from taking their place.