That is all well and good, but hosting large numbers of videos requires considerable capital outlay. This is a barrier to entry into the market which ensures that there wont be sufficient competition.
If all of the newspapers in a country are owned by a small group of people, and they collude, then that is no different from a state newspaper.
At present there are enough competitors to YouTube to ensure this guy can take his content elsewhere. While this remains the case, your arguement holds. However, this kind of business tends to result in monopolies, and as soon as a monopoly exists, that monopoly is vested with a social responsibility.
If YouTube ever becomes a monopoly, then it will be a defacto arm of government, and sensible legislation should be introduced to ensure it cannot pull content in the manner it just has.
You request to tyranny that it furnish you with it's version of security is being granted as we speak. Your son may grow up safe from terrorists, although those who you plead with for his life could hardly care less, and can do little to protect it. The security you seek is a figment of your imagination. The protection you seek is from an enemy that is hardly a threat. It remains to be asked however, where will you plead to when your son is threatened by the very tyranny you invite?
It would be a grave error in judgement to confuse those of us who fear extremists in our governments more than we fear extremists a thousand miles away as merely narcissistic.
The right you describe does exist, it is the natural state of things, and is called the right to access ones cultural heritage.
Think of all music ever written AND released to the public at large as a National Park. In principle everyone should be able to go use the National Park as and when they wish. The big difference is the National Park doesn't constantly just get bigger, as if by magic. But if it could, and we could incentivise people to make it bigger, perhaps through some invented right, then you bet your arse we would. But that doesn't mean people have a right to make a living extending the public park if they suck at it. Nor does it mean that they have a right to keep little bits of the park for themselves, no matter how much work they put into creating it.
Copyright is essentially a means to enhance the public domain. It is all very well to talk about struggling artists, but there are also plenty of struggling football players. We don't try to change the law to help people who are not very good at football.
I think what is needed is copyright terms in the region of 10-25 years for music. A good way to encourage the movie industry might be to build in a clause that if $X dollars are spent on producing a work, then the copyright may be extended by 10 years.
50 years is too long as it stands. No one has a right to a living. I don't go to my funding agency and start demanding that I should be funded for 50 years because I have a Investigating the Universe Property Right.
This is exactly the problem. In schools we are forced to pick a side. And what side do we pick? The side of the useless. The current situation is this. Useless quasi-human children intimidate, use violence and generally have total control in schools. Useful children are terrorised. People act like there can be justice in school, there cant, we have to pick a side. It should be generally acknowledged that smart kids get to do whatever they want in school, the way strong kids do now anyway. At least that way we could foster a culture of supporting the useful.
That is unless someone can come up with a way to make the system fair. But in the mean time, if we aren't going to have a fair system, lets at least have a productive one.
On the off chance this isn't an excelent troll, I'm going to try to explain to you why it is you are wrong.
If you owned a car, and I had the means to make a precise duplicate of your car and did so, would I be stealing?
Stealing deprives you of property.
Next we come to some special cases. The GPL exists because the application of copyright law to software is fundamentally broken. In order to protect basic rights that should be present anyway, the GPL was created. You actually lose freedom when a GPLed piece of software enters the public domain. When you violate the GPL you commit copyright infringement (by and large). You are not stealing. No one is deprived of property.
Now as for DRM, DRM is effectively a breach of contract between citizens and content producers. The agreement was very simple. We will give content producers a limited collection of monopolies, and in return, they enrich the public domain. If their work is protected by DRM or has perpetual copyrigt, then it never enters the public domain, and hence they have broken their end of the bargain. I would like to see a blanket ban on DRM and punitive measures taken against those who violated this agreement to ensure this kind of crap is not pulled again. Content producers should play by the rules.
Your book analogy is flawed because I cannot make an essentially free copy of the book. And this is nothing like what government mandated monopolies are. I believe in the free market. Copyright is essentially government interference in the free market. Now I accept some interference may be useful, but don't go deluding yourself that copyright is in any way a protection of some property you own.
I think you are confusing the issue. You appear to believe that there are two sides to every story. In this case, there is one side to the story. This is like inviting creationists to a debate about evolution. The right decision is already widely known, the question is how to implement it. The fact this technological dinosaur has been invited along to the party is disturbing indeed. He has nothing useful to contribute.
Oh certainly I don't deny that there is a new 'bogey man' on the scene. And fundamentalist Islam is the new Communism. I would suggest the only thing which prevented the ideology from being demonised as much as Communism has been in the past is that it is attached to a religion rather than atheism. Of course it's religious shield will only last so long. This might explain why trial by media has replaced McCarthy style hearings. Either way the fear of Islam is being used in the same way as the fear of Communism was, so I concede that there is more than on oppressed ideology.
Animal Farm/1984 are a warning against totalitarianism. Orwell hated Facism and Communism both because he felt they both lead to totalitarianism. The GP is trying to point out that it is theoretically possible to have the communist system of collective ownership under a democracy. It is not an American style liberal democracy because property rights have been widely violated.
What the GP is also saying is that other ideologies can be subjected to the same treatment as Communism. Orwell warned us against totalitarianism, and the current US administration is drawing the US closer to a totalitarian system, under the banner of being liberal democrats (liberal as in the European sense, and democrats in the supporting a government subject to the will of the people sense). It is pretty far away at the moment. But one way in which it is similar is in the treatment of Communists. Communists are dissidents, and the government inspired reflex like hatred of communism that many Americans display would be a good example of the very thing you talk about in your post, that is, a government totally unwilling to tolerate an opposing view, and inspiring the population to do the same. Fortunately in the US it is only one opposing view, Communism. But that does not make the animal farm/1984 reference any less valid.
The same could be said about Jesus' personal economics. If everyone did as the Bible instructs with reguard to wealth the economy would collaspe. Does that mean that the statement: "Jesus moral and sociopolitical ideology, and his ideas on assistance of the poor was on the whole correct" False? Of course I would dispute most of the teaching attributed to Jesus actually being Jesus, but putting that aside for one second. So do you see the difference between the European and American attitude? In Europe, you wont find that much support for a communist state, but we don't demonise someone just because some of their ideas were wrong. However, do not mistake mild mannered tolerance of differing ideas for a willingness to put up with some communist government taking our freedoms. Besides which your last comment is misleading. I'm going to assume that Mr Marx won the poll you refer to since you do not reference it, and I cant find it. You will notice that importance does not necessarily imply that a person was correct. Regan was an important President, but Reganomics is obviously wrong. Thatcher likewise (although in Thatchers defense she was less wrong). You don't have to be right to be important.
Schools are in general war zones, with different factions. In the West, we support the factions traditionally associated with stupidity. Western education is geared towards the lowest common denominator when it comes to academic achievement and teaching children their cultural heritage, thier civic duties and their history. On the other hand it is geared towards catering for the highest common denominator when it comes to things like sports.
We need to reorient our education system to move away from supporting the useless towardss supporting the useful. It should be made clear to students that a failure to appreciate and understand the sciences, the arts, politics and the humanities makes them a failure as a person, the way that not making the football team makes them a failure now.
That is not to say that we should lose the competative edge in sport, far from it. Just that we need to apply the same ruthlessness to academic achievements. Little Jonny needs to know that getting a D on his maths exams isn't good enough and that his failure does himself, his family, his teachers and his country a disservice.
Finally, all schools give preferential treatment to one group of students over another. In places like the UK the stupid are given preferential treatment over the smart. This has to change. Children need to get in the habit of desiring supremacy useful skills, and we can start by ensuring that those with power in schools, the bullies, the popular, are smart. We can do this by reversing the current state of preferential treatment away from useless children, over to the useful. Japan basically follows this system.
"It seems that the vast majority of file-leechers seem to think that have this right to take whatever they want just because they dont feel like paying for it."
They do, it's called a right to the cultural heritage of humanity. Now the point is that they (collectively) surrendered some of that right by creating another right which temporarily supercedes it, copyright.
We no longer live in a free state. Our government allows us those liberties that corporations have decided are not important to them, while denying us others. If we keep our rights or not have now become a business decision.
The cause of this is simple, democracy. Specifically representative democracy. For democracy to work you need the majority of the people who vote to be well informed. In the West, this simply is not the case. The more I experience of politics the more I realise we need a kind of Aristocratic (not Plutocratic or Oligarchic, I mean Aristocratic in it's technical sense) Democracy. That is a representative democracy where only those with expertise in a field may vote for people making decisions in that field. We also need a government where it is almost impossible to get much done short of returning rights to the states and people, banning political parties and lobbying would be a good start.
If the law contravines the rights of the people it is the responsibility, no duty of those with the power to change government to do so. It says so right there on the Declaration of Independence.
Back to the point in hand, we all have a right to access the cultural heritage. We were only supposed to surrender that right for a short time to encourage enrichment of the public domaine.
You sentiments, while noble, are nieve. Mob rule is exactly what democracy used to mean. It used to be a highly undesirable form of government, primarily because it lead to mob rule. Now in modern times Democracy came to be the catch all word for systems of government in which elected representatives of the people had significant control of government, but often with safeguards to prevent mob rule.
Now democracy is slowly becoming the tyranny of the majority again. We can argue semantics if you want, but I would prefer to look at this statement by you:
"The majority if given the opportunity to learn and when provided with the truth can quite readily make the most effective decisions."
This is simply ridiculous. I'm studying for a PhD, making me highly educated. I do not know anywhere near enough to make decisions on how to run an economy, on what an apropriate policy in the middle east would be, on what the best way to run a health care system is. Yet every few years, I'm asked to select the people who will run these things.
Greater accountability would certainly solve a problem. Every president and congress since Eisenhower should have been removed from office and tried for treason because of the expansion of the federal government and the contravention of states rights (heck maybe every one since, but not including Lincoln). But this is not the problem. The problem is that people select leaders not because they are suitable for the job, but because they will look after their own selfish interests.
I propose a system in which we devise a fair system of testing to determine elidgebility to vote. I should not be voting on who decides how to run our military. I should be voting on who manages science (as a professional scientist I believe I'm qualified to comment on this).
Finally we come to the issue of political parties. These should be banned. There should not be political parties, and being a member of one should cause you to be inelidgeble to stand for election. They are dangerous, they are divisive, they are a barrier to liberty, and they lead to a more ignorant electorate.
You have merely demonstrated that democracy is not an effective means of maintaining a liberal republic. Democracy is exactly the problem, because it leads to mob rule. We need a system which does what the founding fathers intended, uses a pseudo elected federal government to preserve liberty, not impose mob rule. People are on the whole too stupid to select their own leaders, and liberty is more important than putting x's in boxes.
You have obviously never been to the UK. Or if you have, then you have been lucky enough not to be the victim of a crime. Crimes go unpunished here, unless of course someone dies, or there are drugs involved, or an honest citizen has the stupidity to wait at the scene of a 'crime'. If someone abuses me in this country and I respond, then there are two possibilities.
1) They beat me shitless. And then get away with it, because the police don't care. 2) I beat them shitless, and I get arrested and charged because if there is one thing the police cant stand, it's someone taking the law into their own hands.
This is why your statement:
"If they're going to act violently against me, I have the right to defend myself with due force. I've also got the law on my side, if indeed they act violently against me. They CAN'T enact violence upon me or any other individual without fear of reprisal."
Is simply not true. In this country the ignorant have a monopoly on violence because decent people are not protected by the law.
You miss the point, if individuals on the street can, without fear of reprisal enact violence upon another individual, and outside of their rights, then they are the defacto government. I am pointing out that the defacto government on the street are the worthless and ignorant. This is true in both our countries. I am pointing out that you are no more free than I am. Your defacto government opresses you just as much as mine does. Government is not merely those who are elected.
I'm not stating I consider it assault. I was pointing out that it is already illegal, since it falls under the legal definition of assault.
We can debate if individuals are allowed to verbally abuse eachother if you like. I would suggest that as long as if you react violently I can kill you no questions asked, then we are entitled to hurl as much abuse at eachother as we like. Of course the problem is that I wont be able to kill you, because you will probably be armed if you are hurling abuse at me, and with a collection of your fellow gang members. Not to mention that if I do kill you, the aforementioned will probably come after me.
You see the problem with allowing people to aggresively verbally abuse eachother is that it inherently favours the useless over the useful, because there are inherent risks associated with responding to verbal abuse. The intelligent and capable are essentially ruled, when they leave their front door, by the ignorant and the useless because the latter have less to lose than the former, and no comprehension to realise what they have to lose in the first placce. If we had a legal system which inherently favoured more useful members of society then perhaps this situation could be addressed, and then everyone could enjoy the right to free speech that you claim you have.
I suggest if you wish to test your hypothesis that you have the right to walk down the street calling someone a motherfucker, then you try walking in Harlem and call the first tough looking black gentleman you see a 'worthless nigger'. You may have the technical 'right' to say it (although that wouldn't stop me being disgusted by it), but try telling that to those individuals around you.
Now in the UK, those initiating this type of behaviour are genuinely worthless (as, if you actually undertook the suggested above behaviour you would be too). A right is not a right if it only a priviledge of the violent few. The only genuine source of authority is the capacity to do violence, and in this case, that authority is not wielded by all the people, nor by representatives of the people, but by a violent subset of the population.
But please, feel free to continue deluding yourself that you have this right if you wish.
While I agree with much of your sentiment, it is worth keeping in mind that 'anti-social' is a classic example of the British art of understatement. While there have been a few crazy cases, most 'anti-social' behaviour actually has existing laws to deal with it. An example of anti-social behaviousr might be hurling abuse at people as you go down the street, or mock punching people. Or large gangs of individuals hanging around on the street corner consuming alchol and obstructing the highway. While the collective term might anti-social, the first and second are, infact, assault, the last obstructing the public highway, and loitering.
As far as being to the far left of the US, the whole of Europe is more to the left economically than the US. Many states are also socially to the left of the US. The former looks certain to stay that way, unless you count artificially rigging the deck to generate barrier to entry via things like the copyright or patent system, then include corporate entities in the 'government'. However the latter is gradually being undone, and at an alarmingly faster rate than in Europe.
The question is, at what point does CCTV become an invasion of privacy? I think one answer might be, when it looks into a location where one might reasonably expect privacy. I expect privacy from the police on my own property. I don't expect it walking in a town center, because I might reasonably expect to encounter a police officer. Of course there is one final problem, that of making it reasonably possible to achieve insurrection through popular uprising. A state which truely aims to protect the peoples rights should ensure that no agent of government could reasonably prevent an uprising by a majority of the population. I do not know at which point CCTV begins to undermine that aim.
Yeah because that arguement worked with Grokster...
Oh but wait, our politicians are bought and paid for, along with our courts, so actually you are right, on a technicality. That technicality being everything a company / wealthy person does is legal, everything we do, is illegal.
Oh I know that no one would buy games consoles if they were priced at cost. My point is that if you are going to sell a piece of hardware you cant tell people what they can and cannot do with it. I have no objections to the selling consoles at below cost. But they cant then turn around and complain if someone modifies those consoles.
However, trying to barstardise property law to protect this business model is totally unacceptable. If I buy something from you, and then do something with it you hadn't intended with it, well thats just tough on you, unless the something unexpected I do directly infringes on your rights.
If they want us to surrender our property rights when we buy a games console, then make us sign a contract. Don't abuse the country by barstardising property rights. It's about time someone took these corporate overlords and kicked them out of politics. It should be illegal for a limited liability company to expression a political viewpoint or utilise it's property to promote legislation or a political viewpoint.
I have a cunning plan. I'm going to sell pipes to people for transporting water for thier baths, but every time they want to put water through those pipes, I'm going to make them pay me using a meter. And I'm not going to let the modify the meter, or get water from any one else.
Sound like a dumb idea? It is. If the companies that make games consoles are unhappy because their stupid business model doesn't allow them to sell their console for a sensible price (read for a market driven price) and then sell the games, also for a market driven price, then I have some good old capitalist advice for them. Sod off and die.
I bought it, I will damn well do what I like with it, and if they don't like it, my advice to them is simple, don't sell it to me in the first place.
Trying to think of a religion which doesn't try to isolate it's members from non-believers... does Buhdism do this? I don't know many Buhdists. Likewise, is there a major world religion that doesn't encourage tithing? Almost all religions are cults by your definition. I'm not going to disagree with you if thats what you think because I have a hard time coming up with a better definition, but that kind of validates the original posters point.
The beauty of Western Democracy is that finally power brokers have a means to take rights from the masses, they simply ask for their consent. After all, democracy is the most important right, right? Oh no wait, democracy is a means to an end, not an end in itself. But in the West we have forgotten that. It is better to have your privacy protected, to be able to enjoy your cultural heritage, to feel safe at home, to be able to defend yourself, and to have the power to determine your own future in a benevolent dictatorship, than it is to be dictated to by the ignorant, religiously insane, dangerously xenophobic masses which any idiot with enough money can whip into a hysteria.
Slashdot Mirror
That is all well and good, but hosting large numbers of videos requires considerable capital outlay. This is a barrier to entry into the market which ensures that there wont be sufficient competition.
If all of the newspapers in a country are owned by a small group of people, and they collude, then that is no different from a state newspaper.
At present there are enough competitors to YouTube to ensure this guy can take his content elsewhere. While this remains the case, your arguement holds. However, this kind of business tends to result in monopolies, and as soon as a monopoly exists, that monopoly is vested with a social responsibility.
If YouTube ever becomes a monopoly, then it will be a defacto arm of government, and sensible legislation should be introduced to ensure it cannot pull content in the manner it just has.
You request to tyranny that it furnish you with it's version of security is being granted as we speak. Your son may grow up safe from terrorists, although those who you plead with for his life could hardly care less, and can do little to protect it. The security you seek is a figment of your imagination. The protection you seek is from an enemy that is hardly a threat. It remains to be asked however, where will you plead to when your son is threatened by the very tyranny you invite?
It would be a grave error in judgement to confuse those of us who fear extremists in our governments more than we fear extremists a thousand miles away as merely narcissistic.
"out of some implied right of free downloads"
The right you describe does exist, it is the natural state of things, and is called the right to access ones cultural heritage.
Think of all music ever written AND released to the public at large as a National Park. In principle everyone should be able to go use the National Park as and when they wish. The big difference is the National Park doesn't constantly just get bigger, as if by magic. But if it could, and we could incentivise people to make it bigger, perhaps through some invented right, then you bet your arse we would. But that doesn't mean people have a right to make a living extending the public park if they suck at it. Nor does it mean that they have a right to keep little bits of the park for themselves, no matter how much work they put into creating it.
Copyright is essentially a means to enhance the public domain. It is all very well to talk about struggling artists, but there are also plenty of struggling football players. We don't try to change the law to help people who are not very good at football.
I think what is needed is copyright terms in the region of 10-25 years for music. A good way to encourage the movie industry might be to build in a clause that if $X dollars are spent on producing a work, then the copyright may be extended by 10 years.
50 years is too long as it stands. No one has a right to a living. I don't go to my funding agency and start demanding that I should be funded for 50 years because I have a Investigating the Universe Property Right.
This is exactly the problem. In schools we are forced to pick a side. And what side do we pick? The side of the useless. The current situation is this. Useless quasi-human children intimidate, use violence and generally have total control in schools. Useful children are terrorised. People act like there can be justice in school, there cant, we have to pick a side. It should be generally acknowledged that smart kids get to do whatever they want in school, the way strong kids do now anyway. At least that way we could foster a culture of supporting the useful.
That is unless someone can come up with a way to make the system fair. But in the mean time, if we aren't going to have a fair system, lets at least have a productive one.
On the off chance this isn't an excelent troll, I'm going to try to explain to you why it is you are wrong.
If you owned a car, and I had the means to make a precise duplicate of your car and did so, would I be stealing?
Stealing deprives you of property.
Next we come to some special cases. The GPL exists because the application of copyright law to software is fundamentally broken. In order to protect basic rights that should be present anyway, the GPL was created. You actually lose freedom when a GPLed piece of software enters the public domain. When you violate the GPL you commit copyright infringement (by and large). You are not stealing. No one is deprived of property.
Now as for DRM, DRM is effectively a breach of contract between citizens and content producers. The agreement was very simple. We will give content producers a limited collection of monopolies, and in return, they enrich the public domain. If their work is protected by DRM or has perpetual copyrigt, then it never enters the public domain, and hence they have broken their end of the bargain. I would like to see a blanket ban on DRM and punitive measures taken against those who violated this agreement to ensure this kind of crap is not pulled again. Content producers should play by the rules.
Your book analogy is flawed because I cannot make an essentially free copy of the book. And this is nothing like what government mandated monopolies are. I believe in the free market. Copyright is essentially government interference in the free market. Now I accept some interference may be useful, but don't go deluding yourself that copyright is in any way a protection of some property you own.
I think you are confusing the issue. You appear to believe that there are two sides to every story. In this case, there is one side to the story. This is like inviting creationists to a debate about evolution. The right decision is already widely known, the question is how to implement it. The fact this technological dinosaur has been invited along to the party is disturbing indeed. He has nothing useful to contribute.
Oh certainly I don't deny that there is a new 'bogey man' on the scene. And fundamentalist Islam is the new Communism. I would suggest the only thing which prevented the ideology from being demonised as much as Communism has been in the past is that it is attached to a religion rather than atheism. Of course it's religious shield will only last so long. This might explain why trial by media has replaced McCarthy style hearings. Either way the fear of Islam is being used in the same way as the fear of Communism was, so I concede that there is more than on oppressed ideology.
Animal Farm/1984 are a warning against totalitarianism. Orwell hated Facism and Communism both because he felt they both lead to totalitarianism. The GP is trying to point out that it is theoretically possible to have the communist system of collective ownership under a democracy. It is not an American style liberal democracy because property rights have been widely violated.
What the GP is also saying is that other ideologies can be subjected to the same treatment as Communism. Orwell warned us against totalitarianism, and the current US administration is drawing the US closer to a totalitarian system, under the banner of being liberal democrats (liberal as in the European sense, and democrats in the supporting a government subject to the will of the people sense). It is pretty far away at the moment. But one way in which it is similar is in the treatment of Communists. Communists are dissidents, and the government inspired reflex like hatred of communism that many Americans display would be a good example of the very thing you talk about in your post, that is, a government totally unwilling to tolerate an opposing view, and inspiring the population to do the same. Fortunately in the US it is only one opposing view, Communism. But that does not make the animal farm/1984 reference any less valid.
The same could be said about Jesus' personal economics. If everyone did as the Bible instructs with reguard to wealth the economy would collaspe. Does that mean that the statement:
"Jesus moral and sociopolitical ideology, and his ideas on assistance of the poor was on the whole correct"
False?
Of course I would dispute most of the teaching attributed to Jesus actually being Jesus, but putting that aside for one second. So do you see the difference between the European and American attitude? In Europe, you wont find that much support for a communist state, but we don't demonise someone just because some of their ideas were wrong. However, do not mistake mild mannered tolerance of differing ideas for a willingness to put up with some communist government taking our freedoms.
Besides which your last comment is misleading. I'm going to assume that Mr Marx won the poll you refer to since you do not reference it, and I cant find it. You will notice that importance does not necessarily imply that a person was correct. Regan was an important President, but Reganomics is obviously wrong. Thatcher likewise (although in Thatchers defense she was less wrong). You don't have to be right to be important.
Schools are in general war zones, with different factions. In the West, we support the factions traditionally associated with stupidity. Western education is geared towards the lowest common denominator when it comes to academic achievement and teaching children their cultural heritage, thier civic duties and their history. On the other hand it is geared towards catering for the highest common denominator when it comes to things like sports.
We need to reorient our education system to move away from supporting the useless towardss supporting the useful. It should be made clear to students that a failure to appreciate and understand the sciences, the arts, politics and the humanities makes them a failure as a person, the way that not making the football team makes them a failure now.
That is not to say that we should lose the competative edge in sport, far from it. Just that we need to apply the same ruthlessness to academic achievements. Little Jonny needs to know that getting a D on his maths exams isn't good enough and that his failure does himself, his family, his teachers and his country a disservice.
Finally, all schools give preferential treatment to one group of students over another. In places like the UK the stupid are given preferential treatment over the smart. This has to change. Children need to get in the habit of desiring supremacy useful skills, and we can start by ensuring that those with power in schools, the bullies, the popular, are smart. We can do this by reversing the current state of preferential treatment away from useless children, over to the useful. Japan basically follows this system.
"Maybe there are people in the world that are not so stupid as to believe that only people doing illegal things encrypt their files."
Yeah but none of them work in government.
Magnetic Quadrupoles exist. Take two dipoles and you have a Quadrupole.
"It seems that the vast majority of file-leechers seem to think that have this right to take whatever they want just because they dont feel like paying for it."
They do, it's called a right to the cultural heritage of humanity. Now the point is that they (collectively) surrendered some of that right by creating another right which temporarily supercedes it, copyright.
We no longer live in a free state. Our government allows us those liberties that corporations have decided are not important to them, while denying us others. If we keep our rights or not have now become a business decision.
The cause of this is simple, democracy. Specifically representative democracy. For democracy to work you need the majority of the people who vote to be well informed. In the West, this simply is not the case. The more I experience of politics the more I realise we need a kind of Aristocratic (not Plutocratic or Oligarchic, I mean Aristocratic in it's technical sense) Democracy. That is a representative democracy where only those with expertise in a field may vote for people making decisions in that field. We also need a government where it is almost impossible to get much done short of returning rights to the states and people, banning political parties and lobbying would be a good start.
If the law contravines the rights of the people it is the responsibility, no duty of those with the power to change government to do so. It says so right there on the Declaration of Independence.
Back to the point in hand, we all have a right to access the cultural heritage. We were only supposed to surrender that right for a short time to encourage enrichment of the public domaine.
You sentiments, while noble, are nieve. Mob rule is exactly what democracy used to mean. It used to be a highly undesirable form of government, primarily because it lead to mob rule. Now in modern times Democracy came to be the catch all word for systems of government in which elected representatives of the people had significant control of government, but often with safeguards to prevent mob rule.
Now democracy is slowly becoming the tyranny of the majority again. We can argue semantics if you want, but I would prefer to look at this statement by you:
"The majority if given the opportunity to learn and when provided with the truth can quite readily make the most effective decisions."
This is simply ridiculous. I'm studying for a PhD, making me highly educated. I do not know anywhere near enough to make decisions on how to run an economy, on what an apropriate policy in the middle east would be, on what the best way to run a health care system is. Yet every few years, I'm asked to select the people who will run these things.
Greater accountability would certainly solve a problem. Every president and congress since Eisenhower should have been removed from office and tried for treason because of the expansion of the federal government and the contravention of states rights (heck maybe every one since, but not including Lincoln). But this is not the problem. The problem is that people select leaders not because they are suitable for the job, but because they will look after their own selfish interests.
I propose a system in which we devise a fair system of testing to determine elidgebility to vote. I should not be voting on who decides how to run our military. I should be voting on who manages science (as a professional scientist I believe I'm qualified to comment on this).
Finally we come to the issue of political parties. These should be banned. There should not be political parties, and being a member of one should cause you to be inelidgeble to stand for election. They are dangerous, they are divisive, they are a barrier to liberty, and they lead to a more ignorant electorate.
You have merely demonstrated that democracy is not an effective means of maintaining a liberal republic. Democracy is exactly the problem, because it leads to mob rule. We need a system which does what the founding fathers intended, uses a pseudo elected federal government to preserve liberty, not impose mob rule. People are on the whole too stupid to select their own leaders, and liberty is more important than putting x's in boxes.
It isn't defamation if it's true in most countries, the US included I think.
You have obviously never been to the UK. Or if you have, then you have been lucky enough not to be the victim of a crime. Crimes go unpunished here, unless of course someone dies, or there are drugs involved, or an honest citizen has the stupidity to wait at the scene of a 'crime'. If someone abuses me in this country and I respond, then there are two possibilities.
1) They beat me shitless. And then get away with it, because the police don't care.
2) I beat them shitless, and I get arrested and charged because if there is one thing the police cant stand, it's someone taking the law into their own hands.
This is why your statement:
"If they're going to act violently against me, I have the right to defend myself with due force. I've also got the law on my side, if indeed they act violently against me. They CAN'T enact violence upon me or any other individual without fear of reprisal."
Is simply not true. In this country the ignorant have a monopoly on violence because decent people are not protected by the law.
You miss the point, if individuals on the street can, without fear of reprisal enact violence upon another individual, and outside of their rights, then they are the defacto government. I am pointing out that the defacto government on the street are the worthless and ignorant. This is true in both our countries. I am pointing out that you are no more free than I am. Your defacto government opresses you just as much as mine does. Government is not merely those who are elected.
I'm not stating I consider it assault. I was pointing out that it is already illegal, since it falls under the legal definition of assault.
We can debate if individuals are allowed to verbally abuse eachother if you like. I would suggest that as long as if you react violently I can kill you no questions asked, then we are entitled to hurl as much abuse at eachother as we like. Of course the problem is that I wont be able to kill you, because you will probably be armed if you are hurling abuse at me, and with a collection of your fellow gang members. Not to mention that if I do kill you, the aforementioned will probably come after me.
You see the problem with allowing people to aggresively verbally abuse eachother is that it inherently favours the useless over the useful, because there are inherent risks associated with responding to verbal abuse. The intelligent and capable are essentially ruled, when they leave their front door, by the ignorant and the useless because the latter have less to lose than the former, and no comprehension to realise what they have to lose in the first placce. If we had a legal system which inherently favoured more useful members of society then perhaps this situation could be addressed, and then everyone could enjoy the right to free speech that you claim you have.
I suggest if you wish to test your hypothesis that you have the right to walk down the street calling someone a motherfucker, then you try walking in Harlem and call the first tough looking black gentleman you see a 'worthless nigger'. You may have the technical 'right' to say it (although that wouldn't stop me being disgusted by it), but try telling that to those individuals around you.
Now in the UK, those initiating this type of behaviour are genuinely worthless (as, if you actually undertook the suggested above behaviour you would be too). A right is not a right if it only a priviledge of the violent few. The only genuine source of authority is the capacity to do violence, and in this case, that authority is not wielded by all the people, nor by representatives of the people, but by a violent subset of the population.
But please, feel free to continue deluding yourself that you have this right if you wish.
While I agree with much of your sentiment, it is worth keeping in mind that 'anti-social' is a classic example of the British art of understatement. While there have been a few crazy cases, most 'anti-social' behaviour actually has existing laws to deal with it. An example of anti-social behaviousr might be hurling abuse at people as you go down the street, or mock punching people. Or large gangs of individuals hanging around on the street corner consuming alchol and obstructing the highway. While the collective term might anti-social, the first and second are, infact, assault, the last obstructing the public highway, and loitering.
As far as being to the far left of the US, the whole of Europe is more to the left economically than the US. Many states are also socially to the left of the US. The former looks certain to stay that way, unless you count artificially rigging the deck to generate barrier to entry via things like the copyright or patent system, then include corporate entities in the 'government'. However the latter is gradually being undone, and at an alarmingly faster rate than in Europe.
The question is, at what point does CCTV become an invasion of privacy? I think one answer might be, when it looks into a location where one might reasonably expect privacy. I expect privacy from the police on my own property. I don't expect it walking in a town center, because I might reasonably expect to encounter a police officer. Of course there is one final problem, that of making it reasonably possible to achieve insurrection through popular uprising. A state which truely aims to protect the peoples rights should ensure that no agent of government could reasonably prevent an uprising by a majority of the population. I do not know at which point CCTV begins to undermine that aim.
Yeah because that arguement worked with Grokster...
Oh but wait, our politicians are bought and paid for, along with our courts, so actually you are right, on a technicality. That technicality being everything a company / wealthy person does is legal, everything we do, is illegal.
Oh I know that no one would buy games consoles if they were priced at cost. My point is that if you are going to sell a piece of hardware you cant tell people what they can and cannot do with it. I have no objections to the selling consoles at below cost. But they cant then turn around and complain if someone modifies those consoles.
However, trying to barstardise property law to protect this business model is totally unacceptable. If I buy something from you, and then do something with it you hadn't intended with it, well thats just tough on you, unless the something unexpected I do directly infringes on your rights.
If they want us to surrender our property rights when we buy a games console, then make us sign a contract. Don't abuse the country by barstardising property rights. It's about time someone took these corporate overlords and kicked them out of politics. It should be illegal for a limited liability company to expression a political viewpoint or utilise it's property to promote legislation or a political viewpoint.
I have a cunning plan. I'm going to sell pipes to people for transporting water for thier baths, but every time they want to put water through those pipes, I'm going to make them pay me using a meter. And I'm not going to let the modify the meter, or get water from any one else.
Sound like a dumb idea? It is. If the companies that make games consoles are unhappy because their stupid business model doesn't allow them to sell their console for a sensible price (read for a market driven price) and then sell the games, also for a market driven price, then I have some good old capitalist advice for them. Sod off and die.
I bought it, I will damn well do what I like with it, and if they don't like it, my advice to them is simple, don't sell it to me in the first place.
Trying to think of a religion which doesn't try to isolate it's members from non-believers... does Buhdism do this? I don't know many Buhdists. Likewise, is there a major world religion that doesn't encourage tithing? Almost all religions are cults by your definition. I'm not going to disagree with you if thats what you think because I have a hard time coming up with a better definition, but that kind of validates the original posters point.
The beauty of Western Democracy is that finally power brokers have a means to take rights from the masses, they simply ask for their consent. After all, democracy is the most important right, right? Oh no wait, democracy is a means to an end, not an end in itself. But in the West we have forgotten that. It is better to have your privacy protected, to be able to enjoy your cultural heritage, to feel safe at home, to be able to defend yourself, and to have the power to determine your own future in a benevolent dictatorship, than it is to be dictated to by the ignorant, religiously insane, dangerously xenophobic masses which any idiot with enough money can whip into a hysteria.