So what you are saying is a musician should only be able to sell their music once?
No. Saying copyright infringement is not theft is not saying anything else, not about the morality of it or the economic effects. Copying is not stealing.
Consider that vandalism also has some common effects with theft. If I destroy your property, the effect on you is basically identical to if I stole it, yet nobody calls vandalism theft. There is no insane desire to describe vandalism as theft in order to prove it wrong.
"Copying is not theft" and "copyright infringement is wrong" are completely compatible statements. You can not demonstrate that copying is theft because it differs in important ways. If you think it's wrong by all means make your case. There are lots of things that are wrong that aren't theft.
What it comes down to is that there are certain people and organizations that don't want us to think too deeply about the morality copyright infringement. They try to shut down discussion and thought by describing it as theft. If there was a proper discussion, they might not get their way.
On the contrary, you're suggesting that women making a complaint of rape shouldn't be believe by default. In other words, you're saying that these women are guilty of making a false report unless they prove themselves to be innocent. I'm going to suggest that you hadn't fully thought through the implications of your statement.
Complainants should be believed by default by the prosecutor. The accused should be believed by default by the jury. However the rest of us are free to think what we want. Verdicts of not guilty do not result in automatic perjury charges against the complainant and are not equivalent to an accusation of lying. If someone is accused of making false report, the same default assumption applies to that accusation.
Well rape is rape but I still think it makes a certain amount of sense to classify perpetrators according to how easy they would be to stop, the damage they do and the risk they are to society. Some rapists only get stopped by lethal force, some could be stopped by saying no more forcefully or by screaming. That doesn't mean that some rape isn't rape or that victims are to blame. It does mean that I'd feel a whole lot different about a guy who crossed the line with too much pressure on a drunken date than I would about a guy who tackled a woman in the park and dragged her behind the bushes if they moved into our street.
Well I'm not arguing for extremes. I live in Australia which is fairly socialist compared to the US and even some of the work I do is government contracting. Nevertheless I work in a trade and there is a lot of difference between owning your own equipment and using equipment owned by someone else, not so much difference between getting paid a wage by a company or government department. It doesn't make me a financial and productive island, I still live in society, what I'm challenging is the idea that workers in socialist systems own the means of production in any meaningful sense.
I pay for my internet connection and for the right to use the roads on an ongoing basis, in tolls, vehicle registrations and drivers license fees, I don't own them. Yet with my tools, let's say a friend or someone that sees me working asks me to do a small job for them (this happens on a regular basis):
1) If I own my tools and charging by contract I am free to do that job and keep the whole price of it (less taxes and expenses).
2) If I am getting a government wage I am not free to use government tools for private work at all.
3) If I am getting a wage from a company I can do the job but my boss owns the profit.
Who owns the road is irrelevant. If you are free to enter into contracts and keep the profits of your labour, that's capitalism, even if you have to pay some taxes to use government owned infrastructure. Similarly for information workers, if they own the computer and aren't being paid wages they own the profits of their work, even though they don't own the lines their internet connection goes over. If the government owns the computer and pays their wage, they do not own the result.
The major difference between Communism and Capitalism is that in the first the workers own the means of production, in the latter these are owned by someone else.
Yet here I am, a worker who owns my own means of production. Not the pseudo ownership of state control, which isn't ownership for the masses in any meaningful way, but me personally having the right to my own tools and equipment to be productive in my chosen occupation, so I can negotiate contracts to work without a "boss" as an intermediary taking the profits.
A Sleeping Person Cannot Consent, Period. That's rape.
What if my wife of many years and I both wake up during sex? Are we both raping each other? Or does guilt in this case automatically default to the man? I have heard of guys being woken up with blow-jobs, never have I heard them claim rape or sexual abuse.
This is particularly true in psychiatric medicine, where past therapists are required to pass on notes to future therapists, but patients don't necessarily have the right to read the notes themselves.
Since psychiatric diagnoses are used to detain and forcibly treat people I don't see how it can possibly be justified to deny patients the same access rights as anyone else. Especially when they are not in an acute stage of their illness.
Copyright infringement is a crime, no matter the way of committing it.
In most cases of non-commercial infringement this is incorrect. Most non-commercial copyright infringement is a breach of civil law, not criminal law. If caught you may be sued, you will not be arrested, you will not be charged with a crime, you will not be convicted of a crime, you will not have a criminal record. You could be stripped of assets to pay for any judgements against you.
I keep saying this, but yes, the second amendment is no protection against tyranny. It merely allows a transition to the rule of the strong, instead of the systemised albeit flawed democracy we presently have.
Recall how Nazi Germany and East Germany both built careful systems where people would inform on each other for personal gain.
The Nazis, IIRC, banned Jews from owning guns pretty early on.
And indeed, how ahead of the Rwandan massacre, the government actually *handed out* weapons to the public, so that they can use them against the opponents government propaganda had primed them to attack.
They handed out weapons to the Hutu. I bet they didn't give any to the Tutsi. Examples of oppressive governments arming their supporters and disarming their opponents doesn't really support your argument the way you think it does.
The local electronics shop is not the subject of new proposed legislation regarding major changes to government surveillance and tracking of the whole population. This action, IMO, qualifies as valid political speech. It is completely different to an act of vandalism or theft for the sake of it.
the term 'assault weapon' was stolen and redefined to be anything that 'looks' like a battlefield weapon.
It's a nonsensical term for civilian use. A murder weapon, for example, is a weapon that has been used to murder someone without any reference to that weapon's characteristics. A rock, a stick, a knife or a firearm could all potentially be murder weapons but are NEVER so classified until a murder has taken place and even then only if that particular object was used to commit the murder.
Logical consistency demands that an assault weapon is something that has been used to assault someone and is unrelated to the type of object it is.
I'm not the poster you replied to and I haven't bothered to look for a source, but I've read that without a suicide note it is unlikely for a death to be declared suicide unless it is the only reasonable conclusion.
I'm familiar with Gatto's writing and the concept of freeschooling. Our eldest boy has recently (last six months) become interested in reading. He was taught in the usual way, wasn't very interested. Our education department contact was happy with his progress but it didn't seem that good to me. It was about one week turn-around, all it took was to find some fiction books he really liked.
It would be illegal for us to not teach them to read anyway. I don't see any harm in making them learn some things even though I don't like compulsory schooling as it exists.
The idea of engaging in politics is to change who has a realistic chance of winning. If enough people are convinced to vote for a new candidate they can win. That might be hard, but it really is all it takes.
Children don't require government compulsion to become interested in a variety of topics and they learn comparatively poorly when they are not interested. Having those who aren't interested compelled to be in the class guarantees disruption, requiring effort from the teacher that could be put to better use actually teaching.
What we have now is a system where your concept of broadening horizons through compulsory desk work is so rigidly enforced that active children who can't cope with the tedium of sitting still for hours at a time are drugged into docility so they can "reach their full potential". The attributes that made me a "bad" kid in school help me excel in my physically active job.
I do agree though that some things need to be taught regardless of interest, such as literacy and numeracy, as they make you capable of learning the other things that you become interested in. Also that a broad range of subjects should be available.
So we have a system supposedly of the people, by the people, for the people. We force those people to spend their formative years in institutions ostensibly for their education and now we're going to justify a lack of transparency in government because people are too stupid?
The proper response for public officials to people playing statements out of context is to play them in context and explain themselves, not to act in secret so people can't oppose them.
It doesn't matter if congress or the white house got mad. They are not the boss, they are the boss's boss.
Not when your actions are protected by legislation. Then you have no obligation to follow instructions from your boss to the contrary.
If someone takes a job as a scientific researcher for the government they are definitely entitled to follow proper scientific processes. They are putting their name and professional reputation to their work. I'm not a scientist but I have worked in quality control and been pressured to sign off product that did not meet specification. Now I work as a tradesman and I've been pressured to do work that doesn't meet relevant standards. The answer is both cases was no. How could it be otherwise? What's the point of hiring scientists if you don't want them to do science properly?
Read again: A confidential government review in May by the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with the grievances of government workers, found that the scientists' medical claims were valid enough to warrant a full investigation into what it termed "a substantial and specific danger to public safety."
Their job as scientists was to identify that danger to public safety. When the boss didn't want to listen they went to the "boss's boss" and to the public (the boss's boss's boss) via the media, action that is legally protected for this very reason. They were doing their job.
Anyone working for any government department has the moral right to act in the interest of the public to the best of their ability. If you read TFA you'd know that:
"the F.D.A. program may have crossed legal lines by grabbing and analyzing confidential information that is specifically protected under the law, including attorney-client communications, whistle-blower complaints to Congress and workplace grievances filed with the government"
Other administration officials were so concerned to learn of the F.D.A. operation that the White House Office of Management and Budget sent a government wide memo last month emphasizing that while the internal monitoring of employee communications was allowed, it could not be used under the law to intimidate whistle-blowers. Any monitoring must be done in ways that "do not interfere with or chill employees' use of appropriate channels to disclose wrongdoing,"
Members of Congress from both parties were irate to learn that correspondence between the scientists and their own staff had been gathered and analyzed.
While you may have to do what the boss says, when you're a public servant and the White House as well as members of Congress from both parties come are on your side and your actions are specifically protected by law, you ARE doing what the boss says.
And to cap it off: A confidential government review in May by the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with the grievances of government workers, found that the scientists' medical claims were valid enough to warrant a full investigation into what it termed "a substantial and specific danger to public safety."
Nevertheless, being second in volume to China does not equate to the "manufacturing was destroyed" comment the OP made. The US is still one of the world's major manufacturers.
Only in the US is being second in the world at something regarded as being destroyed. It's a terrible mentality that defines success purely as beating others. You don't actually have to do well so long as everyone else does worse so that you're on top. ON TOP!
In any case, manufacturing in the US is far from dead. It won't be the major employer it was, though, because it has become too efficient for that, just like agriculture before it. As a tradesman in Australia, my tools are made in the US, Germany and Australia. I haven't seen anything from China that competes on quality and when they do they'll likely have similar prices.
I agree that it's not good to lose legal protections but I would argue that maintaining your own privacy rather than relying on trust is in some circumstances a necessity, not a luxury.
I grew up not far from what must have been one of the last manually operated telephone exchanges in Australia. My father told me stories of the operator, who was also the local gossip. Combined with what was probably too many crime and spy novels, I formed the opinion that communication methods controlled by others are not secure.
Actual censorship would be noticeable pretty quickly but you may never know when you are being spied on. If I regarded it essential for the contents of my communication to remain private I would speak face to face or if that wasn't possible use encryption. There are things I've said over email or phone that I'd like to remain private, but the worst I'd suffer if it doesn't is embarrassment.
If you have something to hide, it makes more sense to hide it that trust other people not to look.
I said education teaches you how to think, not what to think. There is a big difference.
Yet the difference is not evident, as far as I'm aware, in the public schooling of any country in the world. Unless we accept a "no true education system" defense. Otherwise, manipulative marketing and political PR campaigns would be of little effect.
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So what you are saying is a musician should only be able to sell their music once?
No. Saying copyright infringement is not theft is not saying anything else, not about the morality of it or the economic effects. Copying is not stealing.
Consider that vandalism also has some common effects with theft. If I destroy your property, the effect on you is basically identical to if I stole it, yet nobody calls vandalism theft. There is no insane desire to describe vandalism as theft in order to prove it wrong.
"Copying is not theft" and "copyright infringement is wrong" are completely compatible statements. You can not demonstrate that copying is theft because it differs in important ways. If you think it's wrong by all means make your case. There are lots of things that are wrong that aren't theft.
What it comes down to is that there are certain people and organizations that don't want us to think too deeply about the morality copyright infringement. They try to shut down discussion and thought by describing it as theft. If there was a proper discussion, they might not get their way.
In Numbers 5:13 it's not a reference to consensual sex, it is talking about her being caught in the act.
On the contrary, you're suggesting that women making a complaint of rape shouldn't be believe by default. In other words, you're saying that these women are guilty of making a false report unless they prove themselves to be innocent. I'm going to suggest that you hadn't fully thought through the implications of your statement.
Complainants should be believed by default by the prosecutor. The accused should be believed by default by the jury. However the rest of us are free to think what we want. Verdicts of not guilty do not result in automatic perjury charges against the complainant and are not equivalent to an accusation of lying. If someone is accused of making false report, the same default assumption applies to that accusation.
Well rape is rape but I still think it makes a certain amount of sense to classify perpetrators according to how easy they would be to stop, the damage they do and the risk they are to society. Some rapists only get stopped by lethal force, some could be stopped by saying no more forcefully or by screaming. That doesn't mean that some rape isn't rape or that victims are to blame. It does mean that I'd feel a whole lot different about a guy who crossed the line with too much pressure on a drunken date than I would about a guy who tackled a woman in the park and dragged her behind the bushes if they moved into our street.
Well I'm not arguing for extremes. I live in Australia which is fairly socialist compared to the US and even some of the work I do is government contracting. Nevertheless I work in a trade and there is a lot of difference between owning your own equipment and using equipment owned by someone else, not so much difference between getting paid a wage by a company or government department. It doesn't make me a financial and productive island, I still live in society, what I'm challenging is the idea that workers in socialist systems own the means of production in any meaningful sense.
I pay for my internet connection and for the right to use the roads on an ongoing basis, in tolls, vehicle registrations and drivers license fees, I don't own them. Yet with my tools, let's say a friend or someone that sees me working asks me to do a small job for them (this happens on a regular basis):
1) If I own my tools and charging by contract I am free to do that job and keep the whole price of it (less taxes and expenses).
2) If I am getting a government wage I am not free to use government tools for private work at all.
3) If I am getting a wage from a company I can do the job but my boss owns the profit.
Who owns the road is irrelevant. If you are free to enter into contracts and keep the profits of your labour, that's capitalism, even if you have to pay some taxes to use government owned infrastructure. Similarly for information workers, if they own the computer and aren't being paid wages they own the profits of their work, even though they don't own the lines their internet connection goes over. If the government owns the computer and pays their wage, they do not own the result.
The major difference between Communism and Capitalism is that in the first the workers own the means of production, in the latter these are owned by someone else.
Yet here I am, a worker who owns my own means of production. Not the pseudo ownership of state control, which isn't ownership for the masses in any meaningful way, but me personally having the right to my own tools and equipment to be productive in my chosen occupation, so I can negotiate contracts to work without a "boss" as an intermediary taking the profits.
A Sleeping Person Cannot Consent, Period. That's rape.
What if my wife of many years and I both wake up during sex? Are we both raping each other? Or does guilt in this case automatically default to the man? I have heard of guys being woken up with blow-jobs, never have I heard them claim rape or sexual abuse.
This is particularly true in psychiatric medicine, where past therapists are required to pass on notes to future therapists, but patients don't necessarily have the right to read the notes themselves.
Since psychiatric diagnoses are used to detain and forcibly treat people I don't see how it can possibly be justified to deny patients the same access rights as anyone else. Especially when they are not in an acute stage of their illness.
Copyright infringement is a crime, no matter the way of committing it.
In most cases of non-commercial infringement this is incorrect. Most non-commercial copyright infringement is a breach of civil law, not criminal law. If caught you may be sued, you will not be arrested, you will not be charged with a crime, you will not be convicted of a crime, you will not have a criminal record. You could be stripped of assets to pay for any judgements against you.
I keep saying this, but yes, the second amendment is no protection against tyranny. It merely allows a transition to the rule of the strong, instead of the systemised albeit flawed democracy we presently have.
I disagree that it is no protection against tyranny, but I do agree that it is, by itself, inadequate protection against tyranny. It has proven useful on occasion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._%22Catfish%22_Cole#Klan_defeated_by_the_Black_Armed_Guard
Also what many people don't realize is that you don't always have to win an armed conflict for your use of arms to be effective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_stockade
Recall how Nazi Germany and East Germany both built careful systems where people would inform on each other for personal gain.
The Nazis, IIRC, banned Jews from owning guns pretty early on.
And indeed, how ahead of the Rwandan massacre, the government actually *handed out* weapons to the public, so that they can use them against the opponents government propaganda had primed them to attack.
They handed out weapons to the Hutu. I bet they didn't give any to the Tutsi. Examples of oppressive governments arming their supporters and disarming their opponents doesn't really support your argument the way you think it does.
If we can't live together as a society without the threat of violence, there is not much hope of maintaining a stable, long-lasting state
We can't. If we could live together as a society without the threat of violence we would have no reason to form a state.
The local electronics shop is not the subject of new proposed legislation regarding major changes to government surveillance and tracking of the whole population. This action, IMO, qualifies as valid political speech. It is completely different to an act of vandalism or theft for the sake of it.
the term 'assault weapon' was stolen and redefined to be anything that 'looks' like a battlefield weapon.
It's a nonsensical term for civilian use. A murder weapon, for example, is a weapon that has been used to murder someone without any reference to that weapon's characteristics. A rock, a stick, a knife or a firearm could all potentially be murder weapons but are NEVER so classified until a murder has taken place and even then only if that particular object was used to commit the murder.
Logical consistency demands that an assault weapon is something that has been used to assault someone and is unrelated to the type of object it is.
I'm not the poster you replied to and I haven't bothered to look for a source, but I've read that without a suicide note it is unlikely for a death to be declared suicide unless it is the only reasonable conclusion.
I'm familiar with Gatto's writing and the concept of freeschooling. Our eldest boy has recently (last six months) become interested in reading. He was taught in the usual way, wasn't very interested. Our education department contact was happy with his progress but it didn't seem that good to me. It was about one week turn-around, all it took was to find some fiction books he really liked.
It would be illegal for us to not teach them to read anyway. I don't see any harm in making them learn some things even though I don't like compulsory schooling as it exists.
The idea of engaging in politics is to change who has a realistic chance of winning. If enough people are convinced to vote for a new candidate they can win. That might be hard, but it really is all it takes.
Children don't require government compulsion to become interested in a variety of topics and they learn comparatively poorly when they are not interested. Having those who aren't interested compelled to be in the class guarantees disruption, requiring effort from the teacher that could be put to better use actually teaching.
What we have now is a system where your concept of broadening horizons through compulsory desk work is so rigidly enforced that active children who can't cope with the tedium of sitting still for hours at a time are drugged into docility so they can "reach their full potential". The attributes that made me a "bad" kid in school help me excel in my physically active job.
I do agree though that some things need to be taught regardless of interest, such as literacy and numeracy, as they make you capable of learning the other things that you become interested in. Also that a broad range of subjects should be available.
The problem is the the Public is really stupid.
So we have a system supposedly of the people, by the people, for the people. We force those people to spend their formative years in institutions ostensibly for their education and now we're going to justify a lack of transparency in government because people are too stupid?
The proper response for public officials to people playing statements out of context is to play them in context and explain themselves, not to act in secret so people can't oppose them.
It doesn't matter if congress or the white house got mad. They are not the boss, they are the boss's boss.
Not when your actions are protected by legislation. Then you have no obligation to follow instructions from your boss to the contrary.
If someone takes a job as a scientific researcher for the government they are definitely entitled to follow proper scientific processes. They are putting their name and professional reputation to their work. I'm not a scientist but I have worked in quality control and been pressured to sign off product that did not meet specification. Now I work as a tradesman and I've been pressured to do work that doesn't meet relevant standards. The answer is both cases was no. How could it be otherwise? What's the point of hiring scientists if you don't want them to do science properly?
Read again: A confidential government review in May by the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with the grievances of government workers, found that the scientists' medical claims were valid enough to warrant a full investigation into what it termed "a substantial and specific danger to public safety."
Their job as scientists was to identify that danger to public safety. When the boss didn't want to listen they went to the "boss's boss" and to the public (the boss's boss's boss) via the media, action that is legally protected for this very reason. They were doing their job.
Anyone working for any government department has the moral right to act in the interest of the public to the best of their ability. If you read TFA you'd know that:
"the F.D.A. program may have crossed legal lines by grabbing and analyzing confidential information that is specifically protected under the law, including attorney-client communications, whistle-blower complaints to Congress and workplace grievances filed with the government"
Other administration officials were so concerned to learn of the F.D.A. operation that the White House Office of Management and Budget sent a government wide memo last month emphasizing that while the internal monitoring of employee communications was allowed, it could not be used under the law to intimidate whistle-blowers. Any monitoring must be done in ways that "do not interfere with or chill employees' use of appropriate channels to disclose wrongdoing,"
Members of Congress from both parties were irate to learn that correspondence between the scientists and their own staff had been gathered and analyzed.
While you may have to do what the boss says, when you're a public servant and the White House as well as members of Congress from both parties come are on your side and your actions are specifically protected by law, you ARE doing what the boss says.
And to cap it off: A confidential government review in May by the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with the grievances of government workers, found that the scientists' medical claims were valid enough to warrant a full investigation into what it termed "a substantial and specific danger to public safety."
They were doing the right thing.
Nevertheless, being second in volume to China does not equate to the "manufacturing was destroyed" comment the OP made. The US is still one of the world's major manufacturers.
Only in the US is being second in the world at something regarded as being destroyed. It's a terrible mentality that defines success purely as beating others. You don't actually have to do well so long as everyone else does worse so that you're on top. ON TOP!
Not sure how up to date this is and it's not quite the same as the GP's claim. I'm not going to try to separate out military products.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_country_has_the_largest_manufacturing_industry_in_the_world
In any case, manufacturing in the US is far from dead. It won't be the major employer it was, though, because it has become too efficient for that, just like agriculture before it. As a tradesman in Australia, my tools are made in the US, Germany and Australia. I haven't seen anything from China that competes on quality and when they do they'll likely have similar prices.
I agree that it's not good to lose legal protections but I would argue that maintaining your own privacy rather than relying on trust is in some circumstances a necessity, not a luxury.
I grew up not far from what must have been one of the last manually operated telephone exchanges in Australia. My father told me stories of the operator, who was also the local gossip. Combined with what was probably too many crime and spy novels, I formed the opinion that communication methods controlled by others are not secure.
Actual censorship would be noticeable pretty quickly but you may never know when you are being spied on. If I regarded it essential for the contents of my communication to remain private I would speak face to face or if that wasn't possible use encryption. There are things I've said over email or phone that I'd like to remain private, but the worst I'd suffer if it doesn't is embarrassment.
If you have something to hide, it makes more sense to hide it that trust other people not to look.
I said education teaches you how to think, not what to think. There is a big difference.
Yet the difference is not evident, as far as I'm aware, in the public schooling of any country in the world. Unless we accept a "no true education system" defense. Otherwise, manipulative marketing and political PR campaigns would be of little effect.