Same here, I personally think it's a shame that PIPA, SOPA and CIPA didn't get approved at full force. I seriously doubt people will wake up until the feel the full horror of the decisions of the powers that be, then we might start working on a saner world.
Here's a wake up call - most people would never see the difference if those went into effect. Sure some web sites would disappear - and they'd be upset momentarily but then they'd move on to different web sites. Most folks still have an implicit trust of the governmetn - so if a web site redirects to some anti-piracy page, they're generally going to accept that at face value. (This is for the relatively small subset of people who even use the Internet extensively every day.) Some search results would go away - but they'd never be aware of it to begin with.
If you want people to care, you need to give them a personal reason to care. These laws, if passed, are insidious because they work in a way that keeps people unaware that they're even in effect.
[And no, these laws would not put Google, Youtube, etc out of business or take them offline -- these are huge businesses with a lot of money at stake; they'd find a way to comply without shutting down.]
TL;DR - remember that the people posting here, on blogs, etc are NOT the majority of people in this country. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because an issue is big to you, it must be big to everyone -- look at it from an 'outside' perspective and it's easy to see just how little *visible* effect this would have.
You vastly overestimate the number of people who have anything but the foggiest idea of what copyright is about, never mind things like how long a copyright is good for. What little they know is provided in school education (where it's just presented as fact: copyright is here, this is what it does), and via the very limited 11 o'clock nightly news coverage which heavily favors the existing laws.
And what's better is that even if you explained it in a way that reached most people - they *still* wouldn't care. It's kind of like running Windows on your computer - it's there, it's part of the background, and most folks have no reason to even think about it very much.
Instead of using the funds so graciously provided them by the end users (consumers is such a dirty term) to donate to charities, they should instead use those funds to lower the costs of whatever they are providing or raise the pay rates of their rank and file employees and let end users worry about which charity to donate some funds (that they are not now having to shell out to the corporation) to.
And why should they do that, when consumers are willing to pay the prices they pay?
Or, because I cynically believe that it's a largely marketing/PR stunt when companies do this. There may be some organizations for which this is a shared values thing... but I suspect just as many do it to keep up the company image, not out of any genuine altruism.
I don't disagree here. But on the other hand - does it make a difference? The organizations receiving the money sure don't think so.
have no cognitive dissonance whatsoever about the fact the corporations are, pretty much by definition, almost entirely motivated by profits -- and if a little marketing helps that out, well, that's the cost of doing business
Oil companies have had so much bad press and PR over the years they pretty much have no choice but to be seen to be responsible corporate citizens... that doesn't mean I see it as a sincere gesture.
Again, is it more important that they donate the money, or that their reasons for doing so meet your criteria for a "sincere gesture"?
It's all about maximizing profits, shareholder value, and executive bonuses...They can spend some of those profits to buy lawmakers to ensure they get more profits.
If you want to understand why it costs more in the US, the answer is "because they can".
While I realize it doesn't fit well with your anti-corporate rant, nearly all large American companies give back tremendously to local, regional, and national charities. Many small and medium sized ones do as well. Hell, even the evil oil companies do it. (I don't have a reference handy, but I believe in 2010 the national total of corporate donations was well over 300bn. )
Nobody likes to talk about that for some reason - I suspect because it causes some cognitive dissonance when you go in knowing that corporations are defined by profits and executive bonuses.
Even if they didn't get to skip it, do you think it would matter?
No, they'd just smile for the camera, smile patiently as they dumbshow the process of going through security for the camera -- just to show us how *simple* and *effortless* it all is, what is all that *fuss* about - and carry on.
and there is absolutely no reason that the law should have given Paul the ability to bypass the safety requirements enforced for everyone els
Not many here seem to be disputing that. Instead, the emphasis is (as it should be) on whether those safety requirements should exist in the first place
It's one thing persecuting people for their religion but persecuting atheists is going too far.
Erm, wait -what? How is one any worse than the other? In both cases you're persecuting for someone's lack of belief - for the former, it's the lack of belief in YOUR god. For the latter it's the lack of belief in ANY god.
There are other factors besides price - thus the "rational" in "rational self interest". If you know that the cheaper cheese is made in a way that is not sustainable - slave labor perhaps - then it is not in your long-term self interest to purchase the cheaper cheese; because supporting that method of cheese production means depriving others of the same freedoms you yourself feel it's your right to enjoy.
Unfortunately, the "rational" part has been discarded somewhere along the way, and what we're left with is more along the lines of what you posted.
Well - I'll agree on the suicide nets. The suicide rates at FoxConn were lower per 1000 than most countries (including the US IIRC) -- that was more about bad PR than anything else.
However: stating that it's 'better" at the factories isn't really of any significance. The frying pan is "better" than the fire, but you're still getting cooked either way.
Netflix: yeah, I won't say it would be easy to fix... but certainly manageable. I remain pissed off over that one - our queue is a jumbled mess and we both get recommendations that we wish we didn't. But it does illustrate my point: poor technical design decisions don't change the needs of end users.
Why did you exchange passwords in the first place? There's never a good reason to share passwords. If it ever seems like a good idea to share a password, that's a symptom of a poorly developed user permissions system.
Which doesn't negate the fact that the Internet is rife with poorly developed user permissions systems, thus necessitating password sharing if you do want/need to share owner-level access with someone. Case in point: Netflix. Because instant watch is only available on the main account, we have to share that account. Yes it's stupid, but that's Netflix for you.
Similar situations exist for many bank and credit card accounts. The fact that they've designed their security poorly does not obviate the need for us to share owner-level access to those accounts.
Just because you know it's a bad idea doesn't mean that there's an alternative available.
On the other hand, my wife is someone I'd trust with my life. If you don't have that in a relationship, I pity you. Because here's the thing - once you get to the point where you've decided you're going to grow old and die together, sharing passwords as needed becomes less-than-trivial.
Not necessarily. If someone wanted to dump a whole lot of stock in very short order, it likely succeeded quite well. (And judging by the volume of RIMM share transactions since the rumor came out, that seems not-too-unlikely...)
It doesn't have to jump for long to be profitable to someone.
BGR has a history of posting false rumors about RIM. I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that this turned out the same. The only surprising thing was that anyone believed them in the first place (and many major media names did).
People pirate because they don't want to pay for shit that they feel entitled to have (for whatever reason).
What's with the generalizations, anyway? You can't possibly know the motivation of every pirate in existence.
if the terms and conditions associated with a purchase are not to my liking, I do without it.
Why? It's not at all like stealing a physical object. If you pirated it when there was no way you'd buy it otherwise, they don't even lose a potential sale (actually, they did lose a potential sale whether you pirated it or not... when they implemented their DRM).
If I want something that's for sale, and I think it's worth the price, I pay for it. If it's not worth the price, by what right am I entitled to the product that others have spent significant time and money creating? You'll do what you want (assuming you're in the camp of 'take what I want' based on your argument) - but don't feed me the standard line of how it's not actually stealing. Theft of services is still theft.
People pirate because they don't want to pay for shit that they feel entitled to have (for whatever reason). To me, the answer is a little simpler: if the terms and conditions associated with a purchase are not to my liking, I do without it. I don't *need* the product.
But I will agree that these kind of idiotic DRM schemes will give a subset of people a thin justification for their decision to not pay for shit.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow...I read your statement completely backwards...
I just wish that my AT&T were the same as your AT&T.
Same here, I personally think it's a shame that PIPA, SOPA and CIPA didn't get approved at full force. I seriously doubt people will wake up until the feel the full horror of the decisions of the powers that be, then we might start working on a saner world.
Here's a wake up call - most people would never see the difference if those went into effect. Sure some web sites would disappear - and they'd be upset momentarily but then they'd move on to different web sites. Most folks still have an implicit trust of the governmetn - so if a web site redirects to some anti-piracy page, they're generally going to accept that at face value. (This is for the relatively small subset of people who even use the Internet extensively every day.) Some search results would go away - but they'd never be aware of it to begin with.
If you want people to care, you need to give them a personal reason to care. These laws, if passed, are insidious because they work in a way that keeps people unaware that they're even in effect.
[And no, these laws would not put Google, Youtube, etc out of business or take them offline -- these are huge businesses with a lot of money at stake; they'd find a way to comply without shutting down.]
TL;DR - remember that the people posting here, on blogs, etc are NOT the majority of people in this country. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because an issue is big to you, it must be big to everyone -- look at it from an 'outside' perspective and it's easy to see just how little *visible* effect this would have.
You vastly overestimate the number of people who have anything but the foggiest idea of what copyright is about, never mind things like how long a copyright is good for. What little they know is provided in school education (where it's just presented as fact: copyright is here, this is what it does), and via the very limited 11 o'clock nightly news coverage which heavily favors the existing laws.
And what's better is that even if you explained it in a way that reached most people - they *still* wouldn't care. It's kind of like running Windows on your computer - it's there, it's part of the background, and most folks have no reason to even think about it very much.
Instead of using the funds so graciously provided them by the end users (consumers is such a dirty term) to donate to charities, they should instead use those funds to lower the costs of whatever they are providing or raise the pay rates of their rank and file employees and let end users worry about which charity to donate some funds (that they are not now having to shell out to the corporation) to.
And why should they do that, when consumers are willing to pay the prices they pay?
How about the plans to a Ford Model T or Model A ? Should be in the public domain by now....
Not if they were never published. Trade secrets can stay that way forever. I forget what the law says about leaked trade secrets, though.
/. karma rule #312: "I forget" is much more Interesting, Insightful and even Informative than "I don't know".
Or, because I cynically believe that it's a largely marketing/PR stunt when companies do this. There may be some organizations for which this is a shared values thing ... but I suspect just as many do it to keep up the company image, not out of any genuine altruism.
I don't disagree here. But on the other hand - does it make a difference? The organizations receiving the money sure don't think so.
have no cognitive dissonance whatsoever about the fact the corporations are, pretty much by definition, almost entirely motivated by profits -- and if a little marketing helps that out, well, that's the cost of doing business
Oil companies have had so much bad press and PR over the years they pretty much have no choice but to be seen to be responsible corporate citizens ... that doesn't mean I see it as a sincere gesture.
Again, is it more important that they donate the money, or that their reasons for doing so meet your criteria for a "sincere gesture"?
It's all about maximizing profits, shareholder value, and executive bonuses ...They can spend some of those profits to buy lawmakers to ensure they get more profits.
If you want to understand why it costs more in the US, the answer is "because they can".
Also things like this: http://www.att.com/gen/corporate-citizenship?pid=7737
While I realize it doesn't fit well with your anti-corporate rant, nearly all large American companies give back tremendously to local, regional, and national charities. Many small and medium sized ones do as well. Hell, even the evil oil companies do it. (I don't have a reference handy, but I believe in 2010 the national total of corporate donations was well over 300bn. )
Nobody likes to talk about that for some reason - I suspect because it causes some cognitive dissonance when you go in knowing that corporations are defined by profits and executive bonuses.
Suck. What slim chance he had is out the window.
They don't seem to realize that most Americans think this theater is not only necessary, but essential to their safety.
Even if they didn't get to skip it, do you think it would matter?
No, they'd just smile for the camera, smile patiently as they dumbshow the process of going through security for the camera -- just to show us how *simple* and *effortless* it all is, what is all that *fuss* about - and carry on.
Your argument begs the question.
TSA is simply a response. There are many who still argue it was not the correct or necessary response. Senator Paul is one of those people.
and there is absolutely no reason that the law should have given Paul the ability to bypass the safety requirements enforced for everyone els
Not many here seem to be disputing that. Instead, the emphasis is (as it should be) on whether those safety requirements should exist in the first place
So your options are: public groping with witnesses, or private groping without independent witnesses.
Yep, that's a win-win right there.
Let me fix that for you:
That would be like blaming the incoming president for the mess the previous one left, a mere three years after the new one took office.
It's one thing persecuting people for their religion but persecuting atheists is going too far.
Erm, wait -what? How is one any worse than the other? In both cases you're persecuting for someone's lack of belief - for the former, it's the lack of belief in YOUR god. For the latter it's the lack of belief in ANY god.
There are other factors besides price - thus the "rational" in "rational self interest". If you know that the cheaper cheese is made in a way that is not sustainable - slave labor perhaps - then it is not in your long-term self interest to purchase the cheaper cheese; because supporting that method of cheese production means depriving others of the same freedoms you yourself feel it's your right to enjoy.
Unfortunately, the "rational" part has been discarded somewhere along the way, and what we're left with is more along the lines of what you posted.
Well - I'll agree on the suicide nets. The suicide rates at FoxConn were lower per 1000 than most countries (including the US IIRC) -- that was more about bad PR than anything else.
However: stating that it's 'better" at the factories isn't really of any significance. The frying pan is "better" than the fire, but you're still getting cooked either way.
Please define "it" for the rest of us. Because to most, "it" appears to be "anything that the people of anonymous take a fancy to this week".
Netflix: yeah, I won't say it would be easy to fix... but certainly manageable. I remain pissed off over that one - our queue is a jumbled mess and we both get recommendations that we wish we didn't. But it does illustrate my point: poor technical design decisions don't change the needs of end users.
Erm, you know that sharing private information with the people close to you has nothing to do with societal privacy, right?
But hey, it's a good way to demonstrate you don't actually understand Rand's writings.
Why did you exchange passwords in the first place? There's never a good reason to share passwords. If it ever seems like a good idea to share a password, that's a symptom of a poorly developed user permissions system.
Which doesn't negate the fact that the Internet is rife with poorly developed user permissions systems, thus necessitating password sharing if you do want/need to share owner-level access with someone. Case in point: Netflix. Because instant watch is only available on the main account, we have to share that account. Yes it's stupid, but that's Netflix for you.
Similar situations exist for many bank and credit card accounts. The fact that they've designed their security poorly does not obviate the need for us to share owner-level access to those accounts.
Just because you know it's a bad idea doesn't mean that there's an alternative available.
On the other hand, my wife is someone I'd trust with my life. If you don't have that in a relationship, I pity you. Because here's the thing - once you get to the point where you've decided you're going to grow old and die together, sharing passwords as needed becomes less-than-trivial.
Not necessarily. If someone wanted to dump a whole lot of stock in very short order, it likely succeeded quite well. (And judging by the volume of RIMM share transactions since the rumor came out, that seems not-too-unlikely...)
It doesn't have to jump for long to be profitable to someone.
BGR has a history of posting false rumors about RIM. I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that this turned out the same. The only surprising thing was that anyone believed them in the first place (and many major media names did).
People pirate because they don't want to pay for shit that they feel entitled to have (for whatever reason).
What's with the generalizations, anyway? You can't possibly know the motivation of every pirate in existence.
if the terms and conditions associated with a purchase are not to my liking, I do without it.
Why? It's not at all like stealing a physical object. If you pirated it when there was no way you'd buy it otherwise, they don't even lose a potential sale (actually, they did lose a potential sale whether you pirated it or not... when they implemented their DRM).
If I want something that's for sale, and I think it's worth the price, I pay for it. If it's not worth the price, by what right am I entitled to the product that others have spent significant time and money creating? You'll do what you want (assuming you're in the camp of 'take what I want' based on your argument) - but don't feed me the standard line of how it's not actually stealing. Theft of services is still theft.
People pirate because they don't want to pay for shit that they feel entitled to have (for whatever reason). To me, the answer is a little simpler: if the terms and conditions associated with a purchase are not to my liking, I do without it. I don't *need* the product.
But I will agree that these kind of idiotic DRM schemes will give a subset of people a thin justification for their decision to not pay for shit.