His first mistake was getting an HDTV. $17.99 a month is nothing compared to the premium he paid for getting a DRM-infested digital TV instead of a cheap analog one.
it is not a control method over bad cops, it is a tool for slander and unfound rumor. it's a way fo rinternet trolls to spread lies [...] so yes, close the site down. sure you can say godaddy may not have closed the site down in the most proper procedue, but the site should definitely be closed down, if you have any understanding of ethics So, according to your "understanding of ethics", shouldn't we shut down every web site that offers a public forum or a chance to review products and services? Your description of the site as a "tool for slander and unfound rumor" and "a way for internet trolls to spread lies" could apply just as well to Slashdot, epinions, and just about every blog on the internet!
Free speech doesn't mean you only get to say things that are nice, or things that are true.
but if a cop is genuinely bad, the government will get rid of him or her eventually, through regular channels, as regular people sound off about any mistreatment the cop makes Oh, I get it, you're being sarcastic. Never mind then!
To your assertion that the world except for "radical libertarians" has decided government is for and should be doing everything from deciding what type of vehicle you should use to what you should be able to do with your CDs or computer, whether or not you should be allowed to keep your private data well, private, how you spend your money, etc. is laughable.
Yes, that would be a laughable assertion if I had made it. But I didn't, so it's just a laughable strawman.
The fact of the matter is that the world has not made that decision anymore than than the people of the US made the decision that the only three people worth holding the POTUS seat are McCain, Hillary, and Obama. I bet even you haven't decided that, you just assume it.
I've assumed no such thing. Those people are indeed the only candidates with a chance of winning, but they got there through a process that was laid out centuries ago, in a very different country, with the assumption that candidates would run as individuals instead of members of a party. (That system is long overdue for a redesign, but that's beside the point.)
If I ask if you would choose Evil A or Evil B, it is invalid for me to then, upon getting your answer of A or B) to say that you prefer evil. Yet that is what you are doing.
Hmm. It seems to me that what you're doing is saying "Evil A and Evil B are the same because they're both evil", ignoring the fact that (1) they're still very different proposals for doing very different things, and (2) most people don't even agree that they're both evil.
The fact is that I've not said all government power is the same, but your argument is obviously ignorant of what reality, instead relying on your own biases. The fact is that some government power is valid and other power is not. But unable to actually draw the distinction you opted yo instead label anyone who disagrees with your position as an extremist. You conducted an ad hominem attack instead of pointing to specific instances.
Chill out, buddy. There's no ad hominem there.
Your views are radical: that's not an insult, it's just a fact. The role of government you seem to have in mind is radically different from the role government actually plays today, in this country as well as most others. And your views are shared by only a small minority of voters. Surely you know that already, right?
When you look at the policies the three media candidates espouse, the substance of them is virtually the same, despite the rhetoric. When you look at the voting record, the similarities are still present, and the differences are indeed minor.
The differences are minor if you only consider the issues that you chose to consider. On other issues, the differences are quite major, but you don't seem to care about those because you don't think the government has any business meddling in those issues anyway.
You are, of course, free to choose to care about whatever you want. But you can't expect everyone else to share your priorities, and you can't expect an argument that relies on those priorities to be persuasive to anyone who doesn't share them.
Increase taxes on "the rich" [...] Increase welfare expenditures without accountability? Check. [...] Increase "gun control" restrictions? Check.
On these issues, and probably others from your list, there are significant differences between Obama/Clinton and McCain - if you care to look for them.
Not all similarities are bad, something you clearly miss out on in your zeal to demonize opponents.
Huh? You seem to have mistaken me for someone else. No problem, I get that a lot.
For example, both sides (H&O), McCain) are against Kyoto, and rightly so. Kyoto would cost trillions for a paltry ephemeral savings of less than a billion, and in comparison to other things that could be done, is an even worse choice.
Now I see that this video explains it around the 2:00 mark. It's not actually a stack of chips that have been hollowed out, it's a thin metal cylinder that's been painted to look like chips (although it's obviously fake if you look closely), with a real chip on top, and the cylinder is slightly bigger in diameter than the actual chips.
I'm trying to envision how something shaped like a stack of chips is supposed to fit any chips inside, but I'm not getting anywhere.
1. $5 chips are the same diameter as $100 chips. 2. The hole in a hollowed-out stack of chips must be smaller than the diameter of a chip. 3. You can't fit a circular object into a circular hole of a smaller diameter.
Right now you have thousands of companies providing access. If you have a problem with one (such as Comcast) you can choose an alternative, or pressure/advocate the company into changing. With so many alterntives its likely there's a choice out there for you. No, that's exactly the problem: there aren't thousands of companies providing access. In huge parts of the country, the only alternatives to cable are dialup and satellite (in other words, jack and shit).
If the system was nationalized, and you didn't like something they were doing you have no choice, no alternatives. You can still try advocacy except you now have a much smaller voice than you did before. Smaller... or larger? It seems to me that my opinion is more likely to matter to my elected representatives than it is to the suits at Comcast.
The suits at Comcast know that they're going to have customers no matter what, because if you don't have cable then you're stuck with rabbit ears and dialup (unless you live in an area serviced by DSL, in which case you still need the rabbit ears but you can get screwed by Qwest instead of Comcast for your internet service).
Elected representatives, on the other hand, need continued support from voters to stay in office, and a few dozen people mounting the right kind of campaign can put enough fear into their hearts to get those changes made.
DSL is available in most areas, and Satellite is an option even in areas where there's not Cable OR DSL service. If you really want to have first rate service, and can afford it, full T1's are down under $300/mo in some places. DSL and wireless are the only alternatives that can really compete with cable, but they both suffer from limited coverage areas.
The laws of physics make satellite unusable for anyone who does anything real time: chat, gaming, VPN, VoIP. A T1 is much more expensive than cable and also much slower for downloading: 1.5 Mbps is nothing compared to the reliable 6 Mbps you can get over cable (with bursts up to 12 Mbps). Someone who does enough torrenting to worry about Comcast's interference is probably going to be unhappy capping his downloads at 180 KB/sec.
I'd be fine with an Ayn Rand, objectivist, libertarian free market if the market really was free and had low barriers to entry. This market wouldn't have low barriers to entry even without the regulations.
Cable TV/internet isn't a product that people can come to you to buy. If you want to sell cable, you have to run wires all the way across the city or county to every one of your customers' homes. That means you either spend $millions up front before you get any customers, or make your new customers wait for days or weeks before they can use the service they're paying for.
You can't entirely blame the government for cable/telco monopolies.
How low can the barrier of entry really get, when anyone who wants to start up a new cable company is going to have to wire up every house in the area? And how many different sets of wires do you really want running along those poles, anyway?
Maybe these problems can be solved with modern technology, but historically, at least, it made some sense for these companies to have monopolies.
They both have their preferred groups among those listed, but they both want to do the exact same thing: use government to favor their benefactors while suppressing those who do not side with them. Uh.. huh. Do you also believe there's no difference between Citizen Kane and The Matrix, since they both consist of a series of still pictures which can be played back in quick succession to give the illusion of movement? There's no difference between Linux and Windows, because they're both operating systems that sit between applications and hardware?
You're proving my point here. Yes, if you ignore all the substantial differences, then everything looks the same, but that says more about you than it does about the things you're comparing.
They both want to use the threat of bodily harm, incarceration, and death to force you to do they things they want done with other people's money, or to not do the things they don't want you to do (though they exempt themselves and their friends). Also: they're both political parties, they both run human candidates for office, and they both have web sites. The similarities are endless!
The ultimate question that should be asked in the areas you mentioned is whether federal government should be operating monopolies on these things, whether the government should be doing those to begin with. You know, most of us have already answered that question and moved on. It's only the radical libertarians, a vocal but ultimately insignificant minority of voters, who think it's still up for debate.
To mix another metaphor, Republican vs. Democrat policy is like two wolves and a sheep discussing HOW they are going to eat the sheep. Note they aren't deciding WHAT to eat, but HOW to eat the subject. Again, the fact that you think all uses of government power are equal says more about you than it does about the government. There's a difference between, say, taxing you to pay for schools and taxing you to pay for bombs, but if you can't get past the word "taxing" without frothing at the mouth about how The Man Is Stealing Your Money At Gunpoint, you won't be able to grasp it. That's a shame, but you have to realize it's a problem that affects you and virtually no one else - the rest of us are quite capable of seeing the distinction.
You should worry about the massive amounts of fluoride that is being placed deliberately in our drinking water despite many known dangers. Yes, indeed, although it's not nearly as dangerous as dihydrogen monoxide, which is present in much, much higher levels in tap water as well as bottled water. Even the most advanced water filtering systems let 99% or more of the DHMO pass right through, but thanks to loopholes in the FDA regulations, you won't see that unpleasant fact listed on the safety sheets.
I mean, you're right to be worried about the Commie plot to impurify our precious bodily fluids, but fluoride is just the tip of the iceberg. (By the way, the iceberg that sunk the Titanic also contained dangerously high levels of DHMO. Icebergs don't naturally grow to that size except in the presence of DHMO.)
I'm sure some people buy games here and there, but what beyond that? "Here and there"? You must be joking. Mobile gaming is a billion-dollar industry, and the GIN store alone serves millions of downloads per month.
A one-time loss of a few movie tickets worth of money to be able to distribute some really cool application to millions of people, even for free? Right, I can't imagine the appeal. Sure, some altruistic hobbyists might go for it, but it's still a step beyond your typical open-source volunteer project. I've spent plenty of time on stuff that I've given away for free, but I don't think I'm some rare exception when I draw the line at spending money on it.
But that's a per app fee, and no no offense to Verizon but who the hell actually uses the Get It Now store? And then what are you developing an app for, a tiny screen with pitiful graphics capabilities and the most primitive of input options at hand. Perhaps you've heard of "games". There are dozens available for any given handset through the GIN store, and new ones are released every week... do you really think no one is buying them? All that infrastructure is just going to waste, and developers keep throwing work at it and getting nothing in return? I find that hard to believe.
With the iPhone you only pay once and can develop a billion applications. [...] You are going to see a TON of free apps right out of the gate. I find that a little hard to believe too. Yes, it'll be cheaper to lose money by giving away free iPhone apps, but it's still a loss. What makes you think people will line up to happily flush $99 down the toilet?
Why is it so hard for so many people to understand that his principles are rooted in the U.S. Constitution which grants very limited powers to the Federal government and most of the power to the states? It's not that they don't understand it, it's that they realize the kind of government we had in the 18th century wouldn't serve our needs today.
You can pass all of the social programs you want in your home state, and they would be much more effective at dealing with an actual problem than any Federal program ever devised. Yeah, except for the fact that those programs cost money, and states don't have nearly as much of it as the federal government does. (Particularly the redder states that take in more federal money than they pay in taxes.) They also can't finance stuff with debt the way the federal government can, for better or worse.
The Feds take $1 of evenue, waste most of it on administrative costs and bureaucrat salaries, and then put the remainder into actually dealing with the problem their "social programs" are designed to address. That's not necessarily true. Medicare, for instance, has lower overhead than private health insurers.
If we cut the size of the Federal government to something that was more in line with what's needed to exercise the powers granted to it by The Constitution, we wouldn't be dealing with all this spying crap, and we certainly wouldn't be engaged in pointless trillion dollar wars and militaristic foreign crusades. And instead of one country that's pretty damn competitive, we'd be 50 little countries that are struggling to get by. No thanks.
The same is technically true with Verizon Wireless's Get It Now store. You can give away apps for free, but since you have to pay to get them signed, no one does it, because giving them away for free means losing money.
Don't expect to see a lot of free iPhone apps either.
Most of us do care about those things but most of us are experienced enough to know that GOVERNMENT is the absolute worst entity to charge with making positive changes therein. Experienced? No, that's not experience, it's ideology. Look at any country other than the US, and you'll find plenty of people with plenty of experience who believe that the government is quite capable of making positive change.
In fact, one might argue that the main reason the US government has been so bad at making positive change is that there are so many people here who believe, as a matter of principle, that government can't do anything well - and when those people are elected, they use their power to prove themselves right.
Government is really just an alternate way to get things done. Private industry and the free market are excellent at getting things done efficiently, but the other side of that coin is, they don't even try to get anything done that isn't going to be profitable. If you want something done, period, whether or not it's profitable, that's where government is useful. For example, look at phone and electrical service in rural areas: it didn't exist before the government stepped in, because it wasn't profitable to build phone infrastructure where there were only a few potential customers, but We The People decided that infrastructure was important enough that it should be built anyway.
I'd rather have a gov't stagnated and unable to do much than one that felt it had the mandate of heaven, even when literally killing their own citizens en masse. Hey, so would I. No one likes mass murder.
On the other hand, I'd rather have a government that does good things, like make medical care and education available to people who can't afford to pay for it, than one that's stagnant and unable to do anything.
They are all socialist in the end. The only exception I know of is Ron Paul. We simply must elect him. All the sig links and comment spam in the world won't make that happen, though: you need votes to get elected, and that means you need to convince the voters that your platform is what they want. Unfortunately for Ron Paul, what they want isn't radical libertarianism. Most voters in the US are just fine with government-operated schools and highways, Social Security, and those other "socialist" programs he opposes so strongly.
there's little difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. They're both intent on maintaining and building government power. It's only their _priorities_ which are different. Oh, and their policies. You know, little things like health care, social security, abortion, welfare, environmental and industry regulations, taxes, teaching religion in schools... those things matter, at least to most of us.
But I guess if the only thing that matters to you is "government power", then yes, you might think they're the same, because you're ignoring all the substantial differences.
You could also say that it encourages innovation because people have to iterate over the same subject several times, making new variations of it. Instead of just copying something old. Reinventing the wheel is not "innovation".
Freedom of the press is about preventing government censorship and has nothing to do with copyright. That's what copyright advocates would like us to believe, but I see no evidence that they're right. Look at freedom of speech for an analogy: the courts have agreed that preventing someone from shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is a restriction on free speech, but it's a justified restriction.
Freedom of the press means you're free to print and distribute whatever you like. The GP is wrong, however, when he says that it would have no restrictions if not for copyright: laws against libel and fraud also restrict freedom of the press.
Restricting the freedom of speech and press isn't always wrong, but it is always serious, and the benefits must be carefully weighed against the costs. Restricting it in order to protect public safety is one thing, but restricting it in order to put money in someone's pocket is quite another.
It doesn't change the fact that you don't own the content. If you bought a book, you own the paper. If you bought a cd, you own the plastic. You don't have a right to distribute that content to 100s of thousands of people. In other words, you're saying that I don't have the right to describe an item that I own. I can buy a book, and I can point to it in my library so you can see that I have it, but I can't tell you certain things about it (i.e. which words are printed in it and in what order). I can buy a CD, and I can point to it in my library as well, but again there are certain aspects of it that I'm supposed to keep a secret (i.e. which bits are encoded on it).
Can you think of any other property which a person can own but is forbidden from describing to another person? If not, why should we accept this restriction on books and CDs?
A few years ago, I took a trip and checked my bag. On the way there, they lost the bag and I didn't get it back until two days later. On the way back, they somehow punched a hole the size of a silver dollar in it. I've done all I can to avoid checking bags ever since.
Avoiding the wait at the carousel is pretty important too, though. I don't know how the process works, but it seems ridiculous that passengers can make it to the carousel 15 minutes before their luggage. What the hell takes so long?
A statement's truth value is not determined by its mere existence. Correct, but, of course, irrelevant because neither of us have ever claimed it was.
Recall that you said "the phrase 'objectively true statement' indicates that there is objective truth to the statement itself"--but "statements themselves" are neither true nor untrue by themselves. More pointless wankery. A statement is true or untrue when compared against the reality of the world it describes: "the sky is blue" is a true statement if the sky really is blue, and "the first line of this book is 'call me Ishmael'" is a true statement if those words really are printed there. Good thing we cleared that up, eh?
There's no value in reporting the "fact" because it's merely a hollow repetition of the expression. If people want to report that fact, and other people want it to be reported, then reporting that fact has value to them. That's what value is. I think what you mean to say is "I don't approve of it".
But thanks for admitting that there's no value in those "facts". If you really think that, then your answer to my question is yes, right? You agree that it should be legal for anyone to say as many of these "valueless" statements to as many people as they wish? I mean, if those statements really have no value, then surely they aren't worth regulating.
"Orthogonal to factualness" is either a misuse of orthogonality or factualness. Take your pick. No, it was correct. A statement can be factual or non-factual, and it can be relevant or irrelevant (to any particular subject), but those two attributes are independent of one another. "The capital of Nebraska is Lincoln" is still factual when we're not talking about state capitals, even though it isn't relevant.
In the same vein, the facts in an expression doesn't include the words and order used in that expression. Their "factualness" is a sophism. They are facts. They're not the facts "in" the expression, but they are facts about the expression, and they could be the facts in a different expression: just look at the poems and song lyrics that were written about CSS or the AACS key, for example.
You can write something which conveys the fact that a certain number beginning with 09 F9 decrypts HD movies, without even mentioning those digits, and if you put in enough effort and imagination then it'll be a bona fide artistic expression. By the same token, you could write a story or a song about any other expression, providing enough facts about that expression for someone to reconstruct it. And if you want to enforce copyright, then that story or song will have to be suppressed too, just like any other restatement of those facts.
That sophistry has been outside the goal posts from the very beginning. Perhaps you misunderstood where the goal posts were.
Yet another argument wide of the mark, joining a phenomenally long list. 'Objectively' in your statement is an adverb. And "true" is an adjective modified by that adverb. Please try to pay attention.
There's no value in reporting statements that have no significance outside identifying the list and order of words in an expression. Well, if there's no value in it, I guess you wouldn't mind a change in the law that makes it legal for anyone to report as many of those statements as they want. Surely, no one will even bother transmitting or receiving those statements if they have no value, right?
Ah, so factual relevance depends on context! That doesn't appear anywhere in your sorely inadequate definition. Well, as you know, my definition is nothing more than the standard definition of "fact" used by everyone else on this site except you.
But of course that doesn't appear anywhere in the definition. Facts can be relevant or irrelevant to any particular conversation, but that's orthogonal to their factualness. "The capital of Nebraska is Lincoln" doesn't suddenly stop being a fact the moment we start talking about something other than state capitals.
That raises an interesting idea... why not use the capchas to perform some useful work? Example... display a scanned line of text from a project that needs a large volume of text OCR'd for free/cheap. Someone already beat you to it.
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His first mistake was getting an HDTV. $17.99 a month is nothing compared to the premium he paid for getting a DRM-infested digital TV instead of a cheap analog one.
Free speech doesn't mean you only get to say things that are nice, or things that are true. but if a cop is genuinely bad, the government will get rid of him or her eventually, through regular channels, as regular people sound off about any mistreatment the cop makes Oh, I get it, you're being sarcastic. Never mind then!
To your assertion that the world except for "radical libertarians" has decided government is for and should be doing everything from deciding what type of vehicle you should use to what you should be able to do with your CDs or computer, whether or not you should be allowed to keep your private data well, private, how you spend your money, etc. is laughable.
Yes, that would be a laughable assertion if I had made it. But I didn't, so it's just a laughable strawman.
The fact of the matter is that the world has not made that decision anymore than than the people of the US made the decision that the only three people worth holding the POTUS seat are McCain, Hillary, and Obama. I bet even you haven't decided that, you just assume it.
I've assumed no such thing. Those people are indeed the only candidates with a chance of winning, but they got there through a process that was laid out centuries ago, in a very different country, with the assumption that candidates would run as individuals instead of members of a party. (That system is long overdue for a redesign, but that's beside the point.)
If I ask if you would choose Evil A or Evil B, it is invalid for me to then, upon getting your answer of A or B) to say that you prefer evil. Yet that is what you are doing.
Hmm. It seems to me that what you're doing is saying "Evil A and Evil B are the same because they're both evil", ignoring the fact that (1) they're still very different proposals for doing very different things, and (2) most people don't even agree that they're both evil.
The fact is that I've not said all government power is the same, but your argument is obviously ignorant of what reality, instead relying on your own biases. The fact is that some government power is valid and other power is not. But unable to actually draw the distinction you opted yo instead label anyone who disagrees with your position as an extremist. You conducted an ad hominem attack instead of pointing to specific instances.
Chill out, buddy. There's no ad hominem there.
Your views are radical: that's not an insult, it's just a fact. The role of government you seem to have in mind is radically different from the role government actually plays today, in this country as well as most others. And your views are shared by only a small minority of voters. Surely you know that already, right?
When you look at the policies the three media candidates espouse, the substance of them is virtually the same, despite the rhetoric. When you look at the voting record, the similarities are still present, and the differences are indeed minor.
The differences are minor if you only consider the issues that you chose to consider. On other issues, the differences are quite major, but you don't seem to care about those because you don't think the government has any business meddling in those issues anyway.
You are, of course, free to choose to care about whatever you want. But you can't expect everyone else to share your priorities, and you can't expect an argument that relies on those priorities to be persuasive to anyone who doesn't share them.
Increase taxes on "the rich"
[...]
Increase welfare expenditures without accountability? Check.
[...]
Increase "gun control" restrictions? Check.
On these issues, and probably others from your list, there are significant differences between Obama/Clinton and McCain - if you care to look for them.
Not all similarities are bad, something you clearly miss out on in your zeal to demonize opponents.
Huh? You seem to have mistaken me for someone else. No problem, I get that a lot.
For example, both sides (H&O), McCain) are against Kyoto, and rightly so. Kyoto would cost trillions for a paltry ephemeral savings of less than a billion, and in comparison to other things that could be done, is an even worse choice.
You realize that the
Now I see that this video explains it around the 2:00 mark. It's not actually a stack of chips that have been hollowed out, it's a thin metal cylinder that's been painted to look like chips (although it's obviously fake if you look closely), with a real chip on top, and the cylinder is slightly bigger in diameter than the actual chips.
I'm trying to envision how something shaped like a stack of chips is supposed to fit any chips inside, but I'm not getting anywhere.
1. $5 chips are the same diameter as $100 chips.
2. The hole in a hollowed-out stack of chips must be smaller than the diameter of a chip.
3. You can't fit a circular object into a circular hole of a smaller diameter.
The suits at Comcast know that they're going to have customers no matter what, because if you don't have cable then you're stuck with rabbit ears and dialup (unless you live in an area serviced by DSL, in which case you still need the rabbit ears but you can get screwed by Qwest instead of Comcast for your internet service).
Elected representatives, on the other hand, need continued support from voters to stay in office, and a few dozen people mounting the right kind of campaign can put enough fear into their hearts to get those changes made.
The laws of physics make satellite unusable for anyone who does anything real time: chat, gaming, VPN, VoIP. A T1 is much more expensive than cable and also much slower for downloading: 1.5 Mbps is nothing compared to the reliable 6 Mbps you can get over cable (with bursts up to 12 Mbps). Someone who does enough torrenting to worry about Comcast's interference is probably going to be unhappy capping his downloads at 180 KB/sec.
Cable TV/internet isn't a product that people can come to you to buy. If you want to sell cable, you have to run wires all the way across the city or county to every one of your customers' homes. That means you either spend $millions up front before you get any customers, or make your new customers wait for days or weeks before they can use the service they're paying for.
You can't entirely blame the government for cable/telco monopolies.
How low can the barrier of entry really get, when anyone who wants to start up a new cable company is going to have to wire up every house in the area? And how many different sets of wires do you really want running along those poles, anyway?
Maybe these problems can be solved with modern technology, but historically, at least, it made some sense for these companies to have monopolies.
You're proving my point here. Yes, if you ignore all the substantial differences, then everything looks the same, but that says more about you than it does about the things you're comparing. They both want to use the threat of bodily harm, incarceration, and death to force you to do they things they want done with other people's money, or to not do the things they don't want you to do (though they exempt themselves and their friends). Also: they're both political parties, they both run human candidates for office, and they both have web sites. The similarities are endless! The ultimate question that should be asked in the areas you mentioned is whether federal government should be operating monopolies on these things, whether the government should be doing those to begin with. You know, most of us have already answered that question and moved on. It's only the radical libertarians, a vocal but ultimately insignificant minority of voters, who think it's still up for debate. To mix another metaphor, Republican vs. Democrat policy is like two wolves and a sheep discussing HOW they are going to eat the sheep. Note they aren't deciding WHAT to eat, but HOW to eat the subject. Again, the fact that you think all uses of government power are equal says more about you than it does about the government. There's a difference between, say, taxing you to pay for schools and taxing you to pay for bombs, but if you can't get past the word "taxing" without frothing at the mouth about how The Man Is Stealing Your Money At Gunpoint, you won't be able to grasp it. That's a shame, but you have to realize it's a problem that affects you and virtually no one else - the rest of us are quite capable of seeing the distinction.
I mean, you're right to be worried about the Commie plot to impurify our precious bodily fluids, but fluoride is just the tip of the iceberg. (By the way, the iceberg that sunk the Titanic also contained dangerously high levels of DHMO. Icebergs don't naturally grow to that size except in the presence of DHMO.)
The same is technically true with Verizon Wireless's Get It Now store. You can give away apps for free, but since you have to pay to get them signed, no one does it, because giving them away for free means losing money.
Don't expect to see a lot of free iPhone apps either.
In fact, one might argue that the main reason the US government has been so bad at making positive change is that there are so many people here who believe, as a matter of principle, that government can't do anything well - and when those people are elected, they use their power to prove themselves right.
Government is really just an alternate way to get things done. Private industry and the free market are excellent at getting things done efficiently, but the other side of that coin is, they don't even try to get anything done that isn't going to be profitable. If you want something done, period, whether or not it's profitable, that's where government is useful. For example, look at phone and electrical service in rural areas: it didn't exist before the government stepped in, because it wasn't profitable to build phone infrastructure where there were only a few potential customers, but We The People decided that infrastructure was important enough that it should be built anyway. I'd rather have a gov't stagnated and unable to do much than one that felt it had the mandate of heaven, even when literally killing their own citizens en masse. Hey, so would I. No one likes mass murder.
On the other hand, I'd rather have a government that does good things, like make medical care and education available to people who can't afford to pay for it, than one that's stagnant and unable to do anything.
But I guess if the only thing that matters to you is "government power", then yes, you might think they're the same, because you're ignoring all the substantial differences.
Freedom of the press means you're free to print and distribute whatever you like. The GP is wrong, however, when he says that it would have no restrictions if not for copyright: laws against libel and fraud also restrict freedom of the press.
Restricting the freedom of speech and press isn't always wrong, but it is always serious, and the benefits must be carefully weighed against the costs. Restricting it in order to protect public safety is one thing, but restricting it in order to put money in someone's pocket is quite another.
Can you think of any other property which a person can own but is forbidden from describing to another person? If not, why should we accept this restriction on books and CDs?
A few years ago, I took a trip and checked my bag. On the way there, they lost the bag and I didn't get it back until two days later. On the way back, they somehow punched a hole the size of a silver dollar in it. I've done all I can to avoid checking bags ever since.
Avoiding the wait at the carousel is pretty important too, though. I don't know how the process works, but it seems ridiculous that passengers can make it to the carousel 15 minutes before their luggage. What the hell takes so long?
You can write something which conveys the fact that a certain number beginning with 09 F9 decrypts HD movies, without even mentioning those digits, and if you put in enough effort and imagination then it'll be a bona fide artistic expression. By the same token, you could write a story or a song about any other expression, providing enough facts about that expression for someone to reconstruct it. And if you want to enforce copyright, then that story or song will have to be suppressed too, just like any other restatement of those facts. That sophistry has been outside the goal posts from the very beginning. Perhaps you misunderstood where the goal posts were.
But of course that doesn't appear anywhere in the definition. Facts can be relevant or irrelevant to any particular conversation, but that's orthogonal to their factualness. "The capital of Nebraska is Lincoln" doesn't suddenly stop being a fact the moment we start talking about something other than state capitals.
Nice try moving the goalposts, though.