So, in other words, someone telling congress that they have no right to question their beliefs is "patriotic"
Yes
even if it is done to hide sentiments that show contempt and disdain for one's own country/culture.
Where did you get the idea that's what the original poster's friend were doing? Go ahead. Show me the text. I'll wait.
At the very least, it would be unAmerican of *you* to attempt to silence someone simply because you disagree with what they are saying, yet that is precisely what you seem to be advocating.
Perhaps you arrive at your contradiction because you fallaciously conflate "American" with "patriotic".
And you still seem to find it acceptable for Congress to ever have had anything to do with attempting to squash Communism in America.
Ok, let's back up. We could sit here discussing minutae until we're blue in the face, and it does appear that's the road down which we are headed. I would prefer to back up and look at the bigger picture.
And I'm done equivocating.
The original post that began this stated:
I have many friends and acquaintences who were blacklisted during the McCarthy era, a few of them even cited for contempt of Congress
To which someone replied,
Anyone who is cited or charged for voiceing his or her belives in a nonviolent fashion is a bigger patriot than all those who drive around with a "Support our troops" sticker irregardles of the belives.
To which kfg, the original poster, replied:
Pete's the one who had the guts to stand on the First Amendment, not the Fifth; and declare that Congress did not have the authority to even question him on his beliefs.
There is no information in there as to whether the participant was even a part of the American Communist party. All we know is that someone told Congress that they have no right to question his beliefs - and that much is true. One of the most powerful fundamental principles that this nation was founded upon was the right to freedom of speech and accordingly, the freedom to believe whatever you want to believe.
A free nation consists of MANY different sets of beliefs; their only necessarily common thread in each set of beliefs is that each respect the others and does not attempt to forcefully silence the others.
Someone telling Congress that they have no right to question their beliefs is absolutely patriotic, regardless of the beliefs. That is the very BASIS of the 1st Amendment.
It was Voltaire who said, "I may not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it."
That tenet is echoed many times throughout the writings of our founders and is demonstrated quite eloquently in their actions.
Patriotism in the USA means being proud that you're able to speak your mind and have the liberty and the power to affect change in your nation's affairs. Patriotism means telling Congress that they have no right to question you on your political affiliations; it means telling President Bush that he can take is "Let's Allow Torture" act and shove it, and it means that even if someone spouts off at the mouth a political philosophy that makes you want to hurl from the pit of your stomach, you accept that even they are allowed the freedom to their own ideals.
I believe wholeheartedly that the 'friends' referred to by the original poster were patriotic. That's pretty much all I have to say on the subject.
I think you are unwilling, not unprepared, call American Communists unpatriotic.
Don't put words in my mouth. I know exceedingly little about American Communists and am unprepared to pass judgement on them. I, unlike most, do not pass that kind of half-cocked judgement. I cannot judge something I know next to nothing about. While I am very familiar with Communism, I am very much unaware of any of the actions or beliefs of the Communists in America.
Hence, I can't buy your argument that the ones who were speaking against the rightful persection of American Communists were unfairly targeted
Riiiiiiiight, because every single person McCarthy hauled before the Senate committee was OBVIOUSLY a Commie out to destroy the world. No, self-righteous Senators who need a way to prop up their career have NEVER done ANYTHING that was immoral, unethical, or straight out wrong or made scapegoats of pretty much anything or anyONE in an attempt to further their agenda.
You're mixing "shouldn't have to" and "different technologies". I "shouldn't have to copy my music from a CD to a tape"... but my car only has a tape deck and no CD player. In your case, you either have to burn to CD to stay compatible with the CD player in your car, or buy an iPod and bring it in your car.
Sorry, I thought the parent was talking about having to burn and re-rip to strip the DRM. My mistake, sorry about that. No, I agree with you here.
That's almost the same as if I was complaining that a Windows game won't work on my Mac. I can't do it.
Agh, now it looks like you mixed "shouldn't have to" with "different technologies." Knowing more than just a little bit about game development and OS programming, I know very well why games on one platform won't work out of the box on another platform (although it speaks well of the game developers that they make releases for other platforms).
On the other hand, an MP3 is an open standard, as are almost all other audio codecs, and are fully implementable anywhere. There's nothing about a music file that should make it platform-specific [WMV excluded, of course, along with Sony's proprietary formats, because those ARE attempts to make a simple audio file platform-specific] - only DRM manages to do that; and that gives a very good argument as to why DRM is about vendor lock-in, not about piracy.
I'm not saying that audio files CAN'T be platform specific (again, the WMV and Sony examples) but that there's nothing inherent in audio technology that makes it be. There ARE such factors in games and other applications (cross-platform libraries notwithstanding).
I should have been more specific - ripped from HER CD's that she purchased at a store (not borrowed from a friend and made copies.. in fact, that's interesting, she's not got one song on here that's not from one of her discs or bought from iTunes).
The majority of people I know with iPods have infringed on copyright to get at least some of the music on there. In fact, I can't think of a single person that I personally know who owns an iPod and hasn't downloaded the vast majority of their music collection from some P2P app.
Ok, here's one. My girlfriend has nearly 2,000 songs in iTunes, some purchased, the vast majority ripped from CD's. She has never once used a P2P app.
All this means is that nobody can accurately use the phrase "the majority of iPod users are infringers" because there's seriously no basis for such a statement. If an actual study is done, maybe then.
Errr... no, this time I agree with you completely. This was my first thought when I read the story.. none of this proves any preference of freedom over DRM. Just that people are still more familiar with CD's.
not only don't care about iTunes DRM but don't even know what iTunes "DRM" is or means.
As for moving to throw-away CDs, you can burn your purchased tracks to a regular audio CD.
There's a great quote from X-Men 2:
Pyro: "If you can imitate humans, why not just look like one all the time?"
Mystique: "Because I shouldn't have to."
No, burning songs to a CD isn't a huge problem. But I shouldn't have to.
Aside from illegal uses, I don't see what your problem is, unless you just don't want DRM.
You're forgetting one thing: What if I, Joe User, want to put my iTunes purchased tracks on my shiny new Zune?
I can't do it. That's the biggest problem I have with DRM: Due to vendor lock-in, consumers are no longer relevant to the market. It's all about what various corporate interests want to control.
Please correct me if you think my assessment is incorrect.
I think you misunderstood the poster. HIS friends were the ones unfairly targeted by McCarthyism. That pretty much addresses your entire post, I should think.
But let me be clear: I am unprepared to call American Communists unpatriotic. While those values are not the same ones this nation was founded on, this nation WAS founded on the idea that they be allowed to speak. If they tried to FORCE those ideas on people however (politically or otherwise), that would be another story.
So do we get to apply all of our laws to everyone across the globe, or just the ones you like?
How about the ones relating to human rights. The rest are just fluff and should appropriately vary from place to place (and can we please avoid the argument about "well XYZ country says it's ok to kill female children...")
And before you say "well anything can be construed to be a right," that is true only for the intellectually lazy, as would lazily attempting to apply all our laws to others. Wisdom, and considered opinion, is valued for a reason.
That (above) is, of course, a type of political speech, but it is NOT in any way defending the values and rights that this country was founded on. Certainly one has a right to say it (since we have the right to free speech, ironically one can speak of their hatred for free speech), but it shows nothing but contempt and disdain for the country/culture. Hence, I can't buy the notion that political speech is, by definition, patriotic since political speech can conceivably contain contempt and disdain for one's own country/culture.
I don't disagree, but you're taking an example completely dissimilar to the grand parent poster's and using it as an example of why political speech is not patriotic.
His point was very simple: the people he knew who stood up for their rights in front of Congress were patriotic. It need be no more complicated than that. What THEY did was patriotic. I can sit here and come up with 1000 examples of unpatriotic speech too, and while that speech should be no less free, it is not what the grand parent was talking about when he called them patriotic.
Forgive me if I seem obtuse, but what is so patriotic about voicing an opinion? I thought that patriotism was definined by a love and support of one's country/culture. If an opinion could conceivably be a contempt and disdain for one's country/culture (which many people certainly display), then how can that still be considered "patriotic"? I'm sorry, but I don't see the same sacred value is "voiceing his or her believes" that you do.
The reasons for free speech are complex but my understanding is that when you have people trying to make (possibly shared) decisions then better decisions are made when all points of view are considered.
It's more than that. When applied to the functioning of a Liberal Republic (liberal with an upper-case L, meaning the political theory applied to individual rights-based governance), free speech is absolutely imperative - true liberty and freedom are impossible without it.
Without open discourse, intelligent, considered decisions are impossible. Without open discourse, oppressed minorities have no voice because the majority can say "your opinions are not held widely enough to be important." Open discourse is the very basis of a free culture.
This is why, in reply to the GPP, voicing a political opinion is patriotic. I'm not talking about screaming "Fire!" in a crowded theater - in the specific example in the Grand-GPP, the people he knew stood up to Congress and said "You have no right to question me on this matter."
THAT is political speech at its most powerful, and most important, and that is political speech that defends the values and rights that this nation was founded on.
However, as for your last two, those ammendments ONLY apply to U.S. citizens,
Seriously, where do you get this from?
And even if the Constitution DID explicitly say "citizens", would that still make it right? How many rights violations, what sort of torture, what sort of dehumanization would be too much even for you to accept simply because someone is not a 'citizen'?
The question is not one of whether it is legal, the question is one of whether it is RIGHT.
They ARE enemy combatants who rightfully should be held until the end of the "war."
Right! We could even make things called 'prison ships' and hold prisoners in them indefinitely, until someone smacks us upside the head with the 5th and 6th Amendments to the Constitution:
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Point to the word 'citizen'. Go ahead. I'll wait, just like in my other post. Can't do it?
Then don't go on about how we give rights to non-citizens that they shouldn't have. Looks pretty much to me like the founders intended them to have those rights anyway.
No. Either charge them with something or release them. If there's enough evidence against them to hold them at Guantanemo, there's enough evidence to give them a trial. If there isn't, continuing to hold them makes a mockery of our values and our Constitution and I for one am very disappointed in a leadership that has essentially condoned this behavior.
only there's so little complaining about what they do to us, and so much complaining about what we do to them, that you can only think that some people care more about the "rights" and well being of terrorists than they do of our own citizens and soldiers.
No. The ends do not justify the means. If we sacrifice every value this country has ever held dear in order to prosecute [err, sorry, hold without trial] a few hundred people, we've no more right to exist than a terrorist does. THAT is why people actually care to argue over this - they care about defending the values and rights we have fought so hard for.
complain that people fighting for our enemies are not getting the rights guaranteed by the constitution for U.S. citizens.
Open up the Bill of Rights.
Point to a line number that contains the word 'citizen'. Go ahead. I'll wait.
The reason you won't find it is because our founders held those rights to be self-evident and unalienable. They belong to all humans, not just the citizens of this country.
And the founders knew all too well why this must be so: one of the favorite tactics of British officers prior to the American Revolution was to strip someone of their citizenship in order to deny them the protection of the law.
Apple created Itunes and Ipod to work with each other, and people KNOWING THIS agreed to buy them.
I know very few people who are aware they can only play their iTunes purchased music on an iPod. They believe that if they wanted to play it on another player, they could - there "just aren't any other good players right now."
People did not agree to buy them knowing about the vendor lock-in. In fact, STILL very few people at the moment are even aware of it.
That still doesn't make it right.
If they could not control/profit from them, the creation would have been nonexistent or greatly diminished.
This coming from someone in a culture that believes money is the root of all creation and the only motivator to invent, produce, create or otherwise.
Lots of people create and invent because it gives their lives meaning, because they enjoy it, and by god because THEY WANT TO. You diminish that person everytime you say that unfortunate sentence.
The producers don't get to make the terms of sale. Copyright law does that. They abide by that law, and its purpose, or they don't share their creation.
If they DO share their creation and they violate the terms THEY agreed to, it is your right to break the agreement too (meaning.. you no longer are obligated to abide by the copyright).
Lots of people won't like me saying that but it's true.
We also realize that when joe schmoe can't get his [insert brand] mp3 player to easily work with the store and automatically add purchased media to the mp3 player he is going to call you, despite that fact that you have nothing to do with the support of his mp3 player, thereby costing you more time and money in support. Further we understand that this will affect your image of "just works" because grandma will associate the hassle of getting her music she purchased through your store onto her [insert-brand] thereby causing damage to your image. So Apple, what do you think...you don't mind do you?
This is called government support of a monopoly.
Sorry - people have a right to be able to choose the player they play their music on. They should be able to play that music on any player regardless of where it was purchased - anything less is a government mandated music player (or at the very least, government-approved, through inaction).
What YOU seem to be missing is that that's an unacceptable situation. That is why Apple is being scrutinized.
And no, they don't have to open up their innovations and let everyone else profit from them - that's why they license the FairPlay protocol so that other players can implement it. That would be the.. Fair.. thing to do.
Oh man I love posts like this. I hadn't even thought of the self-evident argument - rights is an issue I am very interested in and it's awesome to see this.
If I had mod points (I never get them, dammit) I'd mod you up.
When I entered engineering school, way back when this stuff (digital replication) was farily new, we got a 1 hour lecture on IP and copyright. It boiled down to this: You buy one copy, you can use one copy. Backing it up is okay. Installing it in multiple locations is okay, as long as only one instance can be used at a time. If you sell the original, you have to wipe the copies - you dont' own it any more. If you can't control the use of a copy, don't make that copy. It boiled down to "treat it like a book".
My office stands by the same approach. We have multiple computers running the same license of Visual Studio. The crux of the issue is that few of us ever use it so we try to make sure only one of us is ever using it at one time. During periods of very high workload, that tends to fall by the wayside, but our accounting department sneers at us when we ask to buy more licenses, so we try to make due.
We do have several backup purchases on hand in case anyone ever comes to us asking about licenses (that is, purchased several copies we don't use, in a half-assed attempt to comply with the license agreement). We don't install them because we're not about install, uninstall, and reinstall with a new license just to comply with the license agreement - Windows is horribly bad at removing installations of ANYTHING and I'm not about to compromise the workability of my computer when I've already done my level best to comply with the licensing.
ARHA seems to imply so, as would buying a cd and making multiple copies for my immediate family and friends, as long as they were on a taxed Music CD.
I don't really feel right making multiple copies for family and friends, but I don't hesitate to make as many copies as I want so I can listen to a CD wherever I want. It's not really feasible for me to keep a CD collection at the office, so I bring them to the office and burn them. I think that more than qualifies as Fair Use.
Interestingly, I was a huge fan of Harvey Danger's first album about 10 years ago, and thought they had disappeared into the moonlight. Imagine my delightful surprise to find them on your list - I'll be downloading their free albums when I get home. Probably will send them some $$ while I'm at it.
Slashdot Mirror
Where did you get the idea that's what the original poster's friend were doing? Go ahead. Show me the text. I'll wait.
At the very least, it would be unAmerican of *you* to attempt to silence someone simply because you disagree with what they are saying, yet that is precisely what you seem to be advocating.
And you still seem to find it acceptable for Congress to ever have had anything to do with attempting to squash Communism in America.
And I'm done equivocating.
The original post that began this stated:
To which someone replied,
To which kfg, the original poster, replied:
There is no information in there as to whether the participant was even a part of the American Communist party. All we know is that someone told Congress that they have no right to question his beliefs - and that much is true. One of the most powerful fundamental principles that this nation was founded upon was the right to freedom of speech and accordingly, the freedom to believe whatever you want to believe.
A free nation consists of MANY different sets of beliefs; their only necessarily common thread in each set of beliefs is that each respect the others and does not attempt to forcefully silence the others.
Someone telling Congress that they have no right to question their beliefs is absolutely patriotic, regardless of the beliefs. That is the very BASIS of the 1st Amendment.
It was Voltaire who said, "I may not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it."
That tenet is echoed many times throughout the writings of our founders and is demonstrated quite eloquently in their actions.
Patriotism in the USA means being proud that you're able to speak your mind and have the liberty and the power to affect change in your nation's affairs. Patriotism means telling Congress that they have no right to question you on your political affiliations; it means telling President Bush that he can take is "Let's Allow Torture" act and shove it, and it means that even if someone spouts off at the mouth a political philosophy that makes you want to hurl from the pit of your stomach, you accept that even they are allowed the freedom to their own ideals.
I believe wholeheartedly that the 'friends' referred to by the original poster were patriotic. That's pretty much all I have to say on the subject.
Riiiiiiiight, because every single person McCarthy hauled before the Senate committee was OBVIOUSLY a Commie out to destroy the world. No, self-righteous Senators who need a way to prop up their career have NEVER done ANYTHING that was immoral, unethical, or straight out wrong or made scapegoats of pretty much anything or anyONE in an attempt to further their agenda.
Agh, now it looks like you mixed "shouldn't have to" with "different technologies." Knowing more than just a little bit about game development and OS programming, I know very well why games on one platform won't work out of the box on another platform (although it speaks well of the game developers that they make releases for other platforms).
On the other hand, an MP3 is an open standard, as are almost all other audio codecs, and are fully implementable anywhere. There's nothing about a music file that should make it platform-specific [WMV excluded, of course, along with Sony's proprietary formats, because those ARE attempts to make a simple audio file platform-specific] - only DRM manages to do that; and that gives a very good argument as to why DRM is about vendor lock-in, not about piracy.
I'm not saying that audio files CAN'T be platform specific (again, the WMV and Sony examples) but that there's nothing inherent in audio technology that makes it be. There ARE such factors in games and other applications (cross-platform libraries notwithstanding).
I should have been more specific - ripped from HER CD's that she purchased at a store (not borrowed from a friend and made copies.. in fact, that's interesting, she's not got one song on here that's not from one of her discs or bought from iTunes).
All this means is that nobody can accurately use the phrase "the majority of iPod users are infringers" because there's seriously no basis for such a statement. If an actual study is done, maybe then.
Errr... no, this time I agree with you completely. This was my first thought when I read the story.. none of this proves any preference of freedom over DRM. Just that people are still more familiar with CD's.
Bingo.
Pyro: "If you can imitate humans, why not just look like one all the time?"
Mystique: "Because I shouldn't have to."
No, burning songs to a CD isn't a huge problem. But I shouldn't have to.
You're forgetting one thing: What if I, Joe User, want to put my iTunes purchased tracks on my shiny new Zune?
I can't do it. That's the biggest problem I have with DRM: Due to vendor lock-in, consumers are no longer relevant to the market. It's all about what various corporate interests want to control.
But let me be clear: I am unprepared to call American Communists unpatriotic. While those values are not the same ones this nation was founded on, this nation WAS founded on the idea that they be allowed to speak. If they tried to FORCE those ideas on people however (politically or otherwise), that would be another story.
And before you say "well anything can be construed to be a right," that is true only for the intellectually lazy, as would lazily attempting to apply all our laws to others. Wisdom, and considered opinion, is valued for a reason.
His point was very simple: the people he knew who stood up for their rights in front of Congress were patriotic. It need be no more complicated than that. What THEY did was patriotic. I can sit here and come up with 1000 examples of unpatriotic speech too, and while that speech should be no less free, it is not what the grand parent was talking about when he called them patriotic.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196644&cid
I hope it makes sense.
Without open discourse, intelligent, considered decisions are impossible. Without open discourse, oppressed minorities have no voice because the majority can say "your opinions are not held widely enough to be important." Open discourse is the very basis of a free culture.
This is why, in reply to the GPP, voicing a political opinion is patriotic. I'm not talking about screaming "Fire!" in a crowded theater - in the specific example in the Grand-GPP, the people he knew stood up to Congress and said "You have no right to question me on this matter."
THAT is political speech at its most powerful, and most important, and that is political speech that defends the values and rights that this nation was founded on.
If that isn't patriotic, I don't know what is.
And even if the Constitution DID explicitly say "citizens", would that still make it right? How many rights violations, what sort of torture, what sort of dehumanization would be too much even for you to accept simply because someone is not a 'citizen'?
The question is not one of whether it is legal, the question is one of whether it is RIGHT.
Point to the word 'citizen'. Go ahead. I'll wait, just like in my other post. Can't do it?
Then don't go on about how we give rights to non-citizens that they shouldn't have. Looks pretty much to me like the founders intended them to have those rights anyway.
No. Either charge them with something or release them. If there's enough evidence against them to hold them at Guantanemo, there's enough evidence to give them a trial. If there isn't, continuing to hold them makes a mockery of our values and our Constitution and I for one am very disappointed in a leadership that has essentially condoned this behavior.
No. The ends do not justify the means. If we sacrifice every value this country has ever held dear in order to prosecute [err, sorry, hold without trial] a few hundred people, we've no more right to exist than a terrorist does. THAT is why people actually care to argue over this - they care about defending the values and rights we have fought so hard for.
Point to a line number that contains the word 'citizen'. Go ahead. I'll wait.
The reason you won't find it is because our founders held those rights to be self-evident and unalienable. They belong to all humans, not just the citizens of this country.
And the founders knew all too well why this must be so: one of the favorite tactics of British officers prior to the American Revolution was to strip someone of their citizenship in order to deny them the protection of the law.
You may find this post interesting
People did not agree to buy them knowing about the vendor lock-in. In fact, STILL very few people at the moment are even aware of it.
That still doesn't make it right.
This coming from someone in a culture that believes money is the root of all creation and the only motivator to invent, produce, create or otherwise.
Lots of people create and invent because it gives their lives meaning, because they enjoy it, and by god because THEY WANT TO. You diminish that person everytime you say that unfortunate sentence.
Hehehe. You walked right into this one.
The producers don't get to make the terms of sale. Copyright law does that. They abide by that law, and its purpose, or they don't share their creation.
If they DO share their creation and they violate the terms THEY agreed to, it is your right to break the agreement too (meaning.. you no longer are obligated to abide by the copyright).
Lots of people won't like me saying that but it's true.
Sorry - people have a right to be able to choose the player they play their music on. They should be able to play that music on any player regardless of where it was purchased - anything less is a government mandated music player (or at the very least, government-approved, through inaction).
What YOU seem to be missing is that that's an unacceptable situation. That is why Apple is being scrutinized.
And no, they don't have to open up their innovations and let everyone else profit from them - that's why they license the FairPlay protocol so that other players can implement it. That would be the.. Fair.. thing to do.
However, I have the sinking feeling we're going to see Cheney in the White House.
Oh man I love posts like this. I hadn't even thought of the self-evident argument - rights is an issue I am very interested in and it's awesome to see this.
If I had mod points (I never get them, dammit) I'd mod you up.
We do have several backup purchases on hand in case anyone ever comes to us asking about licenses (that is, purchased several copies we don't use, in a half-assed attempt to comply with the license agreement). We don't install them because we're not about install, uninstall, and reinstall with a new license just to comply with the license agreement - Windows is horribly bad at removing installations of ANYTHING and I'm not about to compromise the workability of my computer when I've already done my level best to comply with the licensing.
I don't really feel right making multiple copies for family and friends, but I don't hesitate to make as many copies as I want so I can listen to a CD wherever I want. It's not really feasible for me to keep a CD collection at the office, so I bring them to the office and burn them. I think that more than qualifies as Fair Use.
Just wanted to add -
Interestingly, I was a huge fan of Harvey Danger's first album about 10 years ago, and thought they had disappeared into the moonlight. Imagine my delightful surprise to find them on your list - I'll be downloading their free albums when I get home. Probably will send them some $$ while I'm at it.
Yay!
Woohoo! Thanks everyone who answered!