If the alleged wiretaps are so squeaky clean--i.e. only occuring under the limited circumstances that have been made public by the administration--then why did they reject the legal framework that was already in place for such actions? All they had to do was go before a secret court and argue that the person or persons under surveillance were attempting to aid a foreign power. They could even apply for retroactive warrants after the surveillance had already begun. The circumstances they describe easily fall within the court's area of review--and the court almost never rejected the government's requests.
Since the surveillance intentionally circumvented federal laws requiring judicail oversight, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to call them "illegal," though I will grant you they need to be reviewed by the judiciary--and until they are their legality is a matter of opinion. Also, one only has to qualify as a "U.S. person" as opposed to a U.S. citizen in order to fall under the protections of FISA--meaning that any legal resident of the United States is proteted from unwarranted government wiretaps.
I believe that what your proposal boils down to is a bunch of elites deciding who gets to reproduce. They would decide what the measures of "good" and "bad" breeding will be--most likely in a way that reinforces their own privilege. I am especially suspicious of the police-state apparatus that would be needed to spy on families in such a system--child protective services is scary enough without giving them the authority over the genes of the human race. And I believe that--despite your intentions--such a program would become about genetic "purity" as opposed to birth control rather quickly--and again it will serve to reinforce privilege.
Anyway, before such drastic action is even considered, we should put more dollars into social programs that teach about birth control systems as opposed to placing such an emphasis on abstinence.
You illiterate dumbasses and your calls for stupid people to "loose" fingers and for having eugenics like the "nazi's" did would be the first against the wall when the revolution came.
I apologize for the typo, thanks for pointing it out. And for the record, I never called for eugenic practices, nor anyone's death--though it seems you did call for mine. My purpose was to draw an appropriate correlation between the practices indicated by the parent and Nazi programs in order to show the danger inherent in such practices.
Wikipedia's eugenics article defines eugenics as, "a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention." The purpose of your program is different, though: you aim to improve human behavior as opposed to the gene pool. Under this model, uncontrolled reproduction is a crime and the punishment is to have criminals' breeding privileges revoked for the good of society. If your real aim is to alter behavior and not the genetic landscape of the race, then why not use conventional punishments for "uncontrolled breeding?" Not to mention creating more positive reinforcments for "good" breeding? In the United States we consider it to be cruel and unusual punishment to cut off the hand of a thief. How is this different? And I think I've heard it before about how "humane" sterilization is...
In China, couples are limited to one child and that's it. I'm not sure I'd like to live under such a regime; there are reports of them performing sterilizations and forced abortions on those who break the rules... sounds rather par for the course in totalitarian society. The real bottom line for me is that forced sterilization is a critical component of any eugenic program--and much more palatable than "euthanasia." Good luck putting the genie back in the bottle if things get out of hand.
It's still mandatory sterilization. The free will vs. genetic predetermination argument lends itself easily to this debate, since the purpose of the program is eugenic: i.e. make "bad" parents unable to spread their "disease" by continuing to reproduce. Or is that just a beneficial side-effect? If so, what is the real purpose?
It sounds like you're just dressing it up in new scientific and legal terms, by saying that a parent's track-record will determine a legal threshhold for sterilization. The track record of that kind of program speaks for itself: women, lower classes (as evidenced by your K-mart comments), and indigenous people are disproportionately targetted. Will they be targetted because they are just straight-up inferior genetically? Or perhaps you have some fool-proof legislation that will account for the spoiled kids of wealthy parents who just don't care to raise them "properly." But those wealthy parents can hire some pretty good lawyers...
Eugenics was very popular from the 19th century up through the 1940's when the Nazi's used it to justify "mandatory euthanasia" of "undesireables": "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow Germans, that is your money, too." The United States had a very active compulsory sterilization program during this time. In fact, some of Hitler's own ideas may have been inspired by the American eugenics movement...
If the radio station made direct agreements with every composer that they play and pay those composers directly, why would the station have to pay anyone else for the composition? They choose not to make arrangements directly with every single song-writer because it is much less expensive to just pay the fees to ASCAP/BMI/whoever.
The statutory license does not exclude directly negotiated licensing deals as I understand it. No one can forbid direct licensing deals--the right to engage in these kinds of agreements cannot be circumvented by Congress or anyone else. In other words services are free to use Creative Commons licensed material or material under any other license or agreement. If a service exclusively uses such material, it certainly seems that they would be exempt from SoundExchange fees and reporting. If only some of their content falls into this royalty-free category, then what's to stop them from excluding that portion from their SoundExchange reporting? SoundExchange cannot collect fees on directly licensed material, only that which is used under the statutory license...
There are two alternatives to this regime: either artists and copyright owners don't get paid, or they get paid directly by the streaming services. I don't think the streaming services want to be in the business of trying to find all these guys. I recognize that SoundExchange may not be completely worthy of your trust in providing royalties, but there is no other organization that is geared toward paying performing artists and sound recording copyright owners the money that Congress indicated that they are entitled to under the statutory license. So either webcasters have the choice of going with the existing royatly structure, or they can put together their own negotiated system, which may be a good thing, but that process won't be free either...
What's happening here, is that the record companies are worried that there sales are headed for zero.
You're right. I think that expansion of internet usage has benefitted the independent labels more than the majors. So the majors are trying to leverage their existing repertoire into new income streams so that they can maintain executive salaries. And fair use is unlikely to factor in their calculations to this end. And I'll wager that the indies want their cut of that action as well. I just feel like the entertainment industry got taken over by lawyers at some point...
I do like your idea of "free" radio composed entirely of public domain materials, i.e. Creative Commons, since such a model would be free of the royalty regimes. Of course the problem there is that it doesn't seem like freely licensed music has enough "premium" content to really catch on in the market right now. A more likely solution may be to set up aggregating services that partner with labels (no doubt indies) which will set up direct licensing deals with various radio stations/webcasters/podcasters, etc. to provide a negiotiated fee-structure for directly licensed content. If the fees are pushing people out of the business, there's a negotiated solution that could benefit everyone involved.
Of course then the majors will start suing people for whistling to make up for the lost revenue.
Statutorylicensing works by creating an exemption to copyright law for services (webcasters for example) who meet certain requirements. The service does not have to negotiate with the content owner who owns rights to the song/recording--they play whatever music they want and pay a flat fee. I'm guessing the "license" for regular radio will work the same way.
I would just like to add that this little excercise just highlights the fact that we need better transparency for the vote-counting procedures around here. The evidence does not necessarily point to a conspiracy to manipulate votes, but there is definitely a major trend away from any type of accountability. I believe it was Stalin who said, "He who votes decides nothing. He who counts the votes decides everything."
In racing (and crashing) games, there is an element of simulation. So having taken risks in the sim, is a player more likely to take similar risks in real life? Maybe. And after countless simulated crashes, maybe these drivers are more qualified than others to take risks on the road (not that it's any safer)... This is true of a lot of games: simulation and mastery of complex situations can lead to altering one's behavior in rl, potentially in both positive and negative ways. Now can we fault the makers of the game for any of these alterations? I don't think so...
That Sandia would want to cover this up is not surprising. Remember the Cox Report? According to that Congressional study, U.S. aerospace defense contractors have been the subject of "decades of intelligence operations... conducted by the Ministry of State Security" of the Peoples' Republic and that the PRC successfully stole U.S. nuclear technology. It was a big scandal ten years ago.
Though at the time a lot of finger-pointing and security legislation prevailed, the long term effects seem to be negligible: "After Carpenter's termination, the investigations into the Titan Rain group appear to have gone nowhere, said Winkler, a former National Security Agency analyst." Sounds like this trade is of benefit to people with enough juice to make long-term threats to their enterprise disappear...
But by the same token, if someone's intellectual property causes illness (i.e. causing someone's liver to fail, as in the case of Hep C) can I not sue the life out the company that owns that property? I'm sure that people would cease their infringement as soon as the copyright owner provides a free search-and-remove tool.
In order to proove that "I'll do X" would financially damage Google, they would have to provide some kind of supporting evidence that the product's public release would hurt them. I think it's safe to assume that this evidence consists of closely gaurded trade secrets that Google did not want to risk exposing in open court...
Software patents are like nuclear warheads. Companies amass a whole bunch of them so that if somebody starts the war, they will have retailatory salvo. If Microsoft sues Yahoo for patent infringement, they counter-sue. It's about increasing the risk to the potential claimant--mutually assured destruction.
Slashdot Mirror
...by someone who wants to go to prison or by someone who's not human?
Perhaps it was redacted by /. editors.
He may have a good point about making room for "wild ducks" in the research field, but I'm not sure we need more quacks in medicine...
Drugs.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Thanks, good save.
If the alleged wiretaps are so squeaky clean--i.e. only occuring under the limited circumstances that have been made public by the administration--then why did they reject the legal framework that was already in place for such actions? All they had to do was go before a secret court and argue that the person or persons under surveillance were attempting to aid a foreign power. They could even apply for retroactive warrants after the surveillance had already begun. The circumstances they describe easily fall within the court's area of review--and the court almost never rejected the government's requests.
Since the surveillance intentionally circumvented federal laws requiring judicail oversight, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to call them "illegal," though I will grant you they need to be reviewed by the judiciary--and until they are their legality is a matter of opinion. Also, one only has to qualify as a "U.S. person" as opposed to a U.S. citizen in order to fall under the protections of FISA--meaning that any legal resident of the United States is proteted from unwarranted government wiretaps.
I believe that what your proposal boils down to is a bunch of elites deciding who gets to reproduce. They would decide what the measures of "good" and "bad" breeding will be--most likely in a way that reinforces their own privilege. I am especially suspicious of the police-state apparatus that would be needed to spy on families in such a system--child protective services is scary enough without giving them the authority over the genes of the human race. And I believe that--despite your intentions--such a program would become about genetic "purity" as opposed to birth control rather quickly--and again it will serve to reinforce privilege.
Anyway, before such drastic action is even considered, we should put more dollars into social programs that teach about birth control systems as opposed to placing such an emphasis on abstinence.
You illiterate dumbasses and your calls for stupid people to "loose" fingers and for having eugenics like the "nazi's" did would be the first against the wall when the revolution came.
I apologize for the typo, thanks for pointing it out. And for the record, I never called for eugenic practices, nor anyone's death--though it seems you did call for mine. My purpose was to draw an appropriate correlation between the practices indicated by the parent and Nazi programs in order to show the danger inherent in such practices.
Wikipedia's eugenics article defines eugenics as, "a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention." The purpose of your program is different, though: you aim to improve human behavior as opposed to the gene pool. Under this model, uncontrolled reproduction is a crime and the punishment is to have criminals' breeding privileges revoked for the good of society. If your real aim is to alter behavior and not the genetic landscape of the race, then why not use conventional punishments for "uncontrolled breeding?" Not to mention creating more positive reinforcments for "good" breeding? In the United States we consider it to be cruel and unusual punishment to cut off the hand of a thief. How is this different? And I think I've heard it before about how "humane" sterilization is...
In China, couples are limited to one child and that's it. I'm not sure I'd like to live under such a regime; there are reports of them performing sterilizations and forced abortions on those who break the rules... sounds rather par for the course in totalitarian society. The real bottom line for me is that forced sterilization is a critical component of any eugenic program--and much more palatable than "euthanasia." Good luck putting the genie back in the bottle if things get out of hand.
It's still mandatory sterilization. The free will vs. genetic predetermination argument lends itself easily to this debate, since the purpose of the program is eugenic: i.e. make "bad" parents unable to spread their "disease" by continuing to reproduce. Or is that just a beneficial side-effect? If so, what is the real purpose?
It sounds like you're just dressing it up in new scientific and legal terms, by saying that a parent's track-record will determine a legal threshhold for sterilization. The track record of that kind of program speaks for itself: women, lower classes (as evidenced by your K-mart comments), and indigenous people are disproportionately targetted. Will they be targetted because they are just straight-up inferior genetically? Or perhaps you have some fool-proof legislation that will account for the spoiled kids of wealthy parents who just don't care to raise them "properly." But those wealthy parents can hire some pretty good lawyers...
Eugenics was very popular from the 19th century up through the 1940's when the Nazi's used it to justify "mandatory euthanasia" of "undesireables": "This person suffering from hereditary defects costs the community 60,000 Reichsmark during his lifetime. Fellow Germans, that is your money, too." The United States had a very active compulsory sterilization program during this time. In fact, some of Hitler's own ideas may have been inspired by the American eugenics movement...
How's that for a slippery slope?
I like Moby Dick, you insensitive clod! Of course, it's no Flatland ...
Mark Twain defined a literary classic as a book that people praise but don't read. You want a classic? I give you English as She is Spoke .
If the radio station made direct agreements with every composer that they play and pay those composers directly, why would the station have to pay anyone else for the composition? They choose not to make arrangements directly with every single song-writer because it is much less expensive to just pay the fees to ASCAP/BMI/whoever.
The statutory license does not exclude directly negotiated licensing deals as I understand it. No one can forbid direct licensing deals--the right to engage in these kinds of agreements cannot be circumvented by Congress or anyone else. In other words services are free to use Creative Commons licensed material or material under any other license or agreement. If a service exclusively uses such material, it certainly seems that they would be exempt from SoundExchange fees and reporting. If only some of their content falls into this royalty-free category, then what's to stop them from excluding that portion from their SoundExchange reporting? SoundExchange cannot collect fees on directly licensed material, only that which is used under the statutory license...
There are two alternatives to this regime: either artists and copyright owners don't get paid, or they get paid directly by the streaming services. I don't think the streaming services want to be in the business of trying to find all these guys. I recognize that SoundExchange may not be completely worthy of your trust in providing royalties, but there is no other organization that is geared toward paying performing artists and sound recording copyright owners the money that Congress indicated that they are entitled to under the statutory license. So either webcasters have the choice of going with the existing royatly structure, or they can put together their own negotiated system, which may be a good thing, but that process won't be free either...
What's happening here, is that the record companies are worried that there sales are headed for zero.
You're right. I think that expansion of internet usage has benefitted the independent labels more than the majors. So the majors are trying to leverage their existing repertoire into new income streams so that they can maintain executive salaries. And fair use is unlikely to factor in their calculations to this end. And I'll wager that the indies want their cut of that action as well. I just feel like the entertainment industry got taken over by lawyers at some point...
I do like your idea of "free" radio composed entirely of public domain materials, i.e. Creative Commons, since such a model would be free of the royalty regimes. Of course the problem there is that it doesn't seem like freely licensed music has enough "premium" content to really catch on in the market right now. A more likely solution may be to set up aggregating services that partner with labels (no doubt indies) which will set up direct licensing deals with various radio stations/webcasters/podcasters, etc. to provide a negiotiated fee-structure for directly licensed content. If the fees are pushing people out of the business, there's a negotiated solution that could benefit everyone involved.
Of course then the majors will start suing people for whistling to make up for the lost revenue.
Not really.
Statutory licensing works by creating an exemption to copyright law for services (webcasters for example) who meet certain requirements. The service does not have to negotiate with the content owner who owns rights to the song/recording--they play whatever music they want and pay a flat fee. I'm guessing the "license" for regular radio will work the same way.
I don't have to watch it, but I do have to pay for it...
I would just like to add that this little excercise just highlights the fact that we need better transparency for the vote-counting procedures around here. The evidence does not necessarily point to a conspiracy to manipulate votes, but there is definitely a major trend away from any type of accountability. I believe it was Stalin who said, "He who votes decides nothing. He who counts the votes decides everything."
In racing (and crashing) games, there is an element of simulation. So having taken risks in the sim, is a player more likely to take similar risks in real life? Maybe. And after countless simulated crashes, maybe these drivers are more qualified than others to take risks on the road (not that it's any safer)... This is true of a lot of games: simulation and mastery of complex situations can lead to altering one's behavior in rl, potentially in both positive and negative ways. Now can we fault the makers of the game for any of these alterations? I don't think so...
That Sandia would want to cover this up is not surprising. Remember the Cox Report? According to that Congressional study, U.S. aerospace defense contractors have been the subject of "decades of intelligence operations... conducted by the Ministry of State Security" of the Peoples' Republic and that the PRC successfully stole U.S. nuclear technology. It was a big scandal ten years ago. Though at the time a lot of finger-pointing and security legislation prevailed, the long term effects seem to be negligible: "After Carpenter's termination, the investigations into the Titan Rain group appear to have gone nowhere, said Winkler, a former National Security Agency analyst." Sounds like this trade is of benefit to people with enough juice to make long-term threats to their enterprise disappear...
But by the same token, if someone's intellectual property causes illness (i.e. causing someone's liver to fail, as in the case of Hep C) can I not sue the life out the company that owns that property? I'm sure that people would cease their infringement as soon as the copyright owner provides a free search-and-remove tool.
At least their censorship doesn't include blurring out anything based on obscenity.
In order to proove that "I'll do X" would financially damage Google, they would have to provide some kind of supporting evidence that the product's public release would hurt them. I think it's safe to assume that this evidence consists of closely gaurded trade secrets that Google did not want to risk exposing in open court...
Software patents are like nuclear warheads. Companies amass a whole bunch of them so that if somebody starts the war, they will have retailatory salvo. If Microsoft sues Yahoo for patent infringement, they counter-sue. It's about increasing the risk to the potential claimant--mutually assured destruction.