"It gives them the right to publish without prior restraint,"
- Funny thing, that. Damages for publishing what you know to be false are SERIOUS;
Actually, publishing what you know to be false, alone, carries no penalties at all.
there certainly is 'prior restraint',
No, there isn't. Liability is not prior restraint. Only if there was prior restraint, which there is not, would there be no need for vigilance by the potentially harmed.
the legal term is 'due diligence', meaning that you have CHECKED YOUR FUCKING SOURCE AND MADE SURE YOU ARE NOT PUBLISHING SOMETHING FALSE.
Well, no, that kind of action is only legally significant in cases where you have failed to make sure you aren't publishing something false, but tried hard enough to get a legal pass for it in a situation in which you would otherwise be liable.
Wikipedia publishes falsehoods all the time, every day. Some are serious slander. Wikipedia has no "vetting" process despite being a publisher. This IS a problem.
Many things are published on the internet without a "vettign process". Whether or not this is a disadvantage compared to a print publisher, you present no reason to see it a problem compared to the rest of the internet, which is the area within it was asserted that Wikipedia's increasing popularity was problematic.
If you don't like the web as a whole, well, just say that.
If you make legal threats to any publication or its contributors, its a good way to get yourself not to be looked to as a future contributor to that publication."
- If you make a threat to sue a publisher for slander, or send them a cease-and-desist demanding retraction, the publisher is obligated to follow up, and print a retraction.
No, in the conditions you suggest, they are not obligated to do so.
Wikipedia ignores this. Wikipedia, when someone tries to go through their byzantine processes, turns around and says "no wikilawyering, go away" to someone who's been slandered. Or turns around and goes "OMG a legal threat you cant even post here or try to fix it."
What byzantine process?
If you are posting legal threats regarding defamation or simply claims that you were defamed (properly, libel, not slander) on Wikipedia talk pages or articles, then you are clearly not making even a superficial attempt to follow the Wikipedia process on either the issue of defamation (WP:LIBEL) or legal threats (WP:LEGAL).
Wikipedia - "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" - unless you're the person being slandered, or some jumped-up 14 year old with no social skills decides he wants to ban you.
If you are libelled on Wikipedia (that is, if someone posts defamatory unsourced fact claims or fact claims that are sourced falsely; an honestly-sourced fact claim from a false source isn't defamation originating with Wikipedia, and is merely a claim that the other source reported it, which is true), you are absolutely allowed to delete the libel, as laid out in WP:COI and WP:BLP.
And while the wiki-cultists are slapping themselves on the back for expelling a "troll" who "obviously doesnt belong here cuz hes makin legal threats and that aint allowd" [sic], anyone who googles you sees the slander pop up as the #1 search under your name.
Yeah, well, if you are stupid enough not to read the policies and to post legal threats where they aren't allowed, you shouldn't be surprised that the consequences expressly noted for that offense are carried out.
A lot of us are Internet old-timers here on Slashdot, did the Usenet "leadership" flip out like this when some jokingly (or not) called them a cabal? Of course not.
You can make an educated guess at all of those things based on your prior knowledge of the biases of the New York Times, and thus, you have a pretty good sense what shade of light in which to read the article.
Unless you know a lot about the particular author and editor of particular articles, this will often get you completely backwards (and, of course, most sources that claim to inform you of the bias in the NY Times have their own biases, and...)
Now tell me, how are you supposed to know the bias of any given article at Wikipedia?
You aren't.
You are supposed to be ablet to read in light of Wikipedia policies WP:OR and WP:V, and thus to be able to go to the linked sources (something the NY Times rarely has), which are required for every fact claim. And treat every unsourced fact claim as if it was pulled out of the butt of some random person on the internet that can't even follow instructions.
Why are so many people so satisfied with the status quo of being locked-in to Microsoft products?
Because for the average user, Microsoft products (at least Office) do the job required, and do it fairly well, and no one is providing anything that, despite file format incompatibility, provides a compelling reason to change aside from "we're a bit cheaper". Without that, no one is going to get up in arms.
If someone comes up with a way to fill the role of the word processor or spreadsheet in a way stunningly better than Microsoft has, then substantial numbers of people will start chafing at vendor lock-in. As long as most competitors are just making "me too, and you can run me on more OS's" products, they'll have a niche, but not a big push for change.
According to Intel [classmatepc.com], the screen resolution is 800x400. This pales compared to the OLPC's 1200x900 [laptop.org] resolution.
To be fair, Intel says 800x480, and for color the OLPC display is effectively something like 700 x 520; since the 1200x900 is the reflective-mode resolution in which every pixel is either black or white, but in color 1/3 of the pixels are available for each red, green, and blue. Still, 700x520 is only slightly worse overall than 800x480, and lots of uses for an educational machine (like, use as an e-book reader) will benefit from the much higher monochrome resolution on the OLPC.
I read the article and there is no reason why Negroponte objects to Intel's efforts other than it undercuts his own project. If the goal is to have a cheap robust laptop for education, does it matter who makes it?
The objective of the OLPC project is not to have "a cheap, robust laptop for education".
It is to provide educational innovations centered around a cheap, robust laptop for education. OLPC is not just providing a laptop, or a laptop+software, but also coordinating a number of related services and content and content distribution systems, etc.
Isn't this a good thing? Isn't having many companies working towards the same objective, offering similar products, good for competition, and good for making things cheaper in the end?
That depends. If one company without interest in seeing a market develop, but with an interest in guaranteeing that a competitor fails to benefit from a potential market waves promises around in an effort to get people not to hold off buying into the product that its competitor is involved in, and then doesn't follow through with its promises, hat's not a good thing, ad its certainly happened before.
Whether Intel is doing that here is a matter of debate.
Can I buy either one of these? I'd like to get my hands on them to see what they are all about.
OLPC is officially selling only to national governments, though if you had a plan of what to do with them that was generally consistent with the OLPC mission and were willing to purchase in the 250,000 unit lots that they are selling in, they'd probably be willing to talk about making an exception.
dragonwriter: quote:(1) "The internet is not the "entire storehouse of human knowledge" response: are you sure about that?
Yes, I am sure the internet is not the entire storehouse of human knowledge. There are many books which contain human knowledge which are not available in full text on the internet.
Certainly, just because its online, doesn't mean its "knowledge", not as in useful knowledge. but if its NOT online, i would argue that it isn't, actually, knowledge.
Um, okay.
but for scholarly/academic purposes, that stuff very much IS online.
Knowledge is transmitted in other forms that those intended for a scholarly audience. Some of that is online, some is not.
quote: (2) Most people probably get most of their online information from a set of sites that are specific to the kind of information they are usually interested in. response: most people probably? based on what?
Based on my experience dealing with people who use the web. If you've got evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see it.
assuming that google indexing does work as described, the top hit is the one most frequently selected by most searchers, no? so "most people" probably ARE going to wiki, and stopping there, because "most people" aren't in the habit of extensively researching information citing different sources.
This assumes that most people get most of their information online via search, not by going to a known site that concerns the subject. IME, people tend to use search when they don't have a primary site that they use for a given subject, and to go to that primary site if they do. And the more often they use information in a given subject area, the more likely they are to have a one-stop place they go to for it, rather than using a general search engine.
and finally. why is wikipedia dangerous? because its wrong, admittedly anti-expert and pro-mob.
Please provide evidence that wikipedia is "admittedly anti-expert and pro-mob". Since you claim that Wikipedia admits this, you should be able to back it up with official statements from Wikipedia.
Science is not democratic.
Actually, science is a fundamentally democratic system of knowledge that replaces argument by appeal to authority (which, traditionally, largely meant religious authority) with production of repeatable proofs that stand on their own merits and can be verified by those who question the results. The scientific community is not a new priesthood.
An expert is someone conducting original research within a field. I.e. finding out new stuff that hasn't been published elsewhere. And what does wiki say? "no we don't want your expert opinion based on original research you conducted. we would rather have some random crap that some 17-year-old who thinks an INTEREST IN THE SUBJECT equates to KNOWLEDGE OF IT.
This is incorrect. Wikipedia expressly allows editors to include references to original research they conducted, it is just required (as for any other information in Wikipedia) by policy to be sourced to an outside, reliable source. See WP:OR, under "Citing oneself":
This policy does not prohibit editors with specialist knowledge from adding their knowledge to Wikipedia, but it does prohibit them from drawing on their personal knowledge without citing their sources. If an editor has published the results of his or her research in a reliable publication, then s/he may cite that source while writing in the third person and complying with our NPOV policy. See also Wikipedia's guidelines on conflict of interest.
because its dangerous to make stuff up and call it an encyclopedia.
But its apparently just peachy to make stuff up about Wikipedia to defame it.
You don't find hatred and slander of a religion dangerous?
I don't find the frequency of it on Wikipedia compared to the rest of the internet a source for concern about "danger" arising from the increasing popularity of Wikipedia among internet sources of information.
Heck, hatred and slander of religions (Catholicism most certainly included) is common on Slashdot, and yet I don't see people here that are raving about how "dangerous" Wikipedia is saying the same thing about Slashdot.
You don't find people being slandered, which could easily cause them to lose jobs or worse, to be dangerous?
Same response.
The first amendment does NOT give someone the right to slander or libel.
Correct. It gives them the right to publish without prior restraint, which requires that anyone concerned about libel or slander directed at themselves be vigilant and pursue it where it occurs.
"The publisher will engage in editorial review and decide what changes or corrections are appropriate" - and you say this of Wikipedia, where the entire structure is designed to hide those responsible and throw up byzantine mazes of "policy" that, if you actually navigate through, you can be banned for "wikilawyering" and "legal threats"???
Uh, yeah. If you make legal threats to any publication or its contributors, its a good way to get yourself not to be looked to as a future contributor to that publication.
And you REALLY think this isn't dangerous?
I really think you've failed to identify any reason to believe that the increasing popularity of Wikipedia among web searches is a sign of danger, correct.
Property is the ownership of a thing, monopoly is the right to prevent anyone else from creating the thing.
"Property", "ownership", and "monopoly" are all terms for exclusive rights with regard to a subject, including the right to do something(s) with respect to the subject and the simultaneous right to exclude others from doing so. They all can apply regardless of what the particular exclusive rights are.
Creation is part of the scope of the exclusive rights that exist in copyright, but having creation as one of the exclusive rights does not make something into "monopoly" but not "ownership" or "property". Yes, the exclusive rights that exist in intellectual property are different than the exclusive rights that exist in tangible personal property, which are themselves different from the exclusive rights that exist in real property, and all of those are different than the exclusive rights that exist in other classes of intangible personal property aside from intellectual property (and the exclusive rights that exist in various classes of intellectual property differ among eachother.)
You can reasonably argue over whether intellectual property in general, or particular arrangements of exclusive rights in IP, is or are desirable. But trying to argue that they are not property is just ignorant of what property is.
See Also: Essjay, who claimed to be a multiple-doctorate, used that as reason to make the wikipedia article on Catholicism into one of the worst pieces of derogatory shit he could, banned those who tried to counter his lies, and then got found out: turns out that he's a 24 year old dropout with delusions of grandeur and a major hatred for Catholics.
And, so what?
Cleaning up his slander and nastiness will take years - but the Wikicultists are already working on getting him re-adminned under a pseudonym.
Yes, and that's a problem for the utility of Wikipedia (how big is debatable). But how is it dangerous.
See Also: John Siegenthaler and damage done to him.
What damage? Yes, a defamatory article was up for a few months, and removed. I don't see any evidence substantial damage was done, though of course there was understandable and justified offense taken.
Wikipedia cultists would have it that everyone who they come up with an excuse to write a biography page on, is personally responsible for sitting around watching it for vandalism and slander - except they're not allowed to edit it themselves, or request that it be permanently deleted and have that request definitively honored and respected as policy.
Yeah, and so? The first amendment means that everyone is responsible for watching for slander against themselves in any medium, and generally people who don't own the source from which such slander is published don't have the right to edit it themselves, or anything like the policy you suggest. They have the right to complain, of course, and the publisher will engage in editorial review and decide what changes or corrections are appropriate. And they can take action for slander if they are unsatisified.
(And, yeah, it may be hard to do that on the internet in general, given the widespread anonymity. This isn't special to Wikipedia, though.)
Wikiphobes seem to be just as bad as they accuse wikicultists of being.
Not true of the open source movement, I would say, but its not that incoherent of an idea. While the rhetoric of Soviet Communists and American Republicans are very much opposed, the Republican Party, since neoconservatism became an important force within it (and even moreso as it reached its zenith in the present Bush Administration) has adopted quite a bit, tactically, of the Leninist model.
Which probably shouldn't be a surprise given the Trotskyite origins of neoconservatism.
that site has gone beyond annoying, beyond misleading, its actually dangerous. Wiki is at the top of just about every google search. The entire storehouse of human knowledge (i.e. the internet) is being hijacked by a media company (google) via the mindless peddling of "consensus" that is wikipedia.
(1) The internet is not the "entire storehouse of human knowledge", much as Google states that becoming that is their corporate mission. Lots of human knowledge is offline-only, and lots of the internet is not used for anything related to knowledge.
(2) The fact that Wikipedia is a popular source of information on the internet, so much so that it is at the top of many Google searches, does not mean that it is "hijacking" anything, or even that its most people's main source of online information. Google searches aren't the only way people get information on the net. Most people probably get most of their online information from a set of sites that are specific to the kind of information they are usually interested in.
(3) You present no coherent reason to think that Wikipedia is dangerous.
Actually, the real argument lies in debunking the myth of "intellectual property". Simply put, there's no such thing.
Simply put, you are spouting nonsense.
Corporations are trying to create the concept by pure fiat.
No, it was created centuries ago. By pure fiat, sure, but that's how all "property" is created. Property is nothing but a legally exclusive right, whether the subject matter is your wallet (tangible personal property), your house and the land it sits on (real property), a share of stock (intangible personal property), or your copyright in a work you create (also intangible personal property, of the narrower class known as intellectual property).
Jefferson is right. As right now as he was then. Ideas cannot be treated as property.
Ideas probably can't (in that it is literally impossible to do so) be treated as property, but no class of intellectual property can properly be said to apply to "ideas", as such. Applications or particular expressions of ideas can be treated as property, and have been for quite some time. Whether they should be is, of course, a matter of legitimate debate, but one that is not best approached by inaccuracy and hyperbole.
If I take your car, you lose something.
Yes, if you take my car or other tangible personal property, I lose my practical ability to exercise dominion over it.
If you exercise my voting rights on my stock shares, or otherwise exercise the exclusive rights associated with my intangible personal property, I lose my practical ability to exercise dominion over them.
If you take up residence on my land, plant crops, and erect fences, etc., I lose my practical ability to exercise dominion over my real property.
If you violate my copyright, I lose my practical ability to exercise dominion over the subject matter of my copyright.
Ideas are plainly not property. They are something wholly other.
The subjects of intellectual property, which are not "ideas", are plainly different from tangible personal property. But so is real property. That is why most societies distinguish quite strongly between the kind of rights associated with real property and those associated with tangible personal property—to the extent where some societies (such as many Native American groups) and some groups in other society (Georgists being a common modern example) argue against permanent property interests in real property.
But that the subjects of intellectual property are different is hardly sufficient argument that they ought not be subject of some kind of property rights.
Yes, copyrights, patents, trademarks and the like are "monopoly grants" justified by a perceived public good. So are all property rights. The right thing to debate is whether or not a public good warranting the restriction on other's freedom and interests is actually produced by any property protection, because every protection of property limits natural freedom and the common interests all naturally have in the contents of the natural world. Arguing that some subject is somehow inherently not subject to property protection because giving it such protection would instead be a monopoly grant is just playing games, not arguing the important point: all property is a grant of monopoly in some subject.
The insanity starts where it usually does; the Mr. Helprin confuses a monopoly with property (which, of course, is the entire point of calling it intellectual 'property').
Since property is simply an exclusive right to something, or the thing in which such a right exists, that's not a confusion, its exactly correct.
The reason it's good to rent than buy these type of productions is you get to see the show, while the spawn of evil, mpaa, doesn't get one god damn red cent of my money.
I don't think you've thought through the economics of the video rental business very well, but if it is comforting for you to think that you are denying the producers of videos or their industry associations money by renting rather than buying videos, go on telling yourself that.
No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind.
Yes, and that's a perfectly good argument that estates in land should exist for a limited time, too.
if a sound system is used, it's still better to route the signal through the TV so you can control the volume with the same remote as the TV.
Why? If you are using an external audio/video source, then other than for turning the TV on or off, the remote you want to use is the one for that source. Or you'll be using a universal remote that also controls the sound system. In either case, there is no particular reason to want to use a TV-specific remote to control the sound volume for sound from an external source being played through a sound system.
Most legislatures employ lawyers to look over intended laws before they are introduced into the legislative process. These lawyers make sure the wording of the new law states what is intended and is in good legal form.
Most legislatures actually employ (some in the narrow sense, some in a broader sense) several sets of lawyers in this process.
The first is the lawyers employed, on paper, by industry or lobbying groups which actually write the laws that some member of the legislature is convinced to introduced. Then there are lawyers on the staff of individual legislators that review the law and advise the member on it, lawyers on the majority and minority party's staff on each committee that the bill goes through that do analysis, and often lawyers on a nominally nonpartisan legislative counsel office that also do analysis available to members.
Of course, all of that illustrates why stopping lawyers from holding elective office would really not reduce the influence of lawyers in the process, whether for good (understanding the law) or bad (conflict of interest).
If one profession, the law, is forbidden to hold elective office, the other two traditional professions should also be barred, i.e., The Clergy and the Military.
The three traditional "professions" are law, medicine, and the clergy, not law, clergy, and the military.
Polls show both that over 50% of the voting population believes we need a change, yet we reelect the incumbent 95% of the time.
So yes, it is that surprising.
It shouldn't be. There are 535 (voting) members of Congress, 532 of which were not elected by the voter you are questioning. More than 50% believe we need a change, of course. But vastly more of them believe we need a change in the 532 members of Congress that the person be polled didn't have a vote in selecting than in the 3 that they did.
You can have an accent and still pronounce words in such a way that you can properly distinguish between them.
Which words can be properly distinguished by sound alone (rather than context) varies by accent.
The pronunciations in the dictionary are there for a reason, and until people learn to use them, we will still have problems like this.
Except in languages where there is an official prescriptive authority, they exist to document actual usage, and often document several variations which can be ambiguous with other words or combinations of words.
People learning to use them will not change the fact that spoken language, even "proper" spoken language, by any definition, contains ambiguities that cannot be deterministically resolved with 100% accuracy.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, yes, your broadbrush categorical attack on wikipedia admins was pretty much a a textbook example of trolling.
As are, come to think of it, most of your posts about "wikicultists" and "wikitrolls".
Actually, publishing what you know to be false, alone, carries no penalties at all.
No, there isn't. Liability is not prior restraint. Only if there was prior restraint, which there is not, would there be no need for vigilance by the potentially harmed.
Well, no, that kind of action is only legally significant in cases where you have failed to make sure you aren't publishing something false, but tried hard enough to get a legal pass for it in a situation in which you would otherwise be liable.
Many things are published on the internet without a "vettign process". Whether or not this is a disadvantage compared to a print publisher, you present no reason to see it a problem compared to the rest of the internet, which is the area within it was asserted that Wikipedia's increasing popularity was problematic.
If you don't like the web as a whole, well, just say that.
No, in the conditions you suggest, they are not obligated to do so.
What byzantine process?
If you are posting legal threats regarding defamation or simply claims that you were defamed (properly, libel, not slander) on Wikipedia talk pages or articles, then you are clearly not making even a superficial attempt to follow the Wikipedia process on either the issue of defamation (WP:LIBEL) or legal threats (WP:LEGAL).
If you are libelled on Wikipedia (that is, if someone posts defamatory unsourced fact claims or fact claims that are sourced falsely; an honestly-sourced fact claim from a false source isn't defamation originating with Wikipedia, and is merely a claim that the other source reported it, which is true), you are absolutely allowed to delete the libel, as laid out in WP:COI and WP:BLP.
Yeah, well, if you are stupid enough not to read the policies and to post legal threats where they aren't allowed, you shouldn't be surprised that the consequences expressly noted for that offense are carried out.
Usenet leadership? Huh?
Fortunately, no one would get that impression in the 2000s.
Unless you know a lot about the particular author and editor of particular articles, this will often get you completely backwards (and, of course, most sources that claim to inform you of the bias in the NY Times have their own biases, and...)
You aren't.
You are supposed to be ablet to read in light of Wikipedia policies WP:OR and WP:V, and thus to be able to go to the linked sources (something the NY Times rarely has), which are required for every fact claim. And treat every unsourced fact claim as if it was pulled out of the butt of some random person on the internet that can't even follow instructions.
Because for the average user, Microsoft products (at least Office) do the job required, and do it fairly well, and no one is providing anything that, despite file format incompatibility, provides a compelling reason to change aside from "we're a bit cheaper". Without that, no one is going to get up in arms.
If someone comes up with a way to fill the role of the word processor or spreadsheet in a way stunningly better than Microsoft has, then substantial numbers of people will start chafing at vendor lock-in. As long as most competitors are just making "me too, and you can run me on more OS's" products, they'll have a niche, but not a big push for change.
To be fair, Intel says 800x480, and for color the OLPC display is effectively something like 700 x 520; since the 1200x900 is the reflective-mode resolution in which every pixel is either black or white, but in color 1/3 of the pixels are available for each red, green, and blue. Still, 700x520 is only slightly worse overall than 800x480, and lots of uses for an educational machine (like, use as an e-book reader) will benefit from the much higher monochrome resolution on the OLPC.
The objective of the OLPC project is not to have "a cheap, robust laptop for education".
It is to provide educational innovations centered around a cheap, robust laptop for education. OLPC is not just providing a laptop, or a laptop+software, but also coordinating a number of related services and content and content distribution systems, etc.
That depends. If one company without interest in seeing a market develop, but with an interest in guaranteeing that a competitor fails to benefit from a potential market waves promises around in an effort to get people not to hold off buying into the product that its competitor is involved in, and then doesn't follow through with its promises, hat's not a good thing, ad its certainly happened before.
Whether Intel is doing that here is a matter of debate.
OLPC is officially selling only to national governments, though if you had a plan of what to do with them that was generally consistent with the OLPC mission and were willing to purchase in the 250,000 unit lots that they are selling in, they'd probably be willing to talk about making an exception.
Yes, I am sure the internet is not the entire storehouse of human knowledge. There are many books which contain human knowledge which are not available in full text on the internet.
Um, okay.
Knowledge is transmitted in other forms that those intended for a scholarly audience. Some of that is online, some is not.
Based on my experience dealing with people who use the web. If you've got evidence to the contrary, I'd love to see it.
This assumes that most people get most of their information online via search, not by going to a known site that concerns the subject. IME, people tend to use search when they don't have a primary site that they use for a given subject, and to go to that primary site if they do. And the more often they use information in a given subject area, the more likely they are to have a one-stop place they go to for it, rather than using a general search engine.
Please provide evidence that wikipedia is "admittedly anti-expert and pro-mob". Since you claim that Wikipedia admits this, you should be able to back it up with official statements from Wikipedia.
Actually, science is a fundamentally democratic system of knowledge that replaces argument by appeal to authority (which, traditionally, largely meant religious authority) with production of repeatable proofs that stand on their own merits and can be verified by those who question the results. The scientific community is not a new priesthood.
This is incorrect. Wikipedia expressly allows editors to include references to original research they conducted, it is just required (as for any other information in Wikipedia) by policy to be sourced to an outside, reliable source. See WP:OR, under "Citing oneself":
This policy does not prohibit editors with specialist knowledge from adding their knowledge to Wikipedia, but it does prohibit them from drawing on their personal knowledge without citing their sources. If an editor has published the results of his or her research in a reliable publication, then s/he may cite that source while writing in the third person and complying with our NPOV policy. See also Wikipedia's guidelines on conflict of interest.
But its apparently just peachy to make stuff up about Wikipedia to defame it.
Got it.
I don't find the frequency of it on Wikipedia compared to the rest of the internet a source for concern about "danger" arising from the increasing popularity of Wikipedia among internet sources of information.
Heck, hatred and slander of religions (Catholicism most certainly included) is common on Slashdot, and yet I don't see people here that are raving about how "dangerous" Wikipedia is saying the same thing about Slashdot.
Same response.
Correct. It gives them the right to publish without prior restraint, which requires that anyone concerned about libel or slander directed at themselves be vigilant and pursue it where it occurs.
Uh, yeah. If you make legal threats to any publication or its contributors, its a good way to get yourself not to be looked to as a future contributor to that publication.
I really think you've failed to identify any reason to believe that the increasing popularity of Wikipedia among web searches is a sign of danger, correct.
"Property", "ownership", and "monopoly" are all terms for exclusive rights with regard to a subject, including the right to do something(s) with respect to the subject and the simultaneous right to exclude others from doing so. They all can apply regardless of what the particular exclusive rights are.
Creation is part of the scope of the exclusive rights that exist in copyright, but having creation as one of the exclusive rights does not make something into "monopoly" but not "ownership" or "property". Yes, the exclusive rights that exist in intellectual property are different than the exclusive rights that exist in tangible personal property, which are themselves different from the exclusive rights that exist in real property, and all of those are different than the exclusive rights that exist in other classes of intangible personal
property aside from intellectual property (and the exclusive rights that exist in various classes of intellectual property differ among eachother.)
You can reasonably argue over whether intellectual property in general, or particular arrangements of exclusive rights in IP, is or are desirable. But trying to argue that they are not property is just ignorant of what property is.
And, so what?
Yes, and that's a problem for the utility of Wikipedia (how big is debatable). But how is it dangerous.
What damage? Yes, a defamatory article was up for a few months, and removed. I don't see any evidence substantial damage was done, though of course there was understandable and justified offense taken.
Yeah, and so? The first amendment means that everyone is responsible for watching for slander against themselves in any medium, and generally people who don't own the source from which such slander is published don't have the right to edit it themselves, or anything like the policy you suggest. They have the right to complain, of course, and the publisher will engage in editorial review and decide what changes or corrections are appropriate. And they can take action for slander if they are unsatisified.
(And, yeah, it may be hard to do that on the internet in general, given the widespread anonymity. This isn't special to Wikipedia, though.)
Wikiphobes seem to be just as bad as they accuse wikicultists of being.
Not true of the open source movement, I would say, but its not that incoherent of an idea. While the rhetoric of Soviet Communists and American Republicans are very much opposed, the Republican Party, since neoconservatism became an important force within it (and even moreso as it reached its zenith in the present Bush Administration) has adopted quite a bit, tactically, of the Leninist model.
Which probably shouldn't be a surprise given the Trotskyite origins of neoconservatism.
(1) The internet is not the "entire storehouse of human knowledge", much as Google states that becoming that is their corporate mission. Lots of human knowledge is offline-only, and lots of the internet is not used for anything related to knowledge.
(2) The fact that Wikipedia is a popular source of information on the internet, so much so that it is at the top of many Google searches, does not mean that it is "hijacking" anything, or even that its most people's main source of online information. Google searches aren't the only way people get information on the net. Most people probably get most of their online information from a set of sites that are specific to the kind of information they are usually interested in.
(3) You present no coherent reason to think that Wikipedia is dangerous.
Simply put, you are spouting nonsense.
No, it was created centuries ago. By pure fiat, sure, but that's how all "property" is created. Property is nothing but a legally exclusive right, whether the subject matter is your wallet (tangible personal property), your house and the land it sits on (real property), a share of stock (intangible personal property), or your copyright in a work you create (also intangible personal property, of the narrower class known as intellectual property).
Ideas probably can't (in that it is literally impossible to do so) be treated as property, but no class of intellectual property can properly be said to apply to "ideas", as such. Applications or particular expressions of ideas can be treated as property, and have been for quite some time. Whether they should be is, of course, a matter of legitimate debate, but one that is not best approached by inaccuracy and hyperbole.
Yes, if you take my car or other tangible personal property, I lose my practical ability to exercise dominion over it.
If you exercise my voting rights on my stock shares, or otherwise exercise the exclusive rights associated with my intangible personal property, I lose my practical ability to exercise dominion over them.
If you take up residence on my land, plant crops, and erect fences, etc., I lose my practical ability to exercise dominion over my real property.
If you violate my copyright, I lose my practical ability to exercise dominion over the subject matter of my copyright.
The subjects of intellectual property, which are not "ideas", are plainly different from tangible personal property. But so is real property. That is why most societies distinguish quite strongly between the kind of rights associated with real property and those associated with tangible personal property—to the extent where some societies (such as many Native American groups) and some groups in other society (Georgists being a common modern example) argue against permanent property interests in real property.
But that the subjects of intellectual property are different is hardly sufficient argument that they ought not be subject of some kind of property rights.
Yes, copyrights, patents, trademarks and the like are "monopoly grants" justified by a perceived public good. So are all property rights. The right thing to debate is whether or not a public good warranting the restriction on other's freedom and interests is actually produced by any property protection, because every protection of property limits natural freedom and the common interests all naturally have in the contents of the natural world. Arguing that some subject is somehow inherently not subject to property protection because giving it such protection would instead be a monopoly grant is just playing games, not arguing the important point: all property is a grant of monopoly in some subject.
Since property is simply an exclusive right to something, or the thing in which such a right exists, that's not a confusion, its exactly correct.
I don't think you've thought through the economics of the video rental business very well, but if it is comforting for you to think that you are denying the producers of videos or their industry associations money by renting rather than buying videos, go on telling yourself that.
Yes, and that's a perfectly good argument that estates in land should exist for a limited time, too.
It would be nice to see magic pixies appear beside my desk handing me gold coins, too.
Slightly more probable than this particular suit forcing reasonable patent reform, too.
Why? If you are using an external audio/video source, then other than for turning the TV on or off, the remote you want to use is the one for that source. Or you'll be using a universal remote that also controls the sound system. In either case, there is no particular reason to want to use a TV-specific remote to control the sound volume for sound from an external source being played through a sound system.
Most legislatures actually employ (some in the narrow sense, some in a broader sense) several sets of lawyers in this process.
The first is the lawyers employed, on paper, by industry or lobbying groups which actually write the laws that some member of the legislature is convinced to introduced. Then there are lawyers on the staff of individual legislators that review the law and advise the member on it, lawyers on the majority and minority party's staff on each committee that the bill goes through that do analysis, and often lawyers on a nominally nonpartisan legislative counsel office that also do analysis available to members.
Of course, all of that illustrates why stopping lawyers from holding elective office would really not reduce the influence of lawyers in the process, whether for good (understanding the law) or bad (conflict of interest).
The three traditional "professions" are law, medicine, and the clergy, not law, clergy, and the military.
It shouldn't be. There are 535 (voting) members of Congress, 532 of which were not elected by the voter you are questioning. More than 50% believe we need a change, of course. But vastly more of them believe we need a change in the 532 members of Congress that the person be polled didn't have a vote in selecting than in the 3 that they did.
Which words can be properly distinguished by sound alone (rather than context) varies by accent.
Except in languages where there is an official prescriptive authority, they exist to document actual usage, and often document several variations which can be ambiguous with other words or combinations of words.
People learning to use them will not change the fact that spoken language, even "proper" spoken language, by any definition, contains ambiguities that cannot be deterministically resolved with 100% accuracy.