I've already replied to the second claim enough times here to make me nauseous. Take a look at my history if you really want an answer, though I suspect you do not.
"Currency is an artificial economic construct, so should we allow counterfeiting as well?"
Currency represents value; it has no inherent value (these days). Yet, at one time, there was a tend of having money backed by real value, as well as people printing their own money left and right legally. The point being - currency exists for a reason I'm not debating, to allow exchange of goods and services for future goods and services. If someone wants to debate that reasoning, more power to them, it is totally aside from my positions on copyright.
Essentially, you cannot simply act as if copyright is gospel because it exists. Copyright ought to have the same cost-benefit analysis we give to systems like currency. We allow the restriction of counterfeit because it confuses monetary systems and costs the government money. It undermines the idea of currency. Piracy undermines the idea of copyright - yes. That is good, because the more it does, the less people can take the idea of copyright as a foregone conclusion, apart from any value it provides to society as a whole.
However, as it stands, it never gets this kind of analysis in today's society. I find the concept of owning an idea or information disgusting, on top of the proven harm it does to many fields when carried to its logical conclusion (see music industry). Copyright is not property inherently (and not legally in the purest sense, either); infringement upon it is not stealing. The world will not end when we abolish it, and if I ever said one thing with certainty, it is this: that's only a matter of time.
Liberals might run the government poorly, but conservatives want to give the government to the rich. Personally, I'd rather a system I can at least in theory vote in, over the Social Darwinism championed by libertarians.
"Historically, government is an oppressor and everything it does should be treated with suspicion or you deserve what you get."
Read up on the East India Company. And before telling me it was government-connected, think about how much of a difference that made in how it operated or to the people it oppressed.
Violating laws made to protect an artificial economic construct isn't shameful in the least, which is why its association has actually made "pirate" a positive term.
Because the whole thing has no business existing. Because the correct direction in copyright matters is abolition, not expanding it even one inch in ways that might serve to censor.
Frog boiling applies poorly to politics. People's expectations of freedom slowly increase. That's why surfdom, absolute monarchy, and slavery are no longer acceptable. I am quite certain that our current control-oriented mindset is temporary. Eventually, it will become intolerable (we're already nearing it), and the result will be greater freedom overall than before. That process might be avoidable, but history suggests oppression comes slowly, and freedom comes in greater bursts.
There is another meme that applies: to make an omelet, you need to break a few eggs.
...until the United States loses this power. You can't abuse control of a protocol like this and not have people in other countries (like Europe and Japan) start to wonder if they should break off.
Translation: we're cowards, you should be, too. No wonder the world is so messed up. There was a time when Americans would die to right trivial wrongs, but now they hide from even threat of a lawsuit and shrug moral and social responsibility.
More often than not, they are "invented" based on research done at universities; including publicly funded ones. We should be cutting the middle-man and funding those projects more, rather than creating artificial property to encourage corporations to "invent" drugs.
"Copyright is for protecting written information."
Copyright is for controlling the distribution of information. The only protection for information is duplication and distrubition.
Re:Software development is being offshored/inshore
on
Reading, Writing, Ruby?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"College/University is not a trade school"
Yes it is. Of the people who go to college, only a tiny minority will say it is because they want to learn for the sake of learning. Likely, because learning no longer requires attendance at a physical university. What a university provides is a sort of certification. Everyone with a serious goal in life goes because they more or less have to go, in order to be allowed into certain fields. Getting into those fields makes a better life.
I might agree with you somewhat, so far as college does not teach a trade. It is a costly exercise in bureaucracy and wasting of 4-6 years of everyone's time at taxpayer expense for people who do not want to be there (for good reason). Of course, the source of that problem is opinions like yours - that college has some kind of intrinsic value. It somehow makes you better, hence, it is not a "trade school" which teaches you a trade. If this is the case or not is fairly irrelevant; it is not how it is seen by those in it, so it is not how it is treated by them.
Then, of course, there are those who use college as a buffer of party time between highschool and work. I'd dare say they make up a bigger portion of college population than either learners or goal seekers...
"Businesses cannot (legally) use threats to coerce your behavior and force you to do things...the government can. The government, like the mafia, uses the threat of violence against you"
They can't? Every had your electric shut off, threatened to be disconnected from the internet, sued by a business for something, received a C&D, etc? That's not even getting into the fact businesses have and DO use force on the scale of the military. The only reason they do not currently use it on a mass scale is that, heaven forbid, they have lawsuits to fear should they abuse the rights of people. Look up Pinkertons, you'll be amazed how alike business and government can become when unregulated.
You'll see, I hope, why I say they are not different. The only reason the difference you cited exists is because the government has disallowed businesses to violate certain rights. It is not a part of the concept of businesses in general.
"Businesses may do a lot of shitty things, but they don't have the power to take your money through taxes or revoke your right to freedom/life."
They can, however, fix prices in order to take your money, or just throw you out on the street to die of hunger.
"Money is really your life energy (you trade your time/work in exchange for money)...the fact the government takes 40% of it is a true crime."
Ah, makes sense. Your opposition to the government is the typical libertarian spiel, not an actual respect for personal rights: "I do not want taxed."
"Do you really want the government to get involved in deciding what a business must sell?"
Yes, to some extent, I do. That might not be something libertarians here want to hear, but when there exists an oligarchy in a market, it needs regulated or else the consumers will be harmed. Just as you may not conspire to fix prices, you should not be able to use your market power to determine what may or may not be sold.
The difference between libertarian mindsets and those of people who actually value freedoms is that we realize there is no fundamental difference between government and business. Business must respect rights as well for people to be free in the modern world. Voting with your feet does not often work, so there are times when voting at the ballot box is the only way to fix the situation.
When basically every distribution system uses the "optional" system, yes. Corporate censorship is still censorship. It isn't right just because it isn't the government doing it.
You're placing the emphasis on the wrong word. It's that they're religious people who are acting like whackjobs in following their religion, not that they're whackjobs because they're religious alone.
That's why you're always allowed to go and disprove a theory by providing a better one. Throwing up your hands and saying you don't believe it on faith of something unproven is not science, it is emotionalism.
Yes. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was known for its great efforts to help society and protect people from tyranny.
No... wait... it wasn't. It was known for manipulating politics by controlling royal marriages, inciting wars with excommunication of monarchs who dared speak against the church, and mass taxes on all strata of society in order to fund massive building projects and lavish lifestyles in Rome. The merging of religions with states in the Reformation arguably helped the situation by removing a second dictatorial regime from the picture.
They're refusing to "believe" in evolution in favor of a mythical man living in the sky who created the universe. That ought to be classified as a mild form of psychological illness, but sadly it isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
I've already replied to the second claim enough times here to make me nauseous. Take a look at my history if you really want an answer, though I suspect you do not.
"Currency is an artificial economic construct, so should we allow counterfeiting as well?"
Currency represents value; it has no inherent value (these days). Yet, at one time, there was a tend of having money backed by real value, as well as people printing their own money left and right legally. The point being - currency exists for a reason I'm not debating, to allow exchange of goods and services for future goods and services. If someone wants to debate that reasoning, more power to them, it is totally aside from my positions on copyright.
Essentially, you cannot simply act as if copyright is gospel because it exists. Copyright ought to have the same cost-benefit analysis we give to systems like currency. We allow the restriction of counterfeit because it confuses monetary systems and costs the government money. It undermines the idea of currency. Piracy undermines the idea of copyright - yes. That is good, because the more it does, the less people can take the idea of copyright as a foregone conclusion, apart from any value it provides to society as a whole.
However, as it stands, it never gets this kind of analysis in today's society. I find the concept of owning an idea or information disgusting, on top of the proven harm it does to many fields when carried to its logical conclusion (see music industry). Copyright is not property inherently (and not legally in the purest sense, either); infringement upon it is not stealing. The world will not end when we abolish it, and if I ever said one thing with certainty, it is this: that's only a matter of time.
Nice they made a checklist for companies to never purchase goods from.
Liberals might run the government poorly, but conservatives want to give the government to the rich. Personally, I'd rather a system I can at least in theory vote in, over the Social Darwinism championed by libertarians.
"Historically, government is an oppressor and everything it does should be treated with suspicion or you deserve what you get."
Read up on the East India Company. And before telling me it was government-connected, think about how much of a difference that made in how it operated or to the people it oppressed.
Violating laws made to protect an artificial economic construct isn't shameful in the least, which is why its association has actually made "pirate" a positive term.
Because the whole thing has no business existing. Because the correct direction in copyright matters is abolition, not expanding it even one inch in ways that might serve to censor.
...because you're the one attempting to have the state deprive someone of their property and/or liberty over it?
"And to defend herself, she would need to have evidence that she wrote the truth."
Innocent until proven guilty. She doesn't have a damn thing to prove.
Stand by your rights, don't accept false justifications, or they WILL disappear.
Frog boiling applies poorly to politics. People's expectations of freedom slowly increase. That's why surfdom, absolute monarchy, and slavery are no longer acceptable. I am quite certain that our current control-oriented mindset is temporary. Eventually, it will become intolerable (we're already nearing it), and the result will be greater freedom overall than before. That process might be avoidable, but history suggests oppression comes slowly, and freedom comes in greater bursts.
There is another meme that applies: to make an omelet, you need to break a few eggs.
That would be a fine sentiment, if the game weren't still on.
I think you need to look up the British Empire. It just sort of fell apart over time. Death by a million paper cuts.
...until the United States loses this power. You can't abuse control of a protocol like this and not have people in other countries (like Europe and Japan) start to wonder if they should break off.
Translation: we're cowards, you should be, too. No wonder the world is so messed up. There was a time when Americans would die to right trivial wrongs, but now they hide from even threat of a lawsuit and shrug moral and social responsibility.
Change for it's own sake isn't innovation. People who defend half of the stupid moves in the Linux sphere seem to miss this fact.
Except all the people who lost, up until today.
More often than not, they are "invented" based on research done at universities; including publicly funded ones. We should be cutting the middle-man and funding those projects more, rather than creating artificial property to encourage corporations to "invent" drugs.
"Copyright is for protecting written information."
Copyright is for controlling the distribution of information. The only protection for information is duplication and distrubition.
"College/University is not a trade school"
Yes it is. Of the people who go to college, only a tiny minority will say it is because they want to learn for the sake of learning. Likely, because learning no longer requires attendance at a physical university. What a university provides is a sort of certification. Everyone with a serious goal in life goes because they more or less have to go, in order to be allowed into certain fields. Getting into those fields makes a better life.
I might agree with you somewhat, so far as college does not teach a trade. It is a costly exercise in bureaucracy and wasting of 4-6 years of everyone's time at taxpayer expense for people who do not want to be there (for good reason). Of course, the source of that problem is opinions like yours - that college has some kind of intrinsic value. It somehow makes you better, hence, it is not a "trade school" which teaches you a trade. If this is the case or not is fairly irrelevant; it is not how it is seen by those in it, so it is not how it is treated by them.
Then, of course, there are those who use college as a buffer of party time between highschool and work. I'd dare say they make up a bigger portion of college population than either learners or goal seekers...
That's more a result of the broken education system than of scientists making nukes and viruses.
"Businesses cannot (legally) use threats to coerce your behavior and force you to do things...the government can. The government, like the mafia, uses the threat of violence against you"
They can't? Every had your electric shut off, threatened to be disconnected from the internet, sued by a business for something, received a C&D, etc? That's not even getting into the fact businesses have and DO use force on the scale of the military. The only reason they do not currently use it on a mass scale is that, heaven forbid, they have lawsuits to fear should they abuse the rights of people. Look up Pinkertons, you'll be amazed how alike business and government can become when unregulated.
You'll see, I hope, why I say they are not different. The only reason the difference you cited exists is because the government has disallowed businesses to violate certain rights. It is not a part of the concept of businesses in general.
"Businesses may do a lot of shitty things, but they don't have the power to take your money through taxes or revoke your right to freedom/life."
They can, however, fix prices in order to take your money, or just throw you out on the street to die of hunger.
"Money is really your life energy (you trade your time/work in exchange for money)...the fact the government takes 40% of it is a true crime."
Ah, makes sense. Your opposition to the government is the typical libertarian spiel, not an actual respect for personal rights: "I do not want taxed."
"Do you really want the government to get involved in deciding what a business must sell?"
Yes, to some extent, I do. That might not be something libertarians here want to hear, but when there exists an oligarchy in a market, it needs regulated or else the consumers will be harmed. Just as you may not conspire to fix prices, you should not be able to use your market power to determine what may or may not be sold.
The difference between libertarian mindsets and those of people who actually value freedoms is that we realize there is no fundamental difference between government and business. Business must respect rights as well for people to be free in the modern world. Voting with your feet does not often work, so there are times when voting at the ballot box is the only way to fix the situation.
When basically every distribution system uses the "optional" system, yes. Corporate censorship is still censorship. It isn't right just because it isn't the government doing it.
You're placing the emphasis on the wrong word. It's that they're religious people who are acting like whackjobs in following their religion, not that they're whackjobs because they're religious alone.
That's why you're always allowed to go and disprove a theory by providing a better one. Throwing up your hands and saying you don't believe it on faith of something unproven is not science, it is emotionalism.
Yes. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was known for its great efforts to help society and protect people from tyranny.
No... wait... it wasn't. It was known for manipulating politics by controlling royal marriages, inciting wars with excommunication of monarchs who dared speak against the church, and mass taxes on all strata of society in order to fund massive building projects and lavish lifestyles in Rome. The merging of religions with states in the Reformation arguably helped the situation by removing a second dictatorial regime from the picture.
They're refusing to "believe" in evolution in favor of a mythical man living in the sky who created the universe. That ought to be classified as a mild form of psychological illness, but sadly it isn't.