Re:Internet wins...
on
House Kills SOPA
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· Score: 5, Insightful
it was introduced by House Judiciary leader Lamar Smith, a Republican, but co-sponsors include Democrats Howard Berman, John Conyers, and Ted Deutch, amongst others
You are apparently operating under the assumption that the Democrats are not on the same side of the political spectrum as the Republicans. The Democrats have shifted so far to the right that by now the best you can get is a centrist. The few democrats that linger on the left side of the spectrum are on the fringe.
Corporatism aka right wing politics
on
House Kills SOPA
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Corporatism is just a facet of the right wing. Right wing politics are about the maintenance and strengthening of the hierarchy of society, and corporations fit squarely into that hierarchy. Consumers are supposed to consume, and corporations are supposed to produce -- that is the hierarchy that bills that SOPA are meant to strengthen. The entertainment you want, the brand name shoes you wear, all of this comes from corporations. You are a consumer; you are not supposed to be sending copies of movies to your friends, you are not supposed to buy handbags or cosmetics from unauthorized foreign sources, you are not supposed to be able to route your away around the hierarchy -- that is SOPA's philosophy.
It is the difference between the Internet with its peer-to-peer nature, and the cable TV system with its hierarchy.
Re:Internet wins...
on
House Kills SOPA
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
SOPA is not about government control of the media or the economy; it is about the government helping corporations maintain their control over such things. SOPA is about ensuring that the big brands get to remain in control over our lives, and it is a step toward a long-term goal of converting the Internet into a fancy cable TV system, where consumers can only consume. That is a right-wing goal, at least under the standard definition of "right wing."
Yes I know that it is fashionable to describe everything that falls short of libertarianism "socialist," but there is nothing socialist about SOPA, and socialism is not the be-all and end-all of left wing politics.
Re:Internet wins...
on
House Kills SOPA
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
SOPA was as unpopular on the right side of the spectrum as it was on the left
Really? It sure looks like the right wing politicians in our government -- which includes almost all the politicians in Washington (don't kid yourself; we live in a very right-wing age) -- were highly supportive of SOPA. Why would they not be? They give hand-outs to corporations all the time, and they rarely pause to think about the effect on our civil liberties. It was only because of the libertarian element of the Republican party that this bill was shelved; there are just enough libertarians to create a potential problem.
SOPA Is very much a right-wing bill. What could be more right-wing than attacking a system where anyone can communicate equally, regardless of where they fit into the hierarchy of society? The point of SOPA is to curb the free and open nature of the Internet and to reinvigorate the power of established corporations and government agencies -- sounds very right-wing to me.
Or are we only operating under the Fox News definition of "right wing?"
Why would the MPAA want people to know about SOPA? They want this bill to be quietly introduced, so that by the time most people realize what is happening it is too late.
What bothers me is the future of the blackout day protest. If people think SOPA is dead, will they still protest? Will the protest be renewed should SOPA come back (it is not dead, it is shelved)? Will they just keep shelving it and trying again until nobody has the energy left to keep fighting?
Most people have no idea what SOPA is, and the blackout day protest -- especially the Wikipedia blackout -- would have helped raise awareness, perhaps even reaching a critical mass (if Facebook and Google joined the protest, almost every Internet user in America would know about SOPA). What will happen to blackout day now that SOPA is shelved?
At the end of the day, people are going to be just as unaware of SOPA as they were prior to the bill being shelved. It may still come back, quietly, over and over until websites grow weary of planning blackouts.
Why? Most people still have no idea what SOPA is, and the timing of this shelving is just perfect -- just before several popular websites were going to try to raise awareness.
You may not have noticed, by the Obama administration is full of people who have ties to Hollywood. What reason is there to think that he will not sign the bill into law?
Wake up -- the Democrats are just as quick to ignore individual rights as the Republicans are, they just have a different (but not even close to disjoint) set of corporations that they prefer to give hand-outs to.
And what made-in-the-USA alternative computers and cell phones are they going to buy instead?
If we begin with the premise that we need computers and cell phones -- and I think living in modern American society does necessitate that -- then we should talk about not replacing electronics until they are broken beyond repair. How many times have you seen people upgrade a perfectly functional computer, for no reason other than that something a little faster is on the market? How many times have you seen someone throw out a cell phone that works just fine, because a new model came out? How many times have you seen a computer get thrown out because it has too many viruses?
I am using a computer that is more than 6 years old to write this post. Is there some pressing need for me to replace it? The keyboard is starting to show some age, but even that is not very urgent and it certainly doesn't justify buying a brand new laptop. An outright boycott is not necessary here; just cut the amount of buying you do in half and you'll send a message.
This is fair, but in reality the only way to ensure that none of the money spent making electronics finds its way to Congo would be for electronics makers to buy the tantalum (and other minerals) directly from countries like Australia or buy old electronics for recycling and ship the raw supplies to the appropriate places. I am not so sure that would be an infeasible thing for a company like Dell or Apple to do, although it might be more expensive (which is all that really matters, and which is why these sorts of things won't happen).
Really, tech companies could do a lot of things. They could stop using conflict minerals and rely on alternatives. They could hire workers in countries with labor protections instead of China. They are not doing these things, because they do not really care about being socially responsible, only about appearing to be socially responsible (or not even that -- Apple is one of the few that even bothers to put on a show of auditing its suppliers).
Was there some reason that Apple had to use conflict minerals in the first place? Oh, right, otherwise iProducts would be too big and ugly, or worse yet, Apple would have been forced to do the research that other people did on alternatives.
Realistically, the conflict minerals problem can only be solved by ending the war. Did Apple pay any lobbyists to push for the US to actually get involved? Did Apple pay for people to learn about the problems in Africa? Did Apple so much as stop selling its products for one day to raise awareness?
OK, fine, I will not bash Apple -- if they stopped selling their products for a day, their competitors will just scoop up the lost business, and their competitors are just as guilty. My point is not that Apple is the only guilty company here, it is that they are not some shining star -- they put on a great show about auditing their factories and demanding conflict-free minerals, but at the end of the day those antics accomplish nothing except scrubbing Apple's public image. Why should we care about Apple's public image?
So all those people producing tantalum alternatives should be in poverty, because we chose to use tantalum? This is a non-argument. You might as well complain about how stage coach drivers all lost their jobs.
The situation with "conflict minerals" is actually a lot more difficult than you think. There are plenty of honest and hard-working communities losing out at the moment because nobody knows what paperwork would have to be filled out to be allowed to buy their products.
We do not have to use tantalum. There have always been alternatives, and now there are alternatives that meet or exceed tantalum's characteristics.
How much did Apple invest in research on tantalum alternatives, while they were busy "wowing" people with devices built using tantalum (and by extension, financing the war)?
The problem with conflict minerals is simple: people are committing war crimes in Africa while fighting over mineral deposits. That is not an acceptable situation and mineral suppliers should be refusing to ship minerals that were obtained in that region; if the mineral suppliers cannot be trusted not to ship central African tantalum, then all the tantalum producers will have to suffer until the conflict in Africa is over.
Really, all of these arguments apply to working conditions. Why does Apply have to make use of factories in countries with poor labor laws? Why not hire some American, Canadian, or European workers to produce electronics? It would eat into profits and drive up prices? So would switching away from tantalum and other conflict minerals.
Perhaps "voting with your wallet" will do it, but then again it will take a long time, an expensive effort, and people caring to make it happen.
Unfortunately, nobody cares enough. Did people even reduce their purchases of new electronics when they learned about the conflict minerals situation, or did they forget about the war the minute they saw a new cell phone on the market? Did people stop buying sneakers when they found out that children were being forced to work to produce the shoes? People in America simply do not care about the troubles of other countries, as long as they can continue to live comfortable high-tech lives.
If people were willing to do something like this, we could affect change:
I suppose Apple's R&D team might not have been up to the task of finding alternatives to tantalum, but with all the billions of dollars Apple has at their disposal (and all the profit they made on iProducts, which were all made using conflict minerals) they could have set up some research teams and labs. Assuming that they actually cared about the issue, which I would not be so quick to assume (to be fair, Apple's investors and customers never cared, they just wanted to see profits and have sleek looking toys).
As for Steve Jobs' statement, why not apply it to working conditions as well? After all, Apple must have its factories in other countries, just like they must use conflict metals, so how are they supposed to ensure that the factories are not mistreating workers? Dell does it too, right?
They will check working conditions and...then do what when they find violations? Is there any reason to think that Apple will stop doing business with factories that mistreat workers? Is this going to be another sham like Apple's treatment of the conflict minerals situation (where Steve Jobs basically threw his hands up and said that Apple could do nothing about it)?
Microsoft's perspective is, "We want more lock down because it increases our profits." Why should Microsoft care about malware, when for decades they have maintained dominance in the face of shipping the most virus-friendly OS on the market?
If it is about security, then there is no reason to actively fight attempts by users to install their own OSes -- they can simply put a switch on the motherboard that enables custom firmware to be loaded or writes to the boot sector, and prevents the OS from loading until the switch is reset. This is not about user security, this is about locking down the OS, because they want to turn PCs into glorified cable boxes.
Without copyright, the only ways that I can think of for artists to get paid in the digital age is through draconian DRM and black box playback devices.
There are other payment models that are possible and that have been used with varying degrees of success so far. Just because you cannot think of other payment models does not mean they do not exist.
There have always been politics at work with the Internet:
At one time, only researchers had access to the Internet. Non-researchers had Usenet and Fidonet.
One day, congress decided that it was time to open the Internet to commercial users in addition to researchers, and suddenly everyone had access to it.
It took years of political fighting to work out the legal problems with encrypting the Internet, and thus the system was left with security problems left and right.
ICANN works for the benefit of the US government
The Internet became part of the globalization agenda in the 90s.
These are, of course, merely the highlights. There is a long history of politics governing Internet growth; this is just another chapter in that book. If you want a network that is driven by technology, you need a network that is controlled by its users, which is not what the Internet is.
There's nothing wrong with being supportive of anti-piracy efforts
I'll bite. I see the following issues:
"Piracy" is not limited to any single activity. An industrial operation that pumps out trademark or copyright infringing goods is very much different from a peer to peer network. Trademark, patent, and copyright laws were only ever meant to be regulations on industry, and we should continue to treat them as regulations on industry.
The Internet makes it hard to define an international border. In some countries, software patents are not recognized; what if I happen to run a server in such a country, ssh to the server and use the patent-infringing software remotely? Other countries might not recognize trademarks, copyrights, etc.; if we are talking about things that are not physical goods, can we really claim that someone is "importing" infringing goods by downloading those goods over the Internet?
Propping up a dead industry is not a good thing. Does the recording industry really make sense anymore? Should we be expending law enforcement resources to keep the RIAA afloat?
No business should be shut down, and no property should be seized, without some judicial process -- this is fundamental to American rights, and outweighs any copyright, trademark, patent or trade secrets rights. Yet the rate with which things can change on the Internet would overwhelm the judicial system.
After years of explaining this to people, I have come to the conclusion that no matter what people are going to do it. Simply put, if banks allow people to log in to their accounts from random computers, people are going to do so without any regard for security. It is convenient, and the one thing you can expect people to do is something that is convenient.
Slashdot Mirror
it was introduced by House Judiciary leader Lamar Smith, a Republican, but co-sponsors include Democrats Howard Berman, John Conyers, and Ted Deutch, amongst others
You are apparently operating under the assumption that the Democrats are not on the same side of the political spectrum as the Republicans. The Democrats have shifted so far to the right that by now the best you can get is a centrist. The few democrats that linger on the left side of the spectrum are on the fringe.
Corporatism is just a facet of the right wing. Right wing politics are about the maintenance and strengthening of the hierarchy of society, and corporations fit squarely into that hierarchy. Consumers are supposed to consume, and corporations are supposed to produce -- that is the hierarchy that bills that SOPA are meant to strengthen. The entertainment you want, the brand name shoes you wear, all of this comes from corporations. You are a consumer; you are not supposed to be sending copies of movies to your friends, you are not supposed to buy handbags or cosmetics from unauthorized foreign sources, you are not supposed to be able to route your away around the hierarchy -- that is SOPA's philosophy.
It is the difference between the Internet with its peer-to-peer nature, and the cable TV system with its hierarchy.
SOPA is not about government control of the media or the economy; it is about the government helping corporations maintain their control over such things. SOPA is about ensuring that the big brands get to remain in control over our lives, and it is a step toward a long-term goal of converting the Internet into a fancy cable TV system, where consumers can only consume. That is a right-wing goal, at least under the standard definition of "right wing."
Yes I know that it is fashionable to describe everything that falls short of libertarianism "socialist," but there is nothing socialist about SOPA, and socialism is not the be-all and end-all of left wing politics.
SOPA was as unpopular on the right side of the spectrum as it was on the left
Really? It sure looks like the right wing politicians in our government -- which includes almost all the politicians in Washington (don't kid yourself; we live in a very right-wing age) -- were highly supportive of SOPA. Why would they not be? They give hand-outs to corporations all the time, and they rarely pause to think about the effect on our civil liberties. It was only because of the libertarian element of the Republican party that this bill was shelved; there are just enough libertarians to create a potential problem.
SOPA Is very much a right-wing bill. What could be more right-wing than attacking a system where anyone can communicate equally, regardless of where they fit into the hierarchy of society? The point of SOPA is to curb the free and open nature of the Internet and to reinvigorate the power of established corporations and government agencies -- sounds very right-wing to me.
Or are we only operating under the Fox News definition of "right wing?"
Why would the MPAA want people to know about SOPA? They want this bill to be quietly introduced, so that by the time most people realize what is happening it is too late.
What bothers me is the future of the blackout day protest. If people think SOPA is dead, will they still protest? Will the protest be renewed should SOPA come back (it is not dead, it is shelved)? Will they just keep shelving it and trying again until nobody has the energy left to keep fighting?
Most people have no idea what SOPA is, and the blackout day protest -- especially the Wikipedia blackout -- would have helped raise awareness, perhaps even reaching a critical mass (if Facebook and Google joined the protest, almost every Internet user in America would know about SOPA). What will happen to blackout day now that SOPA is shelved?
At the end of the day, people are going to be just as unaware of SOPA as they were prior to the bill being shelved. It may still come back, quietly, over and over until websites grow weary of planning blackouts.
Why? Most people still have no idea what SOPA is, and the timing of this shelving is just perfect -- just before several popular websites were going to try to raise awareness.
Now, let's see what happens with PIPA.
The NDAA has to be signed into law. It funds the entire military
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_junta
You may not have noticed, by the Obama administration is full of people who have ties to Hollywood. What reason is there to think that he will not sign the bill into law?
Wake up -- the Democrats are just as quick to ignore individual rights as the Republicans are, they just have a different (but not even close to disjoint) set of corporations that they prefer to give hand-outs to.
You do not think that this counts as a change:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012
I guess "continuing to lose rights and freedoms" might not be a second order change (i.e. the rate of change remains unchanged).
A fact that was never in question by anyone who spent more than 2 seconds examining American politics.
You know, we can always check Wikipedia for definitions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLTP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLAP
It might have been nice if the editors had included these links in the summary, but it is not as though you do not know how to use Wikipedia.
And what made-in-the-USA alternative computers and cell phones are they going to buy instead?
If we begin with the premise that we need computers and cell phones -- and I think living in modern American society does necessitate that -- then we should talk about not replacing electronics until they are broken beyond repair. How many times have you seen people upgrade a perfectly functional computer, for no reason other than that something a little faster is on the market? How many times have you seen someone throw out a cell phone that works just fine, because a new model came out? How many times have you seen a computer get thrown out because it has too many viruses?
I am using a computer that is more than 6 years old to write this post. Is there some pressing need for me to replace it? The keyboard is starting to show some age, but even that is not very urgent and it certainly doesn't justify buying a brand new laptop. An outright boycott is not necessary here; just cut the amount of buying you do in half and you'll send a message.
This is fair, but in reality the only way to ensure that none of the money spent making electronics finds its way to Congo would be for electronics makers to buy the tantalum (and other minerals) directly from countries like Australia or buy old electronics for recycling and ship the raw supplies to the appropriate places. I am not so sure that would be an infeasible thing for a company like Dell or Apple to do, although it might be more expensive (which is all that really matters, and which is why these sorts of things won't happen).
Really, tech companies could do a lot of things. They could stop using conflict minerals and rely on alternatives. They could hire workers in countries with labor protections instead of China. They are not doing these things, because they do not really care about being socially responsible, only about appearing to be socially responsible (or not even that -- Apple is one of the few that even bothers to put on a show of auditing its suppliers).
Was there some reason that Apple had to use conflict minerals in the first place? Oh, right, otherwise iProducts would be too big and ugly, or worse yet, Apple would have been forced to do the research that other people did on alternatives.
Realistically, the conflict minerals problem can only be solved by ending the war. Did Apple pay any lobbyists to push for the US to actually get involved? Did Apple pay for people to learn about the problems in Africa? Did Apple so much as stop selling its products for one day to raise awareness?
OK, fine, I will not bash Apple -- if they stopped selling their products for a day, their competitors will just scoop up the lost business, and their competitors are just as guilty. My point is not that Apple is the only guilty company here, it is that they are not some shining star -- they put on a great show about auditing their factories and demanding conflict-free minerals, but at the end of the day those antics accomplish nothing except scrubbing Apple's public image. Why should we care about Apple's public image?
So all those people producing tantalum alternatives should be in poverty, because we chose to use tantalum? This is a non-argument. You might as well complain about how stage coach drivers all lost their jobs.
The situation with "conflict minerals" is actually a lot more difficult than you think. There are plenty of honest and hard-working communities losing out at the moment because nobody knows what paperwork would have to be filled out to be allowed to buy their products.
Really, all of these arguments apply to working conditions. Why does Apply have to make use of factories in countries with poor labor laws? Why not hire some American, Canadian, or European workers to produce electronics? It would eat into profits and drive up prices? So would switching away from tantalum and other conflict minerals.
Perhaps "voting with your wallet" will do it, but then again it will take a long time, an expensive effort, and people caring to make it happen.
Unfortunately, nobody cares enough. Did people even reduce their purchases of new electronics when they learned about the conflict minerals situation, or did they forget about the war the minute they saw a new cell phone on the market? Did people stop buying sneakers when they found out that children were being forced to work to produce the shoes? People in America simply do not care about the troubles of other countries, as long as they can continue to live comfortable high-tech lives.
If people were willing to do something like this, we could affect change:
http://library.thinkquest.org/26504/
How about not using tantalum?
http://www.digikey.com/us/en/ph/Panasonic/tantalum.html
I suppose Apple's R&D team might not have been up to the task of finding alternatives to tantalum, but with all the billions of dollars Apple has at their disposal (and all the profit they made on iProducts, which were all made using conflict minerals) they could have set up some research teams and labs. Assuming that they actually cared about the issue, which I would not be so quick to assume (to be fair, Apple's investors and customers never cared, they just wanted to see profits and have sleek looking toys).
As for Steve Jobs' statement, why not apply it to working conditions as well? After all, Apple must have its factories in other countries, just like they must use conflict metals, so how are they supposed to ensure that the factories are not mistreating workers? Dell does it too, right?
They will check working conditions and...then do what when they find violations? Is there any reason to think that Apple will stop doing business with factories that mistreat workers? Is this going to be another sham like Apple's treatment of the conflict minerals situation (where Steve Jobs basically threw his hands up and said that Apple could do nothing about it)?
Microsoft's perspective is, "We want more lock down because it increases our profits." Why should Microsoft care about malware, when for decades they have maintained dominance in the face of shipping the most virus-friendly OS on the market?
If it is about security, then there is no reason to actively fight attempts by users to install their own OSes -- they can simply put a switch on the motherboard that enables custom firmware to be loaded or writes to the boot sector, and prevents the OS from loading until the switch is reset. This is not about user security, this is about locking down the OS, because they want to turn PCs into glorified cable boxes.
Without copyright, the only ways that I can think of for artists to get paid in the digital age is through draconian DRM and black box playback devices.
There are other payment models that are possible and that have been used with varying degrees of success so far. Just because you cannot think of other payment models does not mean they do not exist.
These are, of course, merely the highlights. There is a long history of politics governing Internet growth; this is just another chapter in that book. If you want a network that is driven by technology, you need a network that is controlled by its users, which is not what the Internet is.
There's nothing wrong with being supportive of anti-piracy efforts
I'll bite. I see the following issues:
Just my 2Â.
After years of explaining this to people, I have come to the conclusion that no matter what people are going to do it. Simply put, if banks allow people to log in to their accounts from random computers, people are going to do so without any regard for security. It is convenient, and the one thing you can expect people to do is something that is convenient.