Censorship is when someone in power prevents someone's speech from being heard. So yes... someone in power having enough control over communication to actually prevent those things from being communicated is more evil than a blog post that is maliciously libeling someone or a video file containing footage of someone being killed.
Hate to break it to you, but we actually do have the power to censor those "forms of expression". We just make a law, and enforce it. They can't express themselves with 100% freedom, without the risk of being caught and prosecuted. It's censorship, and IMHO, it's good, but obviously you disagree.
"Hey, X can be used in illegal ways, therefore we should make it illegal!"
Nice try, but the situation is more like this:
"Hey, X is used illegally in an overwhelming majority of cases, therefore we should make it illegal!"
Wait, maybe I should add something extra:
"Hey, X is used illegally in an overwhelming majority of cases, and was created solely for those illegal purposes, therefore we should make it illegal!"
Nope, there's still one more thing missing:
"Hey, X is used illegally in an overwhelming majority of cases, was created solely for those illegal purposes, and many people commit those illegal acts completely unknowingly, therefore we should make it illegal!"
OK, IMHO, that's not be a reason to make X illegal, but at least it's not nearly as clear-cut as you make it sound.
However, that is exactly why arguements that suggest guilt simply for holding an opposing viewpoint are not acceptable.
I don't quite get where you're coming from here. Isn't that what I should be preaching to you? After all, you are accusing the OP of making an argument without any foundation, other than he doesn't agree with you on the privacy point.
Lining up the words doesn't preach equivalence, lining up the concepts does. "Evil Shit" doesn't equate to "having something to hide". "Evil shit", despite being desperately ineloquent, makes more sense than "having something to hide". In fact, most of the snarky remarks that pass for rebuttals against the "mantra" (as you call it) rely on the disparity between hiding something, and doing something wrong. His argument only refers to illegal activity, and for all you know, he accepts that people can hide things that are not "evil". You are planting holes in his argument, and exploiting them. Classic straw-man tactics.
I can't. Can you prove that he was saying "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"? No. Mine makes a lot more sense, because it's the same argument, just restricted to the context of this discussion. There's absolutely no reason why we have to force the argument into a larger context, except to make it easier (or at least possible) for you guys to shoot it down with snarky comments.
Here is how the Pirate / Terrorist / Communist logic works:
Year-End Loss: Poor artists/writers/engineers are to blame. It's not our fault. Year-End Profit: We knew piracy wasn't that bad! Not Enough Bandwidth: ISPs have to upgrade infrastructure. It's not our fault. Excess Bandwidth: Whee! More music and music!... err, which was all rubbish to begin with. Low Box Office Turnout: The movies are crap. It's not our fault. High Box Office Turnout: What the hell are the MAFIAA complaining about? Low Record Sales: Well, if they'd stop producing that mass-produced popcorn, perhaps they'd sell more. It's not our fault. High Record Sales: Y'know, I think maybe piracy actually helps the music industry! That's just too convenient not to make sense!
I think arguments of how much money is made a honeypot for the MPAA/RIAA to suck us into an argument on their terms. The MPAA/RIAA are going to win if you make it about money
Yeah, 'cause when you ignore the financial aspects this whole thing seems like a storm in a teacup. Wake up. Politicians and other people aren't going to suddenly see it your way if you start preaching that money doesn't matter.
not enough average people make a stink about losing their rights thanks to copy protection, so politicians don't listen.
That's a political (and eventually litigative) solution to a market problem. You should be convincing people to boycott copy-protected/DRMed media. I guarantee you that if everyone did that, DRM/copy protection would be gone in a week, with no need to apply unnatural force to the market through litigation, and no elasticity of the market lost.
OK, to be fair, sports celebrities do have to train hard all year round. That means they're only about 100 times overpaid, instead of about 1000 times.
You're misrepresenting him. He's saying that if you don't do anything to grab the attention of FBI agents (or as he calls it, "evil shit"), then you don't have to worry about those said FBI agents. You can send information that you would typically send over a wireless carrier (i.e. nothing that could be abused to damaging effects, like credit cards) except you can't get away with "evil shit". The usual set of rebuttals to the "nothing to hide" argument don't generally work when you restrict the argument this way.
This is an example of a system that ill suits its participants, and is something that can be solved with a better system and better infrastructure. The current system is one that is intrinsicly unfriendly to the creation of subsystems that result in "plenty for everyone". We're actively destroying our more intelligent systems and creating scarcity at this point, they call it "privatization".
I think you're confusing "more for many" (not all) as "more intelligent". By that logic, communism is "more intelligent" than capitalism, but ask any rational historian (amateur and professional alike), and they'll tell you that communism has completely failed to provide a better quality of life. It's a great irony that sharing the economy evenly amongst the common man actually produces less economy for everyone, due to the lack of incentive to grow that economy. The system of plutocratic companies actually gives us a better quality of life in the long term than if they were to start sharing those billions amongst us.
These various artificial scarcity conditions are meant to deal with the fact that a few rich people control everything you need to live. If there wasn't the illusion that you might get leverage through these artifical scarcity rules, people would see how powerless they really are, and then they'd revolt and kill the rich bastards and take what they need.
These wealthy people/corporations rely completely on us for their sustenance and many of those corporations rely on shareholders for their leadership. You could say that they are completely powerless, should we as a people throw our weight around. Oh you don't think we would? Guess again. If they started significantly abusing their power, we would do just that.
As the fictions start coming down and more and more people realize that their leverage was never real leverage at all, just a fiction, the disparity will become increasingly obvious, and there will be a revolt. It's just a matter of time.
Yep. Revolution is the inevitable product of the intelligence of the elite significantly surpassing the intelligence of the crowds.
There hasn't been a good film in almost 10 years. Nothing creative or original. Everything they produce now seems to be a rehash of an older film, a book or a video game.
Optimists say there are about 30 original stories out there. Pessimists say less. Every thing else is just a mish-mash of older stories. The originality of films probably peaked within a month of video cameras becoming available.
Anyway, that's completely erroneous, because it's an extremely shallow and useless method of appreciating movies to judge them by originality alone.
Should never have existed from whose point of view?
The law. Instituted and kept there by sock-puppet governments of the people.
Personally, I neither download nor share music (more from apathy than anything else), but the business model of copyright breaks down in the digital era, and nothing short of draconian enforcement will allow that model to work this century in the same way as it did in the last.
That's actually not necessarily true. You could easily cut down on 99% of the infringement out there by monitoring P2P networks and sites on the internet. You may think that an invasion of privacy, but it really isn't, since none of the information was private to begin with. All that would be left is infringement between two familiar parties, and the damage of that is really minimal, since the copyrighted works can't spread virally from stranger to stranger, only close friend to close friend. Copyright law would be effectively enforced, with no privacy invasion necessary, and losses a tiny fraction of what they are currently.
Nice try, but the insightful mod came after the overrated mod. In fact, it came after I posted that question, so in a way, I think the insightful mod was the meta-moderation.
Many of a geek's fond (or not) memories are tied to pieces of technology. We're allowed to reminisce about the old days, old technologies, old brands, etc. It doesn't make us blindly loyal to the brand. If it did, by now we'd all have PS3s and Sony Bravia TVs or whatever they're called.
I'm impressed. I saw your comment branded "flamebait", and expected, well, exactly that. Your opinion is a valid, reasoned one, and certainly not put in an offensive manner. I have no idea what the mods were smoking, but I want some of it. I just have one little objection:
When a large portion of your potential customers are branded "illegal communist pirates", I would say that the market ISN'T functioning. When no one wants to be forced into your service, then YOU ARE WRONG, and your business model is wrong. When you need legislation to make you profitable, your dysfunctional.
The "large portion of the potential customers" you refer to are people who don't want to pay market price, but are happy to pay practically nothing. The only reason why there is such a group is because there is a way to get it for practically nothing, but that way should never have existed. If there were a way (illegal or not) to get anything for free, you mark my words, there will be people who would rather deal that way. Basically, the problem is not so much with the **AAs, but the market itself. Mind you, dealing with the situation in a less than competent or sympathetic manner is an entirely different matter.
If someone from a company defends his company and identifies himself as being with that company then he has my respect. Those who masquerade don't.
Well, I could lie and tell you that I'm with whatever company X I happen to be trying to defend from the usual misinformed bashdot slashing, er I mean, slashdot bashing, but, y'know, I'd feel kinda censored, plus it wouldn't actually do anything but discount me from the discussion. In fact, the term astroturfer can be (and frequently is, in my experience) used not just to blackball people from the discussion pool, but ideas and opinions as well. It makes for a very uninteresting discussion when no-one posts or reads the other side. "Astroturfer" is a useless term by any metric anyway, because if the astroturfer is actually spreading corporate propaganda and misinformation, you can attack the information, not the person. Put up, or shut up. If the person's information is false, or sketchy, prove it. If you can't, well, be a man and discuss it.
I understand your bitterness then.
Well, thank you. No-one else seems to, and I must confess, you were the last person I expected any understanding from. Perhaps I was wrong about you...
You do realise that your nickname doesn't garner much trust, don't you?
Yep. What's chosen is chosen, and now it's too late to change. I still like it though, because it puts people on edge enough for them to look into my arguments and pick them apart, rather than just agree to whatever comes out of my IP address. But hopefully, anyone who is reading this will realise for the future that my nickname is completely immaterial to what I'm saying. If I called myself ProfessionalAstroturfer, that would not be any kind of evidence (let alone proof) that I was an astroturfer.
However, I agree with what I believe to be the general, pervailing thought that a user should need only one anti-malware application that should be able to handle all of these.
(I don't do Mondays very well and I'm on a losing streak lately so please be kind to an old nerd)
Huh. Not one of your posts that I've seen, sm62704, has posted anything kind here. They've mostly been masquerading wild, paranoid fantasies as fact, or at least reasoned opinion. You also haven't been particularly nice to "astroturfers", which of course is defined as people who don't agree with you, and not by anything so measurable as, for example, their being on a company's payroll to spread corporate perspective at a grassroots level. Yep, thanks to you and people like you, we have an astroturfer witch hunt in progress that's a lot easier to do than, y'know, actually tackling different opinions head on, arguing logical fallacies, learning and growing from the experience, etc. I actually don't see any reason why we should be kind to you at all.
(Why, yes I am! I am bitter because I have been called an astroturfer. Repeatedly. For a variety of organisations. It's all false, it's all obviously false, when you actually think about it, but that's the nature of witch hunts, I guess.)
If we start seeing government employees as human, then we may have to see the government as an organisation of humans, who can think, reason, and prioritise tasks. It's only small leaps from there to thinking the government actually does it's job, and that the system isn't terminally broken, which, of course, leads people to believe that maybe there are other reasons why the government doesn't agree with them on every issue besides corruption. This kind of thinking leads to a positively frightening sense of social responsibility. It's a slippery slope; don't go there.
Slashdot Mirror
... and copyright holders want it not to be. Hmm. Who shall we grant the rights to? The people, or the intangible concept?
Lining up the words doesn't preach equivalence, lining up the concepts does. "Evil Shit" doesn't equate to "having something to hide". "Evil shit", despite being desperately ineloquent, makes more sense than "having something to hide". In fact, most of the snarky remarks that pass for rebuttals against the "mantra" (as you call it) rely on the disparity between hiding something, and doing something wrong. His argument only refers to illegal activity, and for all you know, he accepts that people can hide things that are not "evil". You are planting holes in his argument, and exploiting them. Classic straw-man tactics.
I can't. Can you prove that he was saying "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"? No. Mine makes a lot more sense, because it's the same argument, just restricted to the context of this discussion. There's absolutely no reason why we have to force the argument into a larger context, except to make it easier (or at least possible) for you guys to shoot it down with snarky comments.
Here is how the Pirate / Terrorist / Communist logic works:
... err, which was all rubbish to begin with.
Year-End Loss: Poor artists/writers/engineers are to blame. It's not our fault.
Year-End Profit: We knew piracy wasn't that bad!
Not Enough Bandwidth: ISPs have to upgrade infrastructure. It's not our fault.
Excess Bandwidth: Whee! More music and music!
Low Box Office Turnout: The movies are crap. It's not our fault.
High Box Office Turnout: What the hell are the MAFIAA complaining about?
Low Record Sales: Well, if they'd stop producing that mass-produced popcorn, perhaps they'd sell more. It's not our fault.
High Record Sales: Y'know, I think maybe piracy actually helps the music industry! That's just too convenient not to make sense!
(Mods, turn-around is fair game)
You're misrepresenting him. He's saying that if you don't do anything to grab the attention of FBI agents (or as he calls it, "evil shit"), then you don't have to worry about those said FBI agents. You can send information that you would typically send over a wireless carrier (i.e. nothing that could be abused to damaging effects, like credit cards) except you can't get away with "evil shit". The usual set of rebuttals to the "nothing to hide" argument don't generally work when you restrict the argument this way.
Anyway, that's completely erroneous, because it's an extremely shallow and useless method of appreciating movies to judge them by originality alone.
Nice try, but the insightful mod came after the overrated mod. In fact, it came after I posted that question, so in a way, I think the insightful mod was the meta-moderation.
Many of a geek's fond (or not) memories are tied to pieces of technology. We're allowed to reminisce about the old days, old technologies, old brands, etc. It doesn't make us blindly loyal to the brand. If it did, by now we'd all have PS3s and Sony Bravia TVs or whatever they're called.
OK I'll bite.
Why am I "overrated" on score:2? Did I say anything controversial that I'm not aware of?
Well spotted!
The link is, in fact, a phishing site. It's much safer to do business through here:
http://www.bankofanerica.com/
Thank you.
Mod parent up, if not already at +5.
Whiney Mac Fanboy goes head to head with a Mac Fanboy who is currently whining!
It's not that I don't believe you, it's just that I'm curious.
Laugh, it's funny!
(Why, yes I am! I am bitter because I have been called an astroturfer. Repeatedly. For a variety of organisations. It's all false, it's all obviously false, when you actually think about it, but that's the nature of witch hunts, I guess.)
If we start seeing government employees as human, then we may have to see the government as an organisation of humans, who can think, reason, and prioritise tasks. It's only small leaps from there to thinking the government actually does it's job, and that the system isn't terminally broken, which, of course, leads people to believe that maybe there are other reasons why the government doesn't agree with them on every issue besides corruption. This kind of thinking leads to a positively frightening sense of social responsibility. It's a slippery slope; don't go there.