Taking the internet seriously is what leads to all these "internet laws" that slashdot seems to rally against. In fact, the internet's existence as an international object that isn't technically, on the whole, legal in most jurisdictions, for one reason or another, is due in part to the internet not being taken seriously. Now, people are taking what they read online reasonably seriously; as seriously as any other medium. The internet is now no longer just for geeky adults, but also for children, and as such, a large portion of the population will look to have it censored or at least rated, just like any other medium (the logistics of such a task is another issue entirely).
The days of the internet being a wild west of vocal freedom are in danger of coming to a close, for as much as living in a wild west can be exhilarating and can make you feel more free, there will always be people who want to develop it to make it as safe as the colonised areas.
You telling me that death is better than the natural hardship ALL animals have to experience anyway unless they are given a loving home by humans?
No. Nope. Completely incorrect.
What I'm saying is that releasing an animal into a hostile environment that they are not equipped to deal with is cruel. For example, placing a rooster in a small ring knowing full well that there's another rooster waiting to tear it limb from limb, and that there's nowhere to hide, is cruel. As another example, releasing an animal, whose never had to fend for itself, into the city, where food is scarce and fast cars are plentiful, is cruel. More cruel than putting them down.
It's certainly not what wild animal have to deal with, since wild animals are usually born and taught to fend for themselves, in the habitat that they are suited to.
If you want to deal with an urban animal problem, neuter and neuter and neuter some more. It stops increasing the problem, and stops other animals moving in.
(So now you're talking about the city...)
Perhaps so, but I still think it's unjust to neuter people who buy a pet and then callously reject it. [/being intentionally dense]
You're right though, neutering helps, but it doesn't completely solve the problem.
As for cats "wreaking havoc", this allegation deserves myth status: the havoc (adaptation) already occurred when the humans moved in and created the town, and a few cats stealing scraps, mice and small birds has a negligible impact.
Which is why I say "depending where you live". I happen to know that in central Australia, wild cats are an extremely big problem for the ecosystem there. They eat just about anything, they have no natural predators, and catching them is extremely difficult. They can recognise traps and bait!
Naturally in the city, they're nothing more than an annoyance.
I know it's completely out of place when discussing adherence to web standards, but the last part of your post:
It's not that they don't follow standards. It's that they purposely don't follow them... They know better, but make the rational choice to be different. I have no pity for someone who thinks like that...
It sounds like a citizen in a totalitarian state with stockholm's syndrome.;-)
As someone who has raised and killed dinner, bullshit. I never abused any animal, I bet a bullet to the brainpan is a swifter end than you will meet.
Hey! This isn't a personal attack on you. I'm referring to where most American's get their meat-based dinners: from battery farms.
Bullshit, it is simple hypocrisy.
Right. I'm sorry I ever came up with an alternative theory. As usual, for reasons unexplained, the groupthink is correct: they are hypocrites, and any reason they could be considered morally bankrupt about them is true, and any questions about the moral bankruptcy of our own lifestyles are completely false and should be blissfully ignored (or countered with thought-stopping cliches).
If they really cared they might try supporting the raising of cruelty free meat animals, or many other things.
Perhaps they morally believe that animals shouldn't be raised to be eaten? Oh wait. I'm sorry, I did it again! How free-thinking of me!
In case you are wondering, no I'm not a member of the PETA. Yes, I do eat meat. No, I'm not involved in any kind of campaign for animals' rights. Yes, cognitive dissonance really does get me this angry, even when the resulting bile is directed to an organisation that I generally disagree with ideologically.
I put it in my comment. I said in my sig, read the comment. But still you insist on skim reading my post, omitting the details, and criticising it for not having the details you refused to read! Jesus Fucking Christ, WTF is wrong with you!?
Let me repost my original comment, with some emphasis for the intentionally thick and the genuinely stupid:
Your argument only works if you believe that pirates are not pirates by choice (or the choice is somehow coerced). Otherwise, it's entirely the pirates' fault.
In fact, if anything, I would say it was the pirates responsible for coercing the media companies into trying increasingly restrictive DRM. So, it would be the pirates' fault anyway.
These should have been enough to tell you that I wasn't suggesting any kind of exclusive blame, merely diffusing the exclusive blame laid upon the software companies over and over and over again.
I suppose you skipped right to the phrase:
Otherwise, it's entirely the pirates' fault.
This is true! Unless their choice was coerced, which I explicitly mentioned, then this is true! How would it be, at all, the software company's fault if they had no influence over the pirate's decision? If there was some coercion, then it would be partially the company's fault, proportional to the amount of coercion in play. As I was trying to say, before a certain knee-jerking, strawman-burning asshat had a sudden attack of constipation of the brain, there's very little coercion going on here. The pirate has no right to access the game in the form that he chooses, and Ubisoft's decision to place this DRM on its new titles in no way affects the rights of people who choose not to buy from them.
So yeah, within a reasonable margin of error, it's entirely the pirates' fault for pirating and not the game company's. If you can't find a way to resolve this mentally other than hurling cookie-cutter ad hominems at the person who point it out, then please say so up front, so nobody attempts to take your opinion seriously again.
Not really. The guys who raised and killed dinner are purposefully raising animals to die, often with a life of extreme pain and discomfort in between, and often killed in less than humane ways.
Killing of unwanted pets is the most humane action you can do, short of trying to house them all personally, since you are sparing them a life of hunger and hardship on the streets. And cats, depending on where you live, can wreak havoc on the local ecosystem.
Basically, it's a whole other debate. It does not follow logically that the PETA is guilty of cruelty to animals, and instead, must be established separately.
Also, from your link:
PETA has a $33 million annual budget. But instead of investing in the lives of the thousands of flesh and blood creatures in its care, the group spends millions on media campaigns telling Americans that eating meat, drinking milk, fishing, hunting, wearing leather shoes, and benefiting from medical research performed on lab rats are all “unethical.”
The number of pets they kill is drop in the ocean compared to the number of animals raised and killed in inhumane conditions. Perhaps, it's not an attachment to advertising, so much as a focus on a much greater problem?
At this point, they're really making it more convenient for me to prove them right.
Really? Physically, they're not. You have to wait for half a day before the DRM is cracked, as opposed to the hour it takes to drive to the nearest store and copy the disc.
Morally? Perhaps, but it depends on your morality. It certainly doesn't square in mine. The way I see it, pirating a product thanks to restrictive DRM, as opposed to choosing not to buy it, is a little like beating the shit out of an attacker then robbing him instead of just beating the shit out of him. The extra self-indulgent flourish is a little excessive.
Your argument only works if you believe that pirates are not pirates by choice (or the choice is somehow coerced). Otherwise, it's entirely the pirates' fault.
In fact, if anything, I would say it was the pirates responsible for coercing the media companies into trying increasingly restrictive DRM. So, it would be the pirates' fault anyway.
OK, that is definitely a good point, however I would like to point out that the triviality argument is very much secondary to the financial concerns.
I'd also like to point out that this argument wasn't about the practical concerns of enforcing a ban on drugs, more whether or not the government should be able to ban a friggin' plant. In my experience, most people who oppose the ban on marijuana don't do so purely on the grounds that it's too expensive to enforce, rather based on the government legislating against their private growing and consumption of a plant that is perfectly harmless to grow. So, if this is you, take my advice and refrain from resting your argument on the triviality of pot. Instead concentrate on some of the meatier questions, such as "Who do these politicians think they are!?"
The trivialisation angle doesn't work, since it tends to cuts both ways, i.e. if it's just a friggin' plant, then why are people so attached to smoking it?
Half the words in the dictionary can "cause offense and hurt feelings or other psychological harm", if used the right way.
Which is why swearing or being offensive is often sensitive to context. I guess the idea is to avoid using language to purposefully insult others, for a week.
Perhaps the enterprising artists need the law to quit mostly supporting the big media's business model long enough for them to get off the ground. They might do quite well if not for big media saturating every channel out there.
It's possible, but I would also wonder why Big Media wouldn't have attempted it. They certainly have the resources, and it's not like they like having their livelihood at the mercy of the self-restraint of a public who are increasingly despising them. If they can find a way to wean themselves off their business model, without taking huge hits to their profitability, I'm sure they would at least investigate it.
It could also be that there are many fine business models that allow a fair but not tremendous profit. After all, it's not like we had no music before copyright.
There are indeed plenty of inferior business models out there, capable of turning a modest profit for most works. The problem is that profit isn't so easy to manipulate without the whole system falling apart. If you start capping profit, you don't just get an instant gain for the consumer (hence, the reason why we don't cap profits unless absolutely necessary in other fields). You will instantly see less artists willing to produce less works in less time, and take less financial (and hence artistic) risks. We would get a culture, but it would be a heavily stunted culture, similar to what we had before copyright.
The system of letting the market decide how much a product is worth has served us well in practically every application we've come across. There is this ever-widening hole in artistic works in the digital age that makes it one of the few exceptions. Although this means we need an exceptional measure to make it work, we also don't want to stray too far from the way the free market works now, lest we fail to learn from the successes/mistakes of the past. Copyright is an elegant way to patch this hole, while keeping a free-market dynamic to keep prices down and production up. Once we start limiting artists to inferior models, then we end up shooting ourselves in the foot.
Besides, there's no reason why others can't use those systems. As I pointed out before, the existence of copyright does not mandate its use. You can compete with these other business models on even terms. See whether there is a drop in quality and/or quantity (as I would predict) with adopting these older business models, and if there is, see whether people prefer the freedom to the quantity/quality.
The lack of movies was purely a technology issue.
Actually, the movie industry would be one of the artistic industries most severely limited by getting rid of copyright. Without publishers, movie-makers would be restricted more or less to their own personal budgets, which means cheap, cheap movies. Sure, it's possible someone would rustle up a better business model that could somehow make a buck from offering something that people could already get for free, but until then, movies happen to be a standout example of an industry very sensitive to such a change.
It is notable though that movie making moved to the west coast in spite of NY being the center of theater in part to dodge the intellectual property enforcement on motion picture technology (that is, if IP laws were as universally enforced then as they want them to be now, there might not BE a movie industry).
That sounds interesting. Do you have a link regarding this? It's not that I don't believe you, it's just that I would like to know some more details. (I'm not from the US, you see.)
Besides, it's also worth noting that what they want, and how they want copyright laws to be is not really relevant to this thread, since we are more discussing copyright as a concept. There are a great many things that I and they do not agree upon.
Hey, at least you got a good straight answer out of him. A politician that will answer a question, even at the expense of disappointing his audience, has my respect.
Not my vote, of course, since he disappointed me too. Actually, you need to have some expectations to be disappointed, so I guess he didn't even do that.
I would like to own firearms but it is presently too much of a pain in the ass to get them legally. And further, to practice using them is also a pain in the ass. This is, of course, "by design."
Of course. It's designed to keep nutjobs with short tempers away from firearms, for the good of, well, everyone.
I believe that working business plan is called "sell DVDs".
It sounds like a good plan, but I'm a little fuzzy on the details. How do you propose they sell DVDs, when people can download and burn them practically for free?
Well, to heck with them; if they can't live with the facts of the current situation on line, they obviously can take their ball and go play elsewhere. This will leave a market opportunity for people to come in and displace them as content providers
Actually, there is always a position for others to displace them while they're still running. The problem is that nobody seems to have a better plan for success than they do.
I just wanted to add a quick note before I finished: this whole thread was not so much about the Australian film industry, so much as it is a general comment of the roles of government and courts in propping up business models. That's why I haven't addressed anything too specific.
Slashdot Mirror
Taking the internet seriously is what leads to all these "internet laws" that slashdot seems to rally against. In fact, the internet's existence as an international object that isn't technically, on the whole, legal in most jurisdictions, for one reason or another, is due in part to the internet not being taken seriously. Now, people are taking what they read online reasonably seriously; as seriously as any other medium. The internet is now no longer just for geeky adults, but also for children, and as such, a large portion of the population will look to have it censored or at least rated, just like any other medium (the logistics of such a task is another issue entirely).
The days of the internet being a wild west of vocal freedom are in danger of coming to a close, for as much as living in a wild west can be exhilarating and can make you feel more free, there will always be people who want to develop it to make it as safe as the colonised areas.
No. Nope. Completely incorrect.
What I'm saying is that releasing an animal into a hostile environment that they are not equipped to deal with is cruel. For example, placing a rooster in a small ring knowing full well that there's another rooster waiting to tear it limb from limb, and that there's nowhere to hide, is cruel. As another example, releasing an animal, whose never had to fend for itself, into the city, where food is scarce and fast cars are plentiful, is cruel. More cruel than putting them down.
It's certainly not what wild animal have to deal with, since wild animals are usually born and taught to fend for themselves, in the habitat that they are suited to.
(So now you're talking about the city...)
Perhaps so, but I still think it's unjust to neuter people who buy a pet and then callously reject it. [/being intentionally dense]
You're right though, neutering helps, but it doesn't completely solve the problem.
Which is why I say "depending where you live". I happen to know that in central Australia, wild cats are an extremely big problem for the ecosystem there. They eat just about anything, they have no natural predators, and catching them is extremely difficult. They can recognise traps and bait!
Naturally in the city, they're nothing more than an annoyance.
Hey everybody! I'm announcing an iPod, iPhone, and iPad funeral service over at my house! I'll supply the food, but it's BYO dr#(^$^%*^ **NO CARRIER**
I know it's completely out of place when discussing adherence to web standards, but the last part of your post:
It sounds like a citizen in a totalitarian state with stockholm's syndrome. ;-)
Hey! This isn't a personal attack on you. I'm referring to where most American's get their meat-based dinners: from battery farms.
Right. I'm sorry I ever came up with an alternative theory. As usual, for reasons unexplained, the groupthink is correct: they are hypocrites, and any reason they could be considered morally bankrupt about them is true, and any questions about the moral bankruptcy of our own lifestyles are completely false and should be blissfully ignored (or countered with thought-stopping cliches).
Perhaps they morally believe that animals shouldn't be raised to be eaten? Oh wait. I'm sorry, I did it again! How free-thinking of me!
In case you are wondering, no I'm not a member of the PETA. Yes, I do eat meat. No, I'm not involved in any kind of campaign for animals' rights. Yes, cognitive dissonance really does get me this angry, even when the resulting bile is directed to an organisation that I generally disagree with ideologically.
I put it in my comment. I said in my sig, read the comment. But still you insist on skim reading my post, omitting the details, and criticising it for not having the details you refused to read! Jesus Fucking Christ, WTF is wrong with you!?
Let me repost my original comment, with some emphasis for the intentionally thick and the genuinely stupid:
These should have been enough to tell you that I wasn't suggesting any kind of exclusive blame, merely diffusing the exclusive blame laid upon the software companies over and over and over again.
I suppose you skipped right to the phrase:
This is true! Unless their choice was coerced, which I explicitly mentioned, then this is true! How would it be, at all, the software company's fault if they had no influence over the pirate's decision? If there was some coercion, then it would be partially the company's fault, proportional to the amount of coercion in play. As I was trying to say, before a certain knee-jerking, strawman-burning asshat had a sudden attack of constipation of the brain, there's very little coercion going on here. The pirate has no right to access the game in the form that he chooses, and Ubisoft's decision to place this DRM on its new titles in no way affects the rights of people who choose not to buy from them.
So yeah, within a reasonable margin of error, it's entirely the pirates' fault for pirating and not the game company's. If you can't find a way to resolve this mentally other than hurling cookie-cutter ad hominems at the person who point it out, then please say so up front, so nobody attempts to take your opinion seriously again.
Does anyone even question the slippery slope fallacy anymore?
Not really. The guys who raised and killed dinner are purposefully raising animals to die, often with a life of extreme pain and discomfort in between, and often killed in less than humane ways.
Killing of unwanted pets is the most humane action you can do, short of trying to house them all personally, since you are sparing them a life of hunger and hardship on the streets. And cats, depending on where you live, can wreak havoc on the local ecosystem.
Basically, it's a whole other debate. It does not follow logically that the PETA is guilty of cruelty to animals, and instead, must be established separately.
Also, from your link:
The number of pets they kill is drop in the ocean compared to the number of animals raised and killed in inhumane conditions. Perhaps, it's not an attachment to advertising, so much as a focus on a much greater problem?
Really? Physically, they're not. You have to wait for half a day before the DRM is cracked, as opposed to the hour it takes to drive to the nearest store and copy the disc.
Morally? Perhaps, but it depends on your morality. It certainly doesn't square in mine. The way I see it, pirating a product thanks to restrictive DRM, as opposed to choosing not to buy it, is a little like beating the shit out of an attacker then robbing him instead of just beating the shit out of him. The extra self-indulgent flourish is a little excessive.
Your argument only works if you believe that pirates are not pirates by choice (or the choice is somehow coerced). Otherwise, it's entirely the pirates' fault.
In fact, if anything, I would say it was the pirates responsible for coercing the media companies into trying increasingly restrictive DRM. So, it would be the pirates' fault anyway.
... Katz went to the dogs?
I agree, but with so many other options exhausted, it may well be the least barbaric way of punishing these little shits.
In other news, another slashdot article attacks another study contradicting the slashdot groupthink, claims to be more correct than the study.
I'm sorry, but we'll have to cut this discussion short. I've been swamped with work, and university has just resumed.
Besides, I can't keep giving these mods -1 Troll mod opportunities! This discussion has been hell for my karma.
That's what I get for disagreeing with daring to question the groupthink I guess [/embitteredandcynical]
OK, that is definitely a good point, however I would like to point out that the triviality argument is very much secondary to the financial concerns.
I'd also like to point out that this argument wasn't about the practical concerns of enforcing a ban on drugs, more whether or not the government should be able to ban a friggin' plant. In my experience, most people who oppose the ban on marijuana don't do so purely on the grounds that it's too expensive to enforce, rather based on the government legislating against their private growing and consumption of a plant that is perfectly harmless to grow. So, if this is you, take my advice and refrain from resting your argument on the triviality of pot. Instead concentrate on some of the meatier questions, such as "Who do these politicians think they are!?"
Yet we care so much when a prissy little government bans it. Who cares?
Like I said, trivialisation cuts both ways. The more trivial you make it sound, the less it sound like you care about the issue at all.
But... but... but... otherwise they would be throwing their lives away! We will not let them die of substance abuse, even if it kills them!
Too soon?
The trivialisation angle doesn't work, since it tends to cuts both ways, i.e. if it's just a friggin' plant, then why are people so attached to smoking it?
Which is why swearing or being offensive is often sensitive to context. I guess the idea is to avoid using language to purposefully insult others, for a week.
Fuck you. We can take care of ourselves. Cunt.
Hmm. Your answer is too well thought out, logical, and evidence-based. Next time, please post a variation on this post.
It's possible, but I would also wonder why Big Media wouldn't have attempted it. They certainly have the resources, and it's not like they like having their livelihood at the mercy of the self-restraint of a public who are increasingly despising them. If they can find a way to wean themselves off their business model, without taking huge hits to their profitability, I'm sure they would at least investigate it.
There are indeed plenty of inferior business models out there, capable of turning a modest profit for most works. The problem is that profit isn't so easy to manipulate without the whole system falling apart. If you start capping profit, you don't just get an instant gain for the consumer (hence, the reason why we don't cap profits unless absolutely necessary in other fields). You will instantly see less artists willing to produce less works in less time, and take less financial (and hence artistic) risks. We would get a culture, but it would be a heavily stunted culture, similar to what we had before copyright.
The system of letting the market decide how much a product is worth has served us well in practically every application we've come across. There is this ever-widening hole in artistic works in the digital age that makes it one of the few exceptions. Although this means we need an exceptional measure to make it work, we also don't want to stray too far from the way the free market works now, lest we fail to learn from the successes/mistakes of the past. Copyright is an elegant way to patch this hole, while keeping a free-market dynamic to keep prices down and production up. Once we start limiting artists to inferior models, then we end up shooting ourselves in the foot.
Besides, there's no reason why others can't use those systems. As I pointed out before, the existence of copyright does not mandate its use. You can compete with these other business models on even terms. See whether there is a drop in quality and/or quantity (as I would predict) with adopting these older business models, and if there is, see whether people prefer the freedom to the quantity/quality.
Actually, the movie industry would be one of the artistic industries most severely limited by getting rid of copyright. Without publishers, movie-makers would be restricted more or less to their own personal budgets, which means cheap, cheap movies. Sure, it's possible someone would rustle up a better business model that could somehow make a buck from offering something that people could already get for free, but until then, movies happen to be a standout example of an industry very sensitive to such a change.
That sounds interesting. Do you have a link regarding this? It's not that I don't believe you, it's just that I would like to know some more details. (I'm not from the US, you see.)
Besides, it's also worth noting that what they want, and how they want copyright laws to be is not really relevant to this thread, since we are more discussing copyright as a concept. There are a great many things that I and they do not agree upon.
Hey, at least you got a good straight answer out of him. A politician that will answer a question, even at the expense of disappointing his audience, has my respect.
Not my vote, of course, since he disappointed me too. Actually, you need to have some expectations to be disappointed, so I guess he didn't even do that.
Of course. It's designed to keep nutjobs with short tempers away from firearms, for the good of, well, everyone.
It sounds like a good plan, but I'm a little fuzzy on the details. How do you propose they sell DVDs, when people can download and burn them practically for free?
Actually, there is always a position for others to displace them while they're still running. The problem is that nobody seems to have a better plan for success than they do.
I just wanted to add a quick note before I finished: this whole thread was not so much about the Australian film industry, so much as it is a general comment of the roles of government and courts in propping up business models. That's why I haven't addressed anything too specific.