I'm done with slashdot. No more faux-outrage mentally ill social engineer victim narratives will take up another instant of my time, thanks. If anyone can recommend a better site for actual tech issues leave it in the comments.
It most certainly is, the communist manifesto gives clear instructions for the ordering of society, including details on how to treat emigrants and rebels which Stalin applied with gusto.
Blaming communism for his excesses is like blaming Hitler's excesses on capitalism.
Hitler wasn't a capitalist, he made it fairly clear that his aim was to destroy the banks entirely. He wasn't really a conservative either when you consider how hellbent he was on creating an entirely new mythology for his third reich. In almost every regard he was a reforming man of the left.
Cuba is the classic example, Castro's totalitarian oppression and brutality were FAR FAR outmatched by his predecessor, who was a crony capitalist. Shit, pretty much the entirety of South America (with a few exceptions) is spotted with totalitarian thugs--some communist, but most capitalist.
Saying "crony capitalist" in this context is the exact same as saying "corrupt tinpot autocrat", and as far as I'm aware they've existed throughout history. No, what communism brought to the table was the incentive and excuse to murder and oppress tens of millions and sleep well that night. On top of which the sodding thing doesn't even work.
I always thought of the Borg as more of a riff on capitalism : constantly assimilating everything that made someone distinct or unique, and making everyone into a faceless drone with no opportunity for personal freedom.
Remind me again, which political system stamps out religion, freedom of speech, individual expression, political opposition and indeed all resistance, often leading to mass murders on a scale impressive even by twentieth century standards?
Yes, there was. Food and shelter were provided to all, but luxuries were earned. Scotty bought a boat. Benjaman Sisko's father worked in his own restaurant. In the DC Comics story “The Final Voyage“, Spock’s back pay was stated to be around 611,700 credits when his five-year mission ended.
Reform of policing so citizens actually trust the police?
You need to reform the entire judicial system for that to work. As long as even relatively minor infringements can get someone sent off to forced labour camps with added rape, the police are never going to be part of the community.
Communism flat out doesn't function as it has no means to communicate value. It. Does. Not. Work. Even in the presence of abundance communism fails. It's a really stupid idea.
Star Trek wasn't a communist society, it was a democracy with private property (Picard's brother owned a vineyard), a currency, religion (Bajor), individual rights and the captains had better quarters and facilities than the crew.
If you want a communist society try the Borg.
As for capitalism being dead and stinking make sure you let countries like China know, they've been reaping vast rewards since they embraced it.
That's pretty much exactly what I was saying, and that there needs to be a mechanism for restricting the availability of megaticket items. Enter capitalism. It mightn't even need that much regulation at the end of the day.
My take on ST is that raw materials aren't necessary due to replicators. If man ever makes these and has a way to cheaply produce energy, than yes it might be possible.
But human nature itself will make sure it never happens. It doesn't matter how much you earn/have (above a certain threshold), you always just want more then your neighbors.
That's kind of the drive capitalism harnesses though. It's not a bad thing to want to improve your situation, nor is it always neccessarily linked to one-upping the Joneses, maybe someone really badly wants a 20th century ocean liner. I know I'd love to have my own personal observatory and not because it would make the neighbours jealous.
We do live in a universe of absurdly abundant resources so it's only a matter of time before we're able to adequately harness these, whether that becomes a more developed form of capitalism or some form of state-capitalism hybrid remains to be seen.
Short answer, not really. Longer answer you'll always need some means to control supply, even if only for extreme luxury items.
Consider this scenario: a couple of centuries from now the solar system is well developed, we have gargantuan manufactories orbiting the sun, being fed near-limitless amounts of raw material by automated harvesting operations working through asteroids and comets. Technologically and economically it would be quite feasible to build and supply an entire 20th-century ocean liner for every one of the earth's 18 billion odd inhabitants.
Is it desirable to do so? Of course not. So for items with a vast physical, environmental or sociological footprint (like nuclear warheads) there will always be a cost price. While I'd expect things like one car per person to become almost free, along with ubiquitous healthcare and good spacious housing, economic competition aka capitalism will always have a place. The targets for the competition will simply become more grandiose.
Maybe for a short period but this scenario relies on organised crime somehow surviving an apocalypse that wiped out all government authority and associated infrastructure. There's no reason to believe that they'd be hit any less by a pandemic for example. Afterwards what you've got is a gang of people preying on a much larger group of people who no longer need to fear repercussions from the law if they just up and shoot Don Corleone's strong arm men, and this is something often overlooked - the law protects criminals from the geneal population because the general population has a lot more to lose than criminals by retaliating in kind under the aegis of civilisation.
Take that away and the sheep very rapidly turn into wolves. Neighbourhood watch groups become armed militia and then vigilante raiders. Susie homemaker picks up a shotgun to look after her kids. While organised crime would probably thrive for a while, especially in societies without much gun ownership, the longer term road warrior scenario would require some fairly specific circumstances to become possible.
My problem with the left isn't generally with the causes they promote or the social positives they latch on to - generally the left hasn't been all that bad at actually identifying problems, with a few glaring exceptions (rape culture or the effects of atmospheric lead pollution on crime anyone). Environmentalism is good, reducing pollution is good, increasing worker safety, building the middle class, strong social safety nets, these are all fine ends to work towards.
No, my problem with the left is that their proposed solutions are generally tipping the hat to if not being completely glued at the hip to bizarre socioeconomic theories that matured and should have expired in the 19th century, often revolving around pseudoscientific or completely invented social dynamics. Coupled with Alinskyite tactics and still drawing to an extent on cold war era agendas, the left is often more problematic than the right - which in modern political parlance translates to anyone who disapproves of the abovementioned package.
I would hope that with the dawn of the information age as embodied by the internet and the growing awareness it brings to people, we can finally begin to move past these sickly old manifestos and failed cultural experiments and move on to something more practical - not just evidence, but evidence based solutions. If something is working, leave it alone unless a clear improvement can be demonstrated. If there are problems let's not pick our Emmanuel Goldstein du jour and try to somehow work the solution into an attack on that group as demanded by the dualism that is leftism. Let's work out the best way to deal with each situation on a case by case basis.
As should be clear from the above I'm neither a leftist nor a conservative, I'm just one of a growing groundswell of people who are rapidly getting tired of the received wisdom of noisy polemicists, and not in a way that's going to lead to a communist revolution either.
A lot depends on the woman, the culture, her personal attitudes and experiences, and how she actually feels about the man in question. For myself I've found Eastern European women to be quite forthright about what they want or don't, while American women run the gamut. In some places and for some women immediately responding in the positive to an approach, even a welcome one, is considered somewhat slutty. And it must be said, by far the most ferocious criticism of women for so-called "slutty" behaviour comes from other women in my experience.
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about unwanted kisses, groping and massages - that's not acceptable in a professional environment or indeed any environment (and let's not kid ourselves that men are the sole perpetrators either), but rather approaching a woman with the aim of perhaps beginning a romantic relationship.
Again personally I take rebuffs at face value but I recognise there are other nuances which aren't as cut and dried as they may seem at first glance.
As long as it's easier to fill out an excel spreadsheet, type emails and communicate with people on a PC, there'll continue to be a PC in every home. Typing on a tablet for an extended period isn't fun for most people, and forget pecking at a phone. Yes cue the obligatory obsessive-compulsive who hasn't wearied of it yet, but let's not fool ourselves.
I met a middle aged American gent a couple of years ago looking to rent out a room. No matter what else, he had to have his bigscreen TV in the room with him. Why don't you just use your laptop to watch your shows like the rest of the tenants, I asked, but nothing would budge him. I got the impression it was some sort of status symbol or cultural icon.
And this is the false dichotomy you've created. The world isn't divided into content creators and consumers anymore, there are many shades of grey. At one time in the past it would have been true but as that generation gets older it becomes less and less so. Mainframes and Unix workstations NEVER had a foothold in the mass market and NEVER had the everyday utility that PCs bring so that analogy likewise falls short.
A couple of things; session codes can't be shared, or rather there would be no point in doing so, they're temporary server-side identifiers. Second the internet is fairly useable without cookies, they aren't like javascript. Some sites may use them to store your login details but that's poor programming since your browser should be the only software doing that. In any case browsers like firefox have an option to erase everything when you close it. If you live in the EU you should even see regular notices asking for your permission to use cookies.
As far as I can see with plugins like multifox and user agent switcher along with routinely deleting cookies and an ISP that uses dynamic IP addresses (most of them), there should be no real way for websites to track you unless you use your real name and email address etc.
It's high time the US as a society fell out of love with the perp walk and permanent punishment as embodied by long term criminal records and started to embrace the idea of real rehabilitation, making "convicts" part of normal society again. And for pity's sake stop prison rape, what the actual fuck.
This severely penalises small content producers in favour of massive corporations, all a publisher needs to do is wait five years and they can leverage their marketing and distribution might to completely own a franchise while the original creator gets nada.
If we're grading planets according to habitability, it's fairly binary - habitable or non habitable. Until we've mastered the effects of low or high gravity on people anything not almost exactly earthlike is going to be more effort for less return than a large space station. You might fine tune it a bit by adding a third category - habitable with modifications, like say a semi toxic atmosphere you can survive with air filters. Even then considering how much of the earth's atmosphere is a result of its biosphere the odds of finding an earth-compatible world without running into huge ethical problems regarding the disruption of its native life forms is minimal.
So here's my ad hoc categorisation scheme which no doubt the scientists involved have already superseded.
Class A: Completely human compatible, habitable and uninhabited. Class B: Completely human compatible, inhabited by something. Class C: Moderately human compatible, can be terraformed or colonists genetically engineered for unprotected compatability, uninhabited. Class D: Moderately human compatible, can be terraformed or colonists genetically engineered for compatability, inhabited. Class E: Inhabitable with sanctuary (sealed compartments, very difficult to develop, think Mars or the moon), uninhabited. Class F: Inhabitable with sanctuary, inhabited. Class G: Completely uninhabitable (like Jupiter).
at the end of the day their copyright is still being signed over to a company and no longer owned by themselves.
That's not how copyright works unless they were creating work for hire. They still own it, they may sign an exclusive license but there's considerable legal debate over whether or not copyrights can be transferred or even made public at all, hence the existence of things like creative commons.
And if you go truly independent (as in, publish your own work,) and you find a copyright infringement.. you now have to somehow come up with the time (and potentially money) to fight for it.
Fortunately stronger legal protections as embodied by the DMCA make it relatively easy to have infringing works taken down immediately. If it looks like they were making money from your work, then sue them.
Remember that most of the big companies like Youtube have fast-track takedown policy for "trusted" publishers but an individual trying to get something taken down has a hell of a lot more trouble.
Nonsense, you may be thinking of the automated Content ID tool which draws on a library of copyrighted works for automatic comparison, but when a DMCA notice is sent infringing works get taken down.
Definitely an increase, but I'd say that has far more to do with the rise of internet distribution channels than it does to do with stricter copyright laws.
No doubt a contributing factor along with ubiquitous and cheap tools of creation but we can say at minimum that stronger protections haven't noticeably hindered creative output. For a graphic example of borderline illegal work check the booming mockbuster industry, which pretty much knocks any arguments about the suppression of derivative works on the head.
Sure they'd love to make a living from it but many if not most of them would still produce new works without financial incentive. Internet distribution means they now have an opportunity to distribute that work to a wider audience but again, a lot would do so regardless of whether or not they make money from it (and even with the stronger copyrights, there's a lot of people who post Youtube videos and fanfics and whatever other creative endeavors without any expectation of compensation. They just do it because they love it.)
Whatever gets you through the night, I suppose. Contrary to the opinion of people who've overwhelmingly never created anything in their lives, most artists who've put a lot of time and effort into their work get pretty riled when someone starts sharing their for-profit work for free. If they released something deliberately intending that it should be used as a business card that's a different matter, and of course someone who put in less effort is going to care less, but otherwise it's the surest way to piss someone off.
So we end up with a law that's only really beneficial to artists on paper and not in reality, while at the same time effectively criminalizing a large percentage of the population.
You've constructed a framework of half-truths, imagined circumstances and worst case scenarios in an effort to justify the masses taking advantage of the work of the few, which is precisely why we have laws. I'm not in favour of industry overreach like mass lawsuits or criminalising non-profit sharing, civil penalties are plenty, but really if you don't plan on infringing anyone's copyrights I dont see why you'd oppose stronger protections.
If they're forced to hand over the data they won't be in business in the EU for long, which considering the enormous size and wealth of the EU is going to hurt any company badly, so I guess they'll have to open seperate competing European branches. Either that or the US government is going to have to play nice with the rest of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm done with slashdot. No more faux-outrage mentally ill social engineer victim narratives will take up another instant of my time, thanks. If anyone can recommend a better site for actual tech issues leave it in the comments.
Fill in observatory, Large Hadron Collider, museum, theme park or whatever as needed. Why does this need to be said.
Also I'm guessing difficult to keep attached to the ground in high winds. I wouldn't want to be in this in any kind of adverse weather conditions.
Communism is not a political system, idiot.
It most certainly is, the communist manifesto gives clear instructions for the ordering of society, including details on how to treat emigrants and rebels which Stalin applied with gusto.
Blaming communism for his excesses is like blaming Hitler's excesses on capitalism.
Hitler wasn't a capitalist, he made it fairly clear that his aim was to destroy the banks entirely. He wasn't really a conservative either when you consider how hellbent he was on creating an entirely new mythology for his third reich. In almost every regard he was a reforming man of the left.
Cuba is the classic example, Castro's totalitarian oppression and brutality were FAR FAR outmatched by his predecessor, who was a crony capitalist. Shit, pretty much the entirety of South America (with a few exceptions) is spotted with totalitarian thugs--some communist, but most capitalist.
Saying "crony capitalist" in this context is the exact same as saying "corrupt tinpot autocrat", and as far as I'm aware they've existed throughout history. No, what communism brought to the table was the incentive and excuse to murder and oppress tens of millions and sleep well that night. On top of which the sodding thing doesn't even work.
I always thought of the Borg as more of a riff on capitalism : constantly assimilating everything that made someone distinct or unique, and making everyone into a faceless drone with no opportunity for personal freedom.
Remind me again, which political system stamps out religion, freedom of speech, individual expression, political opposition and indeed all resistance, often leading to mass murders on a scale impressive even by twentieth century standards?
Right.
No, there was no currency in the future:
Yes, there was. Food and shelter were provided to all, but luxuries were earned. Scotty bought a boat. Benjaman Sisko's father worked in his own restaurant. In the DC Comics story “The Final Voyage“, Spock’s back pay was stated to be around 611,700 credits when his five-year mission ended.
And more: http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.c...
There was also no serious show of religion (among the main cast anyway) until DS9.
Wrong: http://www.ex-astris-scientia....
And individual rights (aside from property rights) have nothing to do with communism vs. capitalism.
Hahaha! Seriously, capitalism is a purely economic system, communism is a bizarre blueprint for an entire society from goatee-universe.
Reform of policing so citizens actually trust the police?
You need to reform the entire judicial system for that to work. As long as even relatively minor infringements can get someone sent off to forced labour camps with added rape, the police are never going to be part of the community.
Communism flat out doesn't function as it has no means to communicate value. It. Does. Not. Work. Even in the presence of abundance communism fails. It's a really stupid idea.
Star Trek wasn't a communist society, it was a democracy with private property (Picard's brother owned a vineyard), a currency, religion (Bajor), individual rights and the captains had better quarters and facilities than the crew.
If you want a communist society try the Borg.
As for capitalism being dead and stinking make sure you let countries like China know, they've been reaping vast rewards since they embraced it.
That's pretty much exactly what I was saying, and that there needs to be a mechanism for restricting the availability of megaticket items. Enter capitalism. It mightn't even need that much regulation at the end of the day.
It always cracks me up when headbent leftists imagine that communism is the only way a cashless society can function.
My take on ST is that raw materials aren't necessary due to replicators. If man ever makes these and has a way to cheaply produce energy, than yes it might be possible.
But human nature itself will make sure it never happens. It doesn't matter how much you earn/have (above a certain threshold), you always just want more then your neighbors.
That's kind of the drive capitalism harnesses though. It's not a bad thing to want to improve your situation, nor is it always neccessarily linked to one-upping the Joneses, maybe someone really badly wants a 20th century ocean liner. I know I'd love to have my own personal observatory and not because it would make the neighbours jealous.
We do live in a universe of absurdly abundant resources so it's only a matter of time before we're able to adequately harness these, whether that becomes a more developed form of capitalism or some form of state-capitalism hybrid remains to be seen.
Short answer, not really. Longer answer you'll always need some means to control supply, even if only for extreme luxury items.
Consider this scenario: a couple of centuries from now the solar system is well developed, we have gargantuan manufactories orbiting the sun, being fed near-limitless amounts of raw material by automated harvesting operations working through asteroids and comets. Technologically and economically it would be quite feasible to build and supply an entire 20th-century ocean liner for every one of the earth's 18 billion odd inhabitants.
Is it desirable to do so? Of course not. So for items with a vast physical, environmental or sociological footprint (like nuclear warheads) there will always be a cost price. While I'd expect things like one car per person to become almost free, along with ubiquitous healthcare and good spacious housing, economic competition aka capitalism will always have a place. The targets for the competition will simply become more grandiose.
Maybe for a short period but this scenario relies on organised crime somehow surviving an apocalypse that wiped out all government authority and associated infrastructure. There's no reason to believe that they'd be hit any less by a pandemic for example. Afterwards what you've got is a gang of people preying on a much larger group of people who no longer need to fear repercussions from the law if they just up and shoot Don Corleone's strong arm men, and this is something often overlooked - the law protects criminals from the geneal population because the general population has a lot more to lose than criminals by retaliating in kind under the aegis of civilisation.
Take that away and the sheep very rapidly turn into wolves. Neighbourhood watch groups become armed militia and then vigilante raiders. Susie homemaker picks up a shotgun to look after her kids. While organised crime would probably thrive for a while, especially in societies without much gun ownership, the longer term road warrior scenario would require some fairly specific circumstances to become possible.
My problem with the left isn't generally with the causes they promote or the social positives they latch on to - generally the left hasn't been all that bad at actually identifying problems, with a few glaring exceptions (rape culture or the effects of atmospheric lead pollution on crime anyone). Environmentalism is good, reducing pollution is good, increasing worker safety, building the middle class, strong social safety nets, these are all fine ends to work towards.
No, my problem with the left is that their proposed solutions are generally tipping the hat to if not being completely glued at the hip to bizarre socioeconomic theories that matured and should have expired in the 19th century, often revolving around pseudoscientific or completely invented social dynamics. Coupled with Alinskyite tactics and still drawing to an extent on cold war era agendas, the left is often more problematic than the right - which in modern political parlance translates to anyone who disapproves of the abovementioned package.
I would hope that with the dawn of the information age as embodied by the internet and the growing awareness it brings to people, we can finally begin to move past these sickly old manifestos and failed cultural experiments and move on to something more practical - not just evidence, but evidence based solutions. If something is working, leave it alone unless a clear improvement can be demonstrated. If there are problems let's not pick our Emmanuel Goldstein du jour and try to somehow work the solution into an attack on that group as demanded by the dualism that is leftism. Let's work out the best way to deal with each situation on a case by case basis.
As should be clear from the above I'm neither a leftist nor a conservative, I'm just one of a growing groundswell of people who are rapidly getting tired of the received wisdom of noisy polemicists, and not in a way that's going to lead to a communist revolution either.
A lot depends on the woman, the culture, her personal attitudes and experiences, and how she actually feels about the man in question. For myself I've found Eastern European women to be quite forthright about what they want or don't, while American women run the gamut. In some places and for some women immediately responding in the positive to an approach, even a welcome one, is considered somewhat slutty. And it must be said, by far the most ferocious criticism of women for so-called "slutty" behaviour comes from other women in my experience.
Just to be clear, I'm not talking about unwanted kisses, groping and massages - that's not acceptable in a professional environment or indeed any environment (and let's not kid ourselves that men are the sole perpetrators either), but rather approaching a woman with the aim of perhaps beginning a romantic relationship.
Again personally I take rebuffs at face value but I recognise there are other nuances which aren't as cut and dried as they may seem at first glance.
Oh and never, ever date a feminist.
As long as it's easier to fill out an excel spreadsheet, type emails and communicate with people on a PC, there'll continue to be a PC in every home. Typing on a tablet for an extended period isn't fun for most people, and forget pecking at a phone. Yes cue the obligatory obsessive-compulsive who hasn't wearied of it yet, but let's not fool ourselves.
I met a middle aged American gent a couple of years ago looking to rent out a room. No matter what else, he had to have his bigscreen TV in the room with him. Why don't you just use your laptop to watch your shows like the rest of the tenants, I asked, but nothing would budge him. I got the impression it was some sort of status symbol or cultural icon.
And this is the false dichotomy you've created. The world isn't divided into content creators and consumers anymore, there are many shades of grey. At one time in the past it would have been true but as that generation gets older it becomes less and less so. Mainframes and Unix workstations NEVER had a foothold in the mass market and NEVER had the everyday utility that PCs bring so that analogy likewise falls short.
Is there some compelling reason why these tests aren't being conducted in realistic conditions in the first place?
A couple of things; session codes can't be shared, or rather there would be no point in doing so, they're temporary server-side identifiers. Second the internet is fairly useable without cookies, they aren't like javascript. Some sites may use them to store your login details but that's poor programming since your browser should be the only software doing that. In any case browsers like firefox have an option to erase everything when you close it. If you live in the EU you should even see regular notices asking for your permission to use cookies.
As far as I can see with plugins like multifox and user agent switcher along with routinely deleting cookies and an ISP that uses dynamic IP addresses (most of them), there should be no real way for websites to track you unless you use your real name and email address etc.
It's high time the US as a society fell out of love with the perp walk and permanent punishment as embodied by long term criminal records and started to embrace the idea of real rehabilitation, making "convicts" part of normal society again. And for pity's sake stop prison rape, what the actual fuck.
This is why we don't bother RingTFA around here.
Zing!
1) Reform copyright terms to 5 years by default.
This severely penalises small content producers in favour of massive corporations, all a publisher needs to do is wait five years and they can leverage their marketing and distribution might to completely own a franchise while the original creator gets nada.
If we're grading planets according to habitability, it's fairly binary - habitable or non habitable. Until we've mastered the effects of low or high gravity on people anything not almost exactly earthlike is going to be more effort for less return than a large space station. You might fine tune it a bit by adding a third category - habitable with modifications, like say a semi toxic atmosphere you can survive with air filters. Even then considering how much of the earth's atmosphere is a result of its biosphere the odds of finding an earth-compatible world without running into huge ethical problems regarding the disruption of its native life forms is minimal.
So here's my ad hoc categorisation scheme which no doubt the scientists involved have already superseded.
Class A: Completely human compatible, habitable and uninhabited.
Class B: Completely human compatible, inhabited by something.
Class C: Moderately human compatible, can be terraformed or colonists genetically engineered for unprotected compatability, uninhabited.
Class D: Moderately human compatible, can be terraformed or colonists genetically engineered for compatability, inhabited.
Class E: Inhabitable with sanctuary (sealed compartments, very difficult to develop, think Mars or the moon), uninhabited.
Class F: Inhabitable with sanctuary, inhabited.
Class G: Completely uninhabitable (like Jupiter).
Until you sign a deal with a publishing company.
Many more people are self publishing nowadays than ever before. Seriously, they represent a significant percentage of the total publishing marketplace.
at the end of the day their copyright is still being signed over to a company and no longer owned by themselves.
That's not how copyright works unless they were creating work for hire. They still own it, they may sign an exclusive license but there's considerable legal debate over whether or not copyrights can be transferred or even made public at all, hence the existence of things like creative commons.
And if you go truly independent (as in, publish your own work,) and you find a copyright infringement.. you now have to somehow come up with the time (and potentially money) to fight for it.
Fortunately stronger legal protections as embodied by the DMCA make it relatively easy to have infringing works taken down immediately. If it looks like they were making money from your work, then sue them.
Remember that most of the big companies like Youtube have fast-track takedown policy for "trusted" publishers but an individual trying to get something taken down has a hell of a lot more trouble.
Nonsense, you may be thinking of the automated Content ID tool which draws on a library of copyrighted works for automatic comparison, but when a DMCA notice is sent infringing works get taken down.
Definitely an increase, but I'd say that has far more to do with the rise of internet distribution channels than it does to do with stricter copyright laws.
No doubt a contributing factor along with ubiquitous and cheap tools of creation but we can say at minimum that stronger protections haven't noticeably hindered creative output. For a graphic example of borderline illegal work check the booming mockbuster industry, which pretty much knocks any arguments about the suppression of derivative works on the head.
Sure they'd love to make a living from it but many if not most of them would still produce new works without financial incentive. Internet distribution means they now have an opportunity to distribute that work to a wider audience but again, a lot would do so regardless of whether or not they make money from it (and even with the stronger copyrights, there's a lot of people who post Youtube videos and fanfics and whatever other creative endeavors without any expectation of compensation. They just do it because they love it.)
Whatever gets you through the night, I suppose. Contrary to the opinion of people who've overwhelmingly never created anything in their lives, most artists who've put a lot of time and effort into their work get pretty riled when someone starts sharing their for-profit work for free. If they released something deliberately intending that it should be used as a business card that's a different matter, and of course someone who put in less effort is going to care less, but otherwise it's the surest way to piss someone off.
So we end up with a law that's only really beneficial to artists on paper and not in reality, while at the same time effectively criminalizing a large percentage of the population.
You've constructed a framework of half-truths, imagined circumstances and worst case scenarios in an effort to justify the masses taking advantage of the work of the few, which is precisely why we have laws. I'm not in favour of industry overreach like mass lawsuits or criminalising non-profit sharing, civil penalties are plenty, but really if you don't plan on infringing anyone's copyrights I dont see why you'd oppose stronger protections.
If they're forced to hand over the data they won't be in business in the EU for long, which considering the enormous size and wealth of the EU is going to hurt any company badly, so I guess they'll have to open seperate competing European branches. Either that or the US government is going to have to play nice with the rest of the world.