Any time somebody wants to pass some liberty-crushing legislation, they push the buttons. You know, the kiddie porn button. And the terrorism button. As a result, they can pass any abomination of a law just by passionately declaming "but think of the children!".
I wonder if this isn't more of the same, sort of - a corporate-powered witchhunt for "pirates" in the name of Holy Profit, pushing the "terrorist" as well as the "think of the children" button because that does demonstrably work (apparently people are consistently morons unable to see they're being manipulated to a fare-thee-well while their liberties get snatched out from under them.)
I think we have to get people to stop trying to think about everything in monetary terms. Nothing is expensive or cheap in the real world - it just uses resources, energy and work, and the two areas aren't more than slightly related these days. Healthcare as well isn't expensive or affordable - it just uses resources, energy and work.
When it becomes "expensive" is when it is handled via a money-based system and then abused by every step in the current chain to suck so-called "profit" out of it, as well as overcompensating some people and organizations with obscene resource overabundances. It is also the most "expensive" in the US which has for-profit care, and the least "expensive" in nations where it is paid for via taxation... where the focus is on "good service for minimum cost" rather than "maximum profit for minimum service".
But yeah - the money indoctrination runs so deep it's hard to even argue about things without bringing up words like "affordable" that really have very little meaning.
We're literally using science and employing very capable people to figure out how to brainwash people into buying more crap they don't need, in a world where we're already conspicuously consuming our species to death (literally), filling landfills with cheap garbage that people are then brainwashed into buying again as cheap crap that breaks within months in many cases, is put into the next landfill and bought yet again? This should not be a focus for us, for crying out loud; the focus should be on how do we reshape society so that this organized brainwashing becomes nonsensical and people get the stuff they need instead of the stuff the manufacturers want to sell just so they can turn a bigger profit.
Ever hear of product placement? Ads are already in the content.
Any show you watch today is jam packed with ads! They just hide them a tad and incorporate them into the action. You have a series star driving a Well Known Hybrid going into town for some manufactured reason and then they use The Awesome Auto Parking Feature of the Well Known Hybrid showcasing the driver keeping her hand off the wheel while the logo on the wheel glitters alluringly at the viewer...
Advertising in the actual content is already there! The rest of the advertising is to maximize ad revenue and profits beyond the stealth near-subliminal program-the-viewers type advertising woven into the story itself.
That nasty spyware is actually embedded in the BIOS on a ton of machines, including a ton of HP's.
They claim it can't be activated except by paying for it but security researchers already activated it completely without any intervention from LoJack / Computrace - which makes it a superlative (if somewhat limited in spread) spy. You can format your computer and that thing will infect it again like a disease.
Frankly, benign stated purpose or no, it kind of sucks that HP pre-infects people's machines with that nasty crap, I don't like knowing at least one of my machines comes with a ticking time bomb planted in its "head".
I would argue that the best art and the best inventions aren't made by people who are out to make a buck primarily. The best art is made by real artists, who do it because they're compelled to and riveted by their work, and those artists (regardless of medium) would do their thing without copyright too.
We don't have any need for copyright, patents or any of the myriad BS inventions that have been put into place to service the money side of society - if we just change society into a sane version that doesn't use money at all but instead provides people with their needs out of our shared communal resources in this solar system. Money and the notion of rulers and the ruled (which, let's face it, is exactly what is going on still, to this day, in society) is a long since obsolete concept that the rulers of course do everything in their power to perpetuate. 99% of us are the losers of that particular game, yet not only do the top 1% defend it... most of the foolish wage slave peons defend the system too. Incomprehensible.
The planet has a given quantity of water. Very little of it actually goes anywhere. Every drop of it that we use and consume eventually gets cycled back into the ecosystem. Which is why the notion of "conserving water" is total BS - there is no more or less water than there ever was.
The problem is a lack of energy and the money system hampering our efficient use of resources - if we just scrapped the money system first, we could use the resources of the planet to build literally as many desalinization plants we needed. We could turn the Sahara into a garden, if we so wanted - sure, it would be quite the project, but nothing that is beyond us as a race. But obviously, as long as we do bone-headed things like calculating it on the basis of money, profit and the like it's not going to happen.
That said of course, water pollution isn't something we should accept; if we mix in crap into it, it should get taken right back out before we let it back out into the world.
We don't fix patents - we fix society, by abolishing money completely and shifting to a cooperation basis instead of a competition one.
Patents, while a major problem in their own right, are just a minor symptom of the money-based society and what's wrong with it. We have far bigger issues that also get solved if we abandon the medieval concepts of "money" and "trade" and retire this modern-day feudalism we're suffering under now.
There is nothing but energy out there for us to use. Solar, wind, wave, tidal, geothermal... there is a massive swath of technologies we know how to build, and all that would take is materials and laborers (mechanical mostly, human somewhat). The entire notion of "conserving water" is nonsensical too - when water is used for some purpose, it doesn't just vanish later, it remains in the planetary ecosystem. Every drop of water you use in the shower goes right back out into the world and eventually lands right back in the oceans where it started.
The entire population of the planet, with a few exeptions, is so incredibly hung up on the money system that people don't even question it anymore - this in spite of the absolutely staggering waste of other resources it causes and the vast social problems we have because of it. It's quite a trick - keep people arguing about irrelevant garbage and they won't drill down until they find the one common denominator when it comes to what is killing us all - money, trade and the profit motive, the root cause of virtually all suffering and difficulties we have today.
Cost and money is a hallucination we've invented over time that has very little if any connection to real world values. Virtually all the problems we discuss on a daily basis - pollution, patents, copyright related dreck and so on - are only money-system generated problems, not reality related ones.
People would still create art even if they weren't paid to do so. They would still grow food. They would still play music. If anything, they would do more of those things if they weren't forced to spend their days standing in a McDonalds flipping burgers instead. We could easily meet everyone's needs in society today without making everyone wage slaves to "earn" it, and as a result we would even do away with virtually all the problems of the day - pollution, poverty, starvation, war and certainly there would be no more of these idiotic entirely man made "financial crisis situations" like the upcoming second great depression.
Patents (and copyright) service the money side of society to the detriment of said society. Two options then appear - do away with patents (which is a symptom) or do away with the folly of allocating resources via a money system (the cause).
Any doctor - and any sensible engineer - would tell you that what you have to fix is the root cause, not try to patch the symptom...
For your argument to make any sense whatsoever, you first have to have proof that "piracy has evaporated billions". Nobody has yet managed to demonstrate that believably, not even the RIAA/MPAA. Especially since even that part of the copyright brouhaha have had to admit that people who copy also buy a lot, and that the copying may well act as a form of advertising.
Music used to be unique too. There used to be new artists doing new music (well... new-sounding, since you can only string so many sounds together in so many ways until you run out) - and that stuff got played by mostly independent DJ's on mostly independent radio stations, which allowed for a great deal of diversity. The big record companies had to at least try to innovate (or at the very least, allow new acts to grow). Then came radio deregulation, Clear channel, and suddenly there was basially one big radio station covering the continental US, and payola was institutionalized in the form of "independent promotors" - and it sure wasn't cheap anymore to get anything on radio.
So the big record labels in their nutty quest for fantasy profits decided that they didn't want to take any more risks, to get their money back after the payola payments and so on, everything had to sell - and since people are hardwired to equate "familiar" with "good", hellooo fifteen trillion remakes and remixes and re-recordings of old hits. That's basically all we get out of the big labels these days, any innovation happens on the Internet or independently.
So why this long discussion about the horrors of radio deregulation? Because the same mechanisms are in place for the movies, I think. Familiar = good, remember? In the incessant quest for more money, going with something that has once been a hit and mildly massaging it and doing it again, the studios hope for a surefire moneymaker, and innovation and art etc don't even register on anyone's radar.
Copyright schmopyright, this is all completely anchored in the profit motive. To these people, music, movies or TV are just a cash machine with the output being a side product, not the goal.
Even in todays world, money is a vastly destructive force and the concept of a profit-based is literally destroying the world... so anyone who would retrofit copyright, patents and similar horror-concepts onto a world that had matter/energy conversion is completely beyond me. The only basic core function of copyright and patents are to secure a monetary flow from something that has been created - something that would be beyond nonsensical in a replicator-level civilization and already in our current one has got to go.
On the post: British Transport Police: Illegal Downloading Kills Babies [Updated]
Assuming they care about terrorism at all
I wonder if this isn't more of the same, sort of - a corporate-powered witchhunt for "pirates" in the name of Holy Profit, pushing the "terrorist" as well as the "think of the children" button because that does demonstrably work (apparently people are consistently morons unable to see they're being manipulated to a fare-thee-well while their liberties get snatched out from under them.)
On the post: DailyDirt: Studying Advertising As A Science...?
Re: Re: Isn't anyone else concerned?
When it becomes "expensive" is when it is handled via a money-based system and then abused by every step in the current chain to suck so-called "profit" out of it, as well as overcompensating some people and organizations with obscene resource overabundances. It is also the most "expensive" in the US which has for-profit care, and the least "expensive" in nations where it is paid for via taxation... where the focus is on "good service for minimum cost" rather than "maximum profit for minimum service".
But yeah - the money indoctrination runs so deep it's hard to even argue about things without bringing up words like "affordable" that really have very little meaning.
On the post: DailyDirt: Studying Advertising As A Science...?
Isn't anyone else concerned?
On the post: If TV Companies Released Authorized Torrents With Ads, Would People Download Them?
Ever hear of product placement? Ads are already in the content.
Advertising in the actual content is already there! The rest of the advertising is to maximize ad revenue and profits beyond the stealth near-subliminal program-the-viewers type advertising woven into the story itself.
On the post: Secretly Snapping Naked Pics Of The Woman Who Ended Up With A Stolen Laptop Might Just Be Illegal
Doesn't have to be used
They claim it can't be activated except by paying for it but security researchers already activated it completely without any intervention from LoJack / Computrace - which makes it a superlative (if somewhat limited in spread) spy. You can format your computer and that thing will infect it again like a disease.
Frankly, benign stated purpose or no, it kind of sucks that HP pre-infects people's machines with that nasty crap, I don't like knowing at least one of my machines comes with a ticking time bomb planted in its "head".
On the post: Would We Have Art Without Copyright Law?
Art, inventions and money
We don't have any need for copyright, patents or any of the myriad BS inventions that have been put into place to service the money side of society - if we just change society into a sane version that doesn't use money at all but instead provides people with their needs out of our shared communal resources in this solar system. Money and the notion of rulers and the ruled (which, let's face it, is exactly what is going on still, to this day, in society) is a long since obsolete concept that the rulers of course do everything in their power to perpetuate. 99% of us are the losers of that particular game, yet not only do the top 1% defend it... most of the foolish wage slave peons defend the system too. Incomprehensible.
On the post: DailyDirt: Don't Drink The Water
We have no water shortage.
The problem is a lack of energy and the money system hampering our efficient use of resources - if we just scrapped the money system first, we could use the resources of the planet to build literally as many desalinization plants we needed. We could turn the Sahara into a garden, if we so wanted - sure, it would be quite the project, but nothing that is beyond us as a race. But obviously, as long as we do bone-headed things like calculating it on the basis of money, profit and the like it's not going to happen.
That said of course, water pollution isn't something we should accept; if we mix in crap into it, it should get taken right back out before we let it back out into the world.
On the post: So How Do We Fix The Patent System?
Wrong question, again, I fear.
Patents, while a major problem in their own right, are just a minor symptom of the money-based society and what's wrong with it. We have far bigger issues that also get solved if we abandon the medieval concepts of "money" and "trade" and retire this modern-day feudalism we're suffering under now.
On the post: DailyDirt: Safe Drinking Water
Ridiculous isn't it?
The entire population of the planet, with a few exeptions, is so incredibly hung up on the money system that people don't even question it anymore - this in spite of the absolutely staggering waste of other resources it causes and the vast social problems we have because of it. It's quite a trick - keep people arguing about irrelevant garbage and they won't drill down until they find the one common denominator when it comes to what is killing us all - money, trade and the profit motive, the root cause of virtually all suffering and difficulties we have today.
On the post: It's Not About 'Free,' It's About Sharing
Nothing acttually costs anything, so...
People would still create art even if they weren't paid to do so. They would still grow food. They would still play music. If anything, they would do more of those things if they weren't forced to spend their days standing in a McDonalds flipping burgers instead. We could easily meet everyone's needs in society today without making everyone wage slaves to "earn" it, and as a result we would even do away with virtually all the problems of the day - pollution, poverty, starvation, war and certainly there would be no more of these idiotic entirely man made "financial crisis situations" like the upcoming second great depression.
On the post: Planet Money Continues To Show How Damaging Software Patents Are To Innovation
Now let's take one more step in the logic chain
Any doctor - and any sensible engineer - would tell you that what you have to fix is the root cause, not try to patch the symptom...
On the post: Planet Money Continues To Show How Damaging Software Patents Are To Innovation
Re:
On the post: Without Copyright, Hollywood Would Never Be Incented To... Make A Bunch Of Remakes?
Movies, music, same thing
So the big record labels in their nutty quest for fantasy profits decided that they didn't want to take any more risks, to get their money back after the payola payments and so on, everything had to sell - and since people are hardwired to equate "familiar" with "good", hellooo fifteen trillion remakes and remixes and re-recordings of old hits. That's basically all we get out of the big labels these days, any innovation happens on the Internet or independently.
So why this long discussion about the horrors of radio deregulation? Because the same mechanisms are in place for the movies, I think. Familiar = good, remember? In the incessant quest for more money, going with something that has once been a hit and mildly massaging it and doing it again, the studios hope for a surefire moneymaker, and innovation and art etc don't even register on anyone's radar.
Copyright schmopyright, this is all completely anchored in the profit motive. To these people, music, movies or TV are just a cash machine with the output being a side product, not the goal.
On the post: Star Trek In The Age Of Intellectual Property
Are we THAT hung up on money? Really?