+1 for a Seinfeld reference! (By the way, the spelling is "Newman", for the record.)
Anyway, I agree that the postal service should not be privatized. It should be allowed to compete with private services, for sure, but the only way for remote locations to be served is through a government postal services, because private companies wouldn't find it profitable enough to be worth their time. And it would be a travesty if remote locations got cut off from mail deliveries.
Ah, that does make sense. But then, if all private companies end up molesting people and the TSA's actions today set a precedent for that, how would that help anyone?
I'm not sure I agree with the last part of the graphic. I mean, I agree with the overall message, but couldn't this have been done more generally without invoking any particular politician's name? Plus, how is private security any better than government-run security? The same thing would likely continue, and it would probably be even worse because we would be losing the precious few rights we have once we let private companies run what was once the domain of the government. (I only say this because I've seen a number of stories where discrimination and such suits have worked against the government but not against private companies, so please correct me if I'm wrong in saying this.) What I would REALLY like to see is a return to the pre-9/11 overt security measures combined with skilled people trained to monitor passengers' behavior.
There is a difference between airlines and providers of music, though. Now, up-and-coming artists can release and promote music themselves and profit much better for themselves than they could ever do under the control of a record label. As far as I know, it is not possible for average people to fly themselves to various destinations (especially for which other modes of transportation are no longer viable options e.g. traveling from Washington DC to San Francisco), so the airlines frankly don't stand to lose too much from this otherwise terrible move. Plus, when it comes to power/control versus a satisfied customer base, if they are essentially guaranteed revenues anyway thanks to the airline industry essentially being an oligopoly, which do you think the airlines will pick? (Hint: it starts with a "p" and rhymes with "hour".)
The 1790 Copyright Act may say "encourage learning", but the Constitution doesn't use that exact phrasing. I agree with the overall message, but let us try not to conflate the 1790 Copyright Act with the Constitution.
Ah, yes. You are certainly correct that the real issue is when someone who makes a big deal about attribution (and, later, copyright) conveniently forgets to attribute and then attempts to rationalize that. I was certainly in error by leaving that out.
The problem isn't that we rationalize our own copying and vilify others. After all, Mr. Masnick himself has said that such vilification, as long as it doesn't go too far, constitutes a societal pressure (see: the recent news about Zynga copying others who copied yet others), and that's OK. The problem is when the vilification is extended to old grandmothers and young children to the tune of ridiculously costly lawsuits and threats of a lot of time in jail.
This could be the first recorded use of software-related government dogfooding; the patent examiners were expected to approve patents that would essentially destroy most of the Internet, so the patent examiners didn't want to be hypocrites so they blocked themselves off of the Internet when examining these patents. It's a great cycle, and dogfooding is good, so everybody wins, right? Oh, wait...
Thank you SO much for standing up for us peoplez on the Internetz against the vested interests who readily admit that they want to kill a golden goose as they don't properly understand it. I really wish I lived in Oregon so that I could vote (and have voted) for you. And thank you for being the only elected representative who gets the whole CWF + RTB; here you are C'ingWF, and are thus giving TechDirt-using Oregonians a better RTB.
I hope that you are able to serve for the rest of your days, but if by chance your constituents (or other factors) turn against you, can you...erm...found a lobby or something (one year after leaving office, of course) on our behalf? We desperately need someone to speak for us, but we have nowhere near the resources or established name like the **AAs, and the problem with having big tech companies represent us is that (1) ultimately they are more concerned with profits and (2) the **AAs will say any disagreement with their cretaceous-era policies is coming from Google, not from real Internet users.
It's an estimate, right? It's about as good of an estimate as those "up to X hours" battery life figures quoted for laptops; those figures are meaningless because when only an upper bound is defined, the lower bound could potentially be 0.
I'm going to estimate there are between negative infinity and positive infinity stupid people in Congress today.
Mark Shuttleworth's Thawte Consulting was certainly profitable, but Ubuntu? It was supposed to be profitable a long time ago, yet after 7 years it still isn't.
(Full disclosure: I use Linux Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu, and I support the way Ubuntu is trying to make inroads into more mainstream markets.)
I agree with the sentiment, but why aren't you giving talking points? This doesn't seem like people actually expressing their feelings; in fact, it isn't any better than that NBC copyright campaign in New York, and it certainly runs counter to the TechDirt campaign that was run in response.
It's interesting that you characterize Jobs and Edison in this light, considering that both of them did their utmost to prevent anyone else from doing (with their respective works) what they did with what came before them. Both did so through being overly litigious and patent-happy.
I'm taking an introductory microeconomics class right now, and it's interesting that I've seen this just a week after doing a problem set that had to do with exactly this. We were discussing what the market would look like if there were a few dozen domestic suppliers of some good with a normal upward-sloping marginal cost function versus having a perfectly elastic (essentially infinite) international supply at a given price. We discussed how until the tariff is raised to the point where the total domestic supply equals the domestic demand, all the domestic suppliers will leave in the long-run due to losses, international supply will remain perfectly elastic and will shift up in price by the full value of the tariff, and it will be consumers who lose out entirely. This is essentially the same situation here; there's an almost infinite supply of IP-violating goods coming from China, so tariffs will just shift the whole supply up and hurt only consumers and not producers at all. Oh, wait, Representative King didn't take economics, did he?
Re: Re: Re: The Postal Service must be saved because it beats the alternative
+1 for a Seinfeld reference! (By the way, the spelling is "Newman", for the record.)
Anyway, I agree that the postal service should not be privatized. It should be allowed to compete with private services, for sure, but the only way for remote locations to be served is through a government postal services, because private companies wouldn't find it profitable enough to be worth their time. And it would be a travesty if remote locations got cut off from mail deliveries.
Re: Re: Last parts of the graphic
Ah, that does make sense. But then, if all private companies end up molesting people and the TSA's actions today set a precedent for that, how would that help anyone?
Last parts of the graphic
I'm not sure I agree with the last part of the graphic. I mean, I agree with the overall message, but couldn't this have been done more generally without invoking any particular politician's name? Plus, how is private security any better than government-run security? The same thing would likely continue, and it would probably be even worse because we would be losing the precious few rights we have once we let private companies run what was once the domain of the government. (I only say this because I've seen a number of stories where discrimination and such suits have worked against the government but not against private companies, so please correct me if I'm wrong in saying this.) What I would REALLY like to see is a return to the pre-9/11 overt security measures combined with skilled people trained to monitor passengers' behavior.
There is a difference
There is a difference between airlines and providers of music, though. Now, up-and-coming artists can release and promote music themselves and profit much better for themselves than they could ever do under the control of a record label. As far as I know, it is not possible for average people to fly themselves to various destinations (especially for which other modes of transportation are no longer viable options e.g. traveling from Washington DC to San Francisco), so the airlines frankly don't stand to lose too much from this otherwise terrible move. Plus, when it comes to power/control versus a satisfied customer base, if they are essentially guaranteed revenues anyway thanks to the airline industry essentially being an oligopoly, which do you think the airlines will pick? (Hint: it starts with a "p" and rhymes with "hour".)
There is a way
There is a way to make sure it stays a one-time experience: stop trying to shove laws like SOPA/PIPA through the government. Oh wait, BUT PIRACY!!!
Copyright Act versus Constitution
The 1790 Copyright Act may say "encourage learning", but the Constitution doesn't use that exact phrasing. I agree with the overall message, but let us try not to conflate the 1790 Copyright Act with the Constitution.
Re: Re: The real problem
Ah, yes. You are certainly correct that the real issue is when someone who makes a big deal about attribution (and, later, copyright) conveniently forgets to attribute and then attempts to rationalize that. I was certainly in error by leaving that out.
Obligatory XKCD: Conspiracy Theories
[sarcasm] The EFF is a front group for Google! They just so happen to be solipsistic conspiracy theorists: http://xkcd.com/842/. [/sarcasm]
The real problem
The problem isn't that we rationalize our own copying and vilify others. After all, Mr. Masnick himself has said that such vilification, as long as it doesn't go too far, constitutes a societal pressure (see: the recent news about Zynga copying others who copied yet others), and that's OK. The problem is when the vilification is extended to old grandmothers and young children to the tune of ridiculously costly lawsuits and threats of a lot of time in jail.
Dogfooding
This could be the first recorded use of software-related government dogfooding; the patent examiners were expected to approve patents that would essentially destroy most of the Internet, so the patent examiners didn't want to be hypocrites so they blocked themselves off of the Internet when examining these patents. It's a great cycle, and dogfooding is good, so everybody wins, right? Oh, wait...
All bets
All bets are on for guessing the password of Dark Helmet (TechDirt commenter and writer)! I'm going to guess "qwerty" :P.
Lamar
Isn't it interesting that both Lamars in Congress support these bills quite vocally?
People wonder
And people wonder why our ranking for freedom in journalism is so low this year...
THANK YOU!
HOLY CRAP IT'S SENATOR WYDEN HIMSELF!
Thank you SO much for standing up for us peoplez on the Internetz against the vested interests who readily admit that they want to kill a golden goose as they don't properly understand it. I really wish I lived in Oregon so that I could vote (and have voted) for you. And thank you for being the only elected representative who gets the whole CWF + RTB; here you are C'ingWF, and are thus giving TechDirt-using Oregonians a better RTB.
I hope that you are able to serve for the rest of your days, but if by chance your constituents (or other factors) turn against you, can you...erm...found a lobby or something (one year after leaving office, of course) on our behalf? We desperately need someone to speak for us, but we have nowhere near the resources or established name like the **AAs, and the problem with having big tech companies represent us is that (1) ultimately they are more concerned with profits and (2) the **AAs will say any disagreement with their cretaceous-era policies is coming from Google, not from real Internet users.
Estimate
It's an estimate, right? It's about as good of an estimate as those "up to X hours" battery life figures quoted for laptops; those figures are meaningless because when only an upper bound is defined, the lower bound could potentially be 0.
I'm going to estimate there are between negative infinity and positive infinity stupid people in Congress today.
Ubuntu, Profitable?
Mark Shuttleworth's Thawte Consulting was certainly profitable, but Ubuntu? It was supposed to be profitable a long time ago, yet after 7 years it still isn't.
(Full disclosure: I use Linux Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu, and I support the way Ubuntu is trying to make inroads into more mainstream markets.)
Talking points?
I agree with the sentiment, but why aren't you giving talking points? This doesn't seem like people actually expressing their feelings; in fact, it isn't any better than that NBC copyright campaign in New York, and it certainly runs counter to the TechDirt campaign that was run in response.
You're a magician right?
If you're a magician, can you make the lawsuit disappear?
Did their utmost
It's interesting that you characterize Jobs and Edison in this light, considering that both of them did their utmost to prevent anyone else from doing (with their respective works) what they did with what came before them. Both did so through being overly litigious and patent-happy.
Basic Microeconomics
I'm taking an introductory microeconomics class right now, and it's interesting that I've seen this just a week after doing a problem set that had to do with exactly this. We were discussing what the market would look like if there were a few dozen domestic suppliers of some good with a normal upward-sloping marginal cost function versus having a perfectly elastic (essentially infinite) international supply at a given price. We discussed how until the tariff is raised to the point where the total domestic supply equals the domestic demand, all the domestic suppliers will leave in the long-run due to losses, international supply will remain perfectly elastic and will shift up in price by the full value of the tariff, and it will be consumers who lose out entirely. This is essentially the same situation here; there's an almost infinite supply of IP-violating goods coming from China, so tariffs will just shift the whole supply up and hurt only consumers and not producers at all. Oh, wait, Representative King didn't take economics, did he?