MPAA Boss: If The Chinese Censor The Internet, Why Can't The US?
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
Yes, you took it to the bank robbery -- however it also took lots of people to other places, and didn't know nor care where you were going or why. Nobody would accuse a bus or train of being an accessory.
Knowing what they are currently trying to do with the Internet, them wanting to have some control over the self-driving cars wouldn't surprise me.
To some people it may seem clear how much of a benefit this would be. "Wow, the police are actually able to lock down a getaway car and arrest people who have just committed a bank robbery?".
But, there's a reason I wrote "(ab)used" up there, you probably understand the implications already.
I can't find the citation currently, sorry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_L...
I was almost physically sick when that came across the air. I'm a long-time Democrat but I'll be damned if that didn't make me want to never vote for anyone ever again. Our two political parties are really two sides of the same coin and they are all working for corporations.
They're not, right? Google is a corporation and SOPA goes against Google's wishes. The political parties work for whomever they think will get them re-elected, and apparently the media companies are who they consider most valuable.
I don't think justification to do something that someone else does no matter that it is an oppressive regime.
EDIT: fixed person to child
For some reason, I don't really worry too much about all of these regulations. They will create speedbumps along the way, but the world will move on and come up with more innovative ways to get what they want. If they don't change with times, they will be uprooted eventually.
What Steve Jobs did was bring great technology and experience to masses faster than most other people. All of this would have been created/invented anyway, but it just would have taken a bit longer. All of these people only slow down the progress (which is still pretty bad), but they won't be able to stop it.
That same holds for stealing a pie and eating it. You cannot give it to someone else or sell it.
You just decided on a specific, narrow, interpretation of "stealing".
Stealing is the substraction of an object. If I steal something from you, you don't have it anymore. You lose it. If I pirate Avatar, you can still sell it to someone else. If steal your car, its gone unless you get it back from me.
For example, we say that "he stole the answers to the exam" --in this case, too, the answers are still there, nobody lost them.
Here's what dictionary.com gives for steal:
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch. 2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment. 3. to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance: He stole my girlfriend.
I generally don't like violence or encourage it, but people who back things like SOPA and PIPA really deserve a good beating.
We all saw how good the "great wall of China" proved to be. Protesters vanish without a trace, people who dare to say anything online sometimes go to jail or just vanish.
Didn't that just pass the Senate?
Don't trust things you see reblogged on tumblr, especially if they don't cite sources.
And then they decided it was such a bad idea that they were going to leave the country. Carrying this to the logical extension, if implemented, Google would pack up and leave us for Canada.
Canada is already on the MPAA's naughty list, so....
"We’re the post office, they tell us; who knows what’s in the brown-paper packages? But we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content. Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/opinion/03bono.html?hp=...
Only if you are educated and rational. We, here, are not the audience for his remarks.
Why aren't they just concentrating on how to make more money? Are these actions really more productive than acquiring more customers?
All joking aside, we're talking about people who can barely use a computer debating laws governing the use of the very technology they haven't slightest clue about. As long as our representatives continue thinking that the Internet is a series of tubes we'll continue to hear this sort of thing from them.
Because we have constitutionally guaranteed liberties, which are ingrained into our culture. Ever heard of the first amendment, moron?
It's not that the US government couldn't behave like China's - so far they've just chosen not to go quite that far. They seem to be on their way though.
If you at things historically you'll find people worrying that the US government is/was becoming tyrannical since the year our constitution was adopted. While I agree that the current Internet censorship debate should be taken seriously and I don't want any of these proposed laws to pass, if you take the long view you'll find that the history of the US is all about a series of battles for freedom. Some we win, some we lose but overall we've been heading in the right direction for a long time. It sounds silly but this can be likened to the posts that pop up on HN from time to time about how it's getting diluted and becoming lame. Some days trolls and idiots rule the day, others the smart folks take control and in general the community and their contributions have remained high quality since its inception.
So let's fight the good fight but maybe not go down the whole "this country is becoming the next [insert unpopular regime here]" road. Yesterday always seems like it was better than today, hindsight is 20/20, the grass is always greener, and all that.
And please don't use the argument "but if you didn't do anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear" because that completely misses the point.
I propose that hindsight is 20/20, and the fact that we don't think we are improving as a result says a great deal...
I don't want to go all ad populum, but if people have been saying something for a long time, isn't it possible they've been right for a long time?
Your government (just like any other) is full of people who only care about their own personal gain. It's a slippery slope.
The Western world is full of politicians taking campaign donations (=bribes) in exchange for weaseling through whatever legislation their benefactors benefit from (at the expense of ordinary people), and that presents no problem for their consciences. Further along on the same road, there are places like Egypt, where the government tortures citizens to make an example of what happens when they have the audacity oppose their masters.
They want personal gain, and they want to maintain whatever machinery provides it to them. They're all just people though, the same human race all over. If an Egyptian homo sapiens is capable of abhorrent tyranny, so is an American one.
It's two opposing camps: the government against the governed. Just like in a war, the enemy is not really personified. It's just them vs us.