-15 karma · joined May 5, 2020
Tech is absolutely not a meritocracy.
Are you saying the Chinese government could occupy a foreign country, commit war crimes against them, and kill over a million people without anyone knowing?
And I have no defense for the "something else"s -- casino gambling exploits people in exactly the same way: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/losing-...
Because the demand for delivery services on behalf of restaurants is inelastic right now -- they are relying on delivery for their revenue, and it's difficult to manage that in-house. This leads to price gouging.
>That doesn't mean I stand with Antifa.
Do you know what antifa is short for
Intellectual property benefits publishers, not creators.
They deserve to be paid (eg, by a University), but they do not deserve ownership in terms of exclusive rights to its use. Can you imagine how far back science would be held if any applications of Newton or Einstein’s work required royalties to their estate? Are suggesting that the fact that they aren’t is tyranny?
Internet Archive is a nonprofit with a philosophical mission. I don't agree with them all the time, but I view that their responsibility is to act primarily in accordance with their values. Unfortunately, they ended up taking on powers that they may not be able to handle, but I believe that they are in the right and the publishers are in the wrong, which is a more important conversation to me than whether their decision was strategically prudent (probably it was not).
> Even setting aside the law, there is a question of ethics. If I give you a license key to my software, and you give it away to 10 of your friends, would you consider your act charitable?
All software that I have worked on outside of my job is free and open source, so I would. I believe that it should be mandated by law that all non-trivial software be free and open source. To qualify this, I wouldn't do this on an individual level without your consent if, say, you were a small creator and you depended upon licenses for your livelihood. But small creators are not the plantiffs in this case, nor the people who primarily benefit from strict intellectual property laws -- massive publishing companies are.
Knowledge and culture is not anyone’s property. It is the collective work of all of humanity and ought to be treated as such.
The problem is that our community isn’t very friendly or welcoming to women. How can we make that cultural change?