Actually I'd say THE "important subset" of free speech is political speech. It's perhaps taken for granted today, but the right to speak your mind and disagree politically is paramount. Don't get me wrong: I'm NOT arguing for censoring offensive speech. But mostly I support protecting it because there is sometimes an intersection between offensive speech and political speech. The freedom is about expressing opinions without the government locking you in jail, not just about the right to insult people in the most heinous way imaginable.

Perhaps correct for a particular technical problem, but AI experts since the very beginning have been predicting major advances just around the corner. Organizers and promoters of the well-known Dartmouth AI conference in 1956 thought they could solve many of the major problems of AI (natural language processing, creativity, adaptability, etc.) with just a few dozen smart people sitting around talking to each other for a few weeks. Obviously that didn't happen (though the conference was productive).

Meanwhile, we have had numerous reports of systems "passing the Turing test" over the past decade, when no one has actually come close to the example standards Turing himself predicted would come to pass by the year 2000 with much less powerful computers.

"Strong AI" or anything even resembling a generic "intelligence" has already proven to be a "flying car" kind of scenario. That doesn't mean it can't happen in yet another 20 years, but so far we've had 65+ years of "just around the corner" for that.

BTW, when I say "mobile phones," I'm including car phones. Obviously continuing advances in miniaturization (including transistors) allowed HANDHELD phones to happen. But I was talking about mobile phones in general (i.e., those that can move from place to place), including large car phones -- which likely could have become more common a bit earlier (even if they were bulky) had there been a more efficient way of making use of networks to transmit calls. (Also, as others here have pointed out, TFA is exaggerating how early cellphones may have been practical; there were a lot of other issues that needed to be solved along the way. But the concept of a cellular network was essential to making infrastructure use cheaper.)

Transistors were invented in the late 1940s. Mobile phones did not become common until the 1980s with the adoption of cellular tech. RTFA.

The "original" copyrights were first granted in Italy in the late 1400s to deal with piracy. Yes. Short terms (generally 5-10 years).

Thanks for sticking with this argument. I agree with you. The previous versions of copyright (before Disney and Bono) allowed terms of 56 years (assuming a renewal). How much stuff is the OP here wanting to pirate that came out before 1962? It's a bizarre justification that because stuff between 1923 and 1962 is off limits (a fact that is annoying to me, because I actually like doing historical research and all those sources on Google Books would be helpful), suddenly all the internet pirates feel justified in downloading the movie released last week??

Given that the term of 50 years after the death of the author was adopted in *1908* by the Berne Convention, I'm not sure how much "media companies" had to do with it. Certainly not Disney.

Well, it WAS integrated into luxury automobiles. Car phone services were definitely around from the late 1940s on, but coverage areas were severely limited and costs were astronomical. I first remember realizing this watching the original Sabrina movie with Humphrey Bogart, and Bogie makes a call from his car.. In a 1954 movie. I was a bit shocked, but I looked them up, and sure enough phones like that were around back then. However, as TFA notes, these weren't CELLULAR phones, just mobile phones. Cellular tech was actually what allowed enlarged networks and cheaper prices because more calls could be routed through networks. Cellular was what transformed a luxury good into a more common one.

To be fair, it's not just the U.S. It's the Berne Convention that established long international copyright terms (minimum of 50 years after author's death). In some ways, the U.S. arguably just brought its copyright terms up to the "international standard" in recent decades. I agree with you that such lengthy terms are preposterous and almost completely negate the original concept of "public domain."

On second thought, "rapscallion" isn't really a good synonym for "moron." (Frankly, I just wanted to use the word rapscallion.) But one could easily insert words like "dunderhead" or "clod" and not raise the score -- even a word like "dullard" only ticks it up by 1%.

To look on the bright side, perhaps such systems could elevate the level of insults. For example, let us imagine an internet dispute over feminine bottoms. One might see a comment like:

And that would score 94% "toxicity." Or, the author could reflect a bit and write:

And you'd score a mere 12% "toxicity," despite expressing a nearly identical sentiment.

I'm normally not a fan of trolls, but if a system like this could lead to, shall we say, more "creative" insults and "elevated" ways of expressing such matters, that might be very entertaining.

(Alas, I know this system isn't sophisticated enough to generate such an outcome, since it's easier to "break" than just using words with more syllables.)

Yes, you're right. The point is that there have been certain libertarian organizations pushing states to adopt "free speech laws" on public university campuses recently. The worrisome thing isn't the promotion of "free speech" (which obviously should be protected) -- it's that many of the libertarian groups lobbying for this as well as the state legislators proposing the bills don't actually realize the language they're writing is overly broad and could lead to all sorts of strange side effects, like whether professors actually get to say a student is ever "wrong" in pronouncing a belief in a classroom, or whether a college might be forced to expel a student just for standing up and arguing with a speaker more than once.

There is longstanding precedent in allowing U.S. Executive Agreements that merely enforce what was already agreed to or authorized by previous Senate-approved treaties. That's what you have here -- everything that is **legally binding** in the Paris Agreement follows directly on stipulations made in the original 1992 treaty. All the rest is technically optional and was negotiated specifically to be such. Hence, Trump's withdrawal merely confirms his decision not to honor our self-determined optional commitments.

Despite your unnecessary rudeness, I decided to go back and re-read the relevant sections of the agreement. And I will admit that I think my interpretation of the clauses I cited was not completely correct (I don't claim to be an international lawyer). Despite the wording, I no longer think the new agreement is technically an "Annex" to the original convention, but rather functions under a set of rulemaking authorized by the original 1992 treaty. Anyhow...

That said, your statement isn't entirely correct either. The agreement still is intended to be part of the original 1992 framework and was specifically tailored legally to not have any legal REQUIREMENTS that went beyond what was articulated in the 1992 treaty. All of the rest of the provisions are technically voluntary, and the U.S. could alter its commitments to them at any time.

Also, not all countries ratified the agreement through legislatures. Every country has its own means of dealing with international agreements: many have ratified through legislature, but not all. U.S. diplomats actually were quite conservative in drafting the language of this agreement so as to keep the legal requirements within the confines of the 1992 treaty (and therefore not requiring additional Senate confirmation). There is a longstanding policy in the U.S. that Executive Agreements which merely enforce the legal terms of previous treaties do not require additional Senate approval.

The Paris Agreement was explicitly adopted as an "annex" to the UNFCCC. See the text of the agreement (from p. 2):

I. Adoption. 1. Decides to adopt the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (hereinafter referred to as "the Agreement") as contained in the annex...

The formal "annex" begins on p. 20 of the link. Let's see what else you have.

Again, nope. Note further the stipulations from the original UNFCCC treaty for annexes (Section 16):

3. An annex that has been adopted in accordance with paragraph 2 above shall enter into force for all Parties to the Convention six months after the date of the communication by the Depositary to such Parties of the adoption of the annex, except for those Parties that have notified the Depositary, in writing, within that period of their non -acceptance of the annex.

Note further that Article 23 of the Paris Agreement states that Article 16 of the Convention specifically applies to the Paris Agreement. Since the U.S. did NOT notify the Depository of its non-acceptance of the Annex known as the "Paris Agreement" within 6 months, the UNFCCC automatically makes the Paris Agreement binding upon the U.S., according to the terms approved by the Senate when it adopted the treaty in 1992.

So yes, even if the U.S. didn't sign the Paris Agreement, since we didn't "opt out," the U.S. is by default bound to it by the terms of the previous UNFCCC treaty.

Try again.