Many people discover new books in a library. It's one of the best marketing tools book authors and publishers have. I'm actually fine with authors/publishers/distributors setting whatever conditions they want, it's their intellectual property and their labor.

Simply have libraries refuse to carry any books, ebooks or their physical copies, if a author/publisher/distributor sets onerous conditions as described in TFA.

I'm betting that the loss in marketing exposure will quickly have those authors/publishers/distributors reassessing their stances on the subject.

Strat

This attempt by the government to heavily regulate and control hobbyist/"civilian" drone use has nothing at all at it's roots to do with any of their stated reasons. The government from local law enforcement on up to federal agencies have been largely able to keep things they don't want the public to see and know away from public eyes. Drones change that and they see that as a major threat as they view the public as their adversaries because they seek to rule rather than govern and an informed & aware public makes that more difficult.

All governments seek to increase their power and authority over their citizens over time, even the best of them founded on the most noble principles, because of human nature...we are and have always been our own worst enemy in this regard. Power is a zero-sum game; the more power a government has the less the people have and once it reaches a tipping point it's game over and hello authoritarian hellhole.

Strat.

I don't understand why this was modded "Funny" because Warren *must* be native American, otherwise she'd be guilty of committing federal felony loan fraud for falsely claiming she was eligible for special terms for being native American.

Warren isn't being prosecuted on federal felony loan fraud charges so she must be native American, genetics be damned! /s

[[law for thee but not for me intensifies]]

Strat

The major difference would be how many US soldiers would die.

What that spending does is allow fewer soldiers to accomplish more and at reduced risk of being killed doing it. When you have a small military budget you rely on tactics like human-wave attacks. You replace munitions and technology with expendable human bodies.

Somehow I think that's going to be a tough sell to the citizens (who are the ones that make up the military) of the richest nation on the planet.

Strat

Yes obviously, just like encryption, if it protects against non-government bad guys it'll protect against government bad guys and that cannot be allowed. /s

Strat

It's because Britain has been getting flooded with destitute immigrants from the Middle East and Africa who go on the dole and then go to NHS for healthcare which is stressing NHS to the breaking point.

You cannot have both open borders and a nationalized healthcare system like the NHS. This SSO plan is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Strat

Although I agree with your statement in principal, I must point out that a law is not needed in this case. Just don't go there or transfer out. Have you seen in the news about the enrollment numbers and financial condition of Evergreen and a few other universities with agendas/rules/policies/uneven enforcement students found to be too much to spend that kind of money on?

What's needed is spreading awareness and education. Not many people want to live as a character in a cypherpunk Dystopian nightmare.

Strat

And these new drone laws and regulations are not aimed at criminals. First, the number of "drone crimes" is statistically zero. Second, criminals who would do criminal-type things with a drone will...get this...not obey the laws regarding registration, monitoring, etc, etc.

These drone laws are aimed at preventing their use in exposing government wrongdoing, lies, and corruption. It is to keep the general public ignorant as to the government's doings and avoid accountability for same. The government does not want video on the internet of police paramilitary units breaching the wrong house and killing the occupants and their pets, nor do they want video of elites in and out of government sex-vacationing at "pedo islands" owned by powerful people and other such unsavory, illegal,.and immoral activities and behaviors. They've learned lessons from the consequences they've experienced because of the proliferation of devices that can record video and audio among the general populace.

Strat

There was a /. piece a couple weeks ago about the Ring system where I said basically the same thing as TFS and got modded down for it. Many Slashdotters are schizo as hell, apparently. Hilarious! :D

Allow me to borrow a phrase from "Raz0rfist" the Rageaholic from YT fame:

[spins in computer chair]

"Fuck you, I was right!
Fuck you, I was right!
Fuck you, I was right!"

Strat :D

The devil, as always, is in the details.

How is the sale & distribution of vegetable glycerin, propylene glycol, and nicotine when, with the possible exception of nicotine which not all vapers use, are widely used in food flavorings, commercially baked goods, and much more? It would be like attempting to have the government control, track, and tax baking soda or table salt like tobacco products. Glycerine you know is used extremely widely and commonly, and have you ever picked up a bottle of food flavoring in the baking aisle of the store and read the ingredients?

This is one of the reasons vaping is so frowned upon by those in government. It's nearly impossible and quite impractical as well as unrealistic to control, regulate, and tax.

It's replacing tobacco sales which heavily impacts States, especially those part of the agreement whereby the State agreed not to pursue big tobacco legally in exchange they received a payment every year based on the tobacco sales numbers, and which they immediately turned around and borrowed tons of money against (hey, it's addicting, right?) counting on those tobacco payments *and* the State tobacco tax revenues. That's not even counting the huge economic interest big pharma has in keeping the quit-smoking pharma division rolling, and all the lung cancer specialists, the hospice industry, the list goes on.

There's huge money at stake here. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they wait till this recent storm blows over and try again from a different angle to somehow ban or at least heavily regulate it.

You might be thinking "good! regulate that shit!" but what that will do is hand the big tobacco companies a monopoly on vaping products like Juul, as the rest of the market is almost exclusively small businesses with only a few employees if any and won't be able to afford the overhead of the compliance costs. The government would be ecstatic over this as it means they only have a handful of large corporations who they're accomplices with anyway to tax, regulate, and police, therefor their tax revenue stream is secured so they won't be in danger of defaulting on paying back the money they borrowed counting on future tax receipts from people smoking tobacco, not vaping.

Quietly encouraging smoking by eliminating an effective alternative and tool to quit while passing ever more draconian anti-smoking laws also generates revenue from civil fines, legal fees, and another source of warm bodies for the private prison system and another person "in the system" for life, ripe for further abuse, intimidation, and revenue generation.

Strat

If/when eBooks drive nearly all the physical book producers out of business and all the knowledge formerly in books gets locked behind a DRM wall, when individuals are no longer able to collect, truly own, and share books with others, that will herald the downfall of modern civilization. A library is not an institutional building somewhere, a library is a concept, an idea, the idea of sharing collective knowledge and culture to build a civilization. Placing books and literature behind DRM annihilates the entire library paradigm.

Civilization dies with the lights of the last library.

Strat

But, that's just the thing. They would do that *regardless* of how the social media companies responded. There's no such thing as "enough" when it comes to this sort of horseshit from those sorts of people, as any look through history will tell you. If they had pointed to the law instead of caving, actually behaved like an open platform and gathered public support, at least there would've been a chance for a better outcome for everyone including them.

Strat

What truly baffles me is why FB and the other social media companies, back when all this talk of de-platforming :"offensive" speech and viewpoints began, is why the hell didn't they simply point to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and tell the screeching mobs and spineless advertisers "look, it's the law, we can't take sides or make judgments, under the law we must be open". If they'd only nipped this stupidity in the bud and not allowed it to gain momentum we'd be in a much healthier place as a society and all the social media companies would be much richer not wasting so much money and resources chasing an impossible goal.

Strat

"Genres like Latin, hip-hop and electronic, which consistently dominate the YouTube charts, will now be properly recognized for their popularity."

I, too, listen to music on Youtube, though not that shite, and thank goodness the fraction of a cent per view actually winds up in the pocket of the artist.

That's all they used to get from the big recording studios, anyway, as a perk for being allowed to become famous, until a few became famous enough to get a second contract.

All I hope is that maybe by some miracle in the train wreck this is likely to be, that some incredibly talented and deserving artists that haven't gotten the kind of worldwide promotion they deserve see some benefit.

There's bands like the incredible Nightwish from Finland that are huge in the EU and have toured the US before but never really widely promoted in the US for some reason. Their current singer, Floor Jansen, is a metal Valkyrie Goddess with a voice that has to be among the top 5 in the world, the woman sings fluently in at least 4 languages and she can sing almost any style or genre. The talent in the entire band is mind blowing as well yet I stumbled upon them purely by chance. Not trying to fanboi too hard here, but they aren't the only artists that would probably be crazy successes if only more people knew they existed. That's not even mentioning the untold numbers of people that are missing out on their new favorite artist, song, or band they'll never learn exists without better ways to get artists public attention.

Strat

Not much to worry about though, eh?

A Canadian IED is a shaken 12 pack of Molson.

Strat :)