do I believe that a person should have a monopoly over the products of the labor of his/her own mind? Absolutely. Society has no right to something that someone has created. It is the property of the person/company that created it.

That is only true for as long as the person who created it keeps it to themselves. As soon as they allow it to become part of the culture, then they have to be willing to give up some control over it, and eventually all control. When it becomes part of the culture it is no longer their sole possession, they have conceded to share it with the world, and they must therefore also concede some of the ownership rights too.

Once works become part of our culture people will naturally use those works to reinterpret that same culture. Witness YouTube. People have to be free to create derived works and share them otherwise we have what I guess could be referred to as cultural tyranny.

No one relies on the Americans' "guns." Most of the rest of the world I'm sure would be a lot happier of the US buried their guns instead of using them to start wars.

You speak with sarcasm, but you are absolutely correct.

Society does have a need for music, and for more music (and other works to be produced) society NEEDs that music to enter the public domain at some point. The same holds true for pharmaceutical drugs as well. That is why copyright and patent protection are for limited times.

You make the common mistake of confusing real property rights with monopoly rights granted through copyright and patents. and the point you are trying to make illustrates where this analogy breaks down. I wish we user the term Intellectual Monopoly instead of property. It is more accurate and less likely to lead people to making these poor analogies.

Sorry but that IS what British citizens call it, because they are tried of hearing a bunch of dictatorial bastards say "no". That organization's job is to DENY care and reduce costs.

Any chance you may be confusing them with Americans HMOs? I've heard that's their job too.

-1 redundant

commodore, my man you already said this

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1352459&threshold=-1&commentsort=5&mode=nested&cid=29252481

Recyling your arguments so soon?

tsk tsk

Don't exaggerate. It's only around 15%... mostly people over 65. That's how "safety nets" work

Who's exaggerating?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)#Eligibility In 2007, Medicare provided health care coverage for 43 million Americans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid#Budget In 2002, Medicaid enrollees numbered 39.9 million Americans

http://www.va.gov/NCPS/NEWS/NCPSBg/vha.html 7.9 million veterans enrolled as of October 2006 That is roughly 90 million of a US population of about 300 million or just under 30 percent. These are old numbers too. A lot of people lost jobs since then so I would fully expect the numbers to be well over 30%. Maybe not a majority, but you have to admit it is a significant minority.

Well that sure sounds like a big useless piece of rhetoric.

Freedom in America is an illusion. It's an illusion in the rest of the world too, but it is more pronounced in the states. The only people who have any sort of freedom in any country are the ones who are financially independant. All others lead indentured lives of one sort or another.

Since the US has a very poor social safety net the the need to work is all that much greater, and peoples freedom is then that much less. Most people are not free to pick and choose their health insurance. If you are employed then your employer picks it. If you are unemployed and can't affort $1000's of dollars a month then you have medicaid (if your lucky, and can even afford that) otherwise you have none. There are no choices here. You are only fooling yourself.

Americans' fear of "big government" is absolutely bizarre to say the least, especially in light of the fact that they have what is probably the biggest government in the world. Their government simply chooses to spend its money on guns rather than social infrastructure. A very poor choice indeed.

Too bad your reference is old

Canada Debt is now less that 500B not 868B http://www.debtclock.ca/
US debt is now over 11T, not 8T http://www.usdebtclock.org/

so your numbers are totally useless.

How might authors be protected from the devaluation of their work when copyright no longer exists?

By this logic then the optimim level of copyright protection would be that which maximized the value of a piece of work. That would be perpetual copyright, with no fair use exceptions, and a very broad definition of derived work.

You only see it as "devaluation" because of where we are starting from. If we had no copyright at all and were trying to figure out what was the best level of copyright protection you would come up with a very different answer than now when we have to much protection.

If you first ask the question "What is copyright for?" then answer it with something like "to provide incentives for producing creative works" then you would see that your question would not fit in here at all.

True enough for criminal cases such as car theft. For civil issues such as copyright infringement "punishment" has traditionally been refered to as damages, and it is only enough to compensate the party whos rights have been infringed.

http://www.rbs2.com/cc.htm

Oh gawd more stats.

5% number of non-citizen Americans (according to CBO)

- many non-citizen Americans get insurance through employers just like Americans do.

6% (0.16 times 0.37) YOUR numbers of persons who voluntarily choose not to buy insurance even though they could afford it

- no I said a would be surprised if a majority of these people would not want insurance if they could afford it.

therefore we do not need a government monopoly takeover of the industry

when you consider the number of people on medicare, medicaid, and VA benefits you will find you already have a significant minority, (maybe even a majority) of people on a government program. In fact I think the us government spends more on medicare/aid for this minority of people that Canada does for our entire population. Your system is very inefficent, does not adequately cover several 10's of millions of people, and gives most people no more choice than a government run system would.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance#United_States

I think the figure is more like 84% have some sort of coverage. Of the 16% without, only 37% have incomes greater than 50K. I'd bet almost 100% of those below $50k would like insurance if they could afford it, and I'd bet that even the majority above $50K would say the same thing. So your 97% figure is way our in left field.

You are also mistaken if you think that most people have a choice. 60% of Americans get their insurance through their employer. It is therefore their employer who chooses. not the user.

On top of that the American system spends more on health care than any other country by far, and they still can't ensure adequate care for all their people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_Comparison_-_Healthcare_spending_as_%25_GDP.png

I'm not sure about actual performances but using it for direct educational purposes is one of the strongest fair use protections

You are absolutely correct.Unfortunately in Canada we don't have fair use, only the much more limited fair dealings. which does not cover education uses.

You also don't quote your source for the prostate cancer stat. I'd be willing to bet that those numbers are only for cases of prostate cancer which are treated. I'd also be willing to bet the the number of untreated/diagnosed cases is higher in the US than just about any other western country.