Well, on the basis that malloc() and free() are opposites, and writing to free()d memory is delusional, delusional == free.

On the other hand, look at what America has been fine with imposing on other nations, then what it has been fine living with within itself. America has never been about upholding the standards it claims.

As for freedom, from pretty much the very beginning, Constitutional "rights" have been revealed as merely permissions granted to whoever those in power happened to like. (Hence the amazing numbers of prisoners promising to vote in favour of those in power at the time magically getting dispensation, and the amazing problems minorities with a habit of voting the wrong way have.) There are no "rights" in America, never have been. You can't remove, grant or even waive rights - they exist or they don't and that's the end of it. (On matters of rights, I can be complete Kant.) Permissions are the only things you can ever add or subtract, and since everything in the Constitution has been put on hold or removed at some point, everything in the Constitution is a permission.

But that's fine with Americans, provided it's some other person getting these pseudo-rights pulled, ideally if they're from the wrong political party or the wrong ethnicity, or (in this case) testifying for the wrong side. People want THEIR freedoms and the freedoms of "their side" defended, "the other side" gets whatever crumbs are thrown their way. And that is why Americans are generally elitist snobs of an order pre-WW1 Europe could only ever have dreamed of aspiring to. Even the worst of the empires treated "non-conformists" better than that. Admittedly, in many cases, by shooting them, but that's still treating them as equals of dogs. The US treats undesirables (ie: those who don't think the same) as closer to pond scum.

Judges have never been taken seriously, when decisions run against the government. There have been Supreme Court rulings awarding the Black Hills to the Sioux. The government, for 50? 60? years has managed to ignore the ruling. That covers a lot of Presidents in both parties. But it includes an awful lot more voters, who (by re-electing anyone at all) are active supporters of the Government's refusal to follow SCOTUS orders. You are putting people in power who you know, full well, will not obey judge rulings they do not like. The upshot of that is that I have bugger-all pity when those same politicians disregard (or creatively interpret) rulings that happen to affect you or your "side". You're discovering the price of giving them that power.

The only downside is that everyone in the world, free or otherwise, must pay the price for these games. You have robbed us all of what liberty we had, just so that the right people were oppressed.

And not when you first started working on something?

If so, then your argument makes no sense.

> Seven years? Kid, seven years is nothing. How old are you, fourteen? I just published Nobots [mcgrewbooks.com] last month, have been working on it since 2009. I'd have a two year copyright.

No, you would have 6 years and 11 months left.

If it was a hit song, then why is there no income in July? And August? Oh wait, there is, he might still be collecting money for work done years for DECADES to come.

Who else gets payed for work they did once? Let him add the total, over his lifetime AND his childrens lifetime, and divide it by the number of hours he spend on it. Wanna bet it comes to far more then minimum wage? And this is ONE source of payment? You ever did work and get payed by multiple people for decades to come? No, me neither.

This artist purposely uses misleading data. That means he is a lying piece of scum.

The summary states how much artists are payed and the claim that the artists think that because the payout is not a billion dollars, they are payed to little and spotify is in the wrong.

I am sure many a person cleaning toilets is ALSO not happy with the payout. But the market value of cleaning toilets is low and so apparently is the market value of music by most artists.

Is spotify paying to little or is "indie" (read non-popular) music simply not a viable product in todays entertainment market.

THINK OF THIS: I see NOTHING in the article that could not lead to the conclusion: For barely any plays at all, unknown artists earn more per month then the majority of Americans. 3300 bucks? Isn't that in fact several times minimum wage in the US?

So what are they bitching about? Can I bitch that I am not payed enough for having sex with women? I only make 3300 dollars a month for shagging 400.000 women and I just don't think that is enough...

How much do these artists they should be payed FOR A SINGLE song that, statistically speaking, nobody wants to hear?

Life is hard, many people have to do back breaking work and still don't earn 3300 a month. And they certainly don't get payed for work they did last month, last year or even a decade ago.

How much do these "artists" expect to be payed anyway for a SINGLE listen to a SINGLE song by a SINGLE person?

Afghanistan does have the right to tax the goods resulting from that transaction in London as they enter into Afghanistan.

If States (as you say) are independent, then why shouldn't New York have the right to tax goods resulting from any transaction made in Oregon as they enter into New York?

Of course, rather than New York set up physical checkpoints (and have the tax paid at the border as goods enter into New York), they could make a "logical" one by requiring that the tax be paid at the point of purchase for any goods that will enter New York.

(It would make my life easier if Amazon US collected any VAT likely to be due for goods shipped to the UK and passed the collected payment it to the UK government, rather than me having to go the the Post Office to pay it. However I could see Amazon US objecting to this!)

If notices are going to be sent and processed (then accepted/rejected automatically), followed by verbal fighting, why not simplify the whole exercise? Have a two-way corewars battle between the service and the complainant, winner decides if the link stays. Since the complainant is rarely the copyright holder and the service rarely provides the material, you can extend this to a four-way battle using crobots.

This is just as logical as the current system and has a higher probability of protecting original content from abusive/malign notices.