People keep forgetting that the reason people like Steam is because they provide a service in exchange for you giving something up.
Why give up anything? They could easily get rid of the silly DRM and give people all the other features as well. You could choose whether or not the tie the game to Steam.
I think their beef should be with DRM. Demos only allow you play up to a certain point.
I'm sure you aren't suggesting that public safety is less important than the ability to say whatever you want where ever you want to say it and with any number of people.
I would. Who is the paranoid one here? The ones who are scared that unlikely scenarios where people are hurt will arise, or the ones suggesting that the government could easily abuse such powers (and history provides countless examples of government corruption)? Do you also support the Patriot Act? Warrantless wiretapping? The TSA? It's all for your safety, and surely an 'upstanding' citizen such as yourself wouldn't dare to suggest that petty things such as rights are more important than public safety?
I won't say anything about the rest of it, but I do think what you said there is completely ridiculous.
Random conversations regarding ethics, with atheists.
Can't argue with that hard data. I wish that would've been made clear from the beginning.
Atheists tend to be Pro Baby Killing, because they have dehumanized the "fetal tissue", making it much easier to ease their concience regarding killing for the sake of eliminating the consequences of random sex with people they are not committed to.
I doubt it's that they are pro baby killing, but that they value a woman's rights more than the life of an underdeveloped baby (only because you insist) who's still living in said woman's body. Or maybe they are pro baby killing. How am I to know who you were arguing with?
My question to them, which I have yet to have answered, "What makes your ethics better than mine that you feel that you can impose your ethics upon me, while rejecting the idea that I can impose mine on you?"
Somehow that sounds like a straw man to begin with. Do they really believe that their ethics are better than yours? Well, I guess I wasn't present in your little arguments, so I don't know.
I've had random arguments with theists before. They were pompous imbeciles without a shred of intelligence (evidently because they said things I disagreed with). Therefore, theists tend to be that way. I'm sure that some atheists are idiots, but isn't that true of every group?
Hosts honor takedown notices because it is to their benefit.
And that's the important part, isn't it? Yet you say they are "completely free" to disregard DMCA takedowns. How exactly is it to their benefit?
Of course, that means that these hosts will be driven out of business by the inevitable landslide of lawsuits and judgements against them.
Oh, right.
Neither one of those options is in any way realistic or better than the current situation.
I'd say the latter is better, actually. However, there is a third option: get rid of DMCA takedown notices.
Action without consequences are impossible, yet that tends to be the modern Atheist's goal.
Tends to be? Interesting. What would lead you to believe that?
indeed one cannot properly claim to be an educated westerner and NOT have read a Bible (given that it was one of the biggest influences in Western Civilization and without understanding it you cannot understand many of the characters and events of the past 2K years in the western hemisphere in their full context.)
You can't claim to be educated unless you know how to scuba dive.
I've noted that atheists much prefer debating what they decide to say we say, rather than what we actually say, though, so carry on.
Sounds like a hasty generalization to me.
Lets turn the tables.
You might as well have posted this in an article about SOPA. Does it not matter how they try to enforce copyright law? Does it not matter how many innocents get caught in the crossfire?
It is not right and there is no excuse to justify it if you earn a wage.
That's subjective.
So yes, faith in universal physical laws, and faith in a divine creator, I think are on par with one another.
I think the difference is that one of them is completely worthless and the other one brings progress. I'm not sure people would last very long if they stood around questioning their own existence and such. But if people didn't randomly decide to believe in fairies because there are a few gaps in their knowledge they want to fill? I think we could live without that.
"X is worse than Y, so Y isn't bad" isn't a very good argument, in my opinion.
Any form of private property is a government enforced monopoly
Copyright is not like any private property I've ever seen. In fact, it even has its own cute little name. The fact that someone can store something on a hard drive that is entirely theirs and somehow some random person can claim those specific bits belong to them seems rather insane and unjust to me. The fact that the government is enforcing a monopoly that hinders real property rights (as in, physical property, which is what people usually refer to) does not speak "free market" to me.
You might be able to get by on technicalities, but I don't consider that a free market.
If I would pay a disinterested third party for a counterfeit copy, why would I not just buy an authentic version?
The third party most likely sells it for a cheaper price.
Downloading a copy of Microsoft Office (illegal) is no more lost income to Microsoft than downloading a copy of LibreOffice (legal).
But that's still a loss of potential profit if you had money to give them.
However, buying an illegal copy of Microsoft Office, does mean that Microsoft doesn't earn the money that you paid.
They don't earn any money either way. This distinction is meaningless to me as the money was never Microsoft's to begin with. The fact that they could have had it had different things happened is true in both cases.
Note that this is not necessarily the amount that they wanted for the product, but still a loss.
At most, it is a loss of money that they could have had if the 'pirate' had chosen another path.
In other words, you can try to make some sophistic argument why receiving an illegal copy may not be copyright infringement, but that doesn't help you at all with ebooks.
How does this apply to my comment?
We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts. -- Patrick Moynihan
