Answer: Probably not enough to do serious damage, but definitely more than enough to make most intelligent people need antidepressants.

If only we should be so lucky.

That's arguable. Despite what some people think, there is the concept of a lost sale involved. I don't believe RIAA claims (which are no doubt very inflated), but when a song is copied many many times, there will be some percentage of people who copied that music who would have bought it otherwise. That might be a very low percentage, but it is assuredly non-zero. Also, there is the cost of lost control. Copyright law entitles the rights holder of an artistic pattern to the control of that pattern. Because they created it, they get the say in what happens to it. Just because the creation is digital now, does not automatically negate that. In a nutshell, copying a file may be easy and it may seem ok, but it's still illegal unless you have permission to do that. That's the cost for not having created it yourself or having secured the rights to it for yourself.

The adjustment here is part of the argument in question. Just because the pattern being copied is easily manipulated, does not automatically mean it is morally acceptable to copy it. Copying it may be easy, but the fact remains that in so doing, you're using a template to create a new file. The template wasn't free to create, and the current system recognizes that by stating that the pattern itself has some value and that the pattern has an assigned ownership (which isn't you in this case). It therefore remains the property of the copyright holder. In effect, whoever went to the trouble of creating the pattern owns it, and they should be compensated for it.

The argument that the internet has changed the morality of these things is infantile. The difficulty of an act does not determine whether it is right or wrong. For example, killing someone with a bat would take considerable effort, and would be wrong. However pushing that same person off a bridge to their death is much easier, would cost almost no effort, and yet is still wrong. I'm not comparing murder to the unlawful copying of music, just illustrating that an eased effort of an act does not erase the morality of that act.

It's besides the point, but copying data is creation. You're just using an existing template to guide the final form of the new creation. Also, it's a deflection to say that copying data is the value at question. It's not, the pattern being copied is the thing being valued, and that pattern does have value.

Kind of, but not really. It takes time to build a house just like it takes time to make art. Just because it costs very little to copy the final product does not automatically mean that there wasn't some investment of time and effort on the front end. Copyright law seeks to recognize that original time and effort.

Most of the pro-copying arguments I've seen involve this logic: "It costs me almost nothing to copy this thing, therefore it has no value and the creating artist deserves nothing for it". I've seen it dressed up a lot of different ways but it usually boils down to that, and it's a logical fallacy. If it were true, then people wouldn't recognize a difference between listening to static, and listening to music.

Whether or not intellectual property has value can be argued all day long, but that's not at issue here. What is at issue is whether or not an implementation of an idea has value. Most people confuse those two things, simply because the music they interact with is so easily manipulated. We must be very careful to recognize the difference between a thought, and something created from that thought. Creation has value, the only question is how much value, and how to recognize it.

The big one is that there's essentially no profit motive. In a well-functioning federal agency, all of the staff are encouraged to "do the right thing" for the people they serve, rather than maximize profit.

You've touched on something that I discuss with my socialist friends on a regular basis. They fail to recognize that there's always a profit motive. In government jobs its not a corporate motive, it's a personal motive. I'd argue that personal profit motives are much worse than corporate profit motives, because corporate motives are typically enabled by groups of people that are effectively hindered by their disagreements. In individual profit motives, there is no such limitation. Also others are not likely to call them out on their behavior due to fears of confrontation, and because they receive little or no incentive to ever raise their voice. Most of the time, they just don't want to be noticed, and calling out someone else is a great way to get the wrong kind of attention.

In a nutshell, an overwhelming number of government employees "do the right thing" for the people they serve, true enough. You just have to remember that they consider themselves as the #1 person they serve.

It would be pretty effective at causing panic and fear in the average user. The user could then give their credit info over the phone, or the agent could tell them the command to re-enable the gui and get them on-line again. It wouldn't have to be perfect and they wouldn't care if the right services were re-enabled, since they'd just charge the card and get off the phone.

Thank you for that! I'm pretty well versed in military jargon, but I've never heard that one before. I appreciate it.

Replying instead of moderating

You make great points except for "used nukes in anger". There were a lot of considerations that went into the decision to use nukes, but anger definitely wasn't one of them. The debate over the US' decision to use them has been going on for quite some time, but a few things are pretty clear:

1. The casualty estimates for an invasion without the use of nukes ranged between half a million to 1.5 million.
2. The Japanese had a standing order to execute allied POW's in the event of such an invasion, of which there were about 100 thousand.
3. The conventional wisdom at the time (which was probably true) indicated that Japanese leaders would be unlikely to surrender until well into the invasion of the Japanese homeland.

IANAL. That being said, they may claim the changes are not material but that doesn't mean anything. Any change to the service agreed upon in the contract that results in an increased cost or decreased service would be "an important part of the instrument" and therefore constitutes a material change.

In other words, they can say whatever the heck they want, but if you take them to court (small claims or otherwise) they will lose.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Material+Changes
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/instrument

Not a great idea. I spent five years working post-sales in that environment.

The problem is that the sales people typically aren't motivated and view learning the technical details mostly as a waste of time. So they don't learn it as well as they should. Also, since they've been "trained", an engineer isn't as likely to be assigned to the sales person for the engagement. What you end up with is usually a sales person who thinks they understand the details.

The end result is that the post-sales engineer who gets assigned has to clean everything up. I probably spent at least 60% of my time having to re-engage our sales team for more appropriate contracts and re-engineer the "solution" the client was sold.

There were a few times I was sent to engagements following a new sale that had involved both a sales person and a pre-sales engineer. Those engagements went much more smoothly and usually resulted in increased sales of product and services.

What you describe is a best case scenario for a stolen credit card. Things don't always go that way, and there are a million ways for the incident to be much less pleasant. There is a very real chance a lot of people will have to spend a significant amount of time and energy to get this cleaned up.

Another thing to note here is that it's a closed system. Sure, in the end you won't have to pay the bill. But, I can guaran-damn-te the suits at Sony or Visa won't pay it either. So who pays the bill? Innocent bystanders when Sony raises their prices or Sony employees when they add the loss to their budget planning and have to eliminate another position to offset costs.

And watch a lot of them get turned away. The cable companies have been hard at work introducing legislation to greatly limit competition in a lot of areas. Try asking Verizon when FiOS will be available in Tennessee for example. In the entire Memphis area, your choice is pretty much Comcast or Comcast. There is DSL, but its throughput is laughable and the service is highly unreliable, and there is no "high end" DSL to speak of.

Shouldn't be uncomfortable. There are two types of schools: public and private.

Public schools are mostly paid for and to some degree run by "government" entities. They generally could care less about profit and tend to operate much like assembly lines.

Private schools are businesses. They don't always measure their own performance in terms of dollars, but make no mistake, they operate for profit. Sometimes the profit is the schools prestige, sometimes its student enrollment, and sometimes its simply a schools political involvement. Whatever it is though, its always about advancing either the school or the people who run it.

I have nothing to support this other than my personal experience, so take this as my thought and not as fact. That being said, most of the democrats I've known in my life have tended to convert to the republican party after they've started making decent salaries. IF that is true in a wider sense, then it would seem reasonable that the agenda you describe above would be pushed by both the democrats as well. Otherwise, they educate their base, their base makes more money, and they start losing people.