Not sure about in the US but here in the UK we force our police to have a much higher standard of driving. This means doing something like the following as part of the on the job training: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_driving_test

Mind you, here in the UK we also still have two officers per police car in most patrols and the driver leaves using the onboard equipment to the co-driver.

This is only true if you discount the fact that each copy has to contribute something towards the cost of creating the original.

The original was very expensive to produce so that cost has to be shared out somehow, why not share it out amongst all the people who want to gain access to copy, even temporarily just for their own viewing?

Unless you think some people should gain access to a copy for free while others should pay? That strikes me as inherently unfair.

Try to not get stuck up on individual cases (like move, song, computer game), try and come up with an economic model that allows things that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce but almost nothing to make but each subsequent copy can be made for free pay for their production. Make sure you take into account that each product has to be separable as some people work on one product but not others but still need to be paid a share of the revenue of products they help create.

I am not saying the movie studios, riaa or whatever are great. I think they suck and have screwed up many times, but in order to throw the current system in the bin we need to have a tangible replacement that still works within the confines of a capitalist society where people need to be paid for their efforts.

Bear in mind that some us are not paid to think the piracy is not a good thing, we actually believe it and post our own honest opinions on the matter. Not everyone who disagrees with you and your chums is a paid troll.

Yup, The US approach of not blocking the sites or proxies but then allowing shyster lawyers to sue the users to bankruptcy is much better.

Even with your amazing star trek style replicator it would still take energy. The real issue here though is that the original copy took hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, even if each subsequent copy takes less than 0.01 of a cent. They have to use the profit made from selling copies with are cheap to create to cover the cost of the original.

Netflix must have to pay a fortune to the studios for their licence to resell their content. That deal may also include a small amount extra per user they have or even per viewing. Large companies generally trust other large companies to accurately report this data for some reason.

I work in the elearning industry and it is common place for people producing online courses to charge big companies based on how many people they way to give access to the courses. Even though it costs the producing nothing extra for each user they still demand an extra fee for each person who benefits from their original investment. This is simply how lots of things work in the capitalist world we inhabit.

The difference with a book is that when you bought it there was not a long set of terms and conditions of server for you to read and agree to as part of the purchase. With HBO / Netflix / Whatever there is so you have the choice of agreeing to them, or walking away from the deal and not buying the service. Wanting some third option of paying for the service then refusing to honour your part of the deal is simply not on the table. You might say it should be, but our democratically elected government does not so it isn't.

The fact that these services do not offer the option you want to buy is shit, but that is the people providing the services choice not yours. If you choose to be a criminal rather than put up with the restriction they want you to then you take your chances with how the judge sentences you same as anyone else who breaks laws, even the unjust ones.

All you can really do is hope that sooner or later his boss puts two and two together. In fact, they may have done in order to bring you on board with the remit you say you have been given. In light of that I supposed you could go through a document each mistake that has caused a project to overrun and hope that he is the common thread that unites all the projects.

Alternatively you could try getting the department to run within it's budget and force the necessary cuts be made to staff provisioning. This will force the IT manager to actually go round firing people. Since this is a very tough part of the job to do he might balk at it or at the very least screw it up in a way he can't blame on anyone else.

To be honest though this doesn't sound like you are entirely being truthful. If you were really in the position you are in you probably would have been given the right to fire the IT manager and recruit a decent replacement as part of the deal. This gives you the option to force him to raise his game and also help in with any additional training he needs to become a better manager.

When it come to firing managers you generally just pay them off and then give them gardening leave for the duration of their contract along with a cast iron reference they can take to another employer. This gives them a reason to go quietly without you proving they were shit at all.

If you do not have that and are effectively working under him or alongside him then you are on road to nowhere and might as well just concentrate on helping the department underneath him run well as best you can. Even an incredibly shit IT manager can look amazing if the department all know there stuff and do what they need to.

If projects are all necessarily complex that is not just the fault of the IT manager, that is also the fault of the person or people delivering them. Try working on them directly to get them to deliver better work, one possible way to do this is to subtly make them realise who is for the chop if the costs don't come down. Obviously you have to be very careful how you do this, it might help to pick one person who is on side already but also has a good working relationship with his colleagues and then drop a few hints.

If you are doing all this already and the IT manager is blocking you then you might end up in a situation where all you can do is take your consultancy fee and make a few suggestions around the edges.

I guess you pay attention to the guideline about concentrating on modding up rather than down :)

He made a big thing about it was only copying data, I was trying to illustrate that sometimes just making a copy of something is not desired by the person who owns it. I should realise I am just wasting my breath though, slashdot is mostly full of students and young people who have not realised that people earning a living is far more important than being able to watch whatever you like the name of some data wants to be free crusade.

When you grow up you will realise that some form of copyright law needs to exist. You will only see this though when you have a work of your own that is worth other people wanting to copy it and have a need to buy a house and feed your children. This sort of work will only come about though if you invest thousands of (or maybe even a million) hours in its creation.

The capitalist world we live in at present is simply not ready to abandon copyright yet, there are many reasons why but if all you are crying out for is a way of justifying bit torrent use on some bullshit moral stretch of logic you will never see them.

As you get old you might realise that enjoying a movie you can't be arsed to pay for is just like stealing from the supermarket if you ever get the chance to get away with it. I know that that copying is not not depriving the copyright owner of a physical product, but it is depriving them of the revenue you SHOULD have paid them in order to watch the film. If the film was so shit it wasn't worth anything, then just don't watch it. You can sugar coat it any way you like saying you buy loads of movies and what ever, but for every film you watch illegally for free is depriving someone of the pittance you would have paid to join Netflix or buy it on DVD. if you watch it legally for free you are probably paying in some way you just can't see.

Final point, the lack of copyright law will render the GPL worthless and us evil capitalists (I am joking, see below) will be able to shit all over every bit of open source software by ignoring the GPL completely.

BTW, I am actually a socialist at heart I just think that while capitalism exists then copyright law also has to so artists can earn a living from producing content. Just performing live simply doesn't pay the bills enough as most of the revenue goes to the people who own the venue.

Some kind soul would download it then edit out the adverts and reupload it. Everyone would choose the ad free version and that would be the one with more seeders in no time.

Also, they would attract loads of high paying satellite and cable customers to bit torrent which currently they probably haven't heard of.

Then other companies would make nice, easy to use Tivo boxes that sourced from torrents instead of tv signals.

Instant bankruptcy and they are not quite that stupid.

In my experience (I am a lowly brit) a very small minority, especially at the moment as those on the left moan about the tories being in power and those on the right moan about the liberals being in coalition with them.

That doesn't mean everyone wants to repeal copyright law though, they just think the police should be out making sure no squaddies get attacked by Muslim nutters again.

Wow. You seem quite angry. Maybe you'll calm down a bit when grow up start getting laid.

Would you agree if I hacked your home PC and copied all the data I found on there?

Just because something can be copied without incurring a cost does not make it any less valuable.

Unfortunately the old generation are not dieing quick enough to make changing the law to cope with new technologies possible yet. They will most likely carry on voting for parties to get in and strengthen copyright law for many decades to come, however futile you may think it is.

These are not victimless crimes. The victims are just huge multinational conglomerates that you do not give a crap about (I am not sure I do either to be honest). In this case though the the victims have lots of money and are constantly whining to the police and politicians about the crimes perpetrated against them. The police need to be seen to be doing something.

Also, it is worth remembering that the UK record industry does have a lot of employees and is one of the few things we actually export nowadays so it is no surprise that politicians wish to protect it from any perceived harm.

Finally, you need to remember that the vast majority of the UK voting population do not necessarily give a crap about repealing copyright law or whatever. The care more about our economy. I actually think if we had a referendum tomorrow about copyright law it would come out as a majority in favour of strengthening it thanks to all the old people voting, even though you and all your friends would disagree.