Re:This sort of thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
by Dashing Leech (688077) on Thursday October 06, @08:22AM (#13728844)

"And, in the processes, depriving the copyright holders of income."

And this is where this argument always fails for a variety of reasons.
Income is only deprived if the person receiving the "free" copy would
have paid for it in the first place had they not been able to get the
free copy. I would love to see someone argue that a 14 year old kid
with $10,000 "worth" of songs would have paid $10,000 for them had
they not been able to download.

Also, depriving potential income is not theft. People are deprived of
potential income all the time, from the city doing roadwork in front
of a store, to boycotts, to simply a new competitor moving in.
Deprivation of potential income is not a valid argument because it
relies on an invalid assumption of what people would have intended
under different circumstances. It's the deprivation of the property
from which the income is derived that matters, and that's the
difference between theft and copyright infringement. The former
deprives the owner of the use of the property. The latter just means
you violated their right to decide how something is copied.

One other point. There is no inherent right to earn income from a
creative work, and that is not the intention of copyright law. For
example, this post I am writing is actually a creative work, and
usually something like this is automatically copyrighted under the
law. Should you guys pay me? The intent of copyright law is to
encourage content creators to share their works publically. The
"limited time" (which it isn't really anymore) protection is merely
the incentive for sharing the work. It's not a bad concept for
promoting cultural development, but has become too distorted and
abused to be a useful anymore.

Re:Well it clearly matters to some people...
(Score:5, Insightful)
by mcrbids (148650) Alter Relationship on Monday October 10, @11:57AM (#13758535)
I think the bigger question in my mind is why hadn't someone tried to do this before now?

Science isn't truth, and it isn't fact. It's a process that, over time, results in a gradual and constant tendency towards truth.

If you get into a debate with religious folk about "creationism" versus "evolution", one of the tactics almost invariably tried is to disprove some facet or other of evolution through some form of deductive reasoning. The basic idea is to prove that Science is somehow wrong, and then assume that creationism wins by default once that's done.

It's easy to see the fallacy: disproving evolution (even if they can) doesn't prove creationism.

But, scientific theory is always undergoing review and clarification. Newtonian gravity works, in limited scopes. It was revised and improved with relativity theory, which is itself being revised and improved today with multidimensional, superstring theory. It's this recursive process of deduction, testing, and review that advances science.

We should be ecstatic! Despite our incredible efforts to find it, we've uncovered NO evidence that this has ever happened before in the multi-billion year history of the universe!

People are stupid, and we have to acknowledge that. Our intellect barely rises above our other urges, the urge towards sex, the blindnesses caused by our tendency to suspend reason (A.K.A. "Faith") and follow the leader 'cause it's easy. And, truly fresh/new approaches to problems are rare, and hard to find. Most any "new" thought is merely an extension of a previous thought. We're creatures of habit. But, so long as we continue to try, so long as we continue to be willing to challenge our assumptions, and take the time to do so when somebody DOES come up with something new, then the process of Science progresses, and life continues to get better.

Schools today don't teach science. They teach "facts", like "water vapor absorbs light, but absorbes blue light the least, and thus makes the sky blue". They don't ever teach the method of science, the passion of science, beyond making you recite the "gather facts, form hypothesis, test hypothesis, draw conclusion" which is only minimally how science works.

Children are BORN scientists. As they explore with their hands, and their minds, the world around them, they perform hundreds of experiments a day, every day. Where do you find frogs? What bug is making that buzzing noise? What happens if you clap your hands near a grasshopper? How many blocks can I stack up before they fall over?

So, what do we do? We lock them up in a sterile environment, where they're told not to question the teacher, and never to talk to the kids next to them. We prevent their natural curiousity, and instead, browbeat them into performing tricks like a circus animal. The apathy of the schoolchild is both detrimental and obvious.

And after that's done, after the child's natural, scientific curiousity has been conquered, that's when we introduce the wonders of science in the most boring, unimaginably unflattering way possible, by forcing him/her to regurgitate "facts" that they'd be ridiculed to question.

The real wonder? How does science advance at all in the face of this educational travesty?

It's pretty obvious that scientific curiosity is built into the very fiber of humanity, or how else could still be advancing despite our incredibly expensive social efforts to prevent it?

"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea." Robert Anton Wilson

Zogger, /. user #617870, says:

"---here's the problem. Our system was setup for independents, not for a cabal of two almost identical private organizations to back and forth split the OWNERSHIP of the government. No place is it carved in stone that the dimwits and repugnants get the whole deal, BUT, by manipulating the system they have brainwashed people into voting for them well past any sort of usefulness right into harmful.. They control the mass media outlets, the broadcast and print media to a large extent. It's the party line, year after decade. It never ends.

The times we've had national debates that included third parties, the third parties did well in the polls and elections. Several election cycles in a row who knows what might happen. They don't do that anymore now, they realised that too many people would see that yes, there are alternatives. And that "waste your vote" nonsense both parties use to scare their brainwashed sheeps back into the herd. We have globalist_traitor_goon party A and B. They keep their little minions faked out "lookout, just you lookout now, don't you dare be wastin' your vote! If you don't vote for our goon, the other guy's goon will get in!". Well, duh. Result is we keep electing goons from the globalist_traitor_goon parties.

There's no checks and balances when a combo of the crips and bloods run the show. A criminal gang is a criminal gang, those retardo labels they give themselves are the biggest scam going, there's a pittance worth of difference over all in the long haul. More big government, more taxes,more intrusiveness, more laws that aren't constitutional, on and on. It won't end until people stop voting for those people, local to federal, until enough people see you get the same thing if you keep electing the same thing. And it hasn't mattered, back and forth, this goon is a prez, these goons run the house, the other goons run the senate, both of them pick tame goons for the courts, always distills to the essence of "goonishness".

It's too far, most people won't wake up until there's tanks in the streets, armed mercenaries on the corners with full auto rifles, "camps" of the work and re education and concentration variety, and the whole nine yards then they STILL won't realise that it's mostly their fault for voting for it and putting up wityh it as they went about their daily entertainments and amusements..

Bread and circuses works, divide and conqueor works, and mass psyops and propoganda and brainwashing work. Look how theyuse popular television, theyhave people seeing police routinely breaking the law and violating rights, they have tv shows with the cia engaged in domestic work, they constantly link anyone who espouses constituional mandates as somehow being "fringe" and a 'domestic terrorist", they link gun ownership-not misuse, just plain ownership-with being a drug dealer or worse. They are breainwashing the children in public schools, demonizing home schoolers, getting the doctors to find out who owns guns by asking little billy and sally "do your parents have guns? where are they, how many do they have?". Just all sorts of little chunks of creeping fascism and snitchisms.

People just must really enjoy this sort of thing, they really put up with it. Why I don't know, but they sure do."