I want to see a breakdown of FF expenditures: salaries, bandwidth, compute, etc.
Maybe there are tech ways to mitigate some of the costs, like using a bittorrent-style technology for bandwidth, encouraging home servers for cloud stuff (password manager, sync, maybe calendaring, etc).
I think there really is something to your point. FF never tries to take advantage of the weaknesses of Google and Apple, they always play nice and never step on toes. They didn't make a big deal out of being blocked from iPhone. They didn't pound of Google over manifest v3. They didn't ho for jugular against the bad monopolistic practices. They didn't set up an alt vision against the "App stores" or the "Cloud" etc. It feels like they decided to just try to stay in their own lane and coast. Do not get me wrong: love FF and the developers - they have done some of the best Free Software work we have ever seen. But maybe the org did become "beholden" like you say. Maybe this is an opportunity to shift.
Lundberg conducts regular arsenic testing and publish results. Whole Foods' 365 brown rice has higher levels than other brands. Rice from California, India, and Pakistan mostly has lower levels than from southern US states like Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. I assume this means that you can mitigate the arsenic. It seems like there are various approaches, some better and more thoughtful than others.
Why do we want free speech?
- People have a natural right to express themselves (moral)
- Speech creates a vibrancy where good ideas or expression can convince, influence, or otherwise "win" (practical)
- The tyranny of the majority as a danger to all is most clear here (political)
- etc.
But these also apply to what "IP" wants to regulate. When I want to sing a song, write a book, make a film, make a speech (much less train my AI) I'm regulated by IP laws. Just posting a video very often leads to all kinds of roadblocks. Some might claim that my art that rips-off other's art is not "my" speech, but think of sampling, remixing, Wicked, Eyes on the Prize, Oresteia, etc etc etc etc. The vibrancy of art, science, and politics comes from various forms of remixing. The idea of free speech forbids us from thinking of the merits of the individual case ("this specific speech is worthless, derivative, threatens someone else's power") because we have faith that the openness of freedom brings forward all kinds of value (moral, artistic, political, monetary) that is not immediately apparent.
A lot of slashdotters and others seems to think that copyrights protect a moral right of artists to control their work, but this is a distinctly European, not American or Anglo tradition - this book gives a pretty good overview: https://press.princeton.edu/bo...
In my mind, the First Amendment came AFTER the copyright parts of the US Constitution, and so should be seen as overriding. I know no one agrees with this, but I think it makes sense. A constitutional power was given to the US government to regulate speech, but then, through the Amendment process, that power was taken away.
If copyright is meant to incentivize artistic and scientific and political advancement, then why is its efficacy not studied? It might be too entrenched to be able to look at, but when copyright is not enforced we see innovations, scientific and technological benefits, money being made, health care improving, and other benefits and knock-on effects. How much more bandwidth, disk space, recording devices, and paint would be sold in a world with no copyright? Can't we predict all kinds of job creation when copyright gets eliminated?
What about making other incentives that don't violate freedom? Subsidies? Tax benefits? Higher taxation on mass-distributed speech by commercial orgs? Stronger regulations against business advertisements? These could open the marketplace, encourage experimentation, make expression come from the ground up. But still leave a lot of room for making money. But these are just small, naive, spitballing ideas. I'm sure we could come up with a lot of new good ideas on how the state could incentivize art and speech.
Why ASSUME that the current system is optimal, but just needs tweaking?
You are taking a narrow view: that we can/should create and manipulate markets to incentivize certain kinds of expression. But there are other, broader, considerations: artists might need or want more freedom; there might be scientific or technical strangulation; the right to access literature and science is often hobbled; etc. etc. All of the arguments for free speech apply: the moral ones, the ones about a marketplace of ideas, the status of minority views, etc. Theories of art do not all privilege economics over other factors (we don't understand some kind of universal incentives for art). The sociology of science isn't leading the way in the demand for IP (academics is complex and not only economic). By investing so heavily in creating a powerful legal, financial framework, we are making a very narrow, niche vision dominate the entire wide field of possibilities.
That said, what you wrote was really interesting, succinct, and insightful.
Are cultural works really "my" or "your" works? It seems that the pendulum has swung so far that most art, writing, film, etc., is controlled by big-monied interests.
The elimination of copyright, I think, would benefit the arts and & sciences, would benefit the people over the big companies. The companies want more IP laws & limits, because this is their way of gathering rents. International trade has focused largely on IP, with the US demanding that China and others respect our legal restrictions. IP has become a deeply reactionary way of looking at things.
I think the rip, mix, burn model is the natural way that people express themselves, build culture, and (indirectly) effect the course of humanity. By making it so highly regulated, we strangle the ability for change to come from below. It serves an intensely oppressive impulse, and is a "market" in all the bad ways (unfair monopoly, rents, legal manipulation) and none of the good ways (trade, competition, innovation).
The big AI companies are going to SUPPORT making it more and more illegal to "train" on "data" -- or in other words, for people to be allowed to freely read and experience culture in its broadest sense. Yes, even China will end up here: it will be very illegal to train your personal AI on unapproved data.
I think the anti-corporate sentiment and impulse of the political grassroots is wrongly focused. I want my personal AI to train on all the books and music and movies and stuff that I love, that I hold dear. Just like how I want my children to read those books, see those movies, sing those songs. The AI that I train for myself will not respect the "rights" of the "creators" of those things. When I read a book and it deeply influences me, I am not doing a disservice to the author! When someone convinces me about an idea, I am not stealing their "product!" When I make a computer program that appreciates the film techniques that I have grown to love, I am not ruining those traditions!
Sometimes I find these fun and interesting, but I notice that many of them seem to require that I give my email address...? Why? To me, this signals an anti-web way of thinking, more of a commercial, entrepreneurial, business perspective than a Free, geeky way of being involved in the web.
Please stop doing things like this.
It's true that we all need and want money, but that doesn't mean we should flush our values.
Why not "Post-Free"? Is that what they called in the Confederate States?
The "selling" point would be that the software is high-quality? And it would compete with Free software? I can't dump it into my project? And it's not
The fact that this issue hasn't been seized upon by the "community" shows how dumb we are. This radically changed the Internet landscape as phones took off, and that anti-Freedom momentum never stopped.
My suspicion is that FF got so much money from Google, they decided to strategically keep their mouths shut about big-company abuse. Instead of being bomb-throwers, they decided to be "fair competitors." Very politically short-sighted.
Instead of being inspired by leaders with a vision for openness, we canceled RMS and embraced the same-old bullshit administrative/capitalist way of thinking.
FF has been carrying water for Apple and Google. Time to stop!
Palin said that as a way to show that she had some kind of connection to Russia, and thus has foreign-policy credentials to deal with them. It was a ham-fisted, silly, inept answer. The Tina Fey version mocked her for it. "The crazies that think Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house" are not under some kind of misconception – there might be a subtlety in the actual quote, but there is no crazy lack of comprehension.
I completely agree that mocking speech and even unfair, viciously mocking speech should be "protected" and I think the fake Harris video should be considered free speech for sure. But that does not make it the "same" as the Tina Fey case.
"They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska"
This would be a great Matt Damon movie
"young person with an intellectually defensible but socially unacceptable moral code makes a huge mistake in trying to live by it" Does this make sense? An intellectually defensible moral code that is not socially acceptable is
Intellectually defensible moral code: I want to do things that benefit me, or that I desire to do. And I argue that morally, it is good for people to do the things they want.
Socially unacceptable moral code: Yeah but you stole billions of dollars...?
How is that deep or interesting?
What might Apple's motive be?
The killer feature is, of course, AR's latent ability to see people naked. This is very obvious, but, since it's so repressed, gets even more repressed.
panic: kernel trap (ignored)
