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"Different Clocks" - 12/31/05

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Captain Slug

Helpful Senior Member
Joined
May 23, 2001
Location
Asteroid B-612
There's no foreseeable benefit in trying to accelerate the judicial process in matters of free speech or copyright law. These things take time to be debated, legislated, and precedented and that's the way things have worked out for the past 200 years. It took our legal system 80 years to make decisions concerning the First Ammendment rights of Television and Movies so I think it would be a bit short-sighted to expect file-sharing issues to be weighed and determined in such a short amount of time. Expecially considering how much it has changed since the last rulings took place.

There are precedents now and what has been decided is that the application of legal actions is predicated on copyright law without concern for the content of the "unlawfully exchanged good".

Determinations and opinions concerning these issues will develop as new court cases are presented and decided upon. What I can see as a problem in the process now is that too few people are aware of what their rights are and what they can or cannot be held liable for. Too many citations are being issued for eroneous charges and too many cases are being settled out of court (which in turn prevents precedents from being made).

I don't see the point in trying to hurry something that will accomplish less if rushed. And for the record: we do not live in a Democracy.
 
the subtext here is that we should build a faster elephant... kinda like a better mousetrap, but the size of the (US) government. what happened to the moderate Ed that saw a problem and proposed a solution in a leavel headed fasion?

now its all idealisim or pessimisim, or a new mix of both. not that its better, or worse in terms of reading material, but just less productive food for thought.

weve got along way to go before genetic engineering gives him his wish...
(thanks to captian slug for starting the topic)
 
Captain Slug it is true that the political system does take a long time to work, and that's exactly Ed's point as well, but it's not the complete thought. Precedents are of course hugely important, but the fact is that none of this was unforeseeable. Technology paths are set 3-5 years in advance of coming to any fruition yet every step has been reactionary. We need more foresight though than even 3-5 years. In the 70s the dreamers had to know that technology would reach it's present capabilities. They may not have known when, but consider for a second the things imagined in sci-fi that we now think of as common. That's no less than 30 years of foresight wasted with no real discussion. In this age of globalization it is important that world governments start coming together and looking and legislating towards 80-100 years in the future, so as these things come we have already had time for the necessary debate. Unilateral action is ineffective when faced with as small a world as it has become. Governments need to work away from the reactionaries that they have become and lead us towards a time in which each day does not hold yet another crisis unforeseeable only to the blind and yet we are utterly unprepared for. To be shortsighted is easy when thinking in terms of political careers that will last only 10-20 years longer by the time people reach real power but we need to start looking for people that care more about THE future than THEIR future. To take Ed's parable of elephants and flies. It may not be possible to make an elephant move as fast as a fly but it's not impossible for an elephant to stomp on a fly, he just has to be able to figure out where the fly is going, not where he is. It's hard to predict where a fly will go, and even worse the fly will change course if the elephant is already striking. But then, higher levels of sophistaction necessarily entail higher levels of predictability. If our government is an elephant that takes 80 years to put things through the process we should be thinking about and swinging at where the fly will be in 80 years. Your point about the evils of the rushed job we do now are not lost on me at all. The point is correct, the solution (laissez-faire, let it run it's course) is not in my opinion.
 
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orionlion82 said:
the subtext here is that we should build a faster elephant... kinda like a better mousetrap, but the size of the (US) government. what happened to the moderate Ed that saw a problem and proposed a solution in a leavel headed fasion?

can't build a faster one, but the elephant needs to start acting like he really is smarter than the fly. I agree on the Ed thing. Definitely still got a great eye for the issues but it seems like he's less of a solution guy and more of a I'm so sick of this BS guy.
 
There should not even be an Elephant, just flies (if we are talking USA).

I know that is not very realistic, but it seems that personal responsibility has been lost. The people have better and more realistic capability of ensuring their own security, yet they can't seem to find the the time to look outside their own busy lives so they look to the "elephant" to do it for them.

Same with the victimized record and movie industries. Though they seem to want to ride and control the elephant instead of coming up with real solutions.
 
Am I the only person who, when he tries to read this article, gets linked instead to the next days (1-1-06) article?

Hoot
 
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