>> ^imstellar28:As far as I can see nothing has changed.
1. We still torture
2. We are still in Iraq
3. Drugs are still illegal
4. We still don't have habeus corpus
5. The RIAA still controls the courts
6. Our economy still sucks
7. Nobody has been prosecuted for any crimes of the last administration
8. 95% of the people in this administration worked for the last administration
9. I still lose 50% of my income to taxation
10. Our federal budget is still greater than $3 trillion
Its naive to assume they are different because they have different names or party affiliations. You say they are different tell me why the budgets they propose are almost identical.



Ugggh

1. No we don't
2. We are leaving soon. If Obama were prez in 2003, we wouldn't be in Iraq in the first fucking place.
3. Oh I forgot, Obama was elected to legalize all drugs immediately
4. We do have habeus
5. The RIAA and FISA are shitty matters that make me angry.
6. Our economy sucks, which wasn't Obamas fault. I guess to you, we should've already been rich again in three months. Stupid Obama!
7. Yeah, what a dick that Obama hasn't prosecuted Bush&Cheney himself within three months!
8. %95 statement is ridiculous and completely inaccurate.
9. You lose 50% of your income? WTF? Where the fuck do you live and how much money do you make to lose that much? Fuck man, I make 120+ and only lose 34%
10. Yeah, shame on Obama for not zero-ing out our debts



Man, what world do you have to live in to think that Obama would have everyone out of Iraq, fix our economy, legalize all drugs, and prosecute the Bush admin within 100 days of being in office?

Jesus fucking christ man!

Ya, hoping for a reform in the land of IP for the arts isn't unfounded now that most of the people from the RIAA and MPAA are part of this administration. His wager to place his optimism in science and not the arts is a credit to his insight and intelligence

I do like the way this guy speaks, pretty up front and bold...even venturing into some non-PC analogies...which I like

>> ^volumptuous:
Obama is not Bush.

wrong again

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/4052/bushobamaevolutionpictubk4.jpg
http://www.jwharrison.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/bush-obama-skull-732160.jpg



Seriously though, isn't it a little silly/ironic to lecture an individualist about the government being made up of individuals?

Also, if they are different I would like to see a diff file please. As far as I can see nothing has changed.

1. We still torture
2. We are still in Iraq
3. Drugs are still illegal
4. We still don't have habeus corpus
5. The RIAA still controls the courts
6. Our economy still sucks
7. Nobody has been prosecuted for any crimes of the last administration
8. 95% of the people in this administration worked for the last administration
9. I still lose 50% of my income to taxation
10. Our federal budget is still greater than $3 trillion

Its naive to assume they are different because they have different names or party affiliations. You say they are different tell me why the budgets they propose are almost identical.

A great deal of intellectual capitalists are not the side of the RIAA. Copyright, patent, and government sponsored monopoly really have no place in a capitalistic society.

>> ^Wingoguy:
It seems like there's not a lot of fans of capitalism in this sift. If that's not your thing, that's fine by me.
I personally believe:
1. Companies should be allowed to profit from good products and services.
2. Creators deserved to be paid for their quality work.

http://worldaffairs.videosift.com/talk/Obama-Backs-RIAA-with-150-000-Per-Track-Punishment

Some prefer a political and economic leader who spends his time studying, reading, and writing about politics and economics rather than following the latest pop culture...

I guess thats why you vote for people like Obama who exploit pop culture to manipulate your feelings and actions; and then expand the wars overseas, fail to legalize drugs, support the RIAA levying $150,000 fines for mp3s, fail to support habeas corpus, fail to take a stand against torture, fail to stop millions going to CEOs, etc. etc.

If you want someone to laugh at Sacha Cohen with you, try finding people in your town rather than the voting booth. Obama doesn't give a shit about you or your life, but you may be able to find a few in your town who do.

^ Actually, I think the open source movement undercuts the whole idea of "only private industry could have created <X>." I'd go so far as to say it's a proof positive that a form of socialism can provide tremendous results, and at the same time provide many aspects that libertarians find appealing (ability to customize for very niche sets of needs and desires, for example).

I don't think it undercuts the idea that people who create works of knowledge like programmers, musicians, and artists have a right to own their creations, simply because they can be cheaply and effectively duplicated. To follow that reasoning, as a banker it's okay for me to steal from you, because it's easy for me to just modify your balance to zero, and I'm doing it with my own private pen and paper (or more accurately, my accounting mainframe).

I do think there are real challenges ahead, because it does seem like intellectual property law is fighting an ultimately losing battle. I think severing the property aspect of that creative process really would cut back on the quality of our art, culture, and equally important, our engineering.

A world in which the true creative class does not get to reap the rewards of their labors, but where "investors", "executives", and "publishers" get the lion's share seems to have things exactly backwards.

I don't like what RIAA does, and on a gut level I agree that "information wants to be free", I just don't know that it should be free, so long as we're organized under a system based largely on personal property.

Under your previously stated definitions of wealth and work, I create neither, and except for when I was young, I never have. I've always worked in some sort of idea-making role, and while I earn a comfortable living doing so, my creations are largely making other people rich.

I think a lot of this has to do with the disrespect for intellectual property; companies shouldn't be able to say "everything you create while working for us belongs to us alone" -- that is much closer to slavery than taxation ever has been.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Imstell has definitely changed his tone with a more populist article, the silly avatar, wacky pictures in his comments and a more light hearted demeanor.
Either:
a) He is condescending to 'a site full of retards'.
b) He is attempting a more persuasive, less combative style of argument.
c) He had a bad day and wishes to start anew.
d) He is wearing looser fitting undergarments.
None are against the rules.


d) is totally against the rules. You can't talk about politics unless your panties are in a serious twist.

That said, I'm gonna pile on with the shock that imstellar opposes intellectual property law.

How do you reconcile that with your general feelings on property in general?

Do programmers like me have a right to profit from the fruits of our labor?

I have all kinds of moral objections to the way we shoehorn "intellectual property" into our capitalist society, but I'm not quite sure what practical alternatives there are. At least, without losing the ability to earn a living from doing what I do in the process.

Oh, and as for trying to pin this to Obama, it's clumsy politics. I doubt Obama's even heard about this. I doubt Eric Holder was notified about this. This is probably something happening deep in the bowels of the DOJ's bureacracy. To further reverse the spin, the effort is likely being led by conservatives burrowed into career postings by Bush.

The Krugman article is a better weak spot, politically speaking. Republicans, if they were smart, would beat the drum for nationalization/receivership/FDIC-intervention loud and clear. It'd make people like me think that maybe they'd grown up a little bit, and might have some business still being within 100 miles of Washington.

Instead they're doing crap like putting out a non-budget budget.

The per track fine is totally ridiculous. It's not based on any of their losses or on the amount of times that you uploaded a certain track, it's just based on only what the RIAA feels is good. Real research into the matter has pointed out that people wouldn't have bought most of what they downloaded if they had to buy it. So I would argue that the fine should be less than the cost per track. I would certainly never have been able to pay for the 60GB of music I have. Most if it I haven't even listened much to.

I didn't edit the post, Edeot came out of left field. Feel free the discuss the article. I'm thinking about discarding and recreating because I think its an important issue and the comments here are very distracting.

Consider how many songs the average person has downloaded:

If we take it to be 1,000 that is a potential $150 million dollar fine!
If we take it to be 10,000 that is a potential $1.5 billion dollar fine!

>> ^cybrbeast:
I came here looking for discussion on Obama and RIAA, but it's only about whether this is a troll post. Did imstellar edit his post? Because I don't see any trolling, I just see posted news articles on Obama, which are quite disappointing and warrant discussion.

^No one is stopping you from discussing Obama and the RIAA. Get to it.

I came here looking for discussion on Obama and RIAA, but it's only about whether this is a troll post. Did imstellar edit his post? Because I don't see any trolling, I just see posted news articles on Obama, which are quite disappointing and warrant discussion.

If I were an engineer, I would probably suggest the creation of an "administrative" channel for the type of posts you want to see in "general" sift talk; but I guess it is more fun to create a poorly designed feature and then constantly try to force your will upon it.

>> ^jonny:
I've pointed this out before. Cross posting channel specific posts to the main Sift Talk page is a Bad Idea. And the management agrees. But, of course, most users just do whatever hell they want, community be damned. Tragedy of the commons.

You've gone from half assed stupid bullshit to full on trolling now.
It's a bit early in the day but .. are you drunk?
If you want to stop trolling then post something on topic.


>> ^Edeot:
Oh shit, thought I said it all, and I did, but now I gotta repeat myself.
You don't want to talk about how you called everyone on the site and the admins retards, do you? Not even so much as a damn apology.
And let me humor you for a second here - Let's say I am trolling. 11 comments and counting and 9 of them focus just on you. And I've failed?


>> ^Edeot:
You're right. And you're welcome.
Hey, how about a game of hangman? Free of charge.

Next time why don't you create your own sift talk to "express your feelings"? If you are going to call other people trolls, maybe you shouldn't be trolling yourself.

<embed src ="http://ui30.gamespot.com/2397/vaderfail_2.jpg">

>> ^Edeot
Well, I've said my piece. That's enough for now. Talkin bout my feelings and shit like a real man.