Sunday Morning Reading Material: Fifth Sunday in May 2011: unPATRIOTic laws edition
It’s ok if you’re a Republican.
It’s Sunday morning. Sunday mornings are for comparatively sleeping in, though still getting to work on time for brunch. Alternately, Sunday could be for listening to the amazing Portal 2 soundtrack. Or it could be for thinking difficult thoughts.
This week… It’s sort of amazing how much news one misses by not having access to a computer for several days. A quick look at Google tells me that there’s a truce in Yemen, the space station is finally completed (sadly, Obama does not get to fly up and cut a ribbon), and the Supreme Court ruled that- despite having no access to exercise equipment for about 20 years- California inmates are too scary to be treated humanely.
Africa is big. How big? It’s roughly 80% the size of the moon. Oddly, because of the way we humans tend to make maps, and the position of Africa at the very center of the surface of the Earth, we tend not to understand how big Africa really is. Let’s fix that.
I don’t really want to make Apple bashing a regular feature here on Sunday Morning. That’s not going to stop me from telling you how awful Steve Jobs is as a human being. The man actively colludes with the worst aspects of our entertainment culture to profit from the fencing off of human culture. He is an odious toad who needs to stop being treated like a visionary.
The only downside to my Kindle is that it’s a device locked to a single store, and the books I buy from that store are locked a device from a single manufacturer. This fractures the potential market, causing some rather inefficient competition. I’ll go so far as to say that all the inefficiency is on the consumer-harming side. Funny how that so often happens. It’s almost like capital is afraid of competition.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, we Americans are asked to give up our rights in order to do business. Sign a cellphone contract and lose your right to sue if the handset blows in your pocket. Visit a dentist and they will claim the right to own anything you ever say about that dentist. Most lawyers believe these provisions will be laughed out of court. I’m not sure that’s the case.
In the United States, intellectual property law exists for the express purpose “To promote the progress of science and useful arts,” that word “useful” could arguably be construed to mean that music or movies do not qualify for protection (it would be a silly argument, I think). The UK have released a report showing that their IP regime actually hinders, rather than promotes, innovation and growth. The UK system of IP law was modeled on our own, at our insistence.
Note that I’m refering only to the right to copy or distribute. I am certainly not speaking to the morality of encouraging the theft of someone else’s work. Nor would I argue that plagiarism should ever be ok. Sadly, there are a great many content aggregation sites that do this– I will no longer visit any of “Cheeseburger Network” sites for this reason.
Poland is so proud of a recent video game release that they’ve Given a copy of the game to President Obama. I really hope that he finds time to play it– I’m told the Witcher 2 is amazing. Interestingly: the publishers of the game removed all the DRM from it about a week after launch.
It seems that Sony can screw up movie theaters, in addition to video games and CD players. I’ve long made a point of not giving them my money.
Troy Goodfellow meditates on the difference between making big changes and making smaller ones. He finds (I tend to agree) that bigger changes are easier to get used to. Perhaps we can call this the uncanny valley of change?
The deficit is not a big huge scary monster that will eat our economy. In fact: only by acting now can congress prevent the US budget from balancing itself in 10 years. conveniently, most of the proposals for acting now will help the rich and screw the poor. I’m so glad we’ve given power to this fine group of upstanding legislators!
Congressional oversight committees are designed to be bipartisan, specifically so that members from both parties can have the opportunity to scream loudly at abuses of the American Constitution being done in secret. The US Constitution even contains a clause (” for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place”) which specifically enables encourages such whistle blowing. All of which makes me think that Rep. Wyden is doing a grave disservice to his country by not being more forthcoming about the ways in which the USA PATRIOT act are being abused. If he has some detailed knowledge about abuses committed by the US government, he is specifically charged by his oath of office to report those abuses to the American people.
The City of San Francisco is mandating that all taxi cabs in the City install credit card machines so that taxi users can have an added convenience. The City is actually going so far as to forcibly add the machines to taxis. The City is going to start charging drivers a 5% fee for each time one of those machines is used, to defray the cost of installation. That fee will be charged to taxi drivers. Taxi drivers in San Francisco (probably other places also) don’t own their vehicles, but must rent them. Looking at this chain, I see: Rich people take taxis, and aren’t being asked to pay for something that benefits them. Rich people (literally capitalists!) not being charged for material changes to their equipment in ways that may benefit them. And the people being asked to pay? The poorest people in this triad. Class warfare folks, even in San Francisco.
The Patriarchy hurts men, too.
In my mind, the struggle for women’s equality and the struggle for equality of people in other traditionally disenfranchised groups are so linked that I have difficulty separating them. That’s probably an example of privilege on my part. Easy rule of thumb: if I look around and see that I’m in a room full of white people, I’m probably at fault and need to fix something.
This week’s theme? Good ideas gone wrong. So below, tell me what word you’d trademark, if you had the money to bribe the patent office.
Check out this awesome StarCraft 2 match. Best viewed at High Definition.
