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FTA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:FTA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:FTA (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:FTA (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't know if you meant that in general or just wrt the US but from where I come(India) most of the educated abstain from voting as they do not like any of the political candidates and consider them to be incompetent. It is the poor and uneducated folks who make up the numbers as they vote based on religious/caste based grounds.
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Probably about the same. (Score:4, Interesting)
And of course the numbers could come out different depending on if you use mean or median education level, etc. In the end I'd guess that the average education levels of voters is more or less the same for Democrats and Republicans.
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What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the point in voting when all the candidates act the same way anyway? People aren't voting because there's are rarely ever any people on the ballot worth getting up to vote for. What's the point if Jack Johnson (R) gets into office instead of John Jackson (D)? They'll both make the same stupid decisions being made in the interests of big business or some special interest group anyway. We're left with is this ridiculous Rebulicrat/Demican waltz that goes on forever.
The worst part about all this is the sheer number of people who think voting democrat instead of republican or republican instead of democrat will fix anything.
You want people to vote in this farcical circus we call a democracy? Get the DMV involved and make it a requirement to have voted in the previous election in order to get your driving license renewed, or something equally retarded. The only way to get people to take part in something that's not worth doing is to either change the thing so that it *is* worth doing, or to force them into doing it.
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I think you'll find 99% of the time this is just an excuse to hide a personal fault. Which woul
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In your world, maybe. In my world, voting for "the lesser of two evils" is still voting for "evil"
Re:FTA (Score:4, Funny)
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I hate to be the "love it or leave it" type, but why would you be ashamed of something you are free to change? I understand China is pretty lax about DRM stuff and Canada is nice this time of year.
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Yeah, I deserved that.
You don't like listening to people like him, then you can go to China or anywhere else free speech isn't tolerated. Americans are allowed to hate anything about their country that they choose and are allowed to seek change any legal way they want; including by complain on slashdot.
Which is exactly why the original poster should not be "ashamed to be an American". I tolerate people saying all kinds of bad things about my c
Re:FTA (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:FTA (Score:5, Insightful)
Both passed it as a big wet blowjob for corporate interests, in the hopes that they'd leave a fifty on the nightstand.
So just handle these laws the way we do in the US. Speak up against them, fight them in court, and vote out anyone who supports them. And since none of that will actually make a spec of difference, ignore them.
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Re:FTA (Score:4, Insightful)
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Dude, didn't you read the earlier Spamhaus story? We don't even need to pass laws in your country, 'cause we can just enforce ours there. But you know what? We have the world's largest amassment of chemical weapons, biological weapons, conventional bombs, jet fighters, aircraft carriers, Weapons of Mass Destruction in the known Universe... AND we have a credit card with bottomless p
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Re:FTA (Softwood Lumber - a lesson) (Score:4, Insightful)
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NAFTA is dead. (Score:3, Interesting)
at least they are honest (Score:5, Interesting)
"while those guilty of distributing enabling devices and services to others through a variety of means"
you mean like.. computers?
Uhh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
What is the point in a DVD-Rom if we can't decode DVDs? On top of that don't we pay the same royalties for the DVD-Roms we buy that DVD player buyers pay?
to hack a DVD player to make it multi-region
Even if the manufacturer makes them multi-region?
The laws will make it illegal to modchip a console
Isn't modchipping a console sort of like putting a turbo on your car? So making MY PURCHASED PRODUCT better is against the law?
Re:Uhh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Manufacturer will be required to discontinue offering region free DVD players. Simple as that.
3. Yes, making your purchased product better can be illegal. There are movements here to outlaw so called "chip tuning", and turbos (like nitro injectors) are not allowed altogether already.
Yes, we're getting to the point where the vendor dictates what you may do with the product you buy. I'm really waiting now for a law that outlaws refilling bottles with tap water after you drank the original content.
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The market for region 1 DVDs in Europe and such is huge. I don't think they'll go far with this law before a lot of bitching results.
-Z
Re:Uhh.. (Score:4, Insightful)
One word: Anime.
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And just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's wrong, or that you should recognize the law.
Re:Uhh.. (Score:5, Informative)
Which is interesting as, here in Australia, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission [accc.gov.au] (an independent government authority for fair competition & trade) ruled that DVD region encoding was anti-competitive a few years back. Since then, all DVD players sold in Australia must be either region free or be sold with instructions on how to unlock them.
They even went up against SONY about mod-chipping PS2's, saying it was an Australian's right to purchase games overseas and play them on systems here.
It's always interesting to find a government agency going up against it's own government in the courts over shit like this...
For more info:
ACCC comments re: region coding [accc.gov.au]
ACCC vs SONY on PS2 modchips [accc.gov.au]
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So the car analogy doesn't work well.
Honestly, what I would greatly prefer is to meet in the middle. Allow for unsigned code so indie developers, homebrew games, media center apps, emulators and the l
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Sound like a dumb idea? It is. If the companies that make games consoles are unhappy because their stupid business model doesn't allow them to sell their console for a sensible price (read for a market driven price) and then sell the
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However, trying to barstardise property law to protect this business model is totally unacceptable. If I buy something from you, and then do something with it you hadn't intende
Thanks a lot, George? (Score:5, Informative)
FYI - Signed in 1994 [wikipedia.org]
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Shouldn't the slashdot editors at least make a concious effort to be better than CNN, CBS, and FOX?
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"I blame Bush"
"Windows blows"
"I can't wait for the Wii to come out"
It's easy once you get in the hang of things.
As for the article and topic. The question becomes will there be some measure to defeat this legislation before it becomes law there. And is this an effort by Australia to prove it's more media cartel fri
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http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us.html [dfat.gov.au]
Re:Thanks a lot, George? (Score:4, Informative)
'It was not until early 2001, after the election of George W. Bush in the US and with John Howard in power in Australia, that a US-Australia FTA finally began to take shape. In April 2001, President Bush signalled his interest in pursuing an FTA with Australia provided "everything is on the table".'
[...]
'the text was finally agreed to in February 2004, and signed off on by Australian Trade Minister Mark Vaile and [Bush appointee] US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick in Washington in May 2004.'
(Source Wikipedia, but unless you can find something to contradict, I'm going with it.)
All Congress got to do was ratify the agreement as negotiated.
Sorry boys, but you most definitely can blame Bush.
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Thank Howard (Score:2)
Not that I like him (Score:4, Informative)
Should all Be Legal (Score:2)
These should all be legal in the confides of your own home. But what should be illegal is you trying to make money and selling your hacks/modchips.
Re:Should all Be Legal (Score:4, Interesting)
No.
As long as there is a legal use for DRM Circumvention, then the devices should be legal to sell.
We don't throw Xerox sales reps in jail just because their technology could be used to infringe on copyright.
Copyright law struck a balance between the rights of creators to benefit from their work and the ability of the public to benefit from the work once it was published. And it balances the Freedom of expression rights of both the original creator and those that would make use of the original work in a derivative work. The concept is fair use. Enshrining DRM into law without allowing for reliable ability to make fair use of content throws fair use out the window and undermines the foundation of copyright law. DRM lets the content producer have it both ways and effectively invalidates the time limited provisions of copyright law.
In the US, prohibitions on DRM circumvention are unconstitutional because they violate Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 which allows congress "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
Anti DRM circumvention laws violate this provision, "securing for limited times", because the legal effect is to allow authors or their delegates to control copying far beyond any expiration of copyright.
As far as I am aware the most of the challenges so far to the DMCA have focused on peripheral issues. Whereas they should be focusing on the lack of any type sunset provision for legal use of DRM. Congress certainly has the right to allow DRMs use, but if it legally and effectively prohibits copying well beyond the expiration of copyright, then the law is quite clearly unconstitutional as well as unwise.
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Same old story (Score:3, Interesting)
They've been trying this on south america for decades. Some countries have aligned themselves with the US (chile, mexico), others refuse to accept such kind of conditions though I don't know for how long they'll be able to resist. International and Internal pressure from investment groups and the like on the governments is huge.
DVD de-regioning? (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean to say that, were I an Oz resident, I couldn't flash my DVD-drive to enable me to play my perfectly legally imported Region 1 DVDs? As a UK resident, I did exactly this so that I could get the missus a copy of Legend with the original-release Tangerine Dream soundtrack (not available in UK) as opposed to the ridiculous "director's cut" version that pollutes our senses to this day.
Isn't this just a huge step backwards in the natural global-information-culture progression? I mean, this difficult balance between the rights of consumers and the rights of creators and retailers is getting knocked all over the place with heavy-handed laws.
Piracy is already illegal, but there are many non-pirating practices that can make use of some of these technologies. Isn't this like throwing out the baby with the bathwater, when the bath was already drained anyway?
It's about market control (Score:5, Insightful)
But what this is about is market share and control. The distribution cartel has the world divided in certain "sectors", that pretty much correspond with the RCs. And of course, they have to pay fees to the studios according to their presumed revenues.
Those revenues rely on you being forced to buy with them, though. If someone in, say, Europe could simply buy a DVD from the US (because it's out like a month earlier, mostly due to distribution negotiations taking a few days), the distributor in Europe is losing money. Also he would lose money because, as I said in the first paragraph, the dubbing is most of the time simply outright BAD. And I prefer to listen to it in the original anyway. So what do I do? Right. I buy it a month early in a well made box instead of a dubbed version in cardboard a month later.
And this is what they want to avoid. Besides, the distri in the US only paid them for the distri rights in the US (and Canada, afaik). Should nobody in Europe pick it up because they didn't think there'd be a market, the Distri in the US would make a killing (and leave the studio ripped off). Also, should it against all odds become a huge seller, they can still sell the rights for distribution in Europe and make money again, because I (here in Europe) couldn't have bought it in the US (because of RC lock).
It's all about money and market control.
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Recant your infocentric ideas! (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's not a "copy control" mechanism (Score:5, Insightful)
It just controls where/when you can play a DVD. That is, it is a play control mechanism, not a copy control mechanism.
So as long as they only outlawed circumventing copy-protection mechanisms, they haven't actually affected DRM. The MPAA rhetoric basically comes back and bites them here -- by lying about what the issue is, they get a law that doesn't actually do what they want.
Makes complete sense! (Score:3, Funny)
Well, it only makes sense that in order to make free trade, the involved parties should stop their customers from using the purchased goods freely, right?
Right... because Bush Started the DMCA. (Score:4, Insightful)
We made a Free trade agreement with Australia that effectively says you must conformed to the decisions of this group. Remember that President Bush didn't write this all himself, he didn't sign this law himself. Australian goverment and our own congress approved this law too, John Kerry was also a huge supporter (supposidly).
But continue to call on Bush alone as if no one else but him did any of this.
Control laws (Score:3, Insightful)
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Examples:
+Anti-Nuclear policy - 1985 refused nuclear powered and armed ships access to their ports
I agree with everything else you said, but what's wrong with nuclear-powered ships? I can