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What is the basis for this statement. You steal from me. I want you to stop stealing from me. What is being proposed, if I am reading it correctly, is not religiously or politically motivated. Stop stealing and I am done.
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While the majority of my post was about stealing, I'm not talking solely about that at all. My fear is that censorship will be taken as far as blocking certain things said about certain people... you know, stuff of that ilk. Censorship could easily become a politically and/or religiously motivated thing.
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Who is to say what is illegal or not? A child could answer this question. If you take something that doesn't belong to you and give it (or sell it) to someone else, it is illegal.
It has nothing to do with morals."
A child could answer that question, but unfortunately adults often cannot. While it's obvious that stealing is illegal and wrong, bad words or making fun of god etc. seems to be like a gray area.
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Wikipedia, Google and YouTube are not government agencies. They are businesses. Things being changed and erased on Wiki is a problem now. That's what happens when there is no clean "source". "
I think it's certainly a clean source for search entries. Things are defitely constantly changing on those websites, I agree with that.
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Torrents are bad because they are illegal intellectual property infringement, or because they are infested with viruses?"
I think this depends on who you ask. I think it's definitely bad for both of those reasons!
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Have you ever made something that has been stolen?
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I have been stolen from... as far as making something that has been stolen? Maybe something that I made out legos or something like that haha. I have been mugged of a brand new skateboard before. I was 11 years old and it wasn't a nice experience having two grown men forcefully take it from me on the side of the road. I'm very aware of what it's like to be stolen from (on a completely different level than plain monetary theft...). To use a skateboard as an example of what I was saying earlier-- "let's say that because my skateboard was stolen, I will now put two oval shaped wheels on it to prevent the people who steel it from riding away on it." That is in a nutshell how I feel about some of the anti piracy stuff that is in some software these days. Those funky wheels might stop people from using my board to get away from me, but it's useless as a skateboard. I've had very expensive programs stop working on me out of nowhere because of some anti piracy code that somehow gets activated. I've had to make very expensive international calls to be able to transfer a program from an old computer to a new one. When those companies don't comply, I don't see a problem with downloading a cracked version of their program. I'm not gonna spend $500 on the same thing twice... It's not like I have any intention of using the software on two computers. Those might not be the best examples, but I think that gives you an idea of how I feel about it.
"Sony dumped that anti-piracy CD program weeks after enacting it about 5 years ago. That was before MP3 players were really something. "
I had no idea about that. Unfortunately, however, that program will be on that CD forever, so I can't load it into my MP3 player. I can always go to a CD rental shop and see if I can rent it and try to load it on my MP3 player that way.
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What is the moral objection to Internet in the living room?"
I'm thinking that there will be people who want to make a "family experience" out of it. To me, this implies two things: censorship and making money. They can censor it in the guise of protecting morals. That kind of censorship might include the same kind of thing you see in American radio and TV already (and youtube to some extent). I say "guise", though, because I think that censorship can be used by companies to protect their share of what is available (on a website like youtube, which is what I'm thinking about when it comes to "the livingroom"). Making money will happen by advertisers, and maybe making certain videos pay per view (kind of like on digital television in America). Advertising has already started in certain youtube videos, which I'm sure we've all noticed. I've seen advertisements on videos that people make in their own homes. I've heard of regular old people who do reviews getting a hold of products from companies to review on their youtube channels. I think the established media sources don't like this. These people are their competatitors. While a single person can't come close to a whole company, if every other person with a camcorder gets involved it might spell out trouble. I personally think that companies aren't that afraid of going under because of this... the top guy just wants that extra .03% so he can go to the bahamas or buy a bumper boat pool or whatever those ultra rich people do (which I'm quite interested in doing myself
). I understand where these companies are coming from, but I think it's at too high a cost.
There are obviously really repulsive aspects of this whole thing though... like certain types of pornography and that kinda jazz. I would love to see that kinda thing be gone forever, but I certainly don't want some greedy people using that as a vehicle to start censoring every other thing.
I'm probably over thinking it... but I can see something like this happen.
And for the record I'm not really into pirated media. Especially on a site like youtube. I go on there because it's a(n) (sometimes quite pleasant) alternative to the media that is available on TV or in the stores.