A 99 percent crowdfunded ad ran in the SF Chronicle today. New media movement meets old-style print.
Today’s installment of how partisanship shapes and reflects judgment, television edition: favorite television shows by party id (not in order of popularity). Politicalprof’s choices are starred. And BBC’s Top Gear rocks. (Not the US version.)
Democrats
The Daily Show*
The Colbert Report*
…
The Senate’s PROTECT IP Act and the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are so noxious that even the Business Software Alliance has serious reservations and SOPA’s backer had to take to the virtual pages of National Review today to quell a growing revolt among his conservative colleagues about “regulating the Internet.” Whatever you think of the legislation, it unquestionably represents a sea change in the US approach to the Internet, one which explicitly contemplates widespread website blocking and search engine delisting.
The level of debate on an issue something this important has been… suboptimal. (And hearings have been rather lopsided affairs). Just listen to the rhetoric of SOPA author Lamar Smith: “Enforcing the law against criminals is not censorship.” Pithy, sure, but it doesn’t relate to any actual objections put forth by thoughtful critics.
But rightsholders do need some means of enforcing copyrights and trademarks, something tough to do when a site sets up overseas and willfully targets American consumers with fake goods and unauthorized content. Some sites can be leaned on when in friendly countries, but many simply thumb their nose at US law with impunity. If you can’t go after the sites at the source, and you can’t lure their operators to the US (both tactics used with success in other cases), what’s left but blocking site access from within the US?
Fortunately, plenty can be done, and it can be done in a way that doesn’t raise the same immediate concerns about due process and censorship. One promising alternative was unveiled today by a bipartisan group of 10 senators and representatives. It ditches the “law and order” approach to piracy and replaces it with a more limited, trade-based system.
» via ars technica
Something that bothers me
I live in America, which at one point, was something a little less than horrendous (if you can choke down all the little pings and pangs of daily degradation). Now the whole world is gone to shit and our predecessors have failed to meet the requirements of a successful society, the most important role being to safeguard and assist the prosperity of their passed down generations. The thing that bothers me however, is that with all of the problems being addressed by people around the world, the international rioting, the toppling of corrupt regimes…we STILL drown in our lazy lackluster dedication to these problems so the blame cannot be placed on any exclusive party. Innconent people are dying, innocent animals, the very enviornment we plague is dying. Our species has taken the PLANET hostage and its up to everybody able to help, to do so.
Grrrr…such a sad outrage
Sweet to eat
Invention: Hershey bar in 1900
Function: A bar of milk chocolate made by the Hershey Chocolate Company.
Trademark: #71016827 (US) filed February 8, 1906
Inventor: Milton Snavely Hershey
Criteria: First practical. Entrepreneur.
Birth: September 13, 1857 at Derry Church, Pennsylvania
Death: 1945 at Hershey, Pennsylvania
Nationality: American
