Hi there, if it's ok with you I'm going to address subsequent commenters for a moment. Anyone smarter than me, let's focus on this comment. Isn't this the type of social media post that would be immediately dismissed as self-serving propaganda that has the effect of undermining both democracy and the dollar? What is the essential difference between this post and the kind of nonsense that is now being patrolled on other social media platforms?
With the important distinction that most investment vehicles represent tangible ownership (of equity in a company, of a debt obligation, of real estate, etc.)
Bitcoin exists primarily as something people buy in order to hopefully sell to someone else, all with the underlying value intangible and arguably nonexistent beyond scarcity.
Copyright is fairly applied to Disney. There were many beneficiaries to its extension, large and small. In any case, it is a matter of law, just like earlier, shorter copyright protections were.
It's totally legitimate to favor shorter copyright, but essentially any duration is an arbitrary one. It strikes me as odd that you would be interested in applying the law fairly while also referring to the law as a perversion.
> There were many beneficiaries to its extension, large and small.
The public did not benefit in any way from its extension. Quite the opposite: every time the duration of copyright terms is extended, the public is robbed of its rights so that corporations which have already made billions off of their copyrighted works can make even more money. When was the last time some copyrighted work entered the public domain? Probably the early 20th century. When people think public domain, what comes to mind is renaissance art and classical music. The truth is everything created in the 80s and before should already be in the public domain and that's very generous, more than enough time for companies to get rich off of their creations.
The original social contract behind copyright was "we'll pretend your intellectual work is scarce for some time so you can profit and then it will enter the public domain". Works aren't entering the public domain because every time Mickey Mouse is about to become public property Disney spends millions lobbying the government in order to extend the copyright duration. Copyright is effectively infinite despite what the law says. So why should the public recognize copyright as legitimate to begin with?
This! Disney has morphed copywrite without any input from the public. What sort of contract is valid if only one party changes the terms and the other never agreed to it?
Some would argue that the undefined duration does not match “limited times” and that the copyright is no longer “promoting useful arts”. While some of these questions have been answered in Disney’s favour in recent times, it is clear that the “matter of law” is anything but clear.
Eldred vs Ashcroft held that the CTEA (Sony Bono act) was constitutional.
This is a good point worth bringing up, since the GP seems to imply it isn't with reference to the wording of the constitution's Copyright Clause.
However, it doesn't answer the moral question of whether congress should have passed that law, or whether congress should pass laws to change copyright term lengths to be shorter. That's not the role of the court.
> Cool, so why not set the limit to the heat-death of the universe and be done with it?
Presumably SCOTUS would say that an effectively-infinite timeline is not "limited" within the Constitutional definition of the word. Eldred v. Ashcroft basically tried to argue that continual decades-long extensions amounted to this, but the Court was not convinced.
The supreme court agreeing on something is a solid piece of evidence that something is correct, but it's very far from ironclad. Especially when it's not unanimous.
>The unemployment benefit extension and hack (unemployment + $600) was the real critical mistake that we'll spend a long time fixing.
What was the alternative? Existing unemployment benefits are insufficient for households to pay bills and the PP program at best would have saved a small portion of the overall jobs lost.
Ideally, basically what Japan is doing. Don't try to discriminate on company, don't make it complex, just cut a check to keep employees on the payroll. There's no dumb drama over "who gets the loans", if all employers do.
There are plenty of left-wing subreddits with equal measures of vitriol. Somehow they avoid earning the same opprobrium that the right-wing ones do. This apparent double standard creates the appearance of bias.
If there are plenty, and you are familiar with them, please name a few. It's not possible for us to "investigate on our own" if we don't know what you are considering "equal measures of vitriol".
/r/anarchism and /r/socialism are two that often advocate violence. The latter is dominated by "tankies", which is a term for communists who love Stalin, gulags, and tanks. They frequently take a "kill 'em all" approach. They are also often mocked by other lefties on Reddit, so please don't assume their opinions are popular.
/r/anarchism is a slightly more complicated case. They do advocate violence in a "bash the fash" way. But their intended victims are often those who advocate for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other racist or misogynistic methods. Their violent earnestness is also often mocked by the rest of political Reddit.
/r/LeftWithoutEdge was a sub formed for serious discussion for lefties without resorting to violent speech. It doesn't get enough traffic so I urge any leftists / anarchists here to visit it occasionally.
Edit: I should add that one reason /r/anarchism and /r/socialism are still on Reddit is because they took the warnings of the admins seriously. /r/anarchism dialed their rhetoric back after being told they were on the verge of being banned. Most of the banned right wing subs ignored the warnings, and often doubled-down.
I was responding to a comment that conflated the worst excesses of admittedly terrible communities on Reddit with the whole of the 'modern right.' My goal was to explain the thinking of those who are accusing Reddit of systemic bias against the right. Their assertion is that subreddits advocating violence against right-wing activists are tolerated, while right-wing subreddits are condemned for similar infractions. Whether this is objectively true I do not know. In fact, my interest in politics is minimal and I should probably leave these discussions alone in future. I hope Hacker News does not devolve into another online community overrun with political arguments and petty antagonism.
You'll note that I said that there was an 'apparent' double standard. If may not be apparent to you, but it certainly is to some. You seem like you spend more time on the political parts of Reddit than I, so I'm sure you're well equipped to investigate this yourself.
Without the Bill of Rights having already been drafted and clearly having enough support for success, the Constitution would not have had enough support to have been ratified because of opponents that were concerned about the very rights that the Bill of Rights enacts (including freedom of speech).
It is obviously true that the first amendment is an amendment, but it is not accurate to suggest that it is (or was viewed at the time as) less essential than the document it amended.
This is something that is covered in most U.S. civics classes.
I never took U.S. civics, so that is news to me. I always found it weird that it took an amendment to get to free speech but apparently this was all set up in one go?
Which is only annoying because similar stores in Japan (which for me are a highlight of any trip to Japan) only charge ¥100.
I don't know if it's because of proximity to China or because Daiso knows they're offering better stuff than their literally $1 competitors here in the U.S.
To put it nicely, it's when you don't release it via manually stimulating your genital nerve endings. This practice is derived from ancient Chinese medicine I believe, may be wrong.
