Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Sanity from Texas? Well, I'll be damned.
As I've said before, the big cities outside of Fort Worth are mostly liberal bastions.
I say mostly because Houston, which is located within Harris County, was the city whose recently former mayor brought in a transgender protection bill which was then voted away by voters due to a conservative campaign.
edited 25th Jan '16 4:00:56 PM by tclittle
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."@@TC: I believe those ads basically ran on the pedo hunt fear, which while disgusting, does play effectively on parent's fear for their children. Doesn't seem like they were hoping so much on conservative values in their voters, just in their fear.
Also, I'd like to point out that Abbott's being an asshole and still says that Planned Parenthood is under investigation for this shit. They probably aren't getting their funding back any time soon.
Amusing, but Abbot seems to have a hard-on for going after Planned Parenthood, so the lack of a grand jury indictment will probably make him more determined to go after them.
And I'm going to echo Fighteer's statement on "intellectual property", which I prefer to call Intellectual Monopoly whenever possible. Calling it 'property' is actually somewhat intellectually dishonest for a variety of reasons, though the main one is that, you know, property rights aren't supposed to expire. Though, really, copyrights take a long fucking time to expire (life + 70 years is beyond excessive) and even patents are out of step with how quickly innovation occurs in the information age. Thankfully, Disney's luck has probably run out with copyright extensions (Steamboat Willie's copyright will expire in around two years from now), but unfortunately there's also the ''other'' quagmire that is trademark law that spits in the face of the constitution.
Personally, I'd cut down copyright to 10-20 years, maximum, and cut down patents to 5-10 years. In the case of both, I'd actually suggest a mandatory fixed licensing fee or royalty rate, which would enable creators to be compensated for derivative works not covered under fair use, and/or a rather prominent credit to the original author in the derivative work itself.
The problem with copyright limits is that they don't take into account brand association. For example, I don't think the Marvel Universe would work as a concept if Marvel didn't have a monopoly on their characters. Disney would also be a good example: Disney as a brand is so strongly tied to Mickey Mouse that it's hard to imagine them not being legally connected without one, the other, or both being damaged.
I'd also argue that copyright doesn't necessarily impede creation-it forces people to be original.
Leviticus 19:34![]()
![]()
There's no ambiguity on what he thinks.
We don't need to speculate on what is possible, because he lays it out clearly. He states that he wants to stop immigration to his country because he thinks "unskilled workers" are stealing limited jobs that should go to natives. There really shouldn't be any confusion, he's been very clear on why he is against immigration from "unskilled" workers (e.g. almost all immigration from Latin American countries).
He also thinks that illegal immigration is a corporate conspiracy to get cheap labor, yes,[1] but his main point is the lump of labor fallacy where he thinks the US economy is a zero sum game and that each immigrant is taking a piece of the pie, leaving less for natives.
At the progressive Netroots Nation conference earlier this month, Sanders said the reform bill would have allowed for low wage workers to enter the country who would “be competing against kids in this country who desperately need jobs.”
He's downright disconnected from reality (see also: citing the Nordic economic systems as ideal, and then advocating doing the exact opposite of what they're doing). That is a bad attribute for a candidate to have. Like most of his ideas, it makes sense at face value, but breaks down when you do more then cursory research (like raising the minimum wage to $15
, or significantly reducing trade with China, or radically rolling back free trade so the US doesn't end up like the corporate dystopia of Denmark
).
[1]Apparently a major part of the conspiracy is giving unskilled immigrants jobs no one else wants, and then paying them enough that even illegal immigrant households
have a median income higher than the median household income of France. Because, I dunno, wage slavery.
It's the same argument Sanders has against H1-B quotas. Do you honestly think that Google is exploiting those Asian software engineers being paid six figures a year?
edited 26th Jan '16 12:35:13 AM by Nihlus1
![]()
But that ignores the fact that limited terms are explicitly written into the original articles of the Constitution. Extended terms have been ruled to be within this wording by the courts as long as the terms have some expiration date, but the use of eternally renewable trademarks to argue that public domain works can't be properly public domain is an outright violation of the Constitution, because the trademark can be extended indefinitely.
And as for branding and shared universes? Tough shit. Both of these are neat, but the latter can be continued even with public domain characters (it's not like Marvel suddenly wouldn't be able to stop making stuff of characters they made but went public domain), and an expansion of the public domain would mean a greater expansion of possible material - Marvel recently imported a Spawn character into the comics universe (Angela, who was pretty much the poster girl for bikini armor, who ended up in Neil Gaiman's hands due to being the original creator when Image Comics gave ownership rights of a character to their creator regardless of who owned the actual comic series, Angela's rights being part of a long-running legal dispute (which also involved the rights to Miracleman) between Gaiman and Todd McFarlane (creator of Spawn, toy mogul and all-around greedy asshole) which McFarlane eventually lost), and she and her story has been far more interesting than it ever was in Spawn while also managing to integrate organically into the Marvel universe. And as for brand recognition, I honestly have little sympathy for megacorps, but it's not like people mistake Sony's recent crappy Spider-Man flicks as being made by Marvel Studios, for example. The Constitution was not written for the convenience of corporations, and both public interest and culture comes first.
And while "encouraging people to be original" is a noble and understandable goal, let's be frank, it's not like it works all that much. We have the Expy and Captain Ersatz tropes for a reason. Watchmen's entire cast are virtually carbon copies of DC comics characters who were created purely because Alan Moore couldn't use said characters. The entire Squadron Supreme is the Justice League Of America with different names and costumes and in a deconstruction of silver age comics morals. And whenever there's a new fad in any medium, a bunch of thinly-veiled copycats are sure to follow - Sonic The Hedgehog's many imitators in the 90s, and countless Minecraft clones, for example. But at the same time, you don't see a billion more works of public domain content, but that same content can be used and remixed to add to original works in new and interesting ways. In practice, copyright hasn't has as much effect on originality, and if anything, the stagnation of the public domain is preventing authors from doing new and interesting things with those characters and concepts that should be in there by now.
edited 26th Jan '16 1:02:45 AM by Cronosonic
Meh, Disney will always find a way to own Mickey Mouse. He's their freaking mascot, for crying out loud, and has been in near continual use for decades. I think copyright or trademark laws basically say you as a person or a company have to keep using a character in order to keep one of those. Disney has no problems with doing that.
The general issue tends to come when authors and artists do work for hire at places like Disney and Marvel, and Marvel's previous history of basically taking all the credit for character creation. That fight hasn't been whether copyright is a good thing, but who actually deserves to legally have said copyright. And I'm pretty ok with Disney having a copyright on Mickey and his friends; as far as I'm concerned it can be a thing that they have to apply to retain every ten or so years again. It's when companies try to steal copyright and credit from smaller creators and pull contractual chicanery that the subject gets me annoyed.
As for how it affects creativity: I've come to the conclusion that it has basically no effect on how creative people are. A legal restriction just forces someone to change a name. (Fifty Shades of Gray for a recent example.)
edited 26th Jan '16 1:39:15 AM by AceofSpades
Flint residents could have their children taken away if they don't pay their water bill
So you poison the children and then want to throw into child services because their parents aren't paying for poisoned water?
![]()
See, that's not the intent of copyright. While I would happily include a "use it lose it clause" for works in copyright, the idea of perpetual renewal is where I draw the line, and probably isn't constitutional anyway. The foundation of Disney's success (hell, most of its animated canon) is based on the public domain, but it has simply never given back to it, and goes out of its way to avoid doing so purely for greed's sake. Fuck that shit.
edited 26th Jan '16 8:39:59 AM by Cronosonic
Then everyone is free to reverse-engineer their products and build their own with no patent protection.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"But we are not talking about removing patent protection entirely. We are talking about holding it to a reasonable length of time and about preventing firms from buying up patent rights and then suing any company who won't license from them with the intent of restricting competition. Some sort of "use it or lose it" test seems reasonable.
edited 26th Jan '16 6:26:01 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The market can't force them to do anything if they don't actually want to sell their produce, just keep the rights to it. Plus sometimes they have a captive market, like with life saving medicine.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

A Harris County, Texas grand jury has cleared Planned Parenthood of charges from the abortion videos from last year, while the head of the group who released the videos has been charged with tampering of governmental records and on the prohibition on the sale and purchase of human organs.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."