[clue-talk] The War On...?

[Tommy Phillips]

1.  Agreed:  The music and movie industries are way
behind the curve on technology and how their customers
want to use their products.  Always have been, as far
as I can tell.
2.  Agreed:  The big companies gobble up too big a
fraction of the money, and the artists get too little.
3.  Agreed:  There is room for some level of "fair
use" sharing that could, over time, increase the
number of times that end-users actually pay for a bit
of "content."  However, see point 1.
4.  Agreed:  The music and movie industries seem to
mostly be run by contract lawyers with no imagination.
 (How else would you explain a Garfield movie?)

However, whenever I hear someone complain that Person
X is getting a longer sentence than the average
criminal of Type Y, I think:  "So what?"  First,
averages mean nothing in this context.  Second, if
they did mean anything, it would probably be that the
sentences for violent crime are too light, but that's
not the complaint that I am hearing in these kinds of
whines.

YMMV

--- Sean LeBlanc <seanleblanc at comcast.net> wrote:

> I saw this in the midst of some java blog entries.
> Being the cynic I am, I
> can't help but think this is another War on Some
> Drugs in the making (there
> aren't enough "criminals", so the gov't declares a
> new sort of "criminal",
> and it's never the really big fish that need
> incarceration, of course).
> 
>
http://www.savoirtech.com/roller/page/jgenender/20041227#colleg_kid_may_do_time
> 
> 
> -- 
> Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at comcast.net  
> Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men
> dread it. 
> -George Bernard Shaw 
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> 


=====
---------------------------
Tommy Phillips
303-427-8456 (Home)
303-981-4310 (Cell)
tommyp at acm.org