clonk bonk beep

[garote]

Lots of cool stuff going on, and my only regret is that I barely have time to write about it all. There's something in me that clamors for documentation of things... As if the preservation of a memory is almost as important as the experience itself. Or to put it another way, "What's the point of doing it today, if I won't remember it tomorrow?"

There are many ways to approach the prospect of unspent time, the eminent chain of days bestowed as our adulthood, with our strength in place, and our horizons clear. We could take the road in so many directions, and we are never in danger of not having a life.

I feel danger, personally, though. My personal danger is that I will not understand the lessons offered in all things. Or that when I understand, I will be unable to get them on paper.

It's never come close to an obsession, but I do feel driven by it. This desire to document.

Change of gears. I was standing in the bathroom just now, after finally watching "Kiki's Delivery Service" with my beloved. And for the first time it occured to me, to ask the question:

"A cable descrambler box is considered by law to be a 'circumvention device', and therefore illegal for private citizens to own or manufacture. If you are caught with one, the federal government will send you to jail. On the other hand, if you pay a couple hundred downtown, and wait a few weeks, and you can legally own a handgun.

Why?"

Opinions, anyone? Why is the law like this, and should it be different, and how?

Comments

[akki.livejournal.com]

The difference, I think is that descrambler allows people to steal cable. Theft. Like music piracy. Buying a gun is ok because you are not stealing a gun, and you can protect yourself against those that want to steal your cable, or make mp3s of your music.

[garote]

But a handgun allows people to injure people - and that's all it's designed for! That's got to be worse than theft...?

[akki.livejournal.com]

No! Stealing is wrong! Aren't you american???? Stealing is punishable by death! That's what the gun is for! DOOOF! DUH!

[garote]

Doof glargh eek! Lava and bats!!

[zerophim.livejournal.com]

because large corporations never made cable descramblers to sell to the general populace. no, they just make handguns and cigarettes, and sell those to the people, because they sell rather better.
if there had been a major company that decided to sell cable scramblers before federal law made this taboo, then the law would be different-- once market competition began over descramblers, regulating sales would become difficult, because that would be interfering in the market.
a good example of this idea presents itself in the current status of filesharing. the software companies that made the mp3 trading programs have gotten established, and even though digital music trading hurts the recording industry, the software companies are bona fide corporations-- making it difficult to pass legislation against illicit tading.
in the end, it all comes down to the money.
on a sidenote: my neighbor totoro and kiki's delivery service are next on my list of miyazaki to be watched, because porco rosso and sen to chihiro were both amazing movies.

[garote]

It's an interesting comparison, but it has a couple conflicts worth noting -- A large corporation making cable descramblers would be guilty of producing a physical product, and selling it for profit directly to a customer whose intentions then become clear. Such a corporation would have no business if there wasn't an established copy protection to be circumvented. In other words, if there's no pay-cable, there can be no descramblers.

So the only economically sound progression is, One: pay-cable boxes appear. Two: mass adoption and crappy pricing make a demand for pirate boxes. Three: pirate descrambler boxes appear. Four: Pay-cable companies, with lots of money, find their money stream endangered by this alternate product. And from there, we get campaign donations, legislation, whining, crackdowns, blah blah.

In online piracy, we have corporations, bona-fide or otherwise, who produce a product that has a legitimate market whether or not there is an additional use for piracy.

Also, and more importantly, the mostly-decentralized networks like KaZaA and BitTorrent and HotLine and KDX and Napster and GNUtella enable private citizens to practice media piracy without the sharing software's producer company being directly or physically involved. The software company doesn't maintain the telephone system this all happens on, for example. They don't even provide support - paid or otherwise - for the untrained users of their software - because those users inevitably pirate the software along with everything else.

And so, the RIAA is finding that it's revenue stream is being destroyed primarily by it's own consumers, who would rather subscribe to one thing - an internet connection - and get all the in-home music, software, television, movies, recipies, news, pictures, long-distance chat, and pr0n they can handle.

The case of handguns, now, that's somewhere in-between. They're a physical object like a cable descrambler. But they have other legitimate uses (such as entertainment), like file-trading software. They don't need to piggyback on another market, like cable descramblers do. They don't destroying the revenue stream of a large company, like both others do.

They are, however, directly used in violent crime, unlike cable boxes and file trading. Improper and untrained use of one can cause serious injury and death, to the buyer and to others, unlike cable boxes and file trading. ...