Hard News: Problems
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I'm sure that John Key has plenty of opportunity to fish from his Omaha and Hawaiian dachas, should he be of a mind to.
Anyone else find it a tad annoying when Mr Key appears on the news exhorting his fellow countrymen not to travel overseas for their holidays (the time for which our employers will buy back shortly anyway) so that precious tourism dollars flow into the local economy, not too long after he returns from his well-publicised holiday in Hawaii?
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Maybe, just maybe, if people were more interested in history than fantasy then we might not be in this mess.
Fantasy is always more fun than boring old history. The more conservative, the more dull and dim witted, the more tory they are, the weirder their fantasy lives are.
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You know, the funny thing is that I was able to sit back with a glass of wine and watch that documentary about Thatcherism on saturday because my darling was off watching the final BSG episode with Jose Barbosa and Matthews Dentith.
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But you have to get down into the comments to appreciate the true level of paranoia at play: "The plans are in motion to remove this man and his administration as well as the evil virus infecting Congress," declares one revolutionary. "Is it just me or does anyone else see the clammy, self-serving hand of Freemasonry in all of this mess?" mutters another.
This is not paranoia, it is a deliberate wall orchestrated tactic by the right which has been going on since the first Gingrich 'revolution'. We heard them after Don Brash lost his one and only election. We can hear them in the UK, in Canada, and the USA.
The idea is to challenge and discredit *everything* your opponent does, 24*7 in the most outrageous and inflated terms. It puts people off thinking about actual problems and hopefully (for these folks) puts most people off politics full stop.
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OT: Guess who I've just provisionally confirmed for the next Great Blend?
Squee!
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<i>On Iceland: I am setting an assignment for my students on the Icelandic film industry</i>
I thought Jar City was awesome. And how about those Romanian film makers? Those guys are on fire.
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Australian economist John Quiggin's been running a series called refuted economic doctrines over at Crooked Timber.
That is going to be a long series.
A series on irrefutable economic theories would prove infinitely shorter.
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This just in: Section 92A scrapped.
Chris Finlayson will now presumably be tasked with drafting a new provision into law.
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Maybe, just maybe, if people were more interested in history than fantasy then we might not be in this mess.
Gradgrind, cheap shot or troll?
Certainly I can see no causal link.
The best fantastic art is always throwing the present into sharp relief, from Swift's satires of the absurdities of his society to Wells' inversion of British Imperialism with a Darwinian spin in The War of the Worlds (Wells loved Swift, by the way).
To grumpily imply that because someone likes Battlestar Galacrtica the world's gone to Hell in a handcart is a non sequitur - especially so since that show was so clearly aimed at thoroughly demolishing the 'us versus them' ethos of the Bush administration.
If more people actually paid attention to what art is saying, maybe we wouldn't be so deluded by the fantasy of instant riches?
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s92A to be scrapped this afternoon?
Here's hoping.
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And its dead. Yay!
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Prime Minister John Key has announced that the government will throw out the controversial Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment (New Technologies) Act and start again.
Justice minister Simon Power will now meet with officials and rewrite the section of the Act from the ground up.
No timeframe has been set for whatever clause will replace Section 92A.
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Maybe, just maybe, if people were more interested in history than fantasy then we might not be in this mess.
I for one am more interested in history than fantasy, but my readings of Julius Caesar's campaigns in Gaul do not inform me on how to deal with the current crisis - unless the answer is to lead an army across France burning and looting as we go.
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Here's hoping.
While you were typing ...
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Moi aussi
(Spoilsport) ;-) -
I for one am more interested in history than fantasy, but my readings of Julius Caesar's campaigns in Gaul do not inform me on how to deal with the current crisis - unless the answer is to lead an army across France burning and looting as we go.
Elephants! Let's actually learn from the past and do it with elephants!
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I could suggest one alternative:
- offer as an option on ISP accounts a copyright indemnity fee (maybe 10% / $5 a month or so)
- users paying this fee would not be liable for any non-commercial file sharing they indulge in
- users opting out of this fee would be liable for disconnection, etc.
- the fee would be distributed through a collecting society based on a statistical analysis of content being shared in NZ. -
The S92A repeal is good. But there is something about these "wins" that feels very unnecessary.
We had a similar long, drawn out battle with Microsoft last year. Explaining over and over again, in excruciating detail, why something is obviously bloody wrong is just an annoying and tedious distraction from trying get on with more positive things (which are threatened by the former issues).
Still, congratulations to all that got involved in this for your success. I do hope it encourages people to take a bigger part in and notice of political processes of this country.
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I for one am more interested in history than fantasy, but my readings of Julius Caesar's campaigns in Gaul do not inform me on how to deal with the current crisis - unless the answer is to lead an army across France burning and looting as we go.
It'd sure make Iceland move one down the ladder of 'most fucked up countries in the world right now'.
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Maybe, just maybe, if people were more interested in history than fantasy then we might not be in this mess.
Paul, your downer on all of this geeky fanboy stuff is very early '90's.
It's mainstream now, I'm afraid.
Besides which, its not like we're discussing Star Trek fantasy furpile orgies, or anything.
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the fee would be distributed through a collecting society based on a statistical analysis of content being shared in NZ.
The Danish ISP TDC sort of did that -- unlimited, legal music downloads with your broadband connection. Trouble is, the music was Windows Media DRM and would disappear when the ISP account was terminated.
I think there'd be mileage in an endorsed sharing system that returned fees via a collecting agency but didn't mess it up with DRM. There are a number of local record companies who'd be up for that on day one.
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At the risk of this becoming yet another copyright thread, I have yet to see anything beyond anecdata that this is a major problem (cue robbery, screaming). Let's see numbers. Let's get a handle on the problem. Let's not live in the fantasy world that Arthur Baystings and company inhabit, where 95% of music downloads are illegal.
In other news, the copyright thread is now on its 61st page, and we're sure we can be the first thread to get to 100. Please direct any responses to that thread to help us achieve that grand goal.
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Let's not live in the fantasy world that Arthur Baystings and company inhabit, where 95% of music downloads are illegal
I think it's more the assertion that every infringing download is a lost sale that's hard to sustain.
Let's see numbers. Let's get a handle on the problem.
I so agree. I'm tired of emotional missives. Let's see some data and think about what to do about it.
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At the risk of this becoming yet another copyright thread
Called "Problems"? No thanks.
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I so agree. I'm tired of emotional missives. Let's see some data and think about what to do about it.
Data is so nice. It's like a cup of coffee. Anecdote and emotion more like alcohol - good in moderation.
It's not the emotion, it's how we're emoting.
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