Pardon the Mess
After posting my last entry, I realized that my website looks a little off. I apologize! It seems my upgrade from Movable Type 4.01 to 4.1 changed a thing or two. I may have some time this weekend to address the problem.
I'm Smarter Than a Fifth Grader
Just under a month ago, I commented on John McCain's loony idea to give the Federal gasoline tax a summer vacation. Since then, the people in Hillaryland decided to support the same nonsensical idea. The Obama campaign, on the other hand, came out in strong opposition to the temporary gas tax hiatus. They cite, among many other excellent reasons, the fact that most mainstream economists do not support the gas-tax hiatus because it makes virtually no economic sense as a basis for their position.
Joseph
on On Flyingbulbmusic5
on A Bit of SanityThe thing about BitTorrent and similar technologies is that the illegal uses far outweigh the legal ones. Most people that use these technologies use it only to illegally download copyrighted music, movies, TV shows, and software, rather than share non-copyrighted materials. Those that only use it for legitimate uses are a very small minority. With VCR's, however, it seems the legitimate uses outweigh the illegal ones, at least in my perception. More people record TV shows than illegally copy movies.
Also, what should consumers do to protest this? Are there any ISP's of decent speed that do not restrict BitTorrent traffic? And if there was one that did and advertised as such, I'd imagine that it would be overloaded with BitTorrent traffic, indeed at the expense of legal Internet activities.
Joseph
on A Bit of SanityFirst, I would point out that, if you read the Supreme Court's ruling, it states something like "a strong potential for non-illegitimate uses," as the reason the VCR was not outlawed. I would agree that much of the traffic on p2p networks is illegal, but many people, myself included, use it to download completely legitimate content. I don't think it's possible to argue that no strong potential for legal uses exists.
Whether or not some of that traffic breaks the law also depends greatly upon what use of digital content constitutes fair use, or legal use. Back in the 70's, the movie and television companies argued that taping an episode of some TV show did not constitute fair use: it was their copyrighted content and, with fast forward, it was possible to, in a sense, deprive them of revenue. But it was decided that taping an episode of Battlebots is within a person's fair use rights, provided they have a legal way of receiving that content via airwaves, cable, satellite or what have you.
Of course, the question of fair use is mirky with digital technologies. It's now possible to make an identical copy of something with a computer. But, at the same time, a digital music file, for example, is a non-rivalrous resource. My having a copy does not mean someone else cannot have one, in the sense that, if I take a seat on a subway, then someone necessarily cannot have a seat.
Second, most ISPs do not restrict traffic in any way. And I'm not saying that ISPs should not have the ability to restrict how much people can transfer, but rather that they should not have the ability to restrict what flows through their network. In fact, I think many European ISPs have the right idea: they charge not only based on the speed of connection offered, but also regulate the amount of bandwidth customers use in a month. That seems like a much more sensible solution.
Duly noted. It seems the website I used to calculate the distances, http://portcanal.co.uk/distance/, does not give the correct distance for the Boston-Seattle city pair.