That's not a moral question, and I think that you know it. Whether or not a particular law causes harm or not, is not the moral question. It's a practical question. But a corrolary to the question, "would repeal of IP laws cause harm" is "do IP laws cause harm now?" The answer to both questions is, provablely, yes. So which is the moral cause? Neither. Harm avoidance is not a principle to decide laws upon.
Isn't "harm avoidance" effectively the NAP? Its NAP done properly. People do get together in societies and societies do act to protect themselves from harm. If the society believes losing the benefits of IP law is harmful, it will protect and enforce IP laws. The above paragraph is an obvious contradiction. The en forcement of IP laws implies the use of force. The NAP is in direct contradition of the initiation of use of force. Harm avoidance is a practical goal, it is not a principle. The use of government force to avoid harm to a subset of the population necessarily increases harm on some other subset of the population. So the question then becomes, who is initiating force in this 'harm avoidance' situation? Does the teenager who downloads a bootleg copy of a film via bittorrent threaten or attack the copyright owner in any meaningful way? Obviously not. He doesn't even prevent the copyright owner from doing with the data what he intended to in the first place, nor is he likely to spend money that he doesn't have on a copy, so he can't even be causing the copyright holder a loss of revenue. So who is initiating the use of force? ...snip...
The moral foundation is well established. We live in societies that have the right to act to prevent harm. If the abolition of IP laws is believed to be harmful, society has every right to protect itself by creating and enforcing IP laws.
The only real issue is whether or not society is justified in believing that removal of IP laws would cause harm.
That's not a moral question, and I think that you know it. Whether or not a particular law causes harm or not, is not the moral question. It's a practical question. But a corrolary to the question, "would repeal of IP laws cause harm" is "do IP laws cause harm now?" The answer to both questions is, provablely, yes. So which is the moral cause? Neither. Harm avoidance is not a principle to decide laws upon. The moral question is whether society is entitled to have IP laws. Answer is yes since society has a right to protect itself from harm and its a legitimate decision that losing the benefits of IP law will be harmful in some cases. I agree that the practical question of what to protect is not a moral question - it's something that ideally should be decided by a group of elected representatives. What is society? Is it the entire population that resides within a particular set of imaginarly lines on a map? |
|
|
|
That's not a moral question, and I think that you know it. Whether or not a particular law causes harm or not, is not the moral question. It's a practical question. But a corrolary to the question, "would repeal of IP laws cause harm" is "do IP laws cause harm now?" The answer to both questions is, provablely, yes. So which is the moral cause? Neither. Harm avoidance is not a principle to decide laws upon.
Isn't "harm avoidance" effectively the NAP? No. |
|
|
|
If someone puts their own splash screen on a game and resell it for $5 less than the game developer, the game developer will not risk the millions it takes to make a game.
Why would anyone pay $5 when they can just download the game for free? Unless they are just paying because they don't have internet, or want the service of someone else doing the searching, downloading, and burning for them, in which case the game company should really have been selling direct $5 downloads themselves (like through steam) Why would most people pay for a game when it's available for free legally? I think you're sadly mistaken if you think most people who do pay right now the retail price for a game would actually pay anything if it was legally available for free. It doesn't matter why, because the motives are personal. It's provablely true that a large number of people will pay money for a game available free of charge, legally and without consequence. The Humble Bundle series are evidence enough that people will contribute millions of dollars toward quality, independent game development without even an expected minimum donation. |
|
|
|
Sadly, my other choices for upstream after bellsouth sold back into ATT were blocked legally from offering here. fugged up things, mannnn. ;p
Really? In this modern age? What backwards city do you live in? Don't ask. :/ No, seriously, I'm asking. There may be alternatives for which you are not aware. If nothing else, a multi-homed service via a linux machine might be able to provide the speed that you need most of the time while providing some connection all of the time. I have family members that made a mint by establishing the first ISP in a small town, even though they wouldn't let me near their business because I had a rep as a 'hacker', so I might be able to offer you some alternatives. If you have a line of sight to any cell tower, odds are good that you can get some pretty good burstable speed to handle the higher bandwidth times. |
|
|
|
I've been reading more and more of the technical side lately and I am wondering if trusted "green" addresses could somehow help with blockchain pruning.
Example: Let's say A generates some bitcoins and then it gets spent through the following people/addresses:
A -> B -> C -> D -> E -> F -> G -> H -> I -> J -> K -> L
Normally the client software for the "L" address would have to store all the transactions all the way back to A in order to validate it's balance.
But what if that client software trusted the green address K enough such that it didn't need to download and store all the transactional data prior to it going through K? That would mean the data needed for that particular client instance could be lower.
I know that even if K is trusted, that doesn't necessarily mean the A through K transactions are really valid, it just means K believes they are.
Comments? Flaws? (Probably many - I just thought of this and haven't worked out any details)
Flawed, but that's irrelevent. The pruning of the blockchain would not need to keep anything earlier than H anyway, and would immediately prune H once M was verified. That's assuming that those transactions were older than the minimum block depth/age required by the pruning algo that the user has chosen. Honestly, if J was deeper than 4000 blocks, there's no reason to even keep I once L has been verified and is 6 blocks deep. |
|
|
|
A small city in Europe: What would happen if...
...you took 50000 casascius physical bitcoins and threw them all out of an airplane above the city?
You would end up killing someone. |
|
|
|
Sadly, my other choices for upstream after bellsouth sold back into ATT were blocked legally from offering here. fugged up things, mannnn. ;p
Really? In this modern age? What backwards city do you live in? |
|
|
|
I received an interesting email from ATT this morning;
IMPORTANT COMPUTER SAFETY NOTICE from AT&T Internet Services Security Center -“IRC Traffic Detected”
Our investigation shows that the following IP was assigned to your log-on session at the indicated time and was using IRC connections to a computer network which is possibly a Botnet.
This comes up on a regular basis. AT&T uses a traffic monitoring program intended to identify botnet command & control traffic, which regularly false positives on the IRC traffic that the standard bitcoin client produces to 'bootstrap' peer nodes upon startup. You could just ignore it, and set the client to not annouce your IP address on the IRC channel, and the client will use the saved list of IP addresses to startup; or you could call AT&T support and have your address whitelisted for this. They are aware of the bitcoin false positives by now, as many times as this has come up. I am also familair with their monitoring methods........ Although, that's slightly reassuring for you to say. I was very hesitant to mention 'bitcoin' to them when I spoke to support earlier. So you are fairly confident that AT&T has not recently decided the irc network bitcoin uses is bad? Just seems like I woulda got one of these 'false positives' long ago, as I have been running bitcoin clients with the default bootstrap to irc settings for going on 9 months now... I can't say, directly, because I refuse to do business with AT&T for personal reasons. But based upon the experiences of others, the notice is automaticly generated after so much traffic that looks like botnet traffic. The first tier support personel will have no idea what you are talking about anyway, and couldn't do anything to help regardless. You need the real tech support desk, usually third tier. Personally, I run the client in a 'quiet' mode that neither announces my IP address on the IRC channel, nor accepts incoming connections from IP addresses that are not in my whitelist. I run the client with the '-connect' flag to only connect to a set number of trusted nodes. Only the truly talented would be able to find my node. |
|
|
|
I think part of the reason why people focus on Atlas is because it's easier than arguing against libertarians that are a lot more knowledgeable and patient.
Atlas is a hilarious sociopath. You're just a regular one. And I've spent a ton of moments I'll never get back arguing with you anyway. By definition, as sociopath is a person without a conscience who happens to be very good at hiding that fact. Atlas is terrible at faking social agreement with statists. |
|
|
|
I received an interesting email from ATT this morning;
IMPORTANT COMPUTER SAFETY NOTICE from AT&T Internet Services Security Center -“IRC Traffic Detected”
Our investigation shows that the following IP was assigned to your log-on session at the indicated time and was using IRC connections to a computer network which is possibly a Botnet.
This comes up on a regular basis. AT&T uses a traffic monitoring program intended to identify botnet command & control traffic, which regularly false positives on the IRC traffic that the standard bitcoin client produces to 'bootstrap' peer nodes upon startup. You could just ignore it, and set the client to not annouce your IP address on the IRC channel, and the client will use the saved list of IP addresses to startup; or you could call AT&T support and have your address whitelisted for this. They are aware of the bitcoin false positives by now, as many times as this has come up. |
|
|
|
I count believing strongly as investing strongly in terms of dollars, anything else is very hard to measure. As large amounts of people are selling they must be less invested in the currency and as of such are leaving in the way that matters... with their capital.
"I'm right, therefore I'm right (I said it so it must be true)!" feel free to suggest another useful measure and then we would have a reasonable argument, but my hypothesis is just that a hypothesis, it needs better data. I never said it was definite just that it seems reasonable based on the data available. As I have twice pointed out, you stated it as a fact, which implies that you have sufficent data to support that postion. I then pointed out that it's impossible for you to have such data, an actual fact that you do not contest. So now you claim that it's a "likely" conclusion and a "hypothesis". My own hypothesis is that you are either a troll, or a child who cannot accept when he has made an error in logic. I suggest that you enlighten me as to which is true, before I make an arbitrary decision as to how I shall proceed. |
|
|
|
Also the fact the currency is falling in value and many of the original investors who felt most strongly are leaving could well damage its future prospects as these are the people who believed in it as a medium of exchange.
I challenge you to find one person who held bitcoins a year ago who has sold out and left the community behind. Accused fraudsters excepted, of course. And no, Satoshi has not sold out. How would it be possible to prove, the whole system is designed to make it easy to hide who owns what. Which is exactly the point I was trying to make. You don't have any evidence that any "original investors who felt most strongly" are actually leaving the community in any fashion whatever. You're simply making an assumption based upon projection of your own perspectives. That's an opinion, not a fact, as you implied. It is impossible to be sure, but if a large amount of capital is leaving the system it implies a large amount of people are leaving and as those most exposed could reasonably be assumed to be those who most believe in it then it would be a fair to say that it is likely many of this group are leaving. I never said it could be proven for definite just that it was likely. Taken from your own post... Also the fact the currency is falling in value and many of the original investors who felt most strongly are leaving
FYI, most people would consider the above excerpt to be an assertion by the author that the words following "Also the fact" to be a fact, not an assertion of likelyhood. |
|
|
|
Actually you moved the goal posts when you asked me to point to "a single person" who left bitcoin and the community I was just refuting your argument and showing that by your target of "a single person" I am correct.
I couldn't have moved them, that was my first reply in the thread. You did in fact shift the goal posts, in two ways: many of the original investors who felt most strongly became people who invested thousands - you're talking about two different groups of peopleare leaving became [not] stay fully exposed - you're talking about two different actionsI count believing strongly as investing strongly in terms of dollars, anything else is very hard to measure. As large amounts of people are selling they must be less invested in the currency and as of such are leaving in the way that matters... with their capital. Thank you for your honesty. I, for one, don't believe that reality gives much credence to what you (or I) might believe; but at least we know where you stand. I won't be considering you for any investment advice, BTW. |
|
|
|
|
Please edit your topic title to reflect the meaning, without using those last two words. I understand that anyone can have a hot moment, but this is an open forum and we would very much like to keep the language nazis from noticing us. Thank you.
|
|
|
|
giarc uses shift goal posts...
It's not very effective!
Actually you moved the goal posts when you asked me to point to "one person" who left bitcoin and the community I was just refuting your argument and showing that by your target of "one person" I am correct. First, I did that. Second, you have done nothing of the sort. It may, or may not be, a rational assumption to state that there in an investor that has left the game. But to state that assumption as anything more than your own belief is an obvious falsehood. Also later I describe how a fall in price suggests a flow of capital out of bitcoins, this therefore means that by logic a large percentage of the funds are moving out of the system.
That is not equivalant to the assumption that actual investors are leaving bitcoin. |
|
|
|
Also the fact the currency is falling in value and many of the original investors who felt most strongly are leaving could well damage its future prospects as these are the people who believed in it as a medium of exchange.
I challenge you to find one person who held bitcoins a year ago who has sold out and left the community behind. Accused fraudsters excepted, of course. And no, Satoshi has not sold out. How would it be possible to prove, the whole system is designed to make it easy to hide who owns what. Which is exactly the point I was trying to make. You don't have any evidence that any "original investors who felt most strongly" are actually leaving the community in any fashion whatever. You're simply making an assumption based upon projection of your own perspectives. That's an opinion, not a fact, as you implied. |
|
|
|
If I go to the trouble, would you even consider changing your position? Be honest, now.
Are you speaking to me? I won't change my position with regard to works represented by numbers so large that they would never be available to anyone other than the fact that some entity went to the effort to create it. I was speaking to anyone, really. Thanks for the honesty. Ultimately, the morality of IP laws are an irrelevant argument then? The 'greater good' of the general public is of no concern, even though that is exactly the (official) reason that IP laws presently exist. This is exactly why I called this entire topic an intellectual circle jerk. I'm not going to change my opinion, unless you can demonstrate a moral foundation for their support, which I believe to be impossible. And you're not going to change your position unless I, do what exactly? The moral foundation is well established. We live in societies that have the right to act to prevent harm. If the abolition of IP laws is believed to be harmful, society has every right to protect itself by creating and enforcing IP laws. The only real issue is whether or not society is justified in believing that removal of IP laws would cause harm. That's not a moral question, and I think that you know it. Whether or not a particular law causes harm or not, is not the moral question. It's a practical question. But a corrolary to the question, "would repeal of IP laws cause harm" is "do IP laws cause harm now?" The answer to both questions is, provablely, yes. So which is the moral cause? Neither. Harm avoidance is not a principle to decide laws upon. |
|
|
|
Also the fact the currency is falling in value and many of the original investors who felt most strongly are leaving could well damage its future prospects as these are the people who believed in it as a medium of exchange.
I challenge you to find one person who held bitcoins a year ago who has sold out and left the community behind. Accused fraudsters excepted, of course. And no, Satoshi has not sold out. |
|
|
|
Looking at all the graphs and numbers for the past couple of days, I think that the bubble period was an exception, rather than a rule. We seem to have fallen back to the point where bitcoin value would be if it had grown linearly and the difficulty to produce a new has is dropping back down to a reasonable level for new miners.
BitCoin was probably not ready for that level yet, but it doesn't mean it still can't grow there.
In hindsight, I agree with this assessment. It sure didn't feel like it on the way up, though. I, for one, could not tell that it was in a bubble above $10 until it was well over $20. These things are not clear except in retrospect. |
|
|
|
|
How should I celebrate, then?
|
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
