A few days ago I posted this link to a piece by Scott Adams questioning whether violating someones copyright is theft. Yesterday Poncelet took the opportunity to post a reply. The really amusing thing for me is that Adams had already posted a response. According to Adams the first piece was an experiment in generating cognitive dissonance in the responses. One of my favorite examples of cognitive dissonance from Poncelet’s post:

When you “buy” these underpants, some of that money goes to the person who designed them. The rest goes to the company that mass-produced them and the company that shipped them. Some of that money finds its way to entities who are preparing to sue you for wearing your underpants improperly.

In other words:

1. Money from album sales goes towards the labels and the RIAA who might sue me.
2. When I violate copyright I’m stealing from the artist who created the music.
3. It’s okay because I’m hurting the labels and the RIAA worse than the artist.

Scott Adams on copyright:

Let’s say your neighbor sneaks into your house while you are gone and borrows your underpants. After wearing your underpants all day, the neighbor launders them, folds them neatly, and returns them to your house in perfect condition, all while you are gone. He tells himself that he will say good things to people about your business – whatever business that is – so this arrangement is good publicity for you.

From Poncelet:

Yet copyright holders want to stifle this process in order to protect their opportunity for maximum profit.

So is making good art at odds with making profit?

When faced with a question like this, I like to go back to the classics. For instance Article I, Section 8, U.S. Constitution:

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

Did you know that’s the only clause which grants powers to Congress but also states the purpose for granting that power? The Founding Fathers understood the need for an incentive to invent, create works of art, and further the discovery of knowledge. They decided that the best way to provide that incentive was to grant a limited monopoly to whomever took the risk necessary to invent, create, or discover.

Back to your question. Is making good art at odds with making profit? No. However, making profit is a possible incentive for making good art.

You have to get to the last minute of this clip from The View to see the part where Rosie insinuates that WTC 7 was blown up by the U.S. government on Sept. 11.

But that’s not the funny part.

The funny part isn’t that Rosie keeps claiming that they need to bring in physicists from Harvard or Yale and that they will back her up on this. The funny part isn’t even when Joy says, “Wait a second. Bush went to Yale. How good could they be?”

The funny part is that Harvard is where Bush got his MBA from.

Poncelet and Wil Wheaton, and probably a whole bunch of other people who I don’t bother reading, want you to know that the RIAA is conspiring with the government to wipe out internet radio. Well, I’m hear to tell you that the big issue isn’t that the RIAA wants their members to earn an incredible 14/10000ths of a dollar every single time you listen to a song over the internet. The big issue is that the government has created this nightmare where the copyright owners no longer have control over how much they earn or who is allowed to play their creations.

My point is this, webcasters are lucky that they get to negotiate with a government royalty board over how much they should pay for the music they are allowed to play. If they were forced to negotiate directly with the copyright holders it would be a much different story. Most would want more than .14 cents per play, a few wouldn’t mind less. But they would have to negotiate with each one, and they would have to cut checks to each one, and if they screwed up then they’d end up in court against each one.

In my opinion, it’s the copyright holders that continue to lose in this deal.

The IRS has a list of all their partners who let you E-File your federal returns for free. Your adjusted gross income had to be less than $52,000, and some of the companies have other requirements as well.

The State of Utah has TaxExpress, where you can file for free if you meet all of their requirements.

I was reading this article the other day, “Every Time You Vote against Net Neutrality, Your ISP Kills a Night Elf.” I know that I am in the minority thinking like this, but our government doesn’t exactly have a sterling record when it comes to the types of regulation that these guys advocate. I’m reminded of the businesses of James J. Hill. He built the first privately funded transcontinental railroad in the U.S. He was able to do this without government subsidies because he built farms and industry along the route to ensure the success of his railroad. One of the companies that he started, a steamship company that opened up east Asian markets to U.S. cotton and wheat, relied on the railroad to move export goods at a reduced rate to the ports.

The other three transcontinental railroads had been heavily subsidized by the government, and farmers in the west complained to Congress about the economic power that these railroads were exerting. As a result the government created the Interstate Commerce Commission and granted them vast regulatory powers restricting who could own or operate railroads, and the maximum or minimum rates that they could charge for shipping. James J. Hill was forced to shutdown his steamship company because he was no longer allowed to offer discounts on getting products to the port. On the other hand, the companies that Congress was seeking to regulate were the ones that benefited the most from the regulation.

Fast forward to the present. You have giant cable and telecommunications companies that have been expanding and improving their infrastructure, hoping to earn a return on their investment by offering VOIP and IPTV services in the future. You have companies who rely on this infrastructure, but who haven’t been forced to invest in it, and in some cases are already offering VOIP or IPTV services. I don’t think it’s a stretch to see a parallel between what is happening here and what happened a hundred years ago. I also don’t think that I’m going out on a limb by suggesting that any attempt by the government to legislate the same kinds of regulations into the ISP industry that they legislated into the railroad industry a century ago would likely backfire the same way it did then.

Mark mentioned how two companies selling gasoline in Colorado were sued by their competitors because their prices were two low. In a similar vein, the mayor of Boston intends to bill Sony “for the chaos that swirled around the release of its PlayStation 3 machine after Boston police had to quell crowds grown frenzied and unruly by the hype surrounding the coveted consoles.“

Am I the only one who finds this to be ironic?

A senior Vatican cardinal on Tuesday condemned the building of walls between countries to keep out immigrants and said Washington’s plan to build a fence on the U.S.-Mexican border was part of an “inhuman program”.

For those of you who don’t get the joke. The Vatican has a big wall around it.

Check out this page from CNN’s election coverage this year. One of the things that really bugs me about politics is the assigning of colors that represent different political parties. First of all, who gets to do the assigning? I don’t think it’s the parties themselves. I doubt the Republicans would have chosen red with it’s association with communism. Second of all, why did they assign yellow to Libertarians? Are they trying to suggest that we’re spineless? Maybe they are trying to suggest that Libertarians are pissing their votes away?