The Darker Side of the News

[CorruptUser]

So if Fox wanted to take the main characters and the story and the art of Girl Genius, it'd be perfectly acceptable to do so as long as they call it something else?

[Thesh]

Sure, why not? If it's an exact copy, who is going to pay for it, anyway?

[CorruptUser]

The people that have never heard of the Foglios but have heard of Fox?

You are basically promoting Ebaums World on crack-roids.

[Thesh]

Allow them to trademark the titles, for the sake of brand and reputation, but I don't think there should be restriction on derived works (except for attribution).

[LaserGuy]

Allow them to trademark the titles, for the sake of brand and reputation, but I don't think there should be restriction on derived works (except for attribution).

What good does attribution do if there's no tangible value associated with it?

[CorruptUser]

I was going to change my avatar and description to match Thesh, but then I noticed that "made to fuck dinosaurs" and a Yoshi...

[Dauric]

Hell, if we didn't have copyright protections then this problem goes away, since the only way to make money would be to show that you can produce quality content. The agencies that do the best job of vetting information would be the ones that get the funding. Consumers would subscribe to local news agencies that report in their communities, and local news agencies would cooperate to provide the national and global news.

Trying to get back to the initial premise here...

I would point you to China's lack of respect for Copyright in other nations. Small vendors make plenty of money not by being better content producers, but by copying information (effectively free) and selling that information at a markup from their own negligible costs.

Getting information, whether it's putting reports in the field or making movies, has an enormous overhead. You have to pay for all the resources (cameras, operators, news people, actors, graphic artists for headline layouts, special effects artists, etc. etc .etc.)

If you're copying materials the only expense is time on a computer, you don't even need time of people operating the computer you can just line the files up and run a batch process, which these days the cost for that is practically negligible.

The new Blade Runner movie lost money at the box office, it will probably see profits in the long run, but it will take time for that investment to pay off.

A Chinese street vendor can sell a copy of that movie for five dollars U.S. and 99% of that sale is total profit. The vendor didn't have to invest in the movie, but they're gaining more profit in a shorter time than the movie ever will.

All the "Attribution" in the movie is still there, but that doesn't change that the producers of the movie who actually put their efforts and time in to it won't see a dime of that profit.

Grand upshot: Copying always has a lower initial overhead cost, whether it's movies, games, or news (it's easier to parrot a press release than it is to actually investigate whether the press release is factual). This lower overhead will make copied media -vastly- more profitable than original work, even if the original work sells for more per copy, the copied media's earnings is almost entirely profit.

Getting rid of copyright does nothing to change the fact that greed is (generally) a survival trait. We're wired in the brain to seek profit for the least personal exertion.

The problem isn't copyright, it's that human beings are horrible monsters.

[CorruptUser]

I wouldn't say humans are monsters. Humans are... human. We are semi-social beasts, but even the most social of insects such as ants still murder all other ants of the same species that aren't part of their colony.

Except Argentinean ants, but fuck them, the smug bastards.

[Thesh]

Allow them to trademark the titles, for the sake of brand and reputation, but I don't think there should be restriction on derived works (except for attribution).

What good does attribution do if there's no tangible value associated with it?

It does have tangible value attached to it. You pay for the work you did; if you are just taking other people's work, then people won't be willing to pay as much. Requiring the attribution is about disclosing who did the work.

[LaserGuy]

That's assuming that I have equal capacity to distribute as the person who is copying my work. If I'm a self-published webcomic designer, say, I might get 10000 views a month. If BuzzFeed rips off my comics and puts them on their site, they might get 1,000,000 views per month. Even though I'm the original author, BuzzFeed has a much wider readership and under almost any circumstances would stand to make more money than I would. The same situation is true in pretty much any circumstance where you have a small-time creator whose works are getting stolen by a corporation, or even just a much more influential person than they are (e.g. if you wrote a novel, and Kim Kardashian plagiarized it and started selling it as her own, she would make far more from it than you would, even if she included an attribution to you in the byline of the novel).

[Thesh]

Why would buzzfeed make their own instead of just republishing what you put out? I don't get what your issue is. You got paid to publish, and so it's published.

[addams]

That's assuming that I have equal capacity to distribute as the person who is copying my work. If I'm a self-published webcomic designer, say, I might get 10000 views a month. If BuzzFeed rips off my comics and puts them on their site, they might get 1,000,000 views per month. Even though I'm the original author, BuzzFeed has a much wider readership and under almost any circumstances would stand to make more money than I would. The same situation is true in pretty much any circumstance where you have a small-time creator whose works are getting stolen by a corporation, or even just a much more influential person than they are (e.g. if you wrote a novel, and Kim Kardashian plagiarized it and started selling it as her own, she would make far more from it than you would, even if she included an attribution to you in the byline of the novel).

umm...This is One of the things FaceBook does to create wealth from the work of others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7tA3NNKF0Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6A1Lt0kvMA

FaceBook is Evil.
Marlon Bundo is a Bunny Joke.
It must be frustrating to The Vice-President of The United States, his Bunny is more popular with The Masses than he is.
Shouldn't he, in the ideal, be so honorable and hard working that he'd not have Time for nor Need money from Bunny Books?

[gmalivuk]

So anyway it's sure interesting how mainstream media is mostly trying to humanize that terrorist suicide bomber. I wonder what factor could possibly play a role in how different that coverage is from the coverage of every other suicide bomber...

[addams]

well...I have a Google machine,
I tried to find what The News was saying about the Man.

He built and detonated bombs.
He most certainly terrorized the Austin City Area.

He died by purposefully detonating one of his own bombs.
That Must make him a terrorist suicide bomber.

Yet...I could find not one article about him until I searched for "Austin City Bomb Suspect."
He blew himself to death! He is only a Suspect. Shrug,..Maybe he is, just, a victim?

well...Yes. He is a victim.
Of what, other than his bomb, I have No Clue.

Poor Austin.
It had such a nice reputation.
For a Texas Town it is Nice.

[Sableagle]

Spoiler:

Israeli chief rabbi calls black people 'monkeys'

{Autoplaying video}

One of Israel’s chief rabbis called black people “monkeys” during his weekly sermon.

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s comments were denounced as ”racially charged” and “utterly unacceptable” by the Anti-Defamation League, a New York City-based organisation devoted to battling anti-Semitism and racism.

During his weekly sermon, the rabbi used a derogatory Hebrew term for a black person, before going on to call a black person a “monkey,” according to footage published by the Ynet news site.

His office said he was citing a passage from the Talmud - the book of Jewish law.

Mr Yosef represents Israel’s Sephardic Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent.

He has previously courted controversy for suggesting secular women behave like animals because they dress immodestly.

ADL Slams Chief Rabbi of Israel for Calling Black People 'Monkeys'

The Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel called black people “monkeys” during his weekly sermon on Saturday evening.

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef was addressing Jewish legal aspects of the blessing on seeing fruit trees blossoming, and whether one should bless one tree or at least two.

In that context, he mentioned a blessing uttered upon seeing an “unusual creature,” citing the example of encountering a black person who has two white parents on the street in America.

According to Ynet, Yosef referred to black people by the derogatory Hebrew word “kushi,” and then going on to term a black person a “monkey.”

His office told Ynet that the comparison was a quote from the Talmud.

The comments came days before Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech to the Negev Conference in Dimona Tuesday that migrants coming into Israel are a bigger threat to the country than terrorism. “How could we have guaranteed a Jewish-democratic state with 50,000 and after that 100,000, and it would have reached 1.5 million [illegal immigrants]?” said Netanyahu.

Chief rabbi calls black people ‘monkeys’

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef was addressing Jewish legal aspects of the blessing on seeing fruit trees blossoming, during the current Hebrew month of Nissan, and, specifically, whether one should bless one tree or at least two.

In that context, he mentioned a blessing uttered upon seeing an “unusual creature,” citing the example of encountering a black person who has two white parents on the street in America.

In footage aired by the Ynet news site, Yosef could be seen referring to black people by the word “kushi,” which in modern Hebrew has pejorative connotations, and then going on to term a black person a “monkey.”

His office told Ynet that the comparison was a quote from the Talmud.

Yosef has been known to court controversy in his sermons.

In a sermon delivered in May last year, he appeared to suggest during his weekly sermon that secular woman behave like animals because they dress immodestly.

In March 2016, Yosef was forced to retract a comment that non-Jews should not live in Israel, calling it “theoretical.”

He said non-Jews could live in Israel only if they observe the seven Noahide Laws, which are prohibitions against idolatry, blaspheming God, murder, forbidden sexual relations, stealing, and eating limbs off a live animal, and which prescribe the establishment of a legal system.

Non-Jews, Yosef said, are in Israel only to serve Jews.

A Nightmare on Irony Street part Thirteen: Unto the Seventh Generation ...

... or maybe that's not irony, just humanity or, as it's usually called, "man's inhumanity to man."

[CorruptUser]

Kushi is now the derogatory term?

Kush is the biblical name for Ethiopia, but later referred to Nubia and all dark skinned people. Notably, Moses's wife was Kushite.

[natraj]

kushi has been a derogatory term for a while and appealing to historicity means exactly zero when talking about how it is currently used and applied to living actual black people.

[Zohar]

It is basically the equivalent of the n-word in Hebrew.

[CorruptUser]

Wasn't aware that Hebrew had its own nword. Thought people just borrowed nwords from other languages, the way they take swears from Arabic like "kuss-ummak" ([shove it up] your mother's vagina).

But yeag... that rabbi needs to go. Seriously, Beta Israel has enough problems to deal with.

[Zohar]

It comes from "Kush", an ancient kingdom located in what is today North Sudan. Mentioned in the bible as well. So "kushi" means "a man from Kush". It didn't use to be considered a derogatory term (and apparently was sometimes used for redheads as well), but around the 1960s it started being used as the Hebrew translation for the n-word.

Also yes dismantle any official religious system in Israel.

[Sableagle]

I can see certain parallels in English. We call members of a tribe native to Uzbekistan Uzbeks and members of a tribe native to Kurdistan Kurds with no trouble at all, and we've got Tajiks and Afghans and Turkmen and Kazakhs too, but at some point in the last century or so we used the obvious word for a native of Pakistan as a derogatory term, and now I'd only expect to hear it in a context like "All ____s should be shot on sight."

No, I didn't just make that quote up. I heard that. Recently!

[Zohar]

The word has not been used in modern times to refer to people from Kush. For one thing, that kingdom hasn't existed for thousands of years. It is just used to refer to anyone who's black.

[Mutex]

I can see certain parallels in English. We call members of a tribe native to Uzbekistan Uzbeks and members of a tribe native to Kurdistan Kurds with no trouble at all, and we've got Tajiks and Afghans and Turkmen and Kazakhs too, but at some point in the last century or so we used the obvious word for a native of Pakistan as a derogatory term, and now I'd only expect to hear it in a context like "All ____s should be shot on sight."

No, I didn't just make that quote up. I heard that. Recently!

It's about how it's used, the P word is offensive *because* people use it in sentences like that, not to mention refer to anyone from South Asia.

[CorruptUser]

Sort of like how "limey" is usually short for "limey bastard"...

[Zamfir]

It's not quite the same, is it? 'Kurd' is not a short form of ’Kurdistani', it's how people call themselves and Kurdistan is land-of-the-Kurds. Same for the other examples, except for Pakistan, which is not the land of people who call themselves Pakis.

Like how Deutschland is the land of the Deutsche, but Nederland is not the land of the Neders.

[CorruptUser]

Pakistan is actually an anagram, named for the Pashtun, Afghani, Kashmir, Sindh and BaluchiSTAN.

[gmalivuk]

(That'd be an acronym.)

[Soupspoon]

(I sap tank.
Ask paint.
Pain task.
Sat a pink.
Skip a tan.
Sank it, Pa!
List a aura.
Neutral Placer Fabric Inc.
God mentioned banana drink through real fit interTinder.
eComix.)

[CorruptUser]

Ok, I've clearly not been getting enough sleep lately...

[Tyndmyr]

Allow them to trademark the titles, for the sake of brand and reputation, but I don't think there should be restriction on derived works (except for attribution).

What good does attribution do if there's no tangible value associated with it?

It does have tangible value attached to it. You pay for the work you did; if you are just taking other people's work, then people won't be willing to pay as much. Requiring the attribution is about disclosing who did the work.

This statement seems....wrong. I do not expect the chap selling me a DVD to have made the DVD. Furthermore, the brand of a professional studio known for making movies is going to give it a perception of quality far higher than him saying "I made this myself".

[elasto]

A Texas judge has sentenced a woman to five years in prison after she voted in the 2016 election despite having been convicted of a serious crime.

Crystal Mason, 43, was found guilty of tax fraud in 2011, and was free on probation when she cast her ballot. She failed to convince the judge she did not know that as an ex-convict, she had lost her right to vote.

Mason's lawyer argued at Wednesday's hearing: "She was never told that she couldn't vote, and she voted in good faith."

During her voter fraud trial, she acknowledged having signed a document at the polling station that asks voters whether they have a felony conviction and if they have completed their sentence, including supervised release.

But she testified in court she did not notice that part because an election worker was helping her with the ballot.

Mason's probation officer also told the court he had not advised her she was ineligible to vote.

This is not the first case of a voter fraud conviction in Texas.

Rosa Maria Ortega, 37, an immigrant with a green card, was convicted of voting illegally in the 2012 presidential election and the 2014 Republican primary.

She was sentenced a year ago to eight years in prison, and to be deported afterwards.

I think there needs to be some punishment for voter fraud but, damn, the US has such a hard-on for long prison sentences. What does an eight year sentence achieve that, say, a three month sentence wouldn't?

To get an eight year sentence in some countries you literally have to have committed murder...

link

[Thesh]

Personally, I don't think parolees, prisoners, or felons should be denied the right to vote in the first place.

[freezeblade]

Well, they're not always that heavy handed. I mean, look at this one https://www.cbsnews.com/news/voter-frau ... ump-twice/ Where the offender knew full well that she was breaking the law (claimed that she believed that her first vote would be changed to Hilary). And she was only given probation, and a $750 fine.

I'll let you guess the ethnicity of the person given a slap on the wrist, vs. the person who was given jail time...but I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised.

[sardia]

Well, they're not always that heavy handed. I mean, look at this one https://www.cbsnews.com/news/voter-frau ... ump-twice/ Where the offender knew full well that she was breaking the law (claimed that she believed that her first vote would be changed to Hilary). And she was only given probation, and a $750 fine.

I'll let you guess the ethnicity of the person given a slap on the wrist, vs. the person who was given jail time...but I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised.

Luckily, the prosecutor used his descretion on the white person. Funny how often that happens. Must be a coincidence.

[addams]

Dark News indeed.

[idonno]

She was sentenced a year ago to eight years in prison, and to be deported afterwards.

I think there needs to be some punishment for voter fraud but, damn, the US has such a hard-on for long prison sentences. What does an eight year sentence achieve that, say, a three month sentence wouldn't?[/quote] About 7.75 years of profiting off the person.

[idonno]

I think there needs to be some punishment for voter fraud but, damn, the US has such a hard-on for long prison sentences. What does an eight year sentence achieve that, say, a three month sentence wouldn't?

About 7.75 years of profiting off the person.

[CorruptUser]

Are they in for profit prison states?

[sardia]

Are they in for profit prison states?

Don't regular prisons also force inmates into "jobs" for 1$ an hour?

[Zohar]

I'm with Thesh. I was shocked to find out incarcerated people can't vote. It is just one more facet of the racist disenfranchising of black votes.