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MEGA ANSWERMAN!

championferret wrote:

I don't claim to be some amazing guro

Is amazing guro less sickening than the regular stuff?

Zac wrote:

Fiction Alchemist wrote: Pocky has animal fats in it. I'm a vegetarian and thus can never eat it. I'm probably not missing anything. This would make you a vegan, not a vegetarian. Splittin' hairs and bein' pedantic, perfect activity for a Friday night!

Humm I have to disagree with you there. I don't think vegetarians eat anything meat, and that includes animal fat (carcass fat not milk fat) Some vegetarians don't use some soaps and other products cause of the animal fat in them. Guess it depends how far you go with it.

I would disagree with you that IP is closer to speech than physical property. I'd suggest that some types of IP are expression (ie: art & entertainment), while others are not at all (ie: almost anything patented).

I'd also like to point out that most countries aren't suffering the same problems with the government making the "contract" too one sided (I'm not American), yet most of these countries, which are much less pro-corporation than the USA, still believe that IP is indeed property. In otherwords, it seems that even the reasonable people believe in IP.

In the USA you may have this painful movement towards the concept of licensed property as opposed to owned property. That when you buy something, you are merely acquiring the right to consume it in a particular fashion. In most of the rest of the world, the right to chose how to consume what we own remains the right of the consumer, who owns what they have purchased. Of course, consuming does not mean reproducing.

I'd also disagree that saying anything is expression. Parrots say plenty of things, as do TVs and radios. These creatures and devices are not expressing themselves when they repeat what was originally said. (No, Polly isn't expressing herself when she says she wants a cracker, she doesn't even know that she's going to get a cracker by saying that).

As for a constitutional version of common law, the concept of copyright in the USA is enshrined in the constitution; not an amendment, rather the constitution itself.

I think, and please don't be offended by this, one of the most serious problems with the United States, is that it, and many of its citizens, focus on the literal meaning of 250 year old laws. The right to bear arms, freedom of expression, etc... The creators of those laws did the best they could at the time, but there was no way they could foresee the realities of today's world.

Don't get me wrong, I believe consumers and citizens need to have their rights protected. I am very disturbed by the DMCA, and by the notion espoused by copyright maximalists that copyright owners should be the ones that dictate what rights consumers have when it comes to their IP.

New laws need to be created that protect a creator's rights, an investors rights, and a citizens rights. Concepts like "freedom of access to information" didn't exist in the 18th century, yet I feel that it is an exceptionally important topic today. How can freedom of information and author's rights be brought into accordance with each other?

In short, new laws need to be created to protect consumers, to allow them to properly and fully consume what they've rightfully purchased. While other laws (or perhaps sections of the same laws) need to be created or updated to continue to protect the rights of creators and "promote the progress of science and the arts."

The DMCA might have been in the right direction, but rather than being a single step, it seems to have been ten steps too many.

In other words, patent and copyright law are in serious need of reform.

On an aside, I'm a big believer in copyright alternatives, which is why Dan and I are discussing how to move certain parts of ANN to the creative commons.

Sorry, this post was all over the place.

-t

I guess I should be thankful that I live in SoCal. All of the above is quite common here at Marukai or Mitsuwa.

My BF likes those lil' mushroom-shaped things... I don't know what they're called, but they're made by Meiji. (We have concluded Meiji is our favorite Japanese snack company.) I also have a small collection going of Morinaga ramune candy and buy C.C. Lemon soda over Ramune whenever I can.

posterior_praiser wrote:

Zac wrote: Fiction Alchemist wrote: Pocky has animal fats in it. I'm a vegetarian and thus can never eat it. I'm probably not missing anything. This would make you a vegan, not a vegetarian. Splittin' hairs and bein' pedantic, perfect activity for a Friday night! Humm I have to disagree with you there. I don't think vegetarians eat anything meat, and that includes animal fat (carcass fat not milk fat) Some vegetarians don't use some soaps and other products cause of the animal fat in them. Guess it depends how far you go with it.

Being Vegan is sub genre so to speak of vegetarianism. So you're both right lol. No but seriously, a strictly vegetarian person simply does not eat animal flesh, i.e. meat. That does include seafood btw. A vegan won't even eat products made by animals. So no eggs or milk either. They also are the ones with the animal free clothing and other products, like soap. And if you still want to argue then just go look here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism

The basic rule is veggies don't eat meat.

I think they're all wacko myself

since we're designed as humans to be omnivores, not herbivores.

Parots and TVs/Radios are not sentient beings capable of cognitive intelligent thought though.

Seriously, temee does not always mean "bastard" (even though it is better than "you...!") or kuso means shit. Those are the top mistranslation I keep on appearing. People in Japan handle broadcasting like America... during the day time...

As for American law, our politicians are too busy wasting time worrying about kids falling off tricycles or falling into 5 gallon buckets to deal with anything seriously important. They'll deal with copyright law only after they can't put off making a real decision. One would think there would be enough interest in protecting copyright (Hollywood, for one, has cash).

I think they're all wacko myself since we're designed as humans to be omnivores, not herbivores. But whatever floats your boat. It just means more steak for me.

instead of PEACOCK it says PEAFOWL... is that how we're supposed to identify that bird as? O.o

1:
Humans are omnivorous but evolved to primarily eat plant foods with meat as an addition to the diet. That's why we're not particularly good at digesting red meat (relative to animals for whom it's a more important part of their natural diet).
For the vast bulk of human history (at least in the Western world), most people, outside of the gout-ridden nobility, have eaten meat very rarely - it's only with industrialisation in the 19th Century that meat started to become affordable to the masses in densely settled areas and only in the 20th Century that it became cheap enough to be a part of most people's everyday diet.