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Grubb for Congress. By Weblog. 300

Posted by michael from the have-wiki-will-travel dept.
An anonymous reader writes: "Wired is running a story about a (Libertarian) candidate for Congress in North Carolina whose platform explicitly supports P2P file-sharing activity. She's running against one of the big supporters of the Berman P2P hacking bill." The weblog community is all excited over her because she drank the Kool-aid.
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Grubb for Congress. By Weblog. More

Grubb for Congress. By Weblog.

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  • The ultimate single issue candidate? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Hayzeus ( 596826 ) on Friday August 23, 2002 @06:31PM (#4130359) Homepage
    Will she break the 5-vote mark?

  • GeekPac (Score:4, Informative)

    by FyRE666 ( 263011 ) on Friday August 23, 2002 @06:38PM (#4130408) Homepage
    Another useful link here [geekpac.org]. GeekPac are attempting to use the same tactic as the big corps by trying to raise funds to push some less corporate "influenced" candidates (read sock-puppets) into the parties.

    • Re:GeekPac (Score:4, Interesting)

      by flonker ( 526111 ) on Friday August 23, 2002 @06:49PM (#4130475)
      I would suggest sending donations to help her finance her campaign, to show the people in power that we really do have a strong community. I mean, even if she only gets 10% of the vote, that's enough to shake things up, so that they can't ignore us anymore. And the better she does, the better we do. If, against the odds, she wins, we've got ourselves a really strong political voice. Not just her, but the fact that we put her in office.

      But I looked, and I couldn't find any contact info. Not so much as an email address. I guess we're stuck donating to the EFF [eff.org] instead.
      • Actually, the not too unlikely scenario that might follow would involve people picking up the "internet issues" to gain popularity, who know nothing about them, and who have no real intentions to do anything different than how things are.

        If Grubb gets any votes, "Digital Rights Management" will be the next big election platform that nobody does anything about.

        -9mm-
    • I don't think "GeekPAC" is necessarily the best name one could've picked if you want to be taken seriously. What's wrong with something a little more professional, like say "TechPAC"?

  • Check You Links - You make us do it (Score:3, Informative)

    by Peridriga ( 308995 ) on Friday August 23, 2002 @06:40PM (#4130421)
    Well... They almost got the link right...
    But, they linked to the 2nd page of the story..

    For those too lazy to do it themselves or too stupid to realize it here's the link.
    http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,54693,00 .html [wired.com]

  • Amen (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by jukal ( 523582 )
    "People give worth to what they produce. What they produce is their future. Invest In Each Other.

    Tell congress to love your kid."

    Sheesh, that almost beats the Dilbert.com mission statement generator [dilbert.com] in saying nothing and sounding fancy... but sstill not quite:

    "Our challenge is to proactively enhance mission-critical services as well as to seamlessly disseminate world-class data "

    • Grrr (Score:3, Funny)

      by Nailer ( 69468 )
      Grub for congress? Lilo works fine, damnit!

      Bootloaders don't need shells, and they certainly don't need to run for congress, damnit!
  • *emphasis added*


    I ask your patience, as I am developing this blog with little assistance and no very little about today's computer technology.


    Hmm...I'm going to assume this was a deliberate spalling error to endear her to the /. crowd.

  • Libertarian... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Peridriga ( 308995 ) on Friday August 23, 2002 @06:51PM (#4130492)
    I am a Libertarian
    I don't believe in music piracy
    I do believe in P2P.
    I disagree with how the RIAA/MPAA is trying to solve their problem.

    If you don't agree w/ me, reply. I agree w/ the idea of copyprotected music. It is a produced object. Something that has time and money invested to produce an item that really does have actual value. If I produced a song that I specifically did not want to give away for free, I would try to keep it off P2P networks. I would contact those who are sharing these files and explain that they don't have permission from me to distribute this.

    Now, let me step back and say. I do understand fair use. If you purchase my CD and rip it to MP3 that's fine. You purchased the CD, you purchase the rights to listen to the music but, you did not purchase the rights to re-distribute my works in a way I don't see fit.

    OK.. Now step forward again. Why don't I like the way the MPAA/RIAA is protecting their property. There are/have been laws on the books that protect the copyright holders rights to published works. These laws explicity spelled out the fair uses of these works as well as protecting the creators. These laws worked for years on end. The change in technology didn't change the laws. The change in technology didn't make these laws less effective. You could easily still bring suit against a P2P user for sharing your music under the current legal system, it's just harder to do. So instead of attempting to protect their rights the hard way they simply bought laws to help them. These laws(DMCA, etc.) are what I have a problem with.

    I abhor the creation of laws that violate my rights in any way shape or form. It is not the purpose of government to pick and choose winners by passing favorable laws it is the purpose of government to protect my rights.

    • You forgot to mention that the DMCA haven't really helped them either.

      The government is for and by the people (or so they should be,) not for the rich and wealthy who control the people.

      Current politics work by the equation:

      Corporations = Money + People

      And in a democracy:

      People = Vote

      So it gives the equation:

      Vote = Corporation - Money
    • I have a story idea I'd like to put out one day via the internet. It's like a comic. I do worry about people taking it and not paying for it, but I worry 10x more about a corp using it to enhance their own image (like Austin Powers and Taco Bell...) without compensating me.

      For what I want to do, copyrighting the material would be for protection against corporate theft, but it'd be less for the prevention of consumer theft.

      The corporate example I used is an example of theft, but I do not believe somebody acquiring the images without paying for them is theft. What'd they steal? Electrons? They didn't cost me anything by taking it, they just didn't pay me. I could threaten to sue anybody who doesn't do that, but instead I'd rather appeal to people's good sense. "If you like my work, pay me so I can keep doing it." (Note: My definition of theft is solely limited to the context of my content, I do not intend to imply that I feel that way about copyrighted material across the board.)

      If somebody has my work but doesn't want to pay for it, how can I assume they'd pay for it if they couldn't get it otherwise? If anything, somebody got to trial my work and develop a taste for it. At that point, it's up to me to make the service worth paying for. "Want to see it today instead of having to wait a week or two for somebody to make it available?"

      I believe people are basically honest. I also believe that there'll always be a percentage of those who don't pay for the work but they should. That's called risk. The best thing I can do is figure out why they prefer not to pay for it and consider ways of making it interesting to them. Maybe I can offer a deal where they get it for half price if they agree to buy a bunch of it up front? Who knows?

      I certainly think that locking up the content so they can't use it or learn from it is by far the worst thing I could do. How do I know some guy didn't by my work only because he's interested in 3d rendering?

      Anyway, Im responding to the parent post not to specifically agree or disagree, I just thought I'd express my view as a potential content provider in the future.

      • I don't think that the *AA understands that content is only part of value, service is the other. The movie Ghostbusters is of little value if you can't watch it in entertaining conditions. If you can't pause the video so you can use the bathroom, then you've made viewing conditions 'less entertaining'. When commercials are added to a TV show, it becomes less entertaining. And so on.

        That's why P2P hasn't replaced DVD sales. DVD's are a service that P2P can't replicate. But, if the *AA relies too much on the content and not enough on the service it provides, then yes the internet could potentially be a danger. Not from would-be pirates, but from the new content producers down the road who understand this.

    • Re:Libertarian... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by smallpaul ( 65919 ) <paul @ p r e s c o d . net> on Friday August 23, 2002 @07:29PM (#4130694)
      If you are a libertarian, I am surprised that you support government-backed monopolies at all. After all, that's what IP is!
      • Suggest that you read (or re-read) "Atlas Shrugged" for a really good exposition of how IP != government backed monopolies.

        The issue is that some people, either as individuals or as part of a corporation, try to exploit existing laws and/or influence new laws to their specific benefit. This includes no only IP laws such as copyright and patent laws but also any other law (or lawmaker) that they can subvert for their own advantage. If you want an example of this, I suggest you research the restrictions that were placed on Southwest Airlines when they decided to operate out of Love Field rather than pay the fees that were required to operate out of Dallas-Ft. Worth airport. I'm sure Rep. Jim Wright would still insist that these restrictions are "in the public interest" as Southwest continues to make money while the airlines that lobbied for the restrictions are barely staying out of bankruptcy.

        IP law is not the problem. Politicians making laws that benefit the few at the expense of the many in return for campaign contributions are the problem. I'm not saying that changes aren't needed in the IP laws but I don't see the legal concept of IP (both of individuals and corporations) going away. Again, read "Atlas Shrugged" for what this would mean.... and it ain't pretty.
    • "re-distribute my works in a way I don't see fit."

      that doesn't work.

      we must have laws thatoutline the copyright holders rights, and apply them to all copyrights.

      what if you "see fit" to allow me(gee thanks) to rip mp3, but the next artists doesn't?
      copy right laws need to be inplace to limit the copyright holders rights, not the rights of the people.
      I say 5 year copyright restriction, and I can do anything I want with the medium, as long as I don't distribute it to likely purchasers of the product.

      Of course, to date, new music that had wide p2p distribution also had higher then expected sales, and older music has only seen an increase in sale where available.
      emmnemm would not sold over 1,000,000 copies if it wasn't being played by people who had ripped it before it was released.

    • Re:Libertarian... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mochan_s ( 536939 )

      Let me ask your opinion on another scenario. Suppose you put a CD out and your local library buys a copy and puts it on the shelf so anyone (with a valid library card) can take it home and listen to it.

      Suppose you don't like library patrons listening to your music for free. Should you be allowed to release your CD stating that this CD cannot be put in a library to be loaned? What about a book or a movie?

      So, this is not music piracy and does not violate any of your 4 canons. Now, with P2P sharing of your work, no-one is gaining any money and thus would not put under music piracy but maybe 'unauthorized copying'. So, in a way, this does not violate your 4 canons as well.

      My point is that maybe P2P sharing of copyrighted work is not so bad at all. Libraries do it. The idea that anyone can just download your song and appreciate it without charge is similar to anyone can go and borrow a book and read it. Maybe the music industry has reached a point where it is going in the way of the book publishing industry. Let go of the massive promotions and just cut the cost to recording and reproduction, and live with P2P. That, I think, would be culturally optimal.

      • Well to me personally the difference is that the library has temporarily transferred the rights of listening to the music to the borrower. It can be clearly defined that when one person or entity has paid for the use of the music, and only one person or entity is using that music at any given time.

        Software companies, even Microsoft, used to state in their standard EULA's that you were allowed to make several copies of their software as long as it was only being used in one location at any time. These allowances (which imho should be declared as implicit anyway) have now dissapeared from the EULA's -- possibly because the companies believe it's too hard or inefficient for them to enforce. Instead "independent" organisations like the BSA [bsa.org], the MPAA [mpaa.org] and the RIAA [riaa.org] have been formed by the corporate cartels to crack down on and frighten by legal threats anyone doing what the company decides it doesn't like, under the guise of IP law and in a way that they hope will never be decided on at a court that actually matters.

        A peer-to-peer information sharing network doesn't naturally have this transferral of rights, because the information isn't moved. It's copied. Letting someone else use it doesn't prevent you from using it at the same time. If you look at a typical peer-to-peer music sharing network, this is exactly what happens. A few people buy something, and their versions of it are duplicated and shared many times between many thousands of people, all of whom are using it simultaneously and independently when often very few people have actually paid for it. Irrespective of how right or wrong anyone might believe it to be, this is nothing like how a library works.

    • Firstly, even you use of the term "piracy" with respect to copying some bytes betrays our disagreement as I think it is rediculous to equate sharing mp3s with illegally boarding a ship, murdering the crew, raping and murdering the passengers, stealing their cargo, and sinking the ship when you are done.
    • You start from the wrong premise.

      The problem is not copying, the problem is paying the creators for their work.

      Historically, some companies have tried to solve this problem using various techniques (publishing, advances, royalty payments, advertising-supported broadcasting, pledge drives). All of these are predicated on economies of scale for large runs, and high costs of entry for competitors.

      When a new technology comes along that changes these economics, it is time to look fora new model [mediagora.com] to solve the underlying problem, not construct a technical and legislative framework to restore the old barriers.

    • Re:Libertarian... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by volkris ( 694 )
      Just because you put resources into making something does not mean it has value.

      I think you have some of your reasoning backwards. If a company creates something that ends up being more valuable than the resources that went into it then they will go far. If not they won't. The value of the product is independent of the amount of resources that went into it.

      In the end I say that since the industry's business model relies on artificial scarcities brought about through the IP laws, they business model is simply flawed. Since this neabs kess governmental interference into non-essential matters it's an arguably "more" libertarian POV.
      • Just because you put resources into making something does not mean it has value.

        Of course... I completely understand this.. If I take a $30k diamond and crush it, I put $30k into it but, I certainly won't get $30k out of it. But, that wasn't my original quote. My original quote was that produced music is an "item that really does have actual value".

        This is to say that a master recording of a song has a value. Not of it, itself physically but, in potential sales.

        Now.. the "artifical scarcites"...
        I really like that phrase. I'm adding it to my vernacular for other uses. In this case though although artifically (I will agree. The only reason they have value is because of the protection offered by law) inflated in value, it is a valid law on the face. Regardless of your opinions of IP music, code, and manifestation of the human mind is attributed to it's creator, like it or not. If you compose a classic piece of music you own it. You own the specific arrangement of notes and chords.... Why? Because it is of your creation....

        Why is this important? Without some protection of IP there would be no desire to create IP. If in your head you had an idea for a program that has great fiscal possibilties for you (Make you the next Bill Gates) would you bother investing your time and your energy into something that you could never profit from? I don't think so... The IP laws (the original ones) are there to protect peoples idea's in order to encourage them to create more ideas. Without this fundemental right to ones own ideas progress would stagnate.

  • More Background Info... (Score:5, Informative)

    by HavokDevNull ( 99801 ) <ericNO@SPAMlinuxsystems.net> on Friday August 23, 2002 @06:55PM (#4130515) Homepage Journal
    Here is a little bit of Background Information [projo.com] I found. (Thanx to Google) So far she sounds very promising, and it would be nice to get someone in Congress who actually has (somewhat) a clue!

  • For those who care:
    This was posted earlier today, but they reposted on the front page due to the number of submissions.
    link [slashdot.org]
  • [jukal@doh jukal]$ tar -a grubb
    tar: illegal option -- a
    Try `tar --help' for more information

    But hey, I got an idea:

    [jukal@doh jukal]$ man -k grubb
    grubb: nothing appropriate

    Damn!

  • Refreshing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by shd99004 ( 317968 ) on Friday August 23, 2002 @07:12PM (#4130608) Homepage
    Read her weblog, and Grubb seems like an honest person, with great ideas and views. Enthusiastic. Libertarian. We need more of those kinda people...
    • You do us a disservice when you assume that anyone in the tech community which disagrees with the abuse and corruption of government by corporate interests must, of course, be a Libertarian.

      • Re:Libertarian? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by shd99004 ( 317968 )
        I didn't assume she was a libertarian until I heard about her... and everyone said she was. Yes I agree she could be more laissez faire about a few things, I thought so too after I read the blog. But, that is also the only thing I've read from Grubb.

        Who is libertarian and who is not? I myself am a liberal to the most part, but I'm probably moving towards libertarianism more and more. Question is if there's a complete and absolute definition on what libertarianism is? To me, some libertarians seem to be less libertarians and more liberal, and some of them seem to be anarchocapitalists. I am pretty sure that if you ask two libertarians whether we should have a central government or not, one might say "yes" while the others say "no". Then even those who are for a central government will very likely have different ideas as to how big it should be and what authorities it should have. And what about intellectual property laws? It seems to me that some libertarians want IP laws, others do not.

        I guess what I'm trying to say is that libertarians aren't identical copies of each other and their views may differ. But that thing about 6 months maternal leave is clearly NOT for the government to decide.

    • more like scary.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fantomas ( 94850 )

      "...with great ideas and views"


      Aren't you a wee bit nervous of a politician who makes statements like "The history of the Middle East is the history of oil".?


      I am really worried about a politican who thinks history = 90 years. This feels so close to the views of the European 19th Century powers that believed that African history started when they colonised the continent. Don't forget the earliest cities in the world (Ur, Akkad..) are in Iraq, the birthplace of our civilisation; there is 5000 years of history there. The foundation of the USA started there...


      Hmm, just because somebody can use a weblog doesn't mean they are all right.


      • I agree. Statements like that are somewhat shortsighted. Buf it you read between the lines you see, "I don't really know or care what the conflict over there is about, because it doesn't really concern me unless oil prices get out of hand," which is a typical American viewpoint. Granted, there are plenty of reasons for us to be over there, some of them justified and some of them not, but your average American doesn't give a shit. They want cheap gas and a sense of security, which is what they get by objectifying the conflict in the middle east.

        Apparently she's more concerned with domestic policy, which, in my opinion, is what the legislative branch needs to concern itself with.

  • Capital "L" Libertarian? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think not. Although, I would consider supporting Tara Grubb, but do you actually expect me to believe that Tara is a capital-L Libertarian? Not a chance. Take, for instance, this quote: "I belong to the WORLD Party and so do you". Highly indicative of a person that wants to claim Libertarian without actually holding Libertarian beliefs (and barely libertarian-little l-beliefs).

    There are actually only 2 uses of the word libertarian on her weblog. Where did you get the idea that this woman was a Libertarian? Please!

    Whoever submitted the initial post, could you please change "Libertarian" to read "libertarian"? You should know better.
  • For the love of God, please vote for her!

    Vote for her because her ideas rock.

    But also vote for her because she is running against Howard Coble [house.gov], who is in the back pocket [search.com] of the RIAA [riaa.org].

    If you love the First Amendment and hate the DMCA [anti-dmca.org], send Grubb to Congress!
  • Can Grubb boot Congress? *ducks behind the couch*
  • ... like the big guys in the RIAA and MPAA using their power and influence to shape laws for the protection fo their industry. We shouldn't have big corporations deciding how we use our computers.

    Plus, I really think corporations should offer maternity leave, enough so that I think the government should intercede to provide tax incentives.

    Hence, I am running for congress as a Libertarian, because only the Libertarians truly understand the way to deal with corporate power is to repeal every regulatory counterbalance imaginable [lp.org].

    In the end, The Market will cure all our ills.
    • I recently signed up for the Washington State LP newsletter, quite a bit of stuff going on up here in the Pacific Northwest. I'm really tired of both the Republicans (tax cuts for corps) and Democrats (spend my money on everything) doing the wrong thing time after freaking time.

      I dont believe in socialism, but I REALLY dont believe in corporations having carte blanche freedom, which LP seems to lean towards. HMO's in point, Good idea in theory.. But after a friends baby almost died because the HMO didnt run tests (A way to save money). I found out they actually get BONUSES for cost cutting. Bean counters who calculate infant deaths vs insurnace costs should be outlawed.

      Just looking around at how capitalism effects you on a daily basis, insurance for medical, auto, health, power costs, savings/stocks/401k, medical expenses, income taxes, state taxes, license fees, etc, you can see some issues with everything. Take Insurances companies as an example, underwriting together to raise your rates no matter which company you use. Credit card companies charging both the seller and buyer and charging interest, Not even mentioning all the other fees.

      Maybe I'm the only one getting tired of "Business as Usual", and looking for a way to vent my anger. Supporting the LP has helped some, as I agree with most of thier platform. (And a long list at that, but its scary at how much affects us.)

      • Evidently, a demopublican government has not quite een able to stem corporate misdeeds...

        Moreover, libertarians of all types do believe that fraud is a crime.

        On HMOs - an HMO is a way of making your health care expenses be less by combining mutual insurance with centralized health care rationing. HMOs have a higher chance of killing you than straight insurance or just paying your doctor yourself. It just happens that either of those safer alternatives are more expensive. You roll the dice when you stick to your HMO doctor. At any time, you are free to go to a full-cost doctor as well.

        Unfortunately, medicine is an imperfect art. Even full-paying a doctor doesn't assure a mistake or a bizarre reaction won't happen.

        Should medical care be more affordable? Perhaps, but the Federal Government pays 50% of medical bills in the US, leading to higher utilization of medical care and higher prices (especially for those outside of Medicare/caid).

        You make the call if this is good or bad.

        The Libertarin Party has been a supporter of tax-deducatable self-insurance through expansion of medical savings account laws. It's another option.
  • When the last time a Libertarian came even close to getting elected to Congress?
    • I suppose that depends upon your perspective:

      Ron Paul: Former Libertarian Presidential Candidate serving in Congress as a member of the Republican Party [zolatimes.com]

      Victory or not? If a victory, is it pyrrhic?

    • Oh come on, there SHOULD be a Libertarian rep in Congress. My state, Vermont, has a Socialist :) that's our Bernie Sanders. He's been upsetting some of the antiwar leftists in recent years but he's about as strongly anti-corporate-abuses and pro campaign reform as Nader- except he IS in office, and we're keeping 'im (Bernie is well liked in Vermont- he's our guy, not Disney's guy or whatever)

      I see no reason why there shouldn't be a Libertarian in Congress- and some types of libertarianism I see as about the worst, most destructive thing out there. Interestingly, Tara seems not to be following out the libertarian philosophy to its extremes regardless of the result- for instance, she seems to be privy to some information about FedEx moving into her state and apparently hosing the state pretty good in some way, and she sides with the people who live there, rather than the corporation. She could just as easily have gone the other way, and to my mind this is encouraging that she isn't.

      I've seen a poster excoriate her for not being Libertarian enough. Good! Good for her. I'd excoriate her for not being socialist enough, but eh- even if she's not I think she deserves to be in the House and would be an asset. And it sounds like she researches stuff rather than just philosophizing, which is more valuable still.

      Now what would really be cool is if she got in, and ended up being able to work with Bernie, Vermont's Socialist congressman. He's about as capital S socialist as she is capital L libertarian, so maybe they'd have an easy time finding common ground on the many issues that they agree strongly on :)

      • He's about as capital S socialist as she is capital L libertarian[...]

        Somehow I don't think a "Capital-L Libertarian" would be supporting even the slightest government influence over companies' maternity leave policies (as her weblog shows she would).

        As a staunch "little-l libertarian", I like her position on this. Her idea is to reward companies who offer substantial maternity leave benefits with reduced taxes (rather than to MANDATE maternity leave policies at the federal government level or to "punish" employers for NOT offering really nice maternity leave policies).

        That position bespeaks of a fairly moderate but still libertarian outlook - recognition that a government entity CAN do things to improve society, but for best effect MUST do so with a MINIMUM of meddling...I think a true, hardcore "Capital L Libertarian" would be advocating that the government not take any position whatsoever on the matter, and let the pressures of the employee "market" set the level of benefits necessary to attract good employees.

        Always remember that extremist libertarians may be the LOUDEST, but are far from being the most common. Libertarians who want to sell off ALL public/government owned land (for example) or abolish ALL environmental regulations and so on are really no more common than Ruperticans who want to mandate Christianity in the constitution as the State Religion or Disneycrats who want to turn the US into a tax-funded nationwide Socialist Worker's Paradise(tm).

        I honestly believe that if you could get the majority of voters to stop being driven by fear of "the other party" (whichever party that may be) for a little while, and convince them to quit robotically voting "the party line", a large proportion of them might very well coalesce into a "moderate libertarian" voting block, ex-Ruperticans being attracted by the "fiscal freedoms" (i.e. engage in nearly any non-fraudulent, mutually agreeable buying or selling transaction) and direction and ex-Disneycrats attracted by the "personal freedoms" and "end corporate welfare" (Yes, this IS a 'plank' in the libertarian 'platform') direction, and BOTH being attracted by the "power should move back from the federal level down towards more local levels" aspects (which means BOTH that [to indulge in a ridiculously extreme set of examples to illustrate the point] Texas could mandate gun-safety training for all 6th-grade students while California could organize itself into almost a small socialist country with its own state-run health-care system and a ban on all firearms...[Hey, I SAID they'd be ridiculously extreme examples!])

        But enough babbling from me. Suffice to say that the only reason Libertarianism sounds so extreme sometimes is that unlike the wide variety of Disneycrats and Ruperticans who get air-time on national news media (because they are already in positions of power and therefore "interesting"), the only libertarian viewpoints generally shown are "sensational" ones from relatively "radical" libertarians, since the more rational viewpoints from more moderate libertarians are too "boring" to waste precious broadcast time on (There can be a whole crowd of libertarians protesting drug policy on rational grounds of excessive laws and costs to society and disparity of punishment when compared with more traditional violent crimes, and the news media will invariably take a picture of the one guy there with a marijuana leaf painted on his face in a torn T-shirt yelling "DUDE! Toke for Peace!" or something of the sort)...

    • Ron Paul, a former Libertarian Party Presidential candidate, is in Congress...
  • There is nothing wrong with P2P. Nothing. What the real problem is, is knee-jerk Congressmen who see the music piracy war as some sort of drug war that they can actually win. (I'm reminded of the Disney executive who thought that DRM software can be installed in the processor "because all the bits go through there, right?") They realize that it's easier to shut down P2P companies than to actually go after the music pirates.

    The problem with a P2P subscription service is that the money for subscriptions goes to the RIAA. Meaning? Independent artists get gypped. This means the easier way for them to make money is to side with the RIAA, who apparantely hates the idea of people listening to music for free.

    What's my solution? Micropayments, in a different form. $2 nets you 100 song downloads, and the P2P service monitors the completed downloads, and logs what artists are being downloaded. So for every song you download, 2 cents goes to the artist.

    Let's say that, on average, a typical ~obscure~ song gets 100 downloads per day. That's $2 right there for the artist. Now, spread that out over 365 days. $730 in the pocket for the artist. That's a pretty penny for our musician pals.

    And if he gets popular, and starts getting 500 downloads per day? $3,650 a year. Those 2 cents add up. A very popular artist who gets, perhaps, 1,500 downloads per day would be looking at $10,950. And remember that people would still be buying CDs.

    Considering that the average musician actually sees about 6 cents out of every CD sale, I doubt they'll argue against this idea.

    -Evan

  • background (Score:2, Informative)

    by flollywebfrog ( 462849 )
    i have been following Tara Sue for about a week now. Ed Cone, an opinion writer for the North Carolina News and Record [news-record.com] introduced her to the online world last Friday [weblogs.com] and has been mentioning her on an almost daily basis.

    Dave Winer [userland.com] and others bloggers who have been writing for some time now about the need to find a challenger against Howard Coble [house.gov] quickly linked with support. Tara Sue has become an online ray of hope for many.

  • Get an Interview, Slashdot ! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by linzeal ( 197905 ) on Friday August 23, 2002 @09:45PM (#4131231) Journal
    Put her in the chair, we need to see what she is made of.
  • One of the libertarian ideas is selling the national park system to private parties.

    Any estimates on what you folks figure America's park system is worth? Or is it just "for sale to the highest bidder"?
    • Tthe going rate is about $10,000,000 per park.

      That's what Bill Clinton charged the Phillipine coal producers in capmaign donations to lock up the single largest reserve of clean coal in the United States into a national park in Southern Utah, right before he shepparded legislation through congress requiring coal-fired power plants use cleaner coal.

      -- Terry

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Wow, I totally agree with her hollywood stance, and her views on children and giving parents opportunities to better raise them. I hope she fleshes out more details and issues in her campaign.

    From what I saw on the weblog, she's young and enthusiastic and intelligent and has a lot of potential. I hope she has the power to learn and grow from her interactions with the people she meets on the internet. A lot of people will be willing to help out.

    She definitely needs the ol' slashdot interview treatment eh? And I'd like to know where to send the campaign donation, because she's getting one from me. (But only after I hear more of what she has to say, of course.)

    Go Grubb!

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