laissez faire

Business interests (media business stooges) are complaining that, if Obama is elected, he will get rid of our free-market economy. But we haven't had a free-market economy in this country for a hundred years. If business wants a free market environment, it has only to look to itself to get it. What does business in America think it's going to end up with when it continually lobbies government as special interests for special favors and wheedles the government to bail it out every time it gets into a little bit of economic trouble as a result of its greedy, manipulative policies and practices? If business wants to operate in a free market economy, if it wants government to leave it alone, then it should leave the government alone. What goes around, comes around.

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break the banks

You know things are bad when banks won't borrow from or lend to each other because they don't trust each other. They know how dishonest and untrustworthy they each are and they're not about to risk what's left of their assets by relying on crooks like themselves.

Break up the big banks.
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the new awareness

Anyone who has money, especially if they are wont to use it to further disenfranchise those who do not, should keep quiet about it and work well behind the scenes when making their influence count; because we're onto the prejudicial influence that money can buy and we're going to do something about it when you flaunt your wealth and elitism in our faces. (And this goes double for corporate entities that intend to use their money to buy or influence power to act against the good of the common people.)

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fair use

Copyright owners, such as NBC Universal, Warner Bros., and Viacom, were put on notice Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled that they must not order video be removed from Web sites indiscriminately. Before taking action against a clip, copyright owners, must form a "good-faith belief " that a video is infringing, according to Corynne McSherry, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

EFF represents the Pennsylvania woman who sued Universal Music Group for demanding that YouTube remove her clip, which featured her infant son dancing to 30 seconds of the Prince song "Let's Go Crazy." EFF has always argued that the video was a "textbook" example of fair use and Universal Music should have recognized that.
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"The DMCA absolutely anticipated this very scenario," Litvack said. "Universal said she infringed on her copyright and sent a take-down notice. She then has an opportunity to appeal to YouTube (counter-notification remedy), which is what she sought and the video was restored."

But McSherry of EFF argues that the counter-notification remedy doesn't protect people from unfounded claims and puts the onus on them to prove their innocence. She remembers that before the DMCA, a media company that wanted someone to remove allegedly infringing material would first have to convince a judge and then obtain a temporary restraining order.

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Fogel agreed and the wrote: "The unnecessary removal of non-infringing material causes significant injury to the public where time-sensitive or controversial subjects are involved and the counter-notification remedy does not sufficiently address these harms."

CNET

What I am about to say may not be true, I may be reading my own bias into this, but what gives Universal or any corporation the right to "order" anyone but its own employees to do anything? I'm going to assume that that's just an unfortunate choice of a word by the reporter who wrote this story, because otherwise I might blow a gasket here.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that the DMCA has gone too far by enabling companies to intimidate websites into removing material poste haste with no concern for the rights of people who post to the sites. It's another instance of how we're all so afraid since 9-11 to act to our own better judgment and must always defer to the "authority" of someone who purports to be...

Oh, never mind. It all just pisses me off. That's all.

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slap on the wrist

FAA proposes $7.1 million fine against American
Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:24 pm PDT
Reuters - American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp (AMR.N), knowingly flew planes that needed safety repairs, the U.S. government charged on Thursday in a letter that proposed a $7.1 million fine against the carrier.

Uh-huh. See? I told you they were doing it. And, once again, instead of arresting the people responsible and sending them to jail, they opt to fine them. It's all a big shell game: If you get caught, it's going to cost you a little bit of money. What's $7 million to a multi-billion dollar company? And what kind of incentive is that to discourage corporate officers from breaking the rules again? They take a little bit of money away from them--and give it back in corporate welfare if the company gets itself into financial trouble. What a scam. Meanwhile, passengers risk their lives by flying.

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deceptive products and practices

If a guy owes you $50 and you never see him again, it's worth it.

Unknown

If a company sells me a defective product, and I never buy from them again: it's worth it to me, to know that I reduce my chances of being ripped off; but it's not worth it to the company, which loses business, especially if I tell everybody I know about my experience and advise them to shop elsewhere.

If a company makes a defective product, subsequently discovers the error, and, in order to minimize its loss, deeply discounts the defective product, selling it at a price where people believe they're getting a great bargain and only discover much later that they were ripped off by poor quality, it's not worth it to either the customer or company, for the above reasons.

If companies routinely engage in these deceptive practices, valuing profits above customer satisfaction, we call it American corporate capitalism.

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Parkinson's Law

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

Parkinson's Law

There is little necessity any more that I ever complete any work.
And I have all the time I need to complete any work I choose to do.
Therefore, I should seldom get anything done. And yet I do.
So there's something not quite accurate about that law.

It seems to apply only to corporate work by uninterested employees and doesn't take into account the motivation to get something done for its own sake or for your own sake. Which perhaps reveals the true nature of corporate work.

Oh, I know what the corporate defense against this argument would be: "Good employees don't feel this way; they always work to the company's best interest." But corporate (and government and, more generally, social) definitions often turn logic around backwards, converting black into white, or, if necessary, various shades of gray. Don't fall for it.

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