And that’s why I am so interested in portable Raman and mass spectrometers. They cannot stop people from possessing these; the only thing that does is cost. Drive price low enough, make it possible to mass-produce as a smartphone accessory, have a shared database of spectral fingerprints of good and bad things (synced to the phones in bulk to avoid transporting the fingerprints to third parties), “borrow” the design of the equipment from the Military-Security-Industry Complex (so they are made useful for us too), they use some of these things for e.g. sniffing for explosives.
Have a chemical analyzer in every pocket, and the prohibitionists can go stuff themselves. Black market needs quality control too, let’s make it possible/easy,
Did you look at the “representatives” anytime lately?
Do you trust them at least as far as you can throw them?
Do you consider them competent enough to deserve respect?
Do you agree with all of their decisions, apparently done “in your name”?
Do you consider your co-voters to be competent enough to pick the competent representatives, if there are any left who did not give up in disgust?
It also doesn’t mean that decisions get made without the input of the people. Nor does it mean that every single person has to agree with a law in order for it to be legitimate: whether anyone personally agrees with all governmental decisions is irrelevant.
Corporations don’t vote. Don’t like how your representative acts and votes? Don’t vote for her.
Show me a law bought for corporate money and I’ll show you a corruption charge. But to bring this back on topic, are you saying that corporations bought anti-drug laws, and this is why they’re illegitimate?
Corporations don’t have to vote. They just either buy out both options, or buy the elected reps later.
DMCA?
No. (Well, I am not certain. But this will be more of a problem about the psychology of the lawmakers and the law-enforcement structures and, maaan, that’s too deep for me now with the amount of sleep I got last night.)
The anti-drug laws don’t protect us and hurt us instead, in ways ranging from searches to swat raids to asset forfeitures to criminalization of no-real-harm-done behavior. That’s why they are illegitimate.
You would prefer a DMCA-free regime where ISPs could be directly sued for copyright infringement, without having the takedown safe-harbor? This is the evil that corporations like AOL wrought?
Who do you think pushed through the exceptions? It was the AOL-like corporations, in a corporate-corporate fight. The ones who did not have enough money to join the fray ended up with criminalization of reverse engineering and of breaking the locks imposed upon us without our consent.
My representative does happen to be a her, but only as of January. Nonetheless, she has promised to vote the same way her husband did for the entirety of his rather lengthy congressional career. A voting record that, to my eyes, has very few blemishes for the last 50 or so years. Very few Usians can say the same.
The DMCA safe-harbors effectively saved the internet, and I’m pretty sure that the 1990s ISP lobbist had a lot fewer funds to throw at this issue than Hollywood did. As an example of the corrosive effects of corporate lobbying, it’s hardly persuasive.
[quote=“IronEdithKidd, post:36, topic:52475”]
Nonetheless, she has promised to vote the same way her husband did for the entirety of his rather lengthy congressional career.
[/quote]You might as well have a House of Lords if you’re going to engage in dynastic politics. There are probably people in the US who feel the Kennedies and the Bushes have unblemished records, too. I’m not sure that voting based on their familial reputation is any better than voting for those susceptible to capture by lobbyists (be they corporate or not).
