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(NaturalNews) Recently, USA Today has been running an interesting series of articles on our ridiculous health care system or, as reality would put it, our “disease care” system. While more and more Americans are concerned with the increasing costs of the U.S. health care system, hawked as the best medical care in the world, the problem is that those that cannot afford it are steadily increasing.
A poll found that eighty percent of those that responded were not thrilled with the $2.2 TRILLION, or $7,129 a person, being spent on health care in the U.S. and that medical company profits or malpractice lawsuits were the biggest causes of the spending. Actually, of the $2.2 trillion, 660 billion is spent on hospital care; 462 billion is spent on doctors, and 220 billion on drugs. (See end for complete breakdown)
For the most part, this medical inflation is perpetuated by Big Pharma`s drug hype as the solution to everything. This inflation is also brought about by waste, inefficiency, and the growing number of chronic diseases caused by our epidemic of obesity.
The crossroad we are at is believing the propaganda that we have the best health care system in the world. We realize though that this is a myth built on deception and lies. The reality is that we have the best disease-care system in the world. It is a system designed to take as much money as possible from consumers and taxpayers under the illusion of getting quick and easy pill solutions for their illnesses without having to give up anything to achieve this.
The real way to drop medical costs is to take responsibility for your own health and emphasize care, not treatment. Drugs, doctors, surgery and hospitals rarely solve chronic health problems. That which will have a more profound effect on your health is switching to an organic plant-based, whole (not refined) foods diet and eliminating all dairy products and flesh foods. You know – all those creatures that had a face and a mother.
Dairy products should be eliminated due to the fact that they are laden with pus, antibiotics and bovine growth hormones. Flesh foods should be eliminated due to the fact that they contain growth enhancers, chemicals to keep their flesh red and rosy (otherwise it would be a putrid gray) and stink reducers (after all, the nature of a dead body is to rot and smell).
Let`s not forget processed foods which contain MSG, preservatives and hydrogenated oils, aka cancer causing trans fats. Then there is soda and diet drinks containing aspartame, which converts to formaldehyde at 86 degrees F (the body`s temperature is 98.6 F). Talk about “Night of the Living Dead”. It would be an added plus to not consume sugary juices and to get plenty of exercise and sunlight.
According to Randall Fitzgerald, author of “The Hundred Year Lie”, we have no idea of the effect on our health when all the chemicals we consume through food and industrial pollutants mix together in our bodies. If you think you do not ingest chemicals, read the labels on the food that you buy from your trusted supermarket. One important thing to remember is that if you have trouble pronouncing the ingredient, do not eat it.
Here is your choice: if you want to be as healthy as possible and not have to worry about degenerative diseases or being hooked on drugs for life, you must make these life saving changes. If you don`t care or think that this is nonsense, then carry on. But, someday, when you have some debilitating illness, look in the mirror and realize that the person you see there is the cause of your problems – not your spouse, not your doctor, not the fact that no one told you. YOU are the cause, and you and you alone must take responsibility for your misery.
Don`t be afraid. Change is good.
Aloha!
Complete Breakdown:
Hospital care: 660 Billion 30%
Doctors: 462 Billion 21%
Rx Drugs: 220 Billion 10%
Dental: 220 Billion 10%
Administration: 154 Billion 7%
Investment: 154 Billion 7%
Nursing Home: 132 Billion 6%
Gov’t public health activities: 66 Billion 3%
Other medical products: 66 Billion 3%
Home health care: 44 Billion 2%
Total 2.112 Trillion 99%
Rounding throws the numbers off
About the author
Hesh Goldstein: Vegetarian since 1975, vegan since 1990. Moderator of a weekly radio show in Honolulu called, “Health Talk” since 1981. Obtained a Master’s degree in Nutrition, in 2007, to silence the so-called “doctors” that called in on my weekly radio show asking for my “credentials”. At 70, I am in perfect health, have no illnesses, take no meds, play 4 on 4 half court hoops 2 hours a week, body surf, race walk, do various cardio and weight exercises and teach women’s self defense classes based upon 30 years of Wing Chun training .
To obtain a state of good health, if it had a face or a mother or if man made it, don’t eat it.
For more information: www.healthtalkhawaii.com
Hesh is also the distributor of Organic Sulfur Crystals, an incredible healing nutrient. For more information on this go to his website and click on Products.
(NaturalNews) The Associated Press has declared war on alternative medicine, publishing a series of stories attacking everything from nutritional therapies to bioidentical hormones. These stories, which are syndicated across thousands of websites around the world, are prefaced with the following highly-opinionated “Editor’s Note”:
EDITOR’S NOTE: Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures from alternative medicine. Yet these mostly unproven treatments are now mainstream and used by more than a third of all Americans. This is one in an occasional series examining their use and potential risks.
What this note reveals is an extraordinary bias against natural medicine from the start. It’s clear from the claim of “examining their use and potential risks” that the Associated Press isn’t even looking for potential benefits of natural medicine. They’re just looking to discredit it. And the part about “Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures” is factually incorrect.
To be more accurate, the statement should have said “Ten years and $2.5 billion in research by pharmaceutical researchers who don’t even know how to study something holistically have found no cures that they are willing to publicly acknowledge.”
Because, in reality, natural medicine has provided the populations of the world with countless cures spanning thousands of years of indigenous use by billions of people. Oh, but wait… the Associated Press doesn’t count that. The only evidence they will consider is “proof” provided by researchers on the payroll of the criminally-operated pharmaceutical industry and rubber-stamped by a corrupt, racketeering U.S. Food and Drug Administration that unquestionably pushes a pro-pharma agenda at the expense of public health.
In one story about alternative medicine, the Associated Press characterized the teaching of acupuncture as “Harry Potter medicine.” The story criticizes acupuncture and demeans any mention of “energy channels” even though acupuncture has been scientifically proven to be extremely effective at managing pain. There is no mention in the AP story of the published, peer-reviewed studies that promote acupuncture’s proven effectiveness and safety.
What happened to just reporting the truth?
As I’ve stated here on NaturalNews many times, the whole system of “evidence-based medicine” is biased against natural medicine from the start because the FDA maintains an official policy of declaring all plant-based medicines to be inert in the human body, regardless of how much scientific evidence demonstrates otherwise.
In the FDA’s eyes, there is no such thing as a food, herb, dietary supplement or nutrient that has any beneficial effect against any disease or health problem in the human body. And you know why? Because according to the FDA, only “drugs” can be used to prevent, treat or reverse any disease or health condition, not nutrients. All nutrients are inert by decree.
So the simple truths that vitamin C cures scurvy or that vitamin D prevents cancer are censored out of existence by the FDA and its media cohorts. So the AP, instead of reporting to the American people what works to make them healthy, spends its time attacking Suzanne Somers over her new book featuring interviews with doctors who have cured cancer using nutritional therapies and other forms of alternative medicine. (http://www.amazon.com/Knockout-Interviews-Doctors-Cancer-Prevent/dp/0307587460/)
When it comes to health, the Associated Press apparently isn’t interested in reporting what works. It’s not interested in educating the public how to be healthy, how to avoid cancer, or how to explore natural therapies that might support their health rather than destroying it (like chemotherapy does). Instead, the AP has taken the side of the criminally-operated pharmaceutical industry to discredit and destroy anything that offers the American people freedom of choice in their medicines.
The AP is a powerful, global news manufacturer. Its stories are picked up and republished by thousands of newspapers around the world. Because it is creating “ready-for-publication” news to be dropped into newspapers and magazines, it is supposed to write objective news, without the level of editorializing that you might expect from blogs or sites like NaturalNews. AP is supposed to be leave editors’ opinions out of the stories and just print the actual news.
But instead, AP is now prefacing many of their health stories with this stilted, opinionated and completely inaccurate statement attempting to trash the entire alternative medicine industry. That’s not a news service… that’s just a highly opinionated smear against the only industry that offers any real solutions for lasting health.
Knowing the association’s outright bias against natural medicine, now you have to wonder about everything they publish: Are they censoring success stories about natural medicine? Are they collaborating with drug companies to hype up the supposed “benefits” of pharmaceuticals? Are they twisting stories to try to discredit natural medicine in the minds of readers?
I’ve been watching both the AP and Reuters very carefully for the last several years. I’ve never seen Reuters pull the kind of stunt AP has just committed. Although Reuters covers conventional medicine, it also covers breakthroughs in natural medicine, so even though I don’t agree with everything Reuters says, that news organization at least takes their objectiveness seriously, and they seem to do a good job providing some balanced mainstream coverage of health issues.
The AP, though, has lost all credibility on health issues. It’s just another Big Pharma mouthpiece, spouting out the same babble we get from FDA cronies and crooked drug company CEOs. It’s all the same broken record: Plants don’t contain medicine, take your vaccine shot, take your prescription drugs, patented chemical pills will cure you, and so on ad nauseam.
So I have a question for the AP editors who are writing their opinions-parading-as-news stories: You say $2.5 billion has been spent on alternative medicine with almost no cures found. Do you have any idea how much money Americans are spending on pharmaceutical medicine every year with absolutely no cures being offered?
In 2006, the world spent $643 billion on pharmaceuticals. Where are the cures?
• There are no pharmaceutical cures for cancer.
• There are no pharmaceutical cures for heart disease.
• There are no pharmaceutical cures for diabetes.
• There are no pharmaceutical cures for kidney disease.
• There are no pharmaceutical cures for depression.
• There are no pharmaceutical cures for liver disease.
• There are no pharmaceutical cures for Alzheimer’s disease.
… in fact, if you add it all up, the pharmaceutical industry is the biggest rip-off in the history of medicine! The world spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on pharmaceuticals now, and yet there hasn’t been a single cure found by the drug industry for any major disease or health condition.
Not a single cure.
Where is the cure for cancer? For diabetes? For heart disease?
Alternative medicine offers cures for all three. You can cure cancer using the natural medicine described right here on this website. You can reverse diabetes through simple changes in diet and exercise. You can reverse heart disease with nutritional strategies such as shifting to a plant-based diet. Pharmaceuticals can cure none of these things, even after trillions of dollars have been spent trying to “find cures.”
If the Associated Press had any interest at all in printing real news, they might want to report on how the pharmaceutical industry is the greatest medical hoax ever perpetrated in the history of the world. They might be interested in the trillions of dollars being wasted on false hope from dangerous pills that cure nothing. Maybe the AP would want to report on the price fixing, the bribery of doctors, the fraudulent science, the hidden studies showing harm, the fact that 80% of drug ingredients are made in China and India, or any of a hundred other areas of concern about the criminal pharmaceutical industry.
But no, the AP chooses to attack Suzanne Somers instead. Instead of reporting actual news that might be important to your health, the AP is manufacturing its own agenda-driven opinion pieces and passing them off as real news.
Maybe the Associated Press should change its name to “The AP Blog.”
Sources for this story include:
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry
AP story attacking bioidentical hormones:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hHNmXN7OZofHuB_yOh74RGYHSvQgD9BI7JQ80
AP story attacking Suzanne Somers:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hA60E_ueyggHVwotNK3YsFCyUIyQD9BEFOO00
Suzanne Somers’ new book that challenges the conventional cancer industry:
http://www.amazon.com/Knockout-Interviews-Doctors-Cancer-Prevent/dp/0307587460
AP story attacking acupuncture:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gsNHRbdyZ9vVtdxqFQB6t8Ikta_AD9BMRGKO0
(NaturalNews) US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 people and wounded 30 others in a violent attack at a Texas Army base this past week. He reportedly opened fire at the Fort Hood army base without any particular reason or motivation. In fact, as a psychiatrist, he had counseled many other soldiers on how to cope with the consequences of extreme violence (losing limbs, mental anguish, etc.).
As an army psychiatrist, he was also allowed to prescribe powerful psychiatric drugs to both his patients and himself. Many psychiatrists self-medicate, and Hasan was extremely anxious about the possibility of being sent overseas by the army, according to statements from family members (Reuters, below). Although official confirmation will probably never be made, it seems altogether likely that Hasan was treating himself with powerful psychotropic medications.
The mainstream media, not surprisingly, has utterly failed to raise this question. But it’s being raised by independent media like Prison Planet (http://www.prisonplanet.com/was-fort-hood-killer-on-psychotropic-drugs.html), where writer Paul Joseph Watson says, “Psychiatrists have a history of ‘self-medication’ because of the easy access they have to psychotropic drugs. In almost every major mass shooting over the past two decades, since anti-depressant drugs became popular, the killer has been on SSRI’s , serotonin reuptake inhibitors.”
An informative article in The Examiner also asks the same question: Was Major Hasan on mind-altering prescription medications when he opened fire? (http://www.examiner.com/x-8358-Detroit-Substance-Abuse-Examiner~y2009m11d6-Nidal-Malik-Hasan-His-own-patient).
Meanwhile, a study in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics reveals that 16% of psychiatrists self-medicate (http://www.cchrint.org/2009/11/05/was-fort-hood-psych-on-drugs/).
Given all the psych drugs linked to such acts in previous shootings, such a link seems not only probably, but likely.
Orlando shooter confirmed on psych drugs
It’s been a busy week for violent, drug-induced outbursts in the USA. Orlando shooter Jason Rodriguez is now confirmed to have been on psychiatric medications when he went on a shooting spree in an Orlando office building last week, killing one person and wounding five others.
In a televised interview with Fox News, the former mother-in-law of Rodriguez goes on the record saying, “He was under medication …for control of the brain.” That video segment is available here:
Mind-altering medications made Rodriquez “paranoid,” she explains. (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,572605,00.html)
This paranoia and acting out of violence against others is a classic side effect of SSRI drugs typically used to “treat” depression. These powerful, mind-altering medications have been linked to nearly every major shooting that has taken place in the United States over the last twenty years, including the Columbine, Colorado school shootings.
Listen to my hip-hop song, SSRIs – S.S.R.Lies, which explains more: http://www.naturalnews.com/SSRIs_S_S_R_Lies.html
Why the shootings will continue until the psych drugs are banned
What’s clear about both the Orlando shooting and the Fort Hood shooting is that there’s a psychiatric drug connection to both. Neither of these men was acting rationally. Something “flipped a switch” in their brains. That something was almost certainly a psychiatric drug.
Until we halt the chemical holocaust being perpetrated against our world by the psychiatric drugging industry, we will continue to see more of these violent, drug-induced shootings take place. Count on it. Psych drugs cause violence. And the more psych drugs are prescribed, the more violence we’ll see.
According to Medwatch statistics, 63,000 people in the U.S. have committed suicide while on antidepressant drugs (that’s more than ten times the number of Americans who have died from H1N1 swine flu, by the way). (http://www.naturalnews.com/022930_drugs_antidepressant_drugs_antidepressants.html)
The mainstream media absolutely refuses to tell you the truth about the link between psychiatric drugs and violent killings, but it’s the obvious connection in nearly every single shooting that’s taken place in recent memory: The Virginia Tech shooting (http://www.naturalnews.com/021798.html), the Stephen Kazmierczak Illinois shooting (Stephen Kazmierczak), the Omaha mall shooting (http://www.naturalnews.com/022330.html), and so on.
In December, 2007, I made this public prediction:
“There will be more. I hate to be accurate about this grisly prediction, because I grieve for the families of those lost to pharmaceutically-induced violence, but the truth is that until we stop drugging our children with psychotropic drugs, the shootings are not going to stop.”
And indeed, there have been more. As long as these dangerous, mind-altering psychiatric drugs continue to be prescribed to patients, they will continue to drive people to violence. More innocent lives will be lost while Big Pharma pockets billions of dollars in profits from the very same drugs that are leading people to deadly violence.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (www.CCHR.org) is the leading group fighting this chemical holocaust. Check out the shocking videos on their website to learn more about the dangers of psychiatric medications.
Sources for this story include:
Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSL7699001
The Examiner:
http://www.examiner.com/x-19632-Salt-Lake-City-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m11d6-Video-Orlando-Shooter-is-apprehended-after-1-dead-and-5-wounded
CCHR:
http://www.cchr.org
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I’m writing this post because there is a lot of hoopla about vaccinations right now and I think one more anecdote to the pile of anecdotes out there about vaccinations is important.
My daughter, Bean (yeah, that’s not her real name), is going to be three really soon and I need to go into her history a bit to really be able to delineate her vaccination story effectively.
Bean was born about three years ago to two of the most loving parents on the planet, if I don’t say so myself. To this day I’m amazed at the changes your body and brain go through when you have a kid. I was always the kind of guy that thought kids were something my sister should have, I now have completely reversed that position.
Its amazing to me how you can love someone so much that just cries, needs to be fed, burps, pukes, pisses and poops. But you do, and each week that passes, I love her more and more. Bean learned to walk a little later than average, but not much later, 13 months. But she learned some basic sign language at 8 months (“more” was her first signed word).
Our household has 2 languages in it, I’m an English speaker trying to learn French. My wife is French who speaks perfect English. We decided that I would talk to Bean in English and she would talk to her in French.
With the signing and the dual languages we expected her to start speaking late and she did. But in time we started to realize that she still wasn’t speaking even after allowing for some extra time. There was a word here or there, but she was way behind in speaking. The inability to communicate lead to temperament issues and the all out tantrums were both common and severe. As new parents we had trouble differentiating between normal toddler tantrums and this. But looking at the pace of other kids, we slowly realized that Bean was behind the curve.
We further noted extreme discomfort in social situations. She did a little better with adults, but when it was other kids she would be very flustered and usually end up in a tantrum. Its so hard to see someone you love that much get so upset by normal social interactions that other kids are actually having fun with.
We also noticed that she was rarely smiling or happy. She didnt giggle like other little girls not near as often.
In time we got child therapists. New York State has a great program where therapists come to your house to help your child get up to speed. We have a speech therapist, an occupational therapist (not what it sounds like, the OC helps her negotiate new and different tactile senses), and a therapist to help with her social interactions. I really appreciate these programs available in my sate and now understand where some of the exorbitant tax money goes.
We also took Bean to a developmental psychologist. The autism word was thrown around, but it became clear that bean was probably not autistic. She was very ahead in some cognitive areas and very behind in others, but he didn’t think it was a case of autism.
I want to fast forward to the beginning of October now. Bean got her flu vaccination. It had thimerisol and everything. She had absolutely no physical reactions to it whatsoever: no fever, no swelling, no pain. However since the shot there have been some huge changes in her.
Bean was able to start school since then. She can be in a group of 7 kids in good comfort. This is totally amazing. She has been really fun to be around, really explorative, points out lots of new things here at home, at school and at our weekend house. She can talk well enough that we generally understand what she wants to say although there is still some baby talk that comes out that is hard to understand. She laughs at funny stories or when we joke around. She still has tantrums when she doesn’t get her way, but they are rarely for random or unintelligible reasons anymore. Basically it feels like ever since we got the flu shot for her, she has become a normal child for her age.
Everything in this post is 100% true and accurate as far as I can remember it. I am also 100% sure that if I ask my wife, she will have a different chronology and describe the severity of different aspects of Beans personality differently, but not differently enough that we couldn’t ascribe her improvement to the flu vaccination. You’ll notice that I went ahead and gave credit to the vaccination for her improvement and not the months of work the therapists did.
But I know its not the flu vaccination, of course it isn’t, because there is no reason to think that it is, just like the other way. Just because something happens hours, days or weeks after a vaccination doesn’t necessarily mean that it was because of the vaccination itself. The cause and effect must specifically be studied. To date there is simply no good reason to fear vaccines unless you have allergies to eggs, or some familial history of negative reactions.
I understand how vaccinations work with your immune system. I learned it in high school and relearned it to be able to understand this so called controversy. I have heard the claims by antivaxxers and have read the responses of medical professions on each and every one of those claims even as goalposts move. I then went and checked the claims of the medical professionals. You know what? the people who actually do science and medicine as a living are far better at explaining why they are right, backing up their claims with references that actually confirm what they are saying and have far, far larger datasets that they draw on to show the veracity of their claims. That is part of the years of training that went into their education to be a medical professional. Folks like Kevin Trudeau, Jenny McCarthy, and JB Handley have never had to deal with that rigor and are completely unequipped to back up anything they say without misrepresentation, conspiracy theories, and ad hominem attacks. Their delusions are no more probable, no more explainable, and no more real than the idea that my daughters extreme cognitive improvement came from the flu vaccine.
I love my daughter. I love her to the point that stepping in front of a moving train for her seems like a tiny inconvenience. Part of my love for her is to show her immune system what the bad guys look like, so it can fight them without causing suffering for her.
Oh, and by the way, I didn’t start speaking until I was near three. No, I don’t think any delays she had were from her vaccinations.
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The latest and exclusive video of Modern Warfare 2. It is the Xbox Avatar clothing. Check it below and let us hope for some more such videos before the release of the game on November 10, 2009. Stay tuned as we keep you updated.
Michael Scott alerts us to a recent paper by professor and copyright expert Jessica Litman about “Real Copyright Reform.” While there’s been some chatter here and there about doing real copyright reform, there seems to be no real effort behind it. That’s for a few reasons, including the fact that many people still remember what a pain the last attempt at real copyright reform was (it took decades) combined with the realization (especially on the part of copyright holders) that their ability to push through laws that solely favor themselves to greater and greater degrees may not be so easy this time around. Thanks to the internet and various “wars” on consumers, copyright isn’t just an arcane subject that the day to day person doesn’t know much about. A serious attempt at remaking copyright laws might actually draw out well-reasoned and well-argued points that go against the current views held by the record labels and movie studios. See what’s been happening in Canada, for example.
Litman’s paper goes through the problems with today’s copyright law, and begins to explore what real copyright reform should entail, even while noting the political difficulty of having it go anywhere:
A wise approach to copyright revision might inspire us to rethink the model. If both creators
and readers are ill-served by distributor-centric copyright, and if the economics of digital distribution
now makes it possible to engage in mass dissemination without significant capital investment, perhaps
it is time to reallocate the benefits of the copyright system. The consolidation of control in distributors’
hands does not appear to have made life easier or more remunerative for creators. Copyright lobbyists
have not shown that recent enhancements to copyright have made it easier or more rewarding for
readers, listeners and viewers to enjoy copyrighted works. Perhaps the classic picture of copyright is
too far removed from its reality to be useful.
From there, Litman makes similar arguments that have been made recently by James Boyle and William Patry (among others), wondering why there is little investigation into the actual impact of changes in copyright law, rather than just assuming that “stronger protections” lead to better results, when so much of the evidence suggests otherwise. And, of course, all of this harkens back to the speeches by Thomas Macauley from over a century and a half ago, back when he was able to point to the lack of evidence from those who wished to extend copyright law:
Copyright is monopoly, and produces all the effects which the general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly…. I believe, Sir, that I may safely take it for granted that the effect of monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear, and to make them bad. And I may with equal safety challenge my honorable friend to find out any distinction between copyright and other privileges of the same kind; any reason why a monopoly of books should produce an effect directly the reverse of that which was produced by the East India Companys monopoly of tea, or by Lord Essexs monopoly of sweet wines. Thus, then, stands the case. It is good that authors should be remunerated; and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.
And yet, in copyright reform today, there seems to be no one in the political realm with enough power to play the role of Macauley today. But Litman raises these same issues:
Instead of asking how to enhance copyright owner control, I suggest, we ought to be asking
why. Does a particular proposed enhancement of copyright owner prerogatives seem likely to
expand opportunities for creators or improve reader, listener or viewer enjoyment of copyrighted
works? Is it likely to make the copyright system simpler, more effective, or more transparent? Does it
seem to be designed to shore up copyright’s apparent legitimacy? If not, it seems as likely to make the
current mess worse instead of better.
Litman goes on to suggest that the fact that so many people out there don’t have any respect for copyright law at all is pretty clearly the fault of the current copyright holders who have twisted and abused the law to the point that people just don’t respect it. So, her ideas for copyright reform are based on bringing back “legitimacy” to copyright law by focusing on four principles:
To then accomplish this, she suggests the following steps:
It’s definitely an interesting proposal, though I think there are some serious problems with it. I’ve said in the past that the line between commercial use and personal use is increasingly blurry, so trying to draw that distinction may be a lot harder than most people think. We’re already seeing the kind of mess termination rights create, and I’m still not sure why they help matters, rather than just make them more complex. And, of course even as Litman notes, new intermediaries will spring up to fill the void of the old ones.
Still, if you’re interested in copyright and copyright reform, it’s certainly a worthwhile paper to read just to get you thinking.
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Only a couple of days left for Modern Warfare 2 for release. More and more info is being poured. Here is one of those. Four new screenshots of the game was released. Have a look…
There were rumors out there that the iPhone would be coming to authorized resellers soon, and we’re finally starting to see it showing up. Surprisingly, The Shack will be the first one out the gate.
It was one of the most sought after applications on the Internet until it was leaked earlier today. And now that it’s out there—and it is all over the place, easily findable by anyone able to use a search engine—we can all move on with our lives. Yes, Microsoft COFEE, the law enforcement tool that mystified so many of us (including Gizmodo~! and Ars Technica~!), is now available to download. If only there were a “bay” of some sort where, I don’t know, pirates hang out…
I’m not mentioning any names, nor will there be any screenshots, but the resourceful among you will be able to find the application. Not that it’ll do you any good, since this is how Microsoft describes COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor:
With COFEE, law enforcement agencies without on-the-scene computer forensics capabilities can now more easily, reliably, and cost-effectively collect volatile live evidence. An officer with even minimal computer experience can be tutored—in less than 10 minutes—to use a pre-configured COFEE device. This enables the officer to take advantage of the same common digital forensics tools used by experts to gather important volatile evidence, while doing little more than simply inserting a USB device into the computer.
To reiterate: you have absolutely no use for the program. It’s not something like Photoshop or Final Cut Pro, an expensive application that you download for the hell of it on the off-chance you need to put Dave Meltzer’s face on Brett Hart’s body as part of a message board thread. No, COFEE is 100 percent useless to you.
Given that, what makes COFEE so mysterious, so special? The sole reason is because it’s never been available before (unless, of course, you’re a law enforcement official). People get a thrill by having something they’re not meant to have, and that effect is magnified online where you have chat rooms and message boards filled with people who get all excited over the idea of having some super-secret piece of software that was never meant to reside on their hard drive.
So that’s that then; Microsoft COFEE is out there. It’s not too big, either, at around 15MB. I’ve kept this post as cryptic as possible primarily to work y’all, and to put over COFEE as the most amazing thing to have never been leaked onto the Internet… until now~!
I’ve discussed in the past the question of whether or not there’s even a moral question to consider when it comes to copyright, if you can first show a situation where everyone is better off (i.e., if the end result of content being shared, willingly, is better for both the content creators and consumers, why should morals even be a question?). Separately, I have made clear that I do not engage in any sort of unauthorized file sharing — noting that it is illegal and, I personally believe, wrong. Some people have pushed back on that latter point, suggesting that my labeling it as “wrong” is, in fact, a moral statement as well. A couple months ago (yes, I’m slow, but I’m catching up on some old “saved” submissions), SteelWolf sent over some thoughts on why file sharing is not wrong, and why there’s actually a moral argument in favor of sharing:
It is through sharing that we develop a culture and advance humanity. Creative works like art and music are, at their core, about sharing with others. They tell stories, reveal personalities, or comment on the world in ways that others can appreciate, forming a part of our culture as they are spread around. Gregor Mendel’s discoveries about genetics had no value while they were gathering dust on the monastery bookshelf; it is only when those discoveries were shared with the world that they became vital.Infinite Goods Should Be Shared
Say you have something that is good for others, and it is infinite, so you will not lose any of it by giving some away. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that most people’s idea of morality would dictate that they should share that thing. In general, information is something that can be seen as a public good. If somebody has a discovery or an idea, it costs nothing to give it away, it is not scarce, yet it can potentially benefit the world.
On this, I absolutely agree — but it is much more the argument for why the content creators themselves should share their content first. And that’s where things get tricky. I do think it makes sense to share content. I think that content creators would find themselves better off if they share their works (and do so strategically, in combination with a business plan that takes advantage of it). But what if the original creator doesn’t want the content shared? Then what?
SteelWolf argues that there’s a moral imperative to share, but again, this seems to apply more to the content creator, than those downstream:
Faced with an infinity of good things in the form of content information, why would somebody chose not to give it away? What is gained by hoarding something that can help others and costs nothing to share? Let’s say you figure out that you can protect people from a deadly virus, say, influenza, with a vaccine. While it costs something to manufacture physical vaccines and mail them to everybody in the world, sharing the information behind it is free. Others can chose whether or not they want to invest money in creating their own, but sharing has given them the option to do so where before it did not exist. Faced with this situation, who would chose to let thousands of people perish by denying them even the potential opportunity to save themselves?Yet this is exactly the choice many people are making in the name of “intellectual property.” They would rather see others suffer than share something infinite with them, desperately clinging to business models that depend on scarcity. In the 21st century, ideas, information, digitized content are all infinitely available. For these things, the Star Trek replicator has been made, and it’s time to use that as a stepping stone to greater things.
Faced with an infinite supply of information that can potentially benefit billions of people, I chose to share. Those who try to hoard this information are both attempting to drink the ocean and doing wrong.
While I think this is interesting, and at times compelling, in the end I’m still not convinced there’s a moral component here, except potentially for the creator/innovator. But, at the same time, I still believe that we’re better off taking the moral discussion out of it. Perhaps a moral argument like the one above is helpful to convince some, but it leads right back to the economic discussion, where some will ask why anyone would bother in the first place, if they’re just told they need to give it away for moral reasons.
Instead, I’m more convinced by economic arguments that show greater opportunity in sharing infinite goods, in that it decreases the cost of creation, promotion and distribution, while making it easier reach a larger audience for selling scarce products. Again, if you can make the economic argument, and then throw in the moral benefits of spreading information on top of it, that makes sense. But a purely moral argument still falls a bit short for me. Still, I’m sure it will lead to an interesting discussion here.
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Last year, we wrote how odd it was that former VP Al Gore banned reporters from a speech he gave, where all audio-video equipment was also banned. These days, such “no reporters allowed” speeches make no sense — because anyone can be a reporter. Yet, it seems that there’s something in the veep sauce (or veep wannabe sauce) that leads to these sorts of positions, as former VP candidate, Sarah Palin, is trying to do the same thing, barring “reporters” along with any kind of recording devices from a talk that she is giving. You can understand, perhaps, why politicians like to do this, but it seems both out of touch and completely pointless. Every single person in that room can be a reporter in one way or another — and it doesn’t take a recording device, but a pencil and some paper (or a decent memory). Trying to block out the “official” press is just a waste of time.
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