Thunderbolt - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/ <comment><USER3> I am delighted that Thunderbolt isn't reusing the USB plug form-factor. Early rumors showed Light Peak plugs that were the standard rectangular USB shape with fiber optic channels blended in: [http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/19/apple-to-introduce- light...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/02/19/apple-to-introduce-light-peak- high-speed-connection-technology-soon/)

The outer rectangular, doubly symmetrical shape of USB is a usability nightmare! You know what I'm talking about. Good riddance.

<comment><USER4> Yes.. 50% chance of getting it right every time, even though it feels like less than that! It doesn't help that some motherboards put the USB ports upside-down for some inexplicable reason, and when it's dark you can't see the little USB logo on the cable anyway.

<comment><USER5> Oh, it's not so bad once you take advertising sub-clause of the spec into account. That's the hidden clause that states the USB logo will be on the top of a properly-oriented plug _unless_ you're Microsoft or Logitech, in which case your corporate name is allowed top-billing, so to speak.

Of course, if the slots are oriented vertically...

<comment><USER6> Microsoft USB plugs all have a little nub on the "top" side, if memory serves.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. The only Microsoft USB plug I have these days is one of the wireless stubs, where the logo is the only clue. I have noticed that some Logitech products have a concave top, presumably for the same tactile feedback approach.

Of course, you can always just look at the end of the plug and orient it so the white plastic key is on the bottom, but where's the fun in that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Pleasantly surprised that it's backwards-compatible with the mini-DisplayPort. Was expecting another round of buying dongles.

<comment><USER8> Since there's only one port, you'll most likely need a splitter to use both the data and video simultaneously, unless you want your existing monitor to be at the end of the daisy chain. (DP was brought to market for terminal devices, not pass-through like Firewire, any Thunderbolt devices will most certainly have two ports.)

I assume most monitors will transition from DP to a Thunderbolt pass-through quickly, but in a daisy-chain situation, the monitor would be disconnected the least, meaning it would need to either be the first in line, or split off, allowing the other peripherals to be removed without re-connecting the monitor.

<comment><USER9> Display Port has allowed daisy chaining monitors since 1.2 at least, if not earlier back.

<comment><USER10> Sadly, Thunderbolt only supports 1.1a

<comment><USER11> This is a bit of a moot point, as far as Apple is concerned.

"[...] It is completely backward compatible with DisplayPort v1.1a and requires no new cables or other equipment [...]" - Bill Lempesis, VESA Executive Director.

A 1.2 device will work as a 1.1a device.

The features that you'll loose out on:

* Driving displays in excess of 2560 x 1600 x 30 bpp @ 60 Hz (Apple LED Cinema Display tops out at 2560 x 1440 currently).

* Multiple display daisy chaining (LED Cinema Displays only have a single Mini DisplayPort jack and as such cannot be daisy chained).

* AUX channel data transport at 720 Mbps (beaten by the PCIe transport layer rates within Thunderbolt, which when driving a LED Cinema Display at full resolution leave about ~2Gbps available for data).

* 3d stereoscopic display support (Aww, no Avatar 3D).

* Additional audio format support (mostly related to Blu-ray, which Macs still don't do).

It's sad, yes - but there's not much incentive for Apple (not sure about Intel) to support 1.2 currently. And since Apple is going to have exclusive use of the Thunderbolt interface until it starts showing up on other PCs in 2012, Intel only really has to meet Apple's requirements while they finish up the rest of the spec (optical cabling, etc).

Maybe they'll find time to add in 1.2 support by then.

<comment><USER12> Wasn't the original idea of light peak to be optical? Why didn't they deliver on that promise, I want my future back, it's frickin 2011 now and we still don't use optical connectors to connect our devices :)

(I guess they'll have a hard time with the 'Thunderbolt' icon when they go to optical, it makes even less sense for optical than for a low-voltage connector)

<comment><USER13> Because optical is expensive, less flexible, does not provide enough power for devices (think portable HDD) and not many people use long cable.

Once the technology is widely used, the name doesn't matter anymore I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Technically it seems nice, but what's up with reusing the "high voltage" symbol for this? And "thunderbolt" is a very tacky name...

<comment><USER15> I was surprised about the symbol as well. It's just a matter of time until someone gets hurt while trying to connect their peripherals to a transformer.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps true, but how exactly would you mate the connector with a high voltage power source without a massive amount of kludgery?

<comment><USER17> If you've ever done field tech work, freelance or otherwise, you'd know that mere physical incompatibility isn't going to stop some people from plugging nearly any connector into nearly any port.

<comment><USER18> Sad, but true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So I guess the official branding of Lightpeak is Thunderbolt, even from Intel? And the standard connector (even outside of Apple products) is essentially Mini-Displayport?

<comment><USER20> I wonder if Apple will eventually replace the dock connector on the iPhone/iPad with Thunderbolt? That would be a compelling reason to upgrade: your music sync time would be freed of another bottleneck.

Of course, it kind of messes with the third-party accessory market, but I'm sure they'd love another reason to get people to buy new stuff.

<comment><USER21> Also remember that the doc connector is a revenue source. I'm having trouble finding a source right now, but if I am remembering right Apple sells the actual dock connectors to accessory makers.

<comment><USER22> Yep, Apple charges royalty on the 30 pin conector, which varies in cost depending on what it's used for. You have to be enrolled in Apple's MiFi program too. Apple makes money everywhere.

<comment><USER23> I heard apple charges $4 per unit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Two questions:

Is it royalty-free?

If the answer is negative, what are the licensing terms?

<comment><USER25> _Thunderbolt technology leverages the native PCI Express and DisplayPort device drivers available in many operating systems today. This native software support means no extra software development is required to use a Thunderbolt technology enabled product._

[http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/325136-001US_...](http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/325136-001US_secured.pdf)

<comment><USER26> Not enough. That's talking about support from developers, not whether hardware vendors need to pay for licensing to include this tech in their hardware.

That said, Mini DisplayPort is free of hardware licensing fees... so there's a good chance.

<comment><USER25> The poster of the question _is_ a developer. I answered to help get the information he asked for, not have my answer graded on completeness or lack thereof with a curt "Not enough".

<comment><USER27> I think the "Not enough" was aimed at Intel, not you. But you seemed to have missed the point of the question.

No hardware developer in the consumer space charges developers to access their hardware. Spec owners frequently do charge other companies to implement their specs, though.

Intel has a mixed record on this - some specs - like USB - they have led but have been implementable licence free.

Other things they consider their propriety interfaces and have sued over - <USER2> the recent lawsuits between Intel & Nvidia over their memory bus.

So it is very reasonable to wonder if Nvidia and AMD are going to be able to implement this freely, or are they going to have to pay a tax to Intel. As far as I can see your answer doesn't address that question at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Intel's page sheds some more light on it, too: <http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm>

</comment><comment><USER29> The problem with USB 3.0 is that it still isnt supported by Intel and probably never will since they developed Thunderbolt. If you want USB 3.0 today, you need an extra Chip on your board because its not integrated in any chipset. When Intel integrates Thunderbolt nativly the game is over for USB 3.0

<comment><USER30> "Intel fully supports USB 3 and plans to integrate it in the future." — [http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/24/intel-promises-native- usb...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/24/intel-promises-native- usb-3-0-support-someday/)

<comment><USER29> got me there. Seems like they see Thunderbold not as a competing technology and more like a successor of firewire. Fine by me then, but they havent integrated USB 3.0 yet into their chipsets!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So the whole USB2.0/Firewire is going to repeat? Sigh.

<comment><USER32> Thunderbolt aims to replace nearly every kind of single-use connectors (HDMI, DisplayPort, eSATA, USB, Ethernet). Unifying the connector for displays, peripherals, network and power is a great idea, so I can't complain if they're going up against USB 3.0.

<comment><USER33> Ha. Good luck to them. Thunderbolt will be lucky to replace firewire. There's no way in the world it can replace USB, Ethernet or HDMI. Just think of the number of devices out there with these ports.

It might replace SATA eventually, but it will have to fight against USB.

<comment><USER34> From the Apple page on Thunderbolt: "you can use existing USB and FireWire peripherals — even connect to Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks — using simple adapters."

So, twice as fast as USB 3.0 and compatible with existing devices. Doesn't seem like much of a fight. USB won't disappear overnight, but it's already obsolete.

<comment><USER35> Thunderbolt may be technically superior in every single way, but unless other manufacturers use it for their laptops/motherboards, Apple's 10ish% market share is going to ensure that USB 3.0 "wins" ultimately. This will wind up being just like firewire where aside from Apple's stuff and a select few "Apple" manufacturers, nobody uses it and consumers either buy the more expensive Apple stuff, or use a dongle and see 0 benefit from the superior tech.

<comment><USER36> Apple also pioneered USB with the iMac. Because USB was the only way to connect anything to the iMac, it served as a catalyst for device makers to come out with USB devices, since they knew they had a captive market.

Once the number of USB peripherals reached critical mass, the general PC market followed suit.

So, will Thunderbolt adoption more closely resemble that of Firewire, or USB?

<comment><USER35> I believe the new macs still have USB ports, no? So what incentive do peripherals manufacturers have to use Thunderbolt and target just the new macbooks vs USB 3.0 and targeting everything?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So thunderbolt is PCI-E at the end of a cable, Cool. I can see people building neat, cheapo numa boxes with this. Think sgi altix on the cheap.

For those that don't know, the SGI Altix has a special chip that intercepts memory accesses and maps other systems memory to be seen as "local" on each system. If thunderbolt is just pci-e on a wire, you may be able to connect a few systems together and just map memory across systems. It'd take some trickery, and wouldn't be quite as fast as infiniband, but the thought of building a ghetto supercomputer would be useful to many people.

</comment><comment><USER38> Anybody notice how it shares the name with HTC's 'ThunderBolt' 4G phone being released, and how it looks like both Intel and HTC have trademarks on the word?

<comment><USER39> It's perfectly reasonable for two entities to have trademarks on the same word, so long as they aren't in the same business. In this case (without looking at the relevant legal paperwork), HTC could trademark 'Thunderbolt' with respect to phones, mobile devices, whatnot, while Intel may have the trademark with respect to peripheral data connections. Nobody (except maybe Monster Cable) would have an issue with that arrangement.

<comment><USER40> And what if a phone one day wants to support a Thunderbolt interface? I think that they're a bit too close to one another, both being parts of the consumer electronic space.

Thunderbolt the phone, however, can be expected to have a much shorter lifespan than a new connector like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is this peer-2-peer like FireWire was or it is a client-server model like USB? I see people talking about this being copper or fibre. If this is fibre, then it can't supply power to the device like USB? I don't see that catching on for most portable devices (e.g. hard drives). It's extremely convenient to just have one cable for a device that needs connectivity _and_ power when it comes to portable devices.

<comment><USER42> You can always have one optical fiber for data, and a metal conductor for power, wrapped up in the same cable / connector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I can't seem to find an answer to this in the materials - is this optical or copper? Light Peak was supposed to be optical, but the Wikipedia page has unsubstantiated claims of it initially being copper.

<comment><USER44> > Electrical or optical cables

From <http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm>

I don't know what that means though. Does the newly released MBP support both or only one?

<comment><USER45> Light Peak right now is only copper. Optical will be added in the future most likely.

<comment><USER44> I'd like to read about this. Is there an available document explaining why? Or do you know the reason?

(Not that I hate copper or anything, it is just that they designed it for fiber from the beginning and then suddenly bailed out)

<comment><USER46> Same reason why every interface standard that flirts with optical eventually ends up supporting copper: optical components are more expensive, and over short runs you can get acceptable performance with copper.

<comment><USER43> They're also not as flexible a copper...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Has anyone considered using an external video card with this? That would be a great use with desktop replacement laptops since it would actually be upgradeable.

</comment><comment><USER48> Codenamed Light Peak.

Intel's page on Light Peak (not the same as theirs on Thunderbolt): <http://techresearch.intel.com/ProjectDetails.aspx?Id=143>

Wikipedia has a very informative article on it: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Peak>

<comment><USER49> It's not an implementation of Light Peak, it is what Light Peak is now called.

<comment><USER48> You're right; _Developed by Intel (under the code name Light Peak)_. (I've corrected my comment.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Can anybody shed light on the possibility of DRM or some implementation of Tilt-bits to restrict output from this port to high resolution screens etc?

<comment><USER51> DisplayPort already has two different flavors of DRM. Thunderbolt, being basically PCIe over a DisplayPort cable, doesn't add any additional DRM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Not that it hasn't been possible strictly due to lack of a suitable interconnect technology, but I wonder if this could facilitate using your mobile device as a sort of "personality module" that could plug into a monitor with a built-in graphics chip and maybe some additional processing power (accessed via OpenCL).

Obviously the OS would have a long way to go to support that kind of thing, but I would be surprised if in five years your typical "home directory" isn't either entirely cloud-based or uses a scheme like this.

</comment><comment><USER53> How long before we can buy external graphics cards that utilize thunderbolt? It'd save me the hassle of having to build gaming PCs every couple years.

<comment><USER54> You can lease your card: <http://cuttingedgegamer.com/>

<comment><USER55> Those prices aren't bad at all based on some newegg comparisons. I was expecting a massive markup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Can a Thunderbolt device (eg display) expose USB to peripherals? With my current setup, I connect my display via USB and DVI to my MBP in order to connect USB peripherals via the display. I'd love to break that redundant USB connection with Thunderbolt.

<comment><USER44> Yes. It looks like you would have to implement USB on top of PCIe in the monitor, though.

> _Intel's Thunderbolt controllers interconnect a PC and other devices, > transmitting and receiving packetized traffic for both PCIe and DisplayPort > protocols. Thunderbolt technology works on data streams in both directions, > at the same time, so users get the benefit of full bandwidth in both > directions, over a single cable._

<http://www.intel.com/technology/io/thunderbolt/index.htm>

<comment><USER57> > It looks like you would have to implement USB on top of PCIe in the monitor, > though.

Isn't that basically UHCI?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> It would be awesome if iPad2 had the same port... I say it's a possibility!

<comment><USER59> i would love to have and iPad or TouchPad as a second display.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wonder how many monitors this can push. Also, what will happen to Apples 30pin connector on their iPods,iPhones... I guess we will know Tuesday. Are there any external hard drives with thunderbolt yet?

<comment><USER44> The bandwidth is apparently entirely unimpressive. DisplayPort is currently at 17.28 Gbps, so Thunderbolt can push ... 0.6 monitors? ;) (In the worst case, at least)

I have been excited about Light Peak/Thunderbolt for a year or so now, but in that time it seems the ambitions have become smaller, and the competition has developed as well.

<comment><USER60> It has _two_ independent 10Gbps channels, so it can do 20Gbps.

<comment><USER44> That's not really relevant as long as you can't choose the directions for the channels. You are only going to get one channel in each direction.

 _Edit: Whoa. I just re-read parts of the Intel documentation, and it seems there are indeed two independent downstream channels. My bad. It also looks like there is no provision for using both channels for a single device? I have no idea._

<comment><USER61> 2x10Gbps is still enough to drive two 2560x1600 displays at 60Hz, which is all the prior DisplayPort implementation could do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I might have missed it shooting through the threads, but has anyone announced a PCI express card with thunderpeak? I'd love to have 10gbit between my workstation and my NAS without having to buy multiple FC HBAs.

In fact, I'd probably take all of my current DAS and add it to the NAS pool as well. It would make my home office much quieter if I could hide all the spindles in another room and still have fast storage access.

</comment><comment><USER63> Five years ago I would have been eagerly anticipating this, but I can't really get excited anymore. USB3 has probably already won, and while I love the idea of monitors and other devices all using the same port, I don't think it will be enough to drive adoption.

<comment><USER64> _USB3 has probably already won_

Why do you say that? Are there more USB 3 things on the market than I'm aware of? With Intel and Apple behind it, I wouldn't say Thunderbolt is a sure thing, but it seems promising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> For a moment I thought the device on the left side of the image was an apple version of this on its side ...

<http://gemsres.com/story/apr08/536976/ENGELBART_2.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER29> i sense multiple external screens on a MBP :D

<comment><USER66> That's already been possible for a few years - [http://daggle.com/macbook-pro- multimonitor-4-monitors-at-onc...](http://daggle.com/macbook-pro- multimonitor-4-monitors-at-once-1577)

<comment><USER67> Possible, but not great. The Matrox and Diamond solutions have always been a bit hacky - USB simply can't push bits fast enough and there are lots of cases where you will max it out and stutter.

This is _actual_ support for dual monitors, without compromises.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> So if PCIe x16 is rated between 8GB/s and 16GB/s would it be possible for someone to come out with a PCIe enclosure so I could hook up a semi decent nVidia or AMD/ATI card to my MacBook?

</comment><comment><USER69> Awesome. Two monitors on a MBP with Thunderbolt. Now, where the hell is the adapter to buy that will actually let you connect two monitors?

</comment><comment><USER70> Kinda cheezy name. Also, the plugs on the Intel site don't look like mini displayport. Is the Apple version proprietary?

<comment><USER71> The pictures I've seen look like mDP to me. Apple invented Mini DisplayPort, so mDP is proprietary, but it's licensed for free and VESA later adopted it as part of the DisplayPort standard.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_DisplayPort>

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Now the question is how long it would take market to catch up with adapters/hubs or updated hardware.

<comment><USER73> No hubs--it's a chaining protocol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> What happens if I plug a PC into another PC via thunderbolt?

<comment><USER30> Hopefully the same as when you plug a Mac into another Mac via FireWire. (One of the Macs becomes the most expensive external HDD ever. This requires one Mac to reboot into the target disk mode. It would be nice if the same trick would be possible with Thunderbolt without rebooting.)

<comment><USER61> You don't have to use TDM. You can also use Firewire as a network interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> It really seems to me a lot of this is about making your current peripherals obsolete so they can sell you new ones.

<comment><USER44> In the long run, Thunderbolt aims to replace USB, FireWire, Ethernet, DisplayPort/HDMI/etc, eSATA and be considered an external variant of PCIe.

This is feasible and would be a good future, just like the future we live in now where USB has replaced serial ports, parallel ports and PS/2.

<comment><USER76> I for one don't miss serial, parallel, and PS/2 ports.

<comment><USER77> I miss serial ports.

<comment><USER76> Why?

<comment> ac-slater Because serial is a trivial interface to implement in home brew electronics, just throw in a MAX232.

Even many major consumer electronics are still developed via a serial console. Sure they have fancier connectors to talk to your PC and the network but serial is so simple it's practically idiot proof. So it breaks far less often, makes new hardware much simpler to bring up, and it allows you to debug the fancier interfaces without interfering with their operations.

<comment><USER76> Ah, I see. I can definitely understand that.

Still not crazy about it as yet one more connector for mass-manufactured devices, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Is this why Apple dumped FireWire a few years ago?

<comment><USER30> All Macs except the low end plastic MacBook and the MacBook Air have a FireWire 800 port. So, no. (Also: Why would they dump FireWire without a replacement in place or even just the lab?)

This will probably replace FireWire sooner or later.

<comment><USER78> This is what I meant, but thanks for your downvote anyway: <http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/10/apple-quietly-k/>

<comment><USER9> A simple pin-adaptor turns a FW800 port into a FW400 port - they're electrically compatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I wouldn't be surprised if the 10Gbps chips are interoperable with 10Gbps Ethernet chips at some level.

</comment><comment><USER80> Sounds like the sequel to Steve's Disney "classic" Bolt(2008).

</comment><comment><USER81> On another note the new MacBook Pro is nothing special: \- still no SSD drive built-in (+$250) \- still no 8GB of RAM built-in (+$200) \- less battery duration than last generation

<comment><USER82> Are there any laptops with 8GB built in the default?

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> no doubt it is a great innovation, but it is a Epic Fail with its logo or symbol or branding whatever you call it. it should be something special like USB, Ethernet, Sound symbol etc.</comment>


Hulu requests removal from Boxee - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/hulu-boxee-removal

<comment><USER3> There is some background to this that is interesting. The reason why the content holders behind Hulu didn't want their content on Boxee was because it came too close to replicating the television experience.

While the advertising was kept in place, it still doesn't attract the rates that normal television does. Given a choice, content holders definitely prefer viewers to tune into ordinary broadcast television to watch their shows - online content is about capturing the potion of viewers who miss shows and don't watch broadcast television.

With Boxee, there is the potential that the online content will cut into the broadcast TV audience - hence this decision.

What is interesting is that the true motives are now more obvious. Online content, in the form of both iTunes and Hulu, is fine as long as it doesn't cut too close to the broadcast base.

Content holders have gone from vigorously defending their network broadcasts to now accepting online content, but only to a point. The next battle will take place when more intelligent PC-like DVR's come out on the market (like the PS3, but at a $100-150 price point) allowing viewers to easily stream online content to a television with a remote. The content owners have a short time window between now and then where they have the best of both worlds - both broadcast and online, but once it all goes online the very lucrative and protected broadcast market will be threatened.

With online, there is no more having to acquire broadcast licenses, no more large-scale infrastructure networks to reach your potential audience and no longer limited competition and cable monopolies with packaged channel selection.

<comment><USER3> Further, here is a comparison of CPM rates and revenue for a typical TV episode.

Network TV: $20-40cpm per ad - 15-19 ads shown in 30 minutes

Cable: $1-15 cpm per ad - 10-22 ads shown (plus subscription revenue)

iTunes: $0.80 per viewer, so CPM of $80 total (est network share)

Hulu / Online: CPM $10-40. 1-4 ads per show.

If you do the math, its obvious that network broadcasts really rake it in. A 30 second spot on a prime time network show sells for anywhere from $400,000 to $800,000 per spot (for 15-30M viewers).

If everyone started watching Hulu instead, they would lose 80-90% of revenue. If everybody downloaded on iTunes (assuming 3 viewers per download, or more is likely) they would still lose out but not as much.

The problem is if the networks start offering a la carte shows for $2 a pop, they lose the bundling revenue (ie. channels you receive in a bundle but would never pay for on their own).

<comment><USER4> First, thank you for providing actual numbers.... but...

Supply and demand. If everyone started watching on Hulu they would be able to charge more per advertisement. These are rates given the current situation, not the future. Why do I say this? I watch Hulu. I do not watch TV otherwise. If the advertisers (and networks) want my eyeballs they need to provide content via Hulu.

<comment><USER5> Those numbers or per thousand so it doesn't really matter I would think. Personally I would think that the Hulu ads are more valuable than the TV ones because it is 1 advertiser per show and there is less signal to noise for the viewer. When I watch football on Sunday it is sponsored by Ford, Toyota, Miller, Budweiser, Verizon, and 10 other companies I will never remember or care about. When I watch the Daily Show on Hulu it is 1 company a few times and actually leaves an impression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It really is a shame for NBCU, and company, to ask Hulu to cut Boxee off. If I recall correctly, didn't content from Hulu that was piped into Boxee still have ads?

Hopefully someday they'll realize that when they cut off people from having legal access to their content, people will go back to their illegal methods. When will old media learn?

<comment><USER7> _Hopefully someday they'll realize that when they cut off people from having legal access to their content, people will go back to their illegal methods. When will old media learn?_

How is bit-torrenting TV episodes illegal?

They are broadcast into my house for free, so why would it matter if I record them, or if Some Guy On The Internet records them for me? (I never watch TV un-timeshifted, so I don't see ads either way.)

<comment><USER8> I'll assume this was a serious question. While recording a show yourself and downloading it both produce the same outcome, copyright law cares about the path that bits take. Even if the TV networks are distributing something for free, it isn't legal for you to redistribute it for free without their permission.

<comment><USER9> An interesting post I read about this a while back: <http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In a way, this is actually a good sign. It shows the content providers are scared. You are not doing things right if you are not shaking things up and scaring people. That is what disruptive technology is about.

Many startups face similar challenges and this reminds me of the struggles ones such as GlassesDirect.co.uk had to go through before becoming successful (they could have been crushed many times by Goliaths but fought through) - <USER2> had to close several times when major competitors and retailers tried to sabotage its business by forcing manufacturers/suppliers to drop GlassesDirect (else they would withdraw their vastly larger orders) and running smear campaigns in the press with false allegations about why using the service was illegal and substandard.

In this case, yes, content providers have a right to choose where/how their content is shown, but this is probably more to do with not getting licensing fees from Boxee than anything else. However, if they do not adopt/embrace legal methods such as Boxee (and insert extra adverts etc. to make the revenue they want), then they only encourage illegal methods.

\---

 _Concerted efforts to sabotage the new venture have proved fruitless. In September, his main supplier mysteriously dropped him. "They suddenly said they couldn't do business with me. I reckon they had pressure put on them by a high-street chain. It took me a week to find a new supplier and re-do the website." The trade press confirmed his paranoia when letters and articles appeared questioning the firm's credentials and the General Optical Council launched an investigation. "Groundless attacks. I have fully qualified opticians working in labs, making the glasses._ [[http://www.realbusiness.co.uk/archive/4775601/feature- glasse...](http://www.realbusiness.co.uk/archive/4775601/feature- glassesdirect-it-might-just-work.thtml)]

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Murray_Wells>

</comment><comment><USER11> When I read articles like this, it just makes me sad for Hulu.

What an unpleasant predicament it must be to be in bed with such idiotic partners who just Do It Wrong so much of the time.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's funny, I ordered an Apple TV to install Boxee on for the bedroom TV today. Hulu was going to be one of the major sources of content for Boxee, however now it sounds like it'll simply be tvtorrents + rss + rtorrent. It's just as easy for me, but it means zero ads. Seems like NBC is the one losing out by this move.

</comment><comment><USER13> Dumb, question but what is boxee? Why would I use it? I honestly couldn't figure it out from their website nor the wikipedia article about boxee.

<comment><USER14> It's a media center software (based on XMBC) with a focus on online content with videos from Hulu, Netflix, Comedy Central, YouTube, torrents, etc.; pictures from PicasaWeb and Flickr, music from last.fm, NPR, etc.

Why should you use it? It's a great step towards combining online content with a TV. It has a lot of pieces that are missing from AppleTV. (even though it's possible to install Boxee on AppleTV :))

<comment><USER13> I have a mac mini. Will it let me use the included remote to control it?

<comment><USER15> I tried it on my iMac, and yes you can use the Apple remote to control it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really like the way that Boxee and Hulu are handling this. At least they are being honest with their motivations and not trying to strong-arm users with legal mumbo-jumbo.

That said, this is very unfortunate news. Just this week, I was contemplating replacing my cable with boxee/internet streams. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER8> Now I'm not so sure it's worth paying $30 for PlayOn; I'd hate to see it crippled at some point in the future.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is devastating news. WTF? For what reason? The ads are there. What is wrong with these people. So much for innovation.

</comment><comment><USER18> damn I was loving boxee and if people request out, then you will loose the all in one media experience

</comment><comment><USER19> You can fullscreen Hulu onto your TV with a PlayStation 3.

<comment><USER20> How do you do that?

<comment><USER19> 1\. Open Internet Browser 2\. Hit Triangle and Search for [hulu] 3\. Go to Hulu.com (should be the first hit) 4\. Click on the video you want. 5\. When the page loads, hit Triangle then click on View. Then select the "maxiumum size" option. 6\. Then Click on Full Screen view in the options on the Hulu page.

This should work, but I get letterboxing on the left and right sides of my HDTV. I assume this is my TV, but who knows.

[Edit: it appears that Step 5 is unnecessary.]

<comment><USER8> In my experience you have to use the game controller (rather than the remote) to hit the full screen button. Overall, I find that PlayOn gives a much better experience than the PS3 Web browser.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: BuzzKill automatically removes all Buzz Feed content from Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hartleybrody/buzzkill

<comment><USER2> Can it remove Buzz Feed from the internet too? Please?!

</comment><comment><USER3> haha priceless :)</comment>


Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes <comment><USER2> Article talks about The American National Red Cross. American Red Cross has controversial reputation. It's unfortunate that the reputation of American Red Cross can tarnish the good reputation of The International Red Cross.

Another point, not related to this case:

Money from fundraisers for large charities does not necessarily go to the cause they are collecting it. It often comes too late over weeks and months and you have budged and organize everything ASAP. If the money collected goes to fund the next big catastrophe and not the current one, there is nothing wrong with that. People are just emotional and irrational givers. Money is given as function of lobbying effort, not as function of need.

<comment><USER3> Same with the Swedish Red Cross. A couple of scandals showing poor use of donated money. Huge salaries to board members and also a previous "CFO" was a criminal and sentenced for embezzlement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> After three years moving through 35 countries in Africa, this sums up my experience and thoughts on aid money. I have spent considerable time with a ton of UN and NGO people in many different countries, and heard plenty of great first-hand accounts of how things actually work on the ground.

It sounds great, and the people giving the money really think they're helping. Unfortunately, it's rarely the case.

<comment><USER5> > It sounds great, and the people giving the money really think they're > helping. Unfortunately, it's rarely the case

I don't think your experience driving around Africa gave you a enough information to adequately support your conclusion (which I could not leave unchallenged). I mean this in a non-disparaging way: you got breadth, but not depth. I, an African, on the other hand, have depth, but not breadth.

I have some experience with both sides of the NGO coin: I've seen communities and individuals positively. From disease eradication in whole communities to people regaining their vision. People giving money _are_ helping in most of the cases. On the other side of the coin - I agree that NGOs have a lot of fat they could cut in terms of expenditures that do not directly go to their mission, but this depends entirely on which NGO it is and what their culture is, not all of them are the same. This is an industry ripe for disruption by leaner setups, too bad VCs aren't really geared for this.

Donors are helping, but maybe not as much as they think they are (per dollar). It would be great if they would research the org they are donating to to find how many cents per dollar are going to the cause. More transparency in this area is needed.

<comment><USER4> > _I don 't think your experience driving around Africa gave you a enough > information to adequately support your conclusion....you got breadth, but > not depth. I, an African, on the other hand, have depth, but not breadth._

That's a great point I had not thought enough about, and I think you are correct.

Certainly your examples of health (disease and sight) sound very positive.

Also examples where NGOs or World Vision or whoever bring in massive quantities of food appear very positive on the surface, though the long term consequences are extremely unhealthy, and just create more of a dependence loop than ever before, until locals are utterly unable to help themselves.

> _Donors are helping, but maybe not as much as they think they are (per > dollar). It would be great if they would research the org they are donating > to to find how many cents per dollar are going to the cause. More > transparency in this area is needed._

More transparency is absolutely the key, but I also think it's really important to take a step back and really think about if and how any donor is actually "helping" at all. We in the west have this funny idea that money is the answer to everything and more money = a better life. Certainly it's important to have healthcare and clean drinking water, but after that a lot of times I saw money degrading African society, not making anything better at all.

I'm terrified we'll turn many special countries into "little America" or "little Europe" complete with high cancer rates, stress, 9-5 jobs, pollution, lack of care for our community and neighbors, high crime, rampant greed and inequality ,etc. etc.

<comment><USER6> I live in Tanzania and the only people who don't want the country turn into "little America" or "little Europe" is foreigners who just want to go on Safari. I and everyone else would love skyscrapers, 9-5 jobs, money, IPhones, etc.

<comment><USER4> > _I and everyone else would love skyscrapers, 9-5 jobs, money, IPhones, etc._

Of course you do. What you don't want is skyrocketing cancer rates, heart disease, spousal abuse, a severe lack of time, people who are so poor they can't feed themselves, high crime rates and all the other things that come along with the "shiny" stuff like 9-5 jobs, money & iPhones.

The thing is the developed world hasn't figured out how to get one without the other, and if I were you, I would think long and hard if you _really, really_ want what you're asking for.

I lived that life of the developed first world city, and frankly, it's horrible. I recently spent time in one of the world's most livable cities, supposedly a great place to live. After three years in Africa I would rather die than live in that "great western city".

<comment><USER6> I moved from NYC to Tanzania and spousal abuse, cancer, poverty, and crime is way higher here than there. The only tangibly better part of the culture is the sense of community.

I love Tanzania, but I recognize that it's because I have the money to live a very good life here.

Unfortunately, I've gotten a little addicted to the power of having a cook, housekeeper, and gardener for under $15/day total. I miss NYC, but I also realize how hard it will be to go back to just being an average joe.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but you live in a city in Tanzania, which is already going the way of "Western City", so it already has all the bad stuff.

Get out into a town or village, or better yet, get to a country that isn't overrun with tourists like Tanzania is. Gabon is simply breathtaking, Congo is wild, Burundi really is the heart of Africa, Djibouti is like a different planet! There is a lot to explore, a huge part of me wishes I could turn around and drive south right now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Giving the money to other organizations actually competent to do the work was a good idea. Skimming 9% and then allowing those to skim 24% off the top, less so. (But we don't even really know about the remaining 67%.)

Probably they should have identified groups actually doing work, and let them skim off 0%. I.e., let them submit bills to reimburse expenses for shipping, materials and local labor. Well-run organizations can achieve more when they don't need to scrounge for material expenses. Then, you can apportion according to tangible results.

But what do I know?

<comment><USER8> > Probably they should have identified groups actually doing work, and let > them skim off 0%. I.e., let them submit bills to reimburse expenses for > shipping, materials and local labor

I worked for a UN aid organisation a few years ago that worked like this. They have teams in the country that work with local suppliers to procure whatever goods or services they need to complete projects. The local supplier submits estimates that will be paid upon completion (the local supplier usually receives a bank loan for the funding, rather than being paid in advance).

Even so there is still a large amount of overhead. As with any government- esque organisation there is plenty of red tape and beuracracy at every level. The employees at this organisation are paid a very good salary, tax free, and get a whole host of other benefits and great pension. A lot of people don't seem that great at their job, but once they are in, they stay for life as it's rather cushy. The teams in charge of projects will fly a few times a year to the country, first class. Worst of all I heard rumors of projects being carried out that weren't needed, but were just done for whoever was in charge to get their promotion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Stories like this are why I cannot in good faith donate to large charities. There needs to be more details on the inner workings on these charities, and even if they are in good faith it seems that smaller (and likely religious) organizations do the work more efficiently.

<comment><USER10> Issues like distaster recovery should be handled by governments, not unaccountable private charities. The issue is that the U.S. has systematically destroyed Haiti's infrastructure for nearly a century and overthrown any leader that isn't a puppet regime.

<comment><USER11> This directly runs counter to the idea I was going to pitch.

Send in the troops and have the Core of Engineers actually build out infrastructure and cities to bring them up to modern code in a maintainable way. Also pull in some locals for education in how that stuff is done in the process and try to do knowledge transfer of "This is how you build civilization that does not get flattened by a hurricane."

Given the political history, I doubt that would go well. Is there a foreign military power with a similar skill set that could do this task?

<comment><USER12> Why does it need to be military? IIRC, Australia sent police, specialists as part of post Iraq war efforts.

US could send in fact send non military; engineers, etc, but it will viewed with local suspicion and may make things worst (assaults, sabotage by either side or third party). Even US is suspicious of foreigners building US infrastructure (ie Huawei).

When there's so much distrust of US by Haitians and US likewise doesn't trust Haitian government with funds, there are quasi government organisations such as UN: [https://www.un.org/un70/en/content/70ways/index.html](https://www.un.org/un70/en/content/70ways/index.html)

Even they have had issues in Haiti.

<comment><USER13> Armies are portable civilisation.

If you task most civilian forces with going somewhere that has disaster level problems there will be blockers. Oh, we can't go there until they have: power, clean water, working telecoms, physical security, etc.

In contrast your military forces can, if necessary, bring everything. A US army deployment can make its own electrical power, make water safe, deploy radio communications, and of course it can provide its own physical security. It is not cheap, but it works.

<comment><USER14> Is there something like THW in the US?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technisches_Hilfswerk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technisches_Hilfswerk)

The only thing they don't do is the physical security.

<comment><USER15> We have FEMA, which is similar:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Emergency_Management...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Emergency_Management_Agency)

They did a pretty shit job managing Hurricane Katrina though. Bush's political appointee to run FEMA had no relevant experience, and Trump now also has a variety of incompetents running various agencies.

The military is bigger, better funded, and most importantly, more competent. A lot of people in a disaster in the US, upon hearing that FEMA is coming, would rather wish it were the military (just based on track record).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >The Red Cross said it has to scale back its housing plans because it couldn't acquire the rights to land. No homes will be built.

The article's second half spends most of it's time describing the unreported management overhead that probably has to do with trying to navigate the infeasibly complex and ill-defined land ownership and transfer system of Hati's government.

<comment><USER17> And yet the clinton foundation had no issue building a 5 star hotel. Maybe they could have just asked them for some help dealing with the government?

Nah not worth it, it's just half a billion.

<comment><USER18> Apparently plenty of people had no trouble building 5 star hotels: [https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-11-25/does-haiti-really- nee...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-11-25/does-haiti-really-need-luxury- hotels) Maybe the Haitian government was simply more open to hotel-building than home-building?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would like to see a requirement for tax-exempt charities (maybe even any organization, tax-exempt or not, that acts like a charity, collecting donations to help with healthcare/shelters/residences/infrastructure/education) to report pass- through granular summaries of material expenses and labor for lowest-level contractors, per project. Each project should state clearly its scope, budget, expected outcome, and final outcome once available.

As far as I can see, not even more honorable NGOs like the Gates Foundation do this. I see their annual report, and I see their financial statements, but neither really gets at what I'm looking for.

As generic examples, "Haiti earthquake recovery" and "malaria program" are not valid project scopes. They're vague umbrella categories that could have tons of unnecessary overhead with many levels of "contractors".

<comment><USER20> Don't disagree, but what you're proposing is also overhead. Not a problem for the large players, but perhaps harder to do for the small tax exempt charities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://my.charitywater.org/](https://my.charitywater.org/) has done an amazing thing in recognizing that a lot of people see this corruption and give up on the whole thing. They donate 100% of what you give. They get separate donations to cover operating costs, even using separate money to cover visa fees so that if you give 100$ on your credit card, 100$ goes to getting water to people. I find their work very impressive!

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure that's an improvement.

Charity X: 95% of money donated goes to the cause.

Charity Y: 100% of money donated goes to the cause ( but we get an extra 20% from some where else).

Charity X, incentives are aligned to minimise administration spend. Charity Y obscures that link.

<comment><USER23> Who cares if their admin spend is high if as a individual donator none of my donation goes to that spend?

I imaging the admin is covered by corporate donors/payment processors waiving fees and claiming it all back on tax

<comment><USER22> Because those corporate donors would have donated anyway. In fact just like people they probably want their money going to good causes rather than admin.

And you start getting all kinds of perverse situations. What happens if they have funding to take $1 million in donations, but they get $2 million? Do they return donations?

What happens if they can't get enough admin donations? Do they stop work? Regardless of how much money they have in the bank, waiting to go to good causes?

Then there's the issue of splitting your fund raising efforts. Instead of telling everyone 5% of their donation is going to admin. You have to have a distinct team of admin fund raisers.

So to answer your question _I_ would care if their admin spend was high. And the current set up obscures what that spend is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Did this article get help to actual people on the ground in this particular relief area?

What proceeds did you earn from ads on this article? Did you donate those? Where did you donate those proceeds?

Did this article minimize overhead of relief efforts anywhere?

Are you suggesting that ARC should not have collected donations at all? Because they do not have an established presence in the relief territory and are thus unqualified to determine how best to allocate donations, they shouldn't have collected and donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help?

Here would be a better way to use this time:

\+ Develop a list of actionable suggestions for improving efficiency and allocation of relief aid

\+ Develop solutions for problems in resource-constrained areas

\+ Establish rapport with the people who you think are actually helping

\+ Develop a transparent and accountable international transaction network that operates with minimal resources (on devices powered by hand crank and solar power)

\+ Develop clean energy production capacity, storage, and a resilient power grid in order to produce 3D-printed homes (with plumbing and electrical to code) where there is little timber, clean water, and plenty of sand

\+ Connect people in need of basic necessities with an efficient supply chain that doesn't leave pallets of things undistributed

\+ Go hand out water and MREs and try not to get sick

\+ What is a reasonable MLR (Medical Loss Ratio)

<comment><USER25> Writing that article probably didn't take more than a week so lets say 40 hours. Now compare that with the donation amount. 0.5 billion dollars. Assuming very generously you paid $300 per hour per employee (just to drive home how crazy the amount of money is) this is equivalent to 1.6 million man hours wasted compared to 40 hours. Someone with only 40 work hours is unable to solve the problem. An organization with millions of man hours should be able to solve the problem. In other words criticizing the author for wasting his time is completely crazy because unless he writes another 40000 of these articles his inefficiency amounts to almost nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you are looking for a charity that provides instant improvement in the lifes for those on the receiving end and does not have huge bureaucratic overhead, i suggest: [https://www.onedollarglasses.org](https://www.onedollarglasses.org)

They provide cheap, affordable glasses that can be manufactured/repaired/adjusted locally. They train people in the villages and provide the material needed.

I have no affiliation with them.

</comment><comment><USER27> The comments here are very funny. Lots of finger pointing at Haitians, "corruption", "land ownership system", "send the army". Let's not forget and please acknowledge real facts. Haiti's slave revolt the only successful one in history saw African people pummel Napoleons French army, the British army and the Spanish army. From 1804-1825 there was a economic embargo on the country (similar to what we do to North Korea). It only stopped when Haitians agreed to pay French slave owners reparations for the money they lost and property (slaves and land ). "In 1838, France agreed to reduce the debt to 90 million francs to be paid over a period of 30 years to compensate former plantation owners who had lost their property. The modern equivalent of $21 billion was paid from Haiti to France." So, French banks actually loaned Haiti money with very high interest to pay the French government and avoid sanctions thus very deliberately stifling the growth of the country almost haunting it altogether. Note also this was the colony that made the French more money than all 13 of its colonies put together. Therefore the predicament we have today is due to the pure wickedness and greed of the French coupled with natural disasters.

Ps: recently us mercenaries were captured in Haiti deliberately inciting violence and instability. They have since been released to the US.

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiY...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiYve2o-q7hAhWliOAKHd2UBMwQzPwBegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnationalpost.com%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Ffive- heavily-armed-u-s-mercenaries-were-captured-in-haiti-why-were-they-allowed-to- fly-straight-home&psig=AOvVaw2QMbJN3QTItNoJbxdUHFWo&ust=1554210201201474)

Yes these things are not reported.

</comment><comment><USER28> One thing that requires clarification here is that there aren't shady characters at the helm of the American Red Cross collecting a billion dollars in grant money to develop housing. The money donated to the ARC isn't squandered by executive compensation. The Red Cross isn't even in the business of building houses. It helps provide housing through hotel voucher financial assistance or manages shelters. So, it's no wonder that mistakes were made. The ARC does a lot of things right. If people in the ARC actually committed to housing development, it wouldn't build the houses. It would partner with developers who did.

I'm a disaster response volunteer, although inactive since Katrina.

</comment><comment><USER29> > The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But > the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: > six.

I don't understand what is wrong with this situation.

The priority was to stop people dying not necessarily to solve a future inequality problem.

<comment><USER30> Do you really want to donate a charity that lies about what it's doing with your money? I definitely don't.

<comment><USER31> Did they lie, though.

Providing homes as in places to stays during disasters does not neccessary means "permanent" homes.

<comment><USER32> I think what you're insinuating is actually _worse_ than the reality.

I can understand "we genuinely wanted to help but we're too incompetent to action on our promises". That's morally much better than "we intended to deceive from the outset and other people's suffering is just the cover we need to line our own pockets".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Want to get rich in Haiti?

Work for an NPO -> [https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/haiti](https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/haiti)

You'll likely earn 3x what a Doctor would earn.

</comment><comment><USER34> transparency could be enhanced by a public ledger such as blockchains

</comment><comment><USER35> Ah ok. I'd have interjected with a scathing comment about how ideological market liberalism dooms these projects. Asked why couldn't the Haitian government and legislature take over land plots and run the rebuilding projects; with logistical help and training from more advanced FEMA-like agencies from USA or other countries.

But then again, I remember how the Protezione Civile made a mess in L'Aquila, Italy and I wonder if Haiti would have fared better

</comment><comment><USER36> people should just give money to bill gates. he gets things done

</comment><comment><USER37> There are so many other organizations worthy of donations - UNICEF, Oxfam, Partners in Health, and tons of local NGOs. Maybe it's time for Red Cross donors to look elsewhere, until they clean up their act.

<comment><USER38> Oxfam was literally banned from Haiti due to staff exploiting locals for sex after a natural disaster.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/15/timeline- oxfam...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/15/timeline-oxfam-sexual- exploitation-scandal-in-haiti)

<comment><USER39> Sure, but how many permanent homes have they built?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Instead of donating to feel good, wish it was easy for people in rich countries to buy someone a cow, change the roof, pay for a kid's school etc etc. Things that costs as little as a few hundred dollars but can change a life.

Red Cross should shunned by all, no TV time during emergencies.

<comment><USER41> There is an organization that focuses on this which has been quite successful as far as I know.

[https://www.kiva.org/](https://www.kiva.org/)

The idea is micro loans directly to people who want to do something like buy a cow.

"Kiva loans have a historical repayment rate of about 97% (this number fluctuates slightly so check Kiva's homepage for the current rate)"

When you receive the money back you can then make another micro loan to help someone else out.

<comment><USER40> easier said than done, but imagine the satisfaction of a US middle class person spending $480 to cover the yearly tuition to a poor but bright student in X country? Nothing goes to support a gazillion "charity" managers.

I understand that fraud, nepotism etc etc all get in the way.

<comment><USER42> > US middle class person spending $480 to cover the yearly tuition to a poor > but bright student in X country?

So, the U.S. has its own student loan bubble, that many economists believe is related to the increased availability of student loans AND/OR charitable donations to scholarship funds;

Is there evidence that covering 3rd world tuition doesn't create further class divide, and/or increase the cost of tuition in general? And that perceivably "bright" students are already often the best off.

Also realize that in many places in the world with $480/year tuition are receiving education from sources that get at least some of their funding or staff from NGOs; and that in many cases, "education" is in many cases separating children from their families -- and potentially (though the result dithers morally) decreasing the entire family's ability to be self sufficient by removing productive workers (in a culture where minimum, age of laborers in lower than the U.S. 16)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Serious question: The article says that there are roughly 10 million people living in Haiti. It also says that the Red Cross collected roughly 500 million dollars in donations. To me this sounds like it would have been a better idea to take whatever they wanted for themselves and give the remaining lets say 400 million in equal parts to the people of Haiti. Even if only 50% of that money would have reached its destination, each of the Haiti people would now have 20 million dollars to built up new lives. So why would these organizations try everything to buy land there and build houses and stuff - instead of just giving the money to the people who need it. Except for taking the money for themselves, obviously.

And I'm sorry but I cannot believe that one would actually need more than 300 million dollars to get an arbitrary amount of money to 10 million people.

<comment><USER44> > each of the Haiti people would now have 20 million dollars to built up new > lives.

Isn't your math way off?

50% of 400MIllion = 200MIllion

200Million/10Milion = 20

So each person gets 20$, not 20 million dollars.

<comment><USER43> Ha, damn, now that's quite some error there! Thanks for correcting :)</comment></comment></comment>


Obama warns against irresponsible social media use - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42491638 <comment><USER2> >"The question has to do with how do we harness this technology in a way that allows a multiplicity of voices, allows a diversity of views, but doesn't lead to a Balkanisation of society and allows ways of finding common ground," he said.

From a libertarian point of view: given his background and beliefs, I think Obama is missing a crucial element that allows and enables the reconciliation of those with different beliefs: liberty. The way you have a "multiplicity of voices" and a "diversity of views" is through tolerance: the tacit acknowledgement that while you may find what someone is doing odious and reprehensible, if all parties are consenting and voluntary, they ultimately have the legal right to engage in what they are doing free of interference.

The sticking point is that "tolerance" also means tolerating the liberty of those commonly perceived as religiously conservative. This comes even to my own reluctant consternation as a transgender individual. The example that comes to mind immediately is the gay wedding cake cases. I think it's heinous to deny service to someone simply because they are gay. But is taking government's hands off private business a lesser evil than fighting over the apparatus used to do so every four years? One government administration violates the rights of Christians in order to protect gays, then the inverse occurs under the next administration, gays losing fundamental liberties and the right to self-determination. All while nobody ever seems to ask why either should be forced to live a certain way in the first place, why the government is involving itself in private matters ranging from business to who you choose to marry.

Social media has little to do with this; it's merely a purifier for the underlying contention. Instead of keeping to ourselves and those who agree to associate with us, we've become preoccupied with adjusting an oversized commons to fit the whims of a winning team every four to eight years, hammering in all those who don't fit under the new order. Part and parcel of living in a plural society, is that not everyone will agree to the level where you can ever have such a commons.

The "common ground" that Obama is seeking, effectively, is a consistent application of "leave me alone".

</comment><comment><USER3> Social media is really paradoxical and interesting. I can tell the entire internet something, with just the click of a button. On the other hand, echo chambers are being created, and there's no easy solution to it.

<comment><USER4> What is the current state of empirical evidence about echo chambers and filter bubbles?

The last time I read about it, the 3rd hand reports I was getting said that they were less of a problem than you might imagine, because political junkie types actually _did_ read stuff from the other side. Perhaps becaue, they were _so_ into politics that they did some kind of "opposition research".

<comment><USER5> I think that's an extreme minority, and the benefit would be limited.

The notion of _sides_ in political media deteriorates the conversation into an argument, which at some point undermines an audience's fundamental awareness and understanding of issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem with blaming bubbles is that it's not new to social media. I would image it goes as far back as tribal evolution, but I digress.

Currently, if someone like conservative politics, they read conservative newspapers and magazines, watch conservative news, listen to conservative radio and go to conservative websites, because they like it. There are liberal versions of these and also middle-of-the-road versions. Social media is just another way of consuming information that you like.

Another dimension is wether said information is accurate or not. This has also been a historical problem in this country and the world, probably since we, as a species, have been writing stuff down and even before in oral histories.

Information in social media is consumed from friends and acquaintances. People tend to give more authority to the validity of information from friends and acquaintances, again throughout history.

Social media isn't inherently bad for society, I think politics is bad for society and social media is just another way of sharing ideas, good and bad. Again, most of this is nothing new, including the content.

Look up Andrew Jackson's 1828 campaign against his wife:

 _According to Ann Toplovich, executive director of the Tennessee Historical Society, John Quincy Adams ' presidential campaigns targeted Jackson's "passion and lack of self-control" in both 1824 and 1828, "making it central to the argument that he would devastate the integrity of the Republic and its institutions."[6] One newspaper ran an article asking, "'Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?'"_

<comment><USER7> Is your quote in support of bubbles being around for a while, or simply that politics are bad?

<comment><USER6> It's more an observation of society and politics in the US throughout it's history.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone has truly warned us against irresponsible social media use, it was not this particular president.

</comment><comment><USER9> I hesitate to post a slight disagreement here because I think, for the most part, Obama is right on the money.

However, I would hesitate to just put the problem on 'just' social media itself - if person A posts a message that says in a supposedly limited setting and person B uses a datacenter of big data AI / neural net / blockchain / VR or whatever fancy technology you want to put this in a much larger setting than the original statement, it is just a slightly clever (one could alternatively say unscrupulous) way for a person B to say what person A is saying, many many times over, and try to hide being behind it.

The same thing happens in real-life (maybe I should say 3-d) discussions, in albeit, a much more nuanced manner, but still with just as great potential effect.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remain thoroughly convinced that social media is bad for society, and for the self. It is optimized to bring out the worst in people, and rarely offers anything of value.

</comment><comment><USER11> A post on an ex-leader of the United States regarding technology should not be flagged.

<comment><USER12> Yeah not sure what's going on today. There have been a couple top posts that have been flagged. Does anyone know the procedure for posts becoming un- flagged?

It seems like there is an easy way to flag things, but the only recourse to un-flag is for mods to get involved. I'm curious to know if this impression is correct, and if so what the thinking is behind this set of procedures.

<comment><USER13> I think that you use "vouch" to say that the post shouldn't have been flagged. I suspect (but I am not certain) that a post will be automatically killed after a certain number of flags (and I suspect that the number is more than one). I suspect that it takes manual intervention by a mod to undo the flag kill, and that vouch is the way you bring it to the mods' attention.

<comment><USER12> I see how to vouch for a flagged comment, but not a flagged post.

<comment><USER14> For submissions, "vouch" appears for submissions that are marked "[dead]", not "[flagged]". Same for comments, AIUI. Some confusion is understandable due to the fact they're usually correlated and the looseness with which "flag" is often used to mean either.

<comment><USER12> Good explanation. I guess the problem is that when posts are flagged, they seem to drop precipitously in the ranking, and there's apparently nothing that can be done to vouch until the post is marked dead. But if flagging is tantamount to killing in terms of visibility, then the cure comes too late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wondering if he'd feel the same way had the opposition candidate not used the internet and social media to help overcome the biases of the establishment mainstream media and defeat the candidate Obama endorsed and campaigned for?

Suddenly now, probably not coincidentally because of that result, the trend seems to be "social media is really bad guys" among people in the establishment - both government and the media. It's kind of ironic.

I find his statements somewhat hypocritical given that the media, and government, has had the monopoly on irresponsibility, bias, putting forth alternative realities, and the Balkanisation of society, until just recently now that people are able to combat it and freely spread information among tens of millions of people instantly and so easily, instead of only getting their information from approved sources without citizens being able to freely discuss, disprove, etc. - e.g., directly from the White House, and a couple of privileged mainstream media organizations that are very in-bed with the government.

<comment><USER16> The media is the responsible party here. The public are the irresponsible ones. The public's voice should always be silenced in favor of professional media's voice.

Remember, the public doesn't have social media editorial guidelines. Professional media does. Professional media reporters confirm facts with multiple sources, which is why they are more trustworthy. The public is simply allowed to lie on social media.

This is why you should trust professional media over the public, since the public is irresponsible.

Why would anyone trust a social media person that simply lies instead of a professional media organization that confirms facts with multiple sources?

<comment><USER17> > Why would anyone trust a social media person that simply lies instead of a > professional media organization that confirms facts with multiple sources?

Because they are "local" or because they confirm their biases. The other day on FB a friend shared a photoshopped Nancy Pelosi tweet (For international folks, she's a US Congress Person). Their comment on the shared photo "Did she really say that?".

We live in the age of primary sources, we can easily go to their twitter to confirm. (Wasn't there)

We also have great tools that help keep our American Politicians accountable: [https://projects.propublica.org/politwoops/](https://projects.propublica.org/politwoops/) (Wasn't deleted either)

In the time it took me to confirm that (~15 minutes) 3 people commented agreeing that she was insane for saying it.

<comment><USER18> >we can easily go to their twitter to confirm

Unless the tweet has been deleted (which it often will have been if it's damning)

<comment><USER17> right, but in this case, we do have a resource that tracks deleted tweets.

Beyond that, the point still stands, I believe we should always try and corroborate multiple sources (unless you have a primary source), we, the people aren't doing that and just confirming our biases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm reminded of a Black Mirror episode!

<comment><USER20> Hey, lets leave race out of it.

<comment><USER21> Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? They're not what this site is for, and we eventually ban accounts that do it.</comment></comment></comment>


Imagine There's No YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://jchrisa.net/drl/_design/sofa/_show/post/Imagine-There-s-No-YouTube

<comment><USER2> I love couchdb and what jchrisa is doing there, but this wrong on a variety of levels IMO.

First, on a practical level, no one wants to deal with hosting anything, let alone "civilians", so billions of web servers on the edge of the network is simply a no-go unless and until doing so becomes appliance-esque (which will necessitate provisioning of backups and failover using...wait for it...third party services that could only exist given safe-harbor provisions.).

Second, 99% of users and cumulative usage time is spent consuming, not producing stuff.

Third, this is just crazy:

"""The online content farms profit based on the fact that it's hard to share your own content, yourself, via a means of production that you control. This is the central fact free-speech activists should be upset about."""

There's oodles of places to go that will host your stuff far better than YouTube et al. can, but most people don't care enough to pay for it. Go to vimeo, pay whatever trifling sum they charge these days, and you'll have all the control you want, a better experience to boot, and all the free speech you can muster.

<comment><USER3> So you're saying you're not willing to "imagine"? :)

If it weren't for Alan Kay we'd be all using DOS prompts on our iPhones (oh wait… :) and that was in the early 70s.

<comment><USER2> I can imagine very well, I would just rather not have that vision tied up with advocating the elimination of safe-harbor provisions.

By all means, let us all become publishers, hosts, etc. etc. Maybe an enterprising someone can make that easier and more attractive than the current regime. :-)

<comment><USER4> I don't think that you read that post very well. He's not advocating the elimination of safe-harbor provisions. He's advocating the limitation of who they apply to. It's debatable whether that's a good or a bad thing, but we have to at least be on the same page to have a decent debate on the issue.

<comment><USER5> I'd say youtube in that case would be the landord for the page that holds the video and the creator of the video would be responsible for it. To say that a web host or postal office isn't responsible but that message board is arbitrary.

Also craigslist would obviously fall under a the youtube designtion -- and other such services that require scale.

<comment><USER6> It's not arbitrary at all. To continue with the bar analogy, YouTube is the bar owner, and the person uploading the video is the bartender who mixed your drink. The landlord in YouTube's case is Google, who, by virtue of the fact that they also own the bar, rather than merely renting space to the party that does, has to assume liability for what happens in the bar.

In the case of EC2, Amazon owns the building, and lets a space to you, to do with more or less what you will. If that happens to be running a bar that serves underage drinkers, how is that their responsibility?

Edited to add: Except, of course, in the case where they've been notified that you are, in fact, serving underage customers. Most leases have verbiage that allows the lessor to break the agreement and boot your ass if you're using the space to break the law. That's how they qualify for safe harbor.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's quite arbitrary. The bar analogy sucks. (Most analogies suck.)

The only difference between YouTube and Amazon EC2 is flexibility of purpose. You can do many different things with an EC2 account because it was designed to let you do those things. You can upload videos to a YouTube account and not much more because YT was designed to do one thing well.

What they have in common is that they are both hosting services and apps platforms. They both host your data and applications. The fact that the "window" into EC2 from the outside is whatever the account holder wants it to be, whereas the window into YT is just YT's interface... is totally irrelevant.

The bottom line is that both Amazon and YouTube are hosting your data on their servers, and allowing you to present that data to the public at large. If one of them is responsible for legality of your content, then both of them must be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think what this article don't realize is that Italy's ruling is BENEFICIAL to large corporations, not some sort of "equalizing" factor. Every time some sort of ridiculous regulation has been put in place the big corporations have had the capital to comply, and the individuals have been given even more roadblocks to compete. The lack of imagination is not in not imagining a peer to peer web, but rather in not imagining a Google that can innovate around these restrictions.

Take this safe harbor thing. Let's say that it becomes abolished for sites like YouTube across the board. Do you think Google would say "oh too bad, time to shut down the site". Of course not. Google has the money to pay for a million mechanical-turk style people to view every video, and the innovative prowess to create programs that would do filtering as well. The end result would be that they would probably err on the side of being too cautious, and we'd have a YouTube with far less content.

However, the true problem here is that if I now wanted to compete with YouTube, it would be impossibly difficult due solely to the liability of it all. I can't afford to have a huge staff looking at every video, or massive servers running analysis on every upload. So all of a sudden what you've done is SOLIDIFY YouTube's stranglehold on content.

Not to mention that you've all of a sudden given Google the perfect excuse for denying any content they want, they can now just hide behind "liability concerns". We've already seen that companies abuse DMCA takedowns with fair use, of course there would be abuse of this as well.

<comment><USER9> This is why I think the author supports the idea of giving the power to share videos to everyone, rather than the current model of having someone else share your videos for you once you upload them. You certainly can afford to know that the videos you alone share are legal or not.

It's not about making a competing service, its about self-service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Beyond the hand-waving about "big industry" and "corporate agendas," there's not much here beyond the willingness to endorse authoritarianism in the service of encouraging the style of internet sharing the author prefers.

More serious is the apparent blitheness with which the author assumes that only big companies will be affected by speech regulations. On the contrary, it's normally small operators who are intimidated into shutting down by speech regulations like DMCA or the late, unlamented COPA. The Google in Italy case is newsworthy precisely because the government there bullied an entity with the resources to try to fight back.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you'd rather be protected by the feudal lord (Google) than stand on your own? Make no mistake that's what you're saying.

<comment><USER10> No, I'm saying it's highly unlikely that the "king" is going to shut down the "feudal lord" and then let me, the "peasant," do whatever I want to.

<comment><AUTHOR> You shouldn't be able to do whatever you want. Unless you only want to do good things. Law isn't perfect but it is meant to be applied impartially.

<comment><USER11> What about the things that aren't "good", but aren't _harmful_ to anyone - things like lolcats and blog posts about how the whole web should be running out of home servers? Shouldn't people be able to do those?

<comment><USER7> We're not talking about Italy's hatred of a lolcats video. We're talking about a video of 3 kids taunting an autistic kid. If someone put that video on their home server and showed it to the world, they'd (hopefully) be just as liable as if they put it on YouTube.

If Italy is fine with lolcats on YT, presumably they'd be fine with lolcats on my home server.

<comment><USER11> Your reply isn't actually to what I said, but I'll respond to you:

The video is not the harm; the original taunting is. If it's a manner of protecting a minor, we can talk about pulling the video down.

If the kids were selling the video and making money off it, we can talk about prosecuting them.

<comment><USER7> Why is making money off of something the threshold for prosecution? Is the video (or the act itself) somehow less harmful to someone when it isn't commercially viable?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of the position a very good friend of mine tends to defend, that we'd all be better off if we lived hunter-gatherer lifestyles. None of the stresses of the modern world to constrain us, no sitting at a desk for most of the day, no growth hormones in our food, no complex economy founded on unrealistic debt, no unavoidable, unsustainable network of high-volume petroleum combustion to poison our rivers and lungs.

Despite his having a couple of degrees in anthropology and talking about this long before Avatar was ever in theaters... I remain unconvinced. Even without all the mundane problems of modern life, most of us in the developed world don't have to worry about our immediate survival on a day-to-day basis. Society may have made an enormous number of tradeoffs to get to where we are, but I still have to call it a net positive.

That's kind of how I feel about this article.

<comment><USER13> _most of us in the developed world don't have to worry about our immediate survival on a day-to-day basis_

Neither do hunters and gatherers. Turns out that hunter gatherers (at least the ones surveyed) just sit around most days and rarely worry about their immediate survival either. If you're interested in more information, this is a seminal work for anthropologists studying this topic:

<http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm>

I would agree that, for me, life in modern society is a net positive, but that is a personal decision shaped by my own cultural biases. Is modern society inherently better than a hunter gatherer one? No, I don't think so.

<comment><USER5> I think that modern society is inherently better since no one lives the hunter gatherer one when given a chance. There are still places where one could go and hunt/gather food etc but I don't know of anyone that does that.

<comment><USER13> Most modern hunter gatherers wouldn't want to live in modern society either. See the Sahlins' paper above or a recent National Geographic article on a similar group:

<http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text>

Again, if modern society was inherently better, why are there modern hunter gatherers at all? Shouldn't they all have joined us by now? It is not for lack of opportunity. They like their culture and their lifestyles. They don't want to join us as much as we don't want to join them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Big entities are still good on the web, see wikipedia, openstreetmap and yes, even youtube, liveleak or twitter/identi.ca (iran, scandals etc).

This case could also help many torrent sites to survive [http://torrentfreak.com/can-google-secure-a-safe-haven- for-b...](http://torrentfreak.com/can-google-secure-a-safe-haven-for- bittorrent-sites-100225) . Where I live there is no netflix, no itunes, no hulu. And most people wouldn't have the money for those anyway. So torrent sites play a great role in democratizing culture (good and bad culture I know).

</comment><comment><USER15> Dude is all kinds of confused. It looks to me like he's trying to create an intellectual justification for his emotional dislike of big websites. I can't fathom a legitimately rational explanation for why EC2 is right and proper and good, but YouTube et al are evil and should be hounded out of business by force of law. They both provide essentially the same service, it's just that YouTube make it accessible to everyone.

Sounds like fairly straightforward neo-luddite snobbery to me, the same kind of thinking that made all those Whole Foods customers so angry at Wal-Mart for selling organic vegetables. I think his real agenda is that he wants to turn back the clock to before the Eternal September and take us back to a geek-only internet. I think he resents all of the ordinary people and their cat videos.

Also, no fully peer-to-peer architecture can serve content with low enough latency for web browsing (as Freenet so ably demonstrates) and none ever will because of Parkinson's Law, but that's largely beside the point.

</comment><comment><USER16> In this "personal web" where everyone hosts their own content on their own web server, how do we as content consumers continue to find the 100 cat videos a day we want to watch? Someone's going to have to aggregate them from around the world, there's too much to aggregate by hand, and then we're in the same position we are now. Merely linking to the wrong material is enough to get you convicted in the USA, so there's no protection in that the files linked to are now on many servers -- the aggregator has the same risk as in the industrial web.

<comment> loup-vaillant Links probably should have safe harbour anyway, because there is no way to control the other end of the link. So your lolcat could be find via a search engine, or other aggregation service you may have subscribed to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I agree with the intent of the article that pushing distribution to the edge is a noble goal. But safe-harbors should be expanded -- why should a company have to police it's users. That seems ridiculous. If the country feels something is wrong it should send a letter or police officer to make sure that it is taken down, but that is all.

</comment><comment><USER17> The article glosses over a significant part of Google's argument: "To be clear, none of the four Googlers charged had anything to do with this video. They did not appear in it, film it, upload it or review it. None of them know the people involved or were even aware of the video's existence until after it was removed."

Why exactly where these people charged with anything? What kind of ridiculous law is this? I feel this has less to do with free speech and internet freedom than it does with common sense.

</comment><comment><USER18> Question, if I host a blog, am I responsible for all comments on the blog? Does this mean that all comments must be held for moderation before they are posted?

This would kill hacker news and a large number of other sites, and is not solved by self-hosting.

<comment><USER19> Everyone could host their own comments, and blogs would only accept links as comments on their posts.

      </sarcasm>

<comment><USER11> Judging by cases in a few countries, bloggers would _then_ be responsible for anything on the page at that link.

If you reversed that, with commentors posting comments with links to the post, you'd then need aggregation to read comments, making aggregator sites and software makers vulnerable.

It doesn't really stop until we devolve down to a pre-search engine web. But since "we" will be reshaping things, that'll be all good, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of the potential advantages of the large UGC platforms like Youtube is as a risk pool. Would it be easier for me to fight off an attempt to censor me, or would it be easier for Google to fight off an attempt to censor their users? Note that I'm not saying these platforms necessarily do perform this function, but many do to at least some extent. The thing that bothers me most about this case is that Google seem to have provided Italian law enforcement with the personal information of the criminals. Could you imagine the outcry that would happen if there were a case where AT&T kept recordings of some one's phone calls and used those recordings to turn that person over to the police after the police somehow discovered that some one(without even knowing who specifically they are looking for) was using an AT&T phone as part of criminal activities? Obviously, most people will accept some amount of wiretapping, but I'd expect fewer people to accept either this hypothetical situation or the situation with Google in Italy.

</comment><comment><USER21> Decentralising social networks, hosting, and search is desirable.

But I can't see anything positive in the decision of the Italian court. Remember this is Italy. It's Berlusconi's country. And the guy is hellbent on eradicating independent media. He won't stop at shutting down Youtube.

Being able to anonymously publish stuff is a _very_ important aspect of the freedom of speech!

</comment><comment><USER22> Gosh, I'm willing to imagine ... and yes if it were easy to generate quality content, index-able, search-able and security issues didn't require admin level skills to publish devolving to peer based sharing would be great ...

But the aggregators exist because the content consumers want consistency, ease of discovery and all the admin heavy lifting done for them ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Good work imagining! Now go make something! Building tools for the personal web is no harder than writing a Hacker News clone. It just requires more imagination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Youtube wants to have the right to profit from the contents of its service, but it doesn't want to be held responsible for damages the content causes.

A landlord who leases his premises to the bar owner for a fixed sum per month is not responsible for the behavior of drunk customers. He's just renting the premises. But the bar owner who makes money on the drinks should be responsible.

The law should assign responsibility to Youtube in a similar way. If Youtube is merely a "landlord" it should not be held responsible for copyright infringement. If, however, it profits from the individual videos that are uploaded, it's hard to see why it should not also bear the loss caused by copyright infringement.

</comment><comment><USER24> What's good about the Internet is that it's global. That means that if one country or one group of countries tries to censor something, the host can always be moved elsewhere. Since we have things like Tor now, censoring the Internet itself is not possible; you can only go after individual violators. And if those are outside of the law, you just have to deal with them -- nothing can be done to stop it.

On that note, clearly we should just launch a satellite that beams youtube videos to everyone. Since shooting down a satellite is illegal under various international laws, this should be a safe place to host your autotuned lolcats.

</comment><comment><USER25> I believe Opera is trying this concept in their latest web browser, <http://unite.opera.com/>, although I don't think it's gaining much traction. I believe they're bundling an easy to use web server where you can self hosts and share your content, media, etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> The simple answer: if YouTube and other similar sites didn't exist. We may not have had some of the major innovations of the last 10 years

definitely independant music would be way behind where it is now.

<comment><USER11> When people fall prey to one-true-wayism (as the article does), they wipe out a lot of possibilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If police can walk inside your hotel and stop people from breaking laws, they should be able to do at your website.

What we should build is a universally accepted protocol for government policing. Every UGC website must implement it. The government gets some police accounts which they can use to block objected content. Every government manages their jurisdiction. There can be treaties and smart organizations like NSA who do things automatically.

May be futuristic, but it will happen.

<comment><USER28> No they shouldn't, simply because police shouldn't be able to enforce immoral laws. If there were a morality field generator that magically allowed only the enforcement of morally sound laws within their sphere of operation, it would be a good idea to build a bunch of them and turn them on.

<comment><USER27> If companies can than why not the police?

There would be guidelines and you could take them to court for breaking them. There will be new sections in the law and new court judgments to base actions upon. It would evolve. Let there be a special department trained and specialized in this.

All I am saying is pass the onus to government and give them a way to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Summary:

1) "Hating facism is too cliche"

2) "waaahhhh-big-evil-corporations"

3) "I miss animated GIFs and rainbow borders, grandma needs to handcraft an impossible-to-find-pre-web1pointOh site for her cat videos and not use EvilTube. Will be way cool."

</comment><comment><USER30> If it wasn't for Jackson's tit, it would've been... (Read the YouTube story).

</comment><comment><USER31> no YouTube - just MeTube =)</comment>