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The Big [Censored] Theory

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Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#651

Post by MichaelCollins »

jjeaff wrote: post #600
MichaelCollins wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside the matter of Mormons and their weird puritan sensibilities, what this company essentially did was reinvent movie rental, but because they did it on the internet instead of a brick and mortar shop we're all expected to think it obvious and self evidence that what they did was horrible. In other contexts on sites like this, "do [common thing] but on a computer" patents get mocked and derided because "but…

While some Mormons may have "weird puritan" values, simply wanting censorship options for some movies is something that many families would like to have, not just Mormons. And I don't think it's necessarily puritan to want to cut out that one or two scenes of a head exploding in an otherwise family friendly flick.

I actually agree, but I got the sense that the company being mormon was meant to bias the reader of that comment towards thinking that the company was in the wrong. I hoped to drive the conversation past that prejudice by conceding and dismissing it rather than pushing back against it, because I felt that on this forum pushback would likely prompt a religious flamewar rather than a discussion about digital rental.

Using EDL files to edit movies for my family is something I've actually done before. I think a superfluous sex scene is okay in most contexts, but when watching a movie with parents/grandparents it's generally too cringe for me and everybody else in the room. I used mpv's EDL functionality for this: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/edl-mpv.r...

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#652

Post by biggu »

sudhirj wrote: post #58

We have this kind of censorship in India as well, even the in weirdly innocous places. In James Bond movies, and I think Gone Girl as well, scenes were by zooming into character's faces or just straight cuts. This is probably the only reason I maintain a US iTunes accounts (used to have to buy gift cards from sketchy sites online to keep this going, but I recently discovered that my Indian Amex card works fine with a…

I live in India and have a Netflix account here. There is no censoring

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#653

Post by bjarneh »

Similar to the feeling I got when re-watching Dark Knight Rises, and Drive on a plane (Lufthansa?). Something was missing — the violence. I guess airlines have to assume that any age can watch films on those screens and cut films accordingly. Strange to think that a country wants to treat the entire population like Lufthansa treats kids.

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#654

Post by Banana699 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #609
lettergram wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are just a handful off the top of my head… https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ https://twitter.com/alexberenson/status/1558060844549902338 https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/FACEBO... https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/government-dictating-what-soci... I can keep going, but most of those people who are impacted you don’t hear from due to censorship.

Always funny when people link to publicly available content in order to demonstrate that it is being censored.

Not as funny as when people link to publicly available content in order to demonstrate China is banning it.

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#655

Post by MichaelCollins »

Thorrez wrote: post #569
kelnos wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really a "logical extreme", that's a straw man and an obvious ploy to do something you're not supposed to be able to do. I think a reasonable person would see that what you describe is an attempt to make an end run around both the spirit and letter of the law. But what VidAngel was doing was "one copy = one view", which is IMO entirely reasonable. There is zero moral difference between mailing someone a Bl…

The difference is when mailing it, it gets worn out, so after a certain number of plays the renter needs to buy a new copy. If it's fine digitally it never gets worn out.

Suppose the company threw out the disc and bought a new one after it was rented 50 or so times, would that be a meaningful change to the subjective moral fairness of their business model?

Also, how do you feel about libraries rebinding their books to fix/prevent the books from wearing out?

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#656

Post by jlawson »

Spivak wrote: post #645
eyear wrote: post #592

Where is the diversity we advocate? Must the whole world accept one value? We accept homosexuality so we won't accept other people like Muslims not accepting it? So WE are definitely right and people who are different from us are absolutely wrong?

The paradox of tolerance isn’t really a paradox, it’s a proof by contradiction that the naive notion of tolerance is not sound. Homosexuality is a natural observable phenomenon in the human species across time and cultures. It is an aspect of people as fundamental as height or skin tone. Not accepting them for any reason is intolerance and does not have to be tolerated. It is also intolerance to not accept Muslims, b…

You're misunderstanding the paradox of tolerance, at least as Karl Popper originally formulated it.

The only form of intolerance Popper recognized was bigotry around beliefs. The concepts (and words) homophobia, racism, transphobia, and islamophobia were not even invented when he wrote about the paradox of intolerance.

When he described the intolerant, he specifically meant people who would use violence to stop others from expressing different beliefs - nothing else. He did NOT mean "intolerance" of any particular skin tone, or sexual behavior, identity group, etc.

This is important because intolerance of sexual behavior doesn't structurally break the system of discussion and truth-finding that we use. You could jail every blue-eyed person, just was we jail people who commit certain crimes, but as long as everyone can speak then our system for collective truth-seeking still works. The ONLY meaning for the word "intolerance" that breaks that is intolerance of free speech, and that's the only kind of intolerance that Popper said needs to be suppressed with force. And he was right.

I see this misunderstanding constantly online - honestly it's hideous to see people twisting Popper's pro-free-speech message into an excuse to crush those they misunderstand or disagree with. Literally inverting his meaning.

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#657

Post by Banana699 »

4512124672456 wrote: post #550
lettergram wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

People (or NPCs/bots, like you call them) downvote you because not only is it a bad take and does have questionable grammar, it's also full of misinformation. Let's take your first point for example. If I go on Fox News right now and search for articles about the 2020 election being stolen, I get plenty of articles and opinions talking about it. How exactly was it censored, and how is it comparable to censorship in C…

>censorship is not inherently bad

Then why do you get mad when China or the Middle East bans material they find objectionable? They simply have a different definition of what counts as objectionable, that's all, and it's well within their rights to enforce their different cultural values within their borders, just like you argue that a "democracy" has this right.

Also, when I go to Netflix and search for "LGBT", I see tons of material. So that must obviously mean censoring of LGBT is a pathetic lie, it's right there in one (very big, much bigger than Fox) media outlet so it's obviously not censored.

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#658

Post by truthwhisperer »

sudhirj wrote: post #58

We have this kind of censorship in India as well, even the in weirdly innocous places. In James Bond movies, and I think Gone Girl as well, scenes were by zooming into character's faces or just straight cuts. This is probably the only reason I maintain a US iTunes accounts (used to have to buy gift cards from sketchy sites online to keep this going, but I recently discovered that my Indian Amex card works fine with a…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#659

Post by kuschku »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #372
isk517 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even during the video rental days you weren't allowed to just go out and purchase a bunch of videos at Walmart and start renting them out, you need to have purchased the rights to rent out the video.

You are completely wrong. There's no such thing as "right to rent video." You could 100% buy a bunch of videos and start renting them out today, and it would be completely legal. Netflix does this today for their DVD rental business. This is also why libraries are legal. You can't buy a DVD and charge tickets to see the DVD played by you. You can't stream the DVD's contents over the Internet. But you can absolutely r…

In the current age of gigabit FTTH connections, I wonder how the situation would be if the service provider would just allow you to rent a dvd drive in a datacenter that's connected via regular sata, just tunneled through the internet.

That'd avoid all the "breaking the DRM", "modifying the data", etc.

As provider you just offer a device that loads dvds from a user's in-datacenter storage cabinet into their in-datacenter dvd drives, and rent them a dvd drive.

That might be complicated enough to avoid the whole "performance" interpretation

Re: The Big [Censored] Theory

#660

Post by thebradbain »

jibe wrote: post #606
thebradbain wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said white house directive, but I said he used his social and political power to effectively ban it from, well, really being talked about in the spotlight. There's truly plenty of articles on the subject, or you can ask anyone in Los Angeles who worked in the industry about the concerted effort of Hollywood executives to avoid that word at the behest of Reagan's administration. Also, your examples are not par…

"There's truly plenty of articles on the subject" But you can't cite a single one? That's pretty suspicious. "It's really not too big of a jump" So in a very long winded way, you are saying you made it up and have no evidence? wow...

No, I'm actually saying there's so many articles on the subject from so many different perspectives that support my point that I do not even know where to start. The effects of Reagan's policy decisions are still studied today through the lenses of media, health, and political science.

It's like in 20 years if someone were to say that because neither Trump or Biden explicitly passed a singular law requiring you to work from home that they had no effect on the rise of remote work during Covid. That's what "It's really not too big of a jump" is meant to illustrate– that one thing directly leads to another. Obviously presidential policy isn't just purely laws. But here's a collection of links from a wide variety of sources (including his own foundation) that support my point. There's hundreds, if not thousands, more.

If I'm wrong, please provide _me_ some concrete proof that Reagan had nothing to do with US's societal paralysis and suppression of the AIDs epidemic, because I think that's the point that more obviously needs defending.

https://www.wpr.org/how-reagan-helped-usher-new-conservatism... https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2020/the-other-time-a-us-presid... https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230616196_9 https://www.reaganfoundation.org/education/curriculum-and-re... https://www.press.umich.edu/331707/the_president_electric https://daily.jstor.org/ronald-reagan-the-first-reality-tv-s... https://www.vox.com/ad/18175876/ronald-nancy-reagan-white-ho... https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/beloved-media/ https://www.press.umich.edu/331707/the_president_electric http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/wihr/pdfs/Banwart-MoralMajori... https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/8/29/20826545/hoberman-make... https://lithub.com/ronald-reagan-presided-over-89343-deaths-...

In fact, even the article you yourself linked (aptly titled Hollywood’s struggle to deal with AIDS in the ’80s) supports my point:

"So perhaps it isn’t surprising, then, that it wasn’t until the mid to late ’80s that a few flutterings of references to the AIDS crisis began to pop up. And even then, many of the artists who first used their art to broach the delicate topic were obscure pop bands or directors of fringe movies."

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