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If it wasn't for Newton, we wouldn't have to eat bruised apples.
If it wasn't for Newton, we wouldn't have to eat bruised apples.
Too bad (Score:2)
Its too late (Score:2)
The problem... (Score:4)
A.H.
"If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things."
In Fairness... (Score:3)
Interesting, and informative. (Score:3)
Now, if the word processor manufacturers would get off their butts and let the software read/write Postscript... this would be a true cross-platform, program indipendant, junk-rich document format. but alas... most word processor programmers are dumb as a stump.
Copyright used to control users (Score:3)
A clear argument, for once (Score:2)
Unlike the Adobe person he quotes, this guy actually seems to understand what he's talking about. Instead of making broad generalizations such as "the founders of our country loved IP laws," this guy knows a little bit about the background of IP law, and also presents a clear, non-techie view of IP and copyright law.
He points out that nobody ever imagined that the copyright holder could have such exclusive conrol over content, and I think this is the heart of the matter. Although content control is now possible, and perhaps even legal, that doesn't make it "right." DVD Region coding may be acceptable to some(I think it's dumb and purely greed driven), but forcing someone to "lease" a utility simply to make more money is inheritly wrong. In some cases lease-only makes sense(few consumers need to actually OWN their phone service, for instance), but owning your word processor or paperback book is an option which works, and should be available. If I want to read a book once or 500 times, or eat it, or burn it, I should be able to.
Well, enough ranting. Back to work :)
Re:Its too late (Score:2)
"lessig == smart" won't compile (Score:2)
'smart' is a property of 'lessig' (which is an author, a subclass of human being); you need to call a field accessor:
lessig.isSmart() == true;
Unless you want to go through the trouble of overloading operator== for all the different data types of the fields in the author class, which would create even more problems if you had more than one field of the same type...you see the problem? Too much work.
The Second Amendment Sisters [sas-aim.org]
But laws are still influenced by big money... (Score:2)
So, we want laws that support progress, but at the same time leave enough freedom for the authors to make a profit with their findings. (They should at least be able to get their invested money back.) Where should the line between the need of protection of the authors rights and the wish for progress from the public be drawn?
In my opinion that line was drawn at the right place, but the latest changes indicate that big businesses push successfully to change the "balance" (Lessig got that right as well) to their favor. Is there a way to influence this trend without having lots of money? I don't really believe that many politicians listen to intelligent remarks from normal citizens. So, what is the way to get heard without using illegal means?
Re:Offtopic: PDF (Score:2)
Which is the lesser evil? (Score:2)
My Experience With The DMCA/RIAA This Week (Score:5)
I run a fairly successful (free) auction site. Yesterday, I had a voicemail left on my machine at work from the Director of Legal Affairs for Universal Records.
When I called to speak with him, and played a little phone-tag, he brought up the concern that a user had posted bootlegged Godsmack recordings, on CD-R's, on my site. Godsmack's management was not pleased with this and voiced their concern to Universal Records.
The representative I spoke with seemed understanding and realized that I am an individual operating a free, non-profit website with no intention to exploit intellectual property ownership. I explained that all I could do was review the auction in question and notify him of any decisions or actions that were made after I weighed his concern.
I reviewed the auction, which the seller had clearly explained in the item's description, was a compilation of bootlegs and songs that were not commercially available by the artist and that, as such, there was no financial impact on the artists themselves. You do not need to be a lawyer (and I am not one) to realize that this is most likely still very wrong. Bootlegging is, generally, a bad thing. And making money off it is probably almost always illegal.
Still, my concern was not for my own legal well-being, as the site clearly states that items being sold are the sole responsibility of the person posting them and all concerns should be addressed directly with that person. My concern was, in fact, how and what precident I would be setting for the future of my site and its users.
My final decision was to notify the seller of the situation, leave the auction up, put a notice on the auction item itself that the record company and Godsmack's management had concerns regarding this and as such, it was no longer available, should not be bid upon, and for all intents and purposes, the item should be considered not to exist. The auction page itself remained, until the seller willingly deleted it, for information purposes.
I notified Universal Records immediately of the decision I had made and received an email confirmation. They seem to have found my handling of the issue acceptable.
Now, my understanding is that even if these bootlegs were, somehow, legitimate and legal, I would have been required to remove/ban the auction until it could be proven that the item was acceptable to sell. Simply by someone claiming a wrong done, I would be required to behave and proceed with the assumption that, until proven otherwise, a wrong had been done. Is this correct? To what extent does this reach?
On a side note, during my conversation with the Universal Records lawyer, he said that (paraphrasing) "Our only concern is that our artists and their management feel damaged by material being exploited to make money which they should have control over." To which I replied, "I completely agree that it is wrong for someone to exploit an artist and their work for monitary gain without respect to the artist and ownership of their material."
Obviously, I was making a slight risk at agitating a lawyer with lots of financial backing by a very large corporation, but I thought it deserved to be said -- and how many chances do you get to tell a major record label what you think of their treatment of artists? I think it had to be done, or I'd be forever kicking myself for missing the opppertunity.
His response? He was silent, long enough for me to have to pose an inquisitive "...hello?" before the conversation continued.
---
icq:2057699
seumas.com
Re:Its too late (Score:2)
That's not really true (Score:2)
I just meant that the only true artform is the original form in which the art was created. If the art was first created through a keyboard, and if the keyboard did not modify it, the art is still mine. Otherwise, the keyboard would surrender all IP rights or else pay me royalties
Thus, you do own your own digital artwork: the artform requires the use of certain tools. However, the art of a program isn't in the binary, it's in the source.
55 years (Score:5)
No copyright has expired in this country since the end of World War 2.
When the copyrights expire sometime around 2008, Congress will most likely vote to re-extend them again. Unlike what the Founders intended, entire generations can be born and die without seeing a copyright expire. A whole generation with no access to a "common pool of knowledge," but plenty of opportunity to be harassed by corporatist police state goons (e.g. 15 year-olds in Scandinavia).
Re:The REAL problem... (Score:2)
I rambled a bit there but the point I'm trying to make is that we may be a bit f*cked up at the moment, but I believe we'd do better fixing what we've got than trying to switch over to a socialist/facist/whatever system.
By the way, Dolfy, what'd you think of "Schindler's List"?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The system is out of date. (Score:4)
Another result of this is the fact that the "thing" that is being protected has become an idea, not actually a "thing" at all. At most tangible, it is a process or method; at least tangible it might be innovative concepts for which the originator should not go unrecognized. Copyright is no longer restricted to "maps, charts and books." It reaches anything "fixed in a tangible medium of expression." It no longer regulates only publishers; it reaches anyone who makes a "copy."
Perhaps the IP laws, copyright laws, and patent system need an overhaul. Well, certainly they need an overhaul. The emphasis needs to be returned to innovation and progress, and the periods of protection need to be shortened. A serious dialogue is a good start. Getting the government to change things takes a long time. What can we do in the mean time?
This isn't the first time... (Score:4)
... that the government has taken the interests of business over the interest of technological advancement. The whole thing certainly resembles the patent problem.
Unfortunately, right now we (the USA) as a country judge ourselves based upon our economy. The 1790's weren't the time that we draw most from - we draw more from the industrial economy of the 1920's.
What Mr. Lessig said very eloquently is perfectly applicable to the 1790's. It's not to the 1920's, the time of the economy of the nation being the only priority. Except that our economy is now based on information - most of it entertainment information, but information nonetheless. It's the old "Mickey Mouse's copyright is expiring-let's extend the copyright term" situation.
It took major politics to bring workers rights up as an issue in the 1920's. Unfortunately no polititian wants to touch the copyright and patent issues - because what both parties stand for is money. There is no major political party concerned with issues of copyrights. (Does anybody know Mr. Nader's position on copyright law?)
In this situation, the consitution is an outmoded model. Instead consider the suffering worker of the 1920's as the model - except we don't suffer physically, only intellectually.
let the free software switch begin. (Score:5)
If people are given a choice between software that truly belongs to them which they have full control over and being led around on a leash by corporate interests that have goals other than their own, they'll pick freedom every time. Free software will take off because it will become the only way people can get what they really want and need. Projects like KDE and Gnome are coming along to the point where switching from other OS's is an extremely viable solution.
That said, it's sad to see developments like this. When it comes down to it, it's greed and powermongering at it's worst.
BBK
Re:In Fairness... (Score:3)
Easy. Limit the length of copyright to something more reasonable, say the framer's original 14 years (actually, In order to keep up with the times, I think it should be less than that - the pace of innovation has increased, so the rate at which IP enters the public domain should increase as well). After that time the IP enters into the public domain. Voila, the public gets to use those ideas and information to innovate, while companies have an incentive to create new things since they can't simply rely on selling old stuff to make money. Things get more lively. Lots more innovation. Of course, it will probably mean that companies won't make as much profit as before, but last time I checked there wasn't a legal guarantee of a certain profit margin. Those companies that cannot create new things will likely fail. Oh well. Those that remain will be making genuine contributions to the overall improvement of society.
I am sick and tired of my government working to protect corporations when they should be trying to protect me. The rights of the public should ALWAYS take precedence over the rights of a corporation. Period. Copyright should apply to individuals and not corporate entities.
Re:Software (C)opyright (Score:2)
Obviously written by someone who has never coded a program in machine language with a pen, paper and a programmer's reference card (optional).
Re:The problem... (Score:5)
That principle is certainly not dead today; gov't groups like the FTC and DOJ only step in when a company pushes the bounds. While there are always people screaming that the gov't has too much control on businesses, I would argue that businesses are free to do nearly everything they want, as long as they pay their taxes and don't hurt citizens or the environment.
However, I would also think that laisse faire works both ways; while the gov't cannot regulate an industry unless it's required, the gov't should not also favor industry unless required (such as during the S&L crisis). However, laws like the DMCA actually benefit companies and do not benefit the average citizen in any real regard. If the founding fathers had a bill like the DMCA to review, they would have probably trashed it, not only for the copyright extentions, but the fact there is no obvious benefit that non-corporations can get from it.
But unfortunately, our democratatic system as it stands is flawed, allowed corporations to buy votes to get such bills enacted. Grassroot campaigns are great, but they rarely have money or media attention to get any votes whatsoever, and many have come to rely on a higher court (which can't be bought) to overturn a law.
What suprises me is that given how fast the two CDA bills were fought and successfully overturned, nothing save for deCSS and Napster has been really pushed forward for anti-DCMA. (IMO, even without the DCMA in effect, both cases would be before courts right now). And to be truthful, I rather not have the DCMA challenged with these cases, because if one of them loses, it sets a dangerous precident that some later case that challenges the DCMA with more legit concerns would have to overcome. A win for the copyright holders might also toughen up some other copyright holders and cause a strong death grip for many sites on the web.
And to come back to the case in point, in the case of copyrights, the time a copyright should be granted should be related to the number of people that would be interested in said product, and the time of delievery to said product. In 1800, say with a million Americans and a lack of rapid communications between the various states, 14 years is reasonable. In 1950, 200 million Americans, and with an interstate system, fast printing presses, and the proliforation of tv and radio, 14 years is overkill, because the large amount of information there and the speed to get it to everyone. Today, with 300 million and the internet, the amount of data has probably exponentally grown the number of citizens, and thus, the time for copyrights should be much much smaller.
Intellectual Monopolies (Score:5)
The endless extensions to the rights and protections granted to the holders of intellectual property are, especially in their most recent incarnations, nothing short of astounding. No reasonable person can defend the actions of the few, large players in the "Intellectual Property Industry" (another thing the framers never could have conceived of) in transparently prolonging the life of the Mickey Mouse franchise. The DMCA is the current pinnacle of the efforts to coopt the creative by corporate interests; a law which is, in form and function, an anathema to artists (of any dicipline) and their audience alike.
Society is not peppered with man-as-island "artists" and "authors" and "coders," who spin out delicate and frail inventions from ivory towers, desperate for protection from marauding information pirates. We are intimately dependent on one another, on our ideas, our dreams, our goals; each of us fuels the others work as citizens, as thinkers, as creators of new ideas, new art, new programs (an art in itself, certainly). The unprecedented progress we have witnessed in the last century is unquestonably operating in spite of the growing trend toward brutal protection of intellectual property, in a vacuum of both understanding and enforcement. This intellectual growth could not have happened under the culture that is being created today, and a balanced intellectual property doctrine wisely recognizes the necessity of all ideas to mature into the public domain, and ignores the natural ecology of ideas at the extreme peril of those who would live under it.
As a programmer, it is easy for me to follow the news, watch the lawsuits, and reach direct, immediate, and objective conclusions about the impact of intellectual property (especially software patents) on our discipline and the world that it serves. The peril to innovation of the current intellectual property law, and our interpretations of it regarding software, is so obvious that it has spurred a phenomenal and almost unexplainable social phenomenon: free software. But it goes way beyond software, and it's easy to infer how much real damage "overly strong" intellectual property law is doing to our economy among "solution-oriented" disciplines, and this doesn't stop short of harm to our more personal lives in "softer" industries like music, literature, etc.
We have now a very small group of capitalists who have grown very fat by exploiting, and then expanding, the weaknesses of our intellectual property laws. They will naturally stop at nothing to preserve their effortless wealth; they have no interest in creating a healthy society: their only interest is their own success. Of course, in a democracy, their absurdly small minority should be drowned out by the balance of the citizenry. Everyone's interests should be represented, to insure that no one's self-interest foils a fair government in presiding over a healthy society.
Of course, you can do ABC news polls out the wazoo, and you will find numbers that lead politicians pandering greedily to the IP interests. Most American's can't be bothered to think about these issues, even as the quality of their lives are silently eroded by the forces at work. But, for this, I can't do more than to simply quote a very smart man, who once observed:
"Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands... The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature.
The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."
-Albert Einstein
Re:Syntax Error. (Score:2)
Re:The problem... (Score:2)
Socialism: A social system in which the means of producing and distributing goods are owned collectively and political power is exercised by the whole community.
Which one would you pick to describe Nazi ideology? Just because North Korea is officially named the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, does that make it a democracy?
-B
More Lessig, copyright (Score:5)
The brief (in pdf) is here [harvard.edu].
Re:Software (C)opyright (Score:2)
or bytecode for that matter.
I refuse to see any difference between source code and binary files, because a binary can be written in assembler, which is binary code.
The difference is between how hard it is to express yourself in the language.
Should there be different copyright laws just because a book is written in danish and not english ?? Or a program written in python vs. assembler.
Python is a interpreted language, like wise is assembler. Assembler is just interpreted by hardware.
So, weather or not something is binary or "source code" i want the same laws to apply for it all.
ion++
Making criminals via legislation (Score:3)
Would it really be so bad if Walt Disney, Co. lost their copyright protections to Mickey & Co? Sure, we'd start seeing Mickey pop up in all sorts of unexpected places, and Disney might suffer harm because of this. But economics is not a zero-zum game. Were Disney to be terminally damaged by this and soon thereafter be relegated to the nostalgia bin, there would be another entertainment conglomerate to rise in its place.
My point? That the "overly strong" copyright laws that exist today are actually weaking our economy. For certain, these copyright laws are benefiting the status quo: Disney, Seagrams, etc. But by putting up legislative barriers to innovation such as these, companies are protected from having to compete in the arena of ideas. Further, I have a very hard time with the idea of almost perpetual protection for cartoon characters, jingles, and pop horror films. There are always the so-called "experts" who frighten Congresscritters with their gloom-and-doom predictions were Mickey to go into the public domain. I hardly believe the world economy would crash. We'd just start seeing more Mickey, and probably in ways that Disney doesn't like. That is not a bad thing.
- Rev.Re:"lessig == smart" won't compile (Score:2)
Re:55 years (Score:4)
Tangible medium of expression (Score:2)
Re:The problem... (Score:2)
Lessig is right about Thomas Jefferson (Score:4)
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson [let.rug.nl], August 13, 1813
It sounds to me a lot like what RMS has been saying all along.
Prevention is the problem, not a solution. (Score:3)
I hate what it takes from the thief.
See, it has measures that seek to take away the ability to steal, not just to make it illegal. They say the encryption is illegal to break, and it's illegal to show others how to break it. Next, having a debugger will be illegal because it gives us the abity to figure out the encryption and so break it. (okay maybe an exageration) This is bad. Now, don't take me wrong here, I don't want to live in a crime ridden world. But there is a reason that we have a right to a jury of our peers.. That reason is that only people like us can judge us guilty of a crime. Even people who have admittedly killed other people have been let free, judged to have extenuating circumstance, or other reason to do so. Ever hear of self defence?
So If the ability to kill is taken from me, what do I do when a person who has figured out how to retain that ability triess to kill me? Die, I guess.
No, I don't think that people should or could pirate DVDs for self defence. No, I don't think that copying DVDs is tantamount to murder. I simply think that you can make it illegal for me to do something, and punish me for doing it, but you should NOT be able to take away my ability to do so.
See, a all-encompasing law can not pertain to every case. A body of peers will help to keep the law applied fairly (well, it should, but let's assume it does for now). So let me keep my ability to steal. Just punish me for doing so after the fact, okay?
Murder is illegal, but a kitchen knife is not. Copying DVDs is illegal, but the decryption software is not... oops. At least I can tell others where to get the decryption software... right?
Btw: what happens when thinking about circumventing copy protection is outlawed, and circumventing the 'anti-Bad Thought device' is illegal? Should our ability to think bad things go too? Don't laugh, 600 years ago the idea of sending a message instantly to the other side of the planet would have gotten you laughed at or killed.... there was no other side of the planet, let alone the message part. Yet here I am, doing it.
Reference? Please? (Score:2)
Like sqlrob asked, please post a reference we can use in getting this through to folks.. This is the kind of awkward question that should be asked by our representatives when the debate comes around again if not before - and if they dont ask it, then we should be asking THEM why not when they come up for re-election! Corporations and PACs can buy publicity and spin, they cant buy our votes - the only way to ensure a politician represents us is to convince them that to do otherwise would be political suicide....
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
Re:In Fairness... (Score:3)
There is such a solution. It's called letting the company that thinks its copyright has been infringed go after the people who are infringing. This is the solution that worked for generations before digital copying became possible, and it's actually the approach that seems to be having a decent degree of success in stopping digital copyright infringement today.
Take a look, for instance, at the Metallica vs. Napster affair; Metallica asks Napster to shut down people who are infringing copyright, Napster does so, and now a lawsuit decides whether the shut down has to continue. This works. In order for a group to infringe enough to do serious damage to a a big software company like Microsoft, they need a large organization that can be tracked down and gone after legally. In fact, when Microsoft complains about the cost of "pirating" of their software, it's almost always complaining about well organized groups that are stamping their own CD's, making bogus Microsoft holograms, and the whole works.
That's why the whole prior restaint (i.e. access controls) aspect of the DMCA is so odious. People are essentially assumed to be infringers before they ever lay hands on the product, and are denied their fair use rights because it's the easiest way of keeping them from non-fair use copying.
My radical philosophy (Score:2)
OK, I understand that when I take this particular sequence of numbers and feed it as input to a particular decoding program, out comes the latest Brittany Spears or whatever. So what? If I take it and feed it to Word, out comes a file of text. (It's gibberish. But then again, a lot of what is produced with Word is gibberish.)
It's not at all hard to imagine a program that takes an MP3 file and produces a pretty picture ... maybe a histogram or something. At that point, can you argue that the MP3 is uniquely a representation of the Brittany Spears song? Maybe I want it for some other purpose. Do I really believe that digitizations has completely undermined the entire basis of intellectual "property"? Actually, yes, but I don't expect the system to fall. This nagging inconsistency at its root might, however, force a rationalization sometime soon, wherein the social contract is reviewed and amended in the full light of day rather than (metaphorically) hidden in the cover of darkness.
RTFA first (Score:4)
1) Not everyone who questions the current state of patents, copyrights, and IP, is out to steal such. Saying "what a minute, is this a good idea" does not make one a criminal.
2) Current copyright laws are not necessarily what the US founders had in mind. And then he goes on to show why I thinks that way.
The US patent system, and the UK's as well, was explicitly set up to spread learning in the population. The Statute of Anne in 1710, which gave the rights to works to the authors as opposied to the printers-publishers, has the title 'an act for the encouragement of learning . . .'. It took until 1774 for the House of Lords to fight off the publishers' fighting of the Statute and to "affirm the public domain created by the 1710 statute by denying common law claims to the perpetual protection of intellectual property"
Before the late 1500s there wasn't much of anything like IP. There were some granted patents, which tended to run for 5 years or less. The response of IP holders to easier copying has been to push the period of ownership out further and further, which doesn't really address the problem of copying IP. Of course, neither does running around trading files and shouting "Music should be free".
Some of the push for longer term IP came from Europe, where establish wealthy families and companies wanted to maintain control longer. The result has been that the the longer terms have spread to the US, where control of IP has left the actual creators and ended up in the hands of large organizations. It's worth the trouble of getting copyright to go for life+70, if it means that the company that actually controls the IP can now make money off of it for 100+years. Corporations can live "forever", people don't.
Re:The problem... (Score:2)
2. Yes, there is no doubt that, like Stalin, Castro, and many other leaders in the 20th centrury, I was a Facist. However, in Nazi Germany (at least for the Aryan-Germans), there was a redistribution of wealth. (Does the term "Nazi-gold" seem familiar). Before the Nazi rule, people were in absolute poverty, since the great depression drove the inflation rate in Germany so high. After the Nazis came into power, suddenly infrastuture came to Germany. Roads were built. State-sponsered education was avaliable. More jobs were created. (This was money being redistibution from, in part, the very wealthy Jewish business oweners). That's socialism. In fact, many Germans didn't find out about the Concentration camps until after the war ended.
Now I did do some things that, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have done. However, the Nazis were very much a socialist party... people just forget that it was benificial to the (Aryan) German people, which is why they supported it. The "allied" countries from WWI forced Germany into economic recession, so of course a social-nationalistic movement like the Nazi was bound to happen. Was there really any other choice?
A.H.
"If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things."
Re:55 years (Score:4)
Works that did expire were retroactively given their copyright back - this is why you don't see "It's a Wonderful Life" EVERYWHERE anymore around Christmas. You have to pay for it again.
Re:In Fairness... (Score:3)
The first step would be returning to the 14 year expiry of copyright. 95 years is draconian and deprives the nation of -true- innovation and progress.
2)be fair to the Companies' rights
The companies' "rights" as enshrined in law are so ludicrously far reaching these days they are laughably unenforceable. When the rights are in equal measure to the public interest, we'll talk again about "fairness".
3) somehow prevent the pirates from illegally stealing software.
The most brutally obvious answer is: "Give it away for free". Structure revenue models around other profit centers, such as service, support and hardware. Keep R&D costs under control, and base your development efforts on easily implemented open standards and community effort.
SoupIsGood Food
Re:The problem... (Score:2)
-B
Re:Its too late (Score:2)
It's time to get some laws changed to strengthen the free flow of ideas in the public domain. A few examples: 1)reduce the length of time for which copyrights exist; 2)strengthen fair use exceptions; 3)make it clear that reverse-engineering of copy-protection schemes is allowable.
Headline "Adobe Sues Harvard Professor" (Score:2)
"The text is available on my Web site, Mr. Warnock. In a PDF file.
Adobe Systems has sued Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig for violating the Digital Copyright Act (UCITA). Press reporters quote Adobe Chariman John Warnock saying ,"Just because some commie pinko teaches at Harvard doesn't mean he can go around violating the lawful agreement he entered into by using our product." Questioned further in the incedent Mr Warnock further explained that the Harvard Professor had maligned Adobe Systems and Himself in an online editorial. When asked about UCITA violating Mr Lessig's free speech rights Warnock replied, "This ain't about free speech. Its about responsible speech and following the law."
Mr. Lessig couldn't immediaetly be reached for comment, but one of his students reported his comments when the he was served a Court Summons during a class. The student though he heard the professor mutter, "What, the truck?" but he wan't certain.
Re:The problem... (Score:2)
I could point out that every purely socialist system ever tried has failed miserably, and cost tens of millions of people their lives. The Nazis, who were only very, very, very, very tangentially connected with socialism (a point which you have glossed over in your previous posts) did, in fact, only succeed in gaining power through a confluence of economic factors and an ability to whip the populace of Germany into a frenzied mass of extreme racists. Russia had its purges, killing, what, like 20 million of its own citizens? And millions more, I believe, starved, in the name of creating a worker's paradise.
Hmm... I'm trying to think if I'm missing any obvious ones. China isn't really even close to socialism anymore. In the words of Leon Lederman, it's a gerontocracy(re: government of old people). There are like six very old people who control this country for their own personal betterment, not the betterment of its proletariat. Cuba may be the world's best example of a communist/socialist state, actually, believe it or not. And even there, there are obvious problems. I see no evidence to suggest that life in any of these countries, at any point, is better than the life of the average American today. Socialism was supposed to solve the dehumanization inherent to modern society. But Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao and the rest got it wrong.
I suspect that you're going to say that none of these states was purely socialist, but so what? America isn't purely capitalist either. If you're going to defend the USSR by saying that it wasn't a real socialist state, I'm going to defend the US by saying we're not a real capitalist state. No doubt, if we were, the DMCA would not exist. (and indeed, it might not, as it IS government intervention in the marketplace)
I don't know what the answer to the DMCA is, but it's almost certainly not a socialist revolution. Were the US to have a revolution, it would be about six months before we'd have our own Hitler/Stalin/Mao who'd come to power. All three of those men, while doing great things in terms of increasing the power of their countries, did horrible things on a human scale.
And that brings me to my other point. Your user name. I want to let it go, but I can't. Adolf Hitler was hardly a visionary. And he did do some great things, I guess. He managed to resurrect Germany from the defeated shell it was after the first World War into the hellish war machine that it became. In terms of an economic, industrial and military feat, this is impressive.
But, so what? Imagine, for a second, that Germany had won the war. A thousands-year-old people would be extinct. History, as a field, would only exist to serve the Reich. (because you're crazy if you think Hitler would have stopped at controlling continental Europe) Literature, art, music, all would be under extreme censorship. I could go on.
My point is that yes, Hitler did do some good things. But that fact is outweighed by the awful things he did. There is no excusing that, and hearing him called a visionary is enough to make me ill. I pray that you're just poorly informed. Because, frankly, I don't know what to say if you know all of the facts and you still believe what you say.
Yes, every story does have two sides. But that doesn't mean that one of those sides isn't right. Unless you're a complete moral relativist, right is really easy to determine in this case.
I know most of this note is off topic, and I expect to be moderated down accordingly. But some things shouldn't be allowed to go unanswered.
Re:My radical philosophy (Score:2)
If you feed it to a music decoding program, and out comes Brittany Spears, isn't that gibberish too? :-)
Re:Making criminals via legislation (Score:2)
So, it doesn't matter what you wish to be free, information, software, etc. What matter is what the author wishes. Feel free to preach to folks the benefits of freeing what they create. What protects Disney, the RIAA, etc also protects us.
Another Lessig Article (Score:2)
http://www.tnr.com/061900/lessig061900. html [tnr.com]
Briefly, Lawrence Lessig argues that the Clinton administration's
regulatory inaction during AT&T's acquisition of MediaOne will have
dire consequences for the future of the Net. Among them:
1) "Customers accessing the Internet through cable will have no guaranteed
choice of ISPs. Instead, the cable company will pick the ISP.
Rather than allow consumer choice among scores of providers offering
broadband Internet service, the cable company will permit just a few
ISPs of its own selection."
2) "... cable companies [will] design the next generation of the Internet
on the model of the old telephone system--in which the network owner,
by dint of choosing the ISP, gets to control the kind of content and
use the network will allow. "
Thoughts?
Re:The problem... (Score:2)
2) The Nazis used socialist methods to gain more votes within the german people. never forget that the Nazis did (in part, at least) earn their power trough democratic elections! Of course, you know that better than anyone... How's the weather in Argentinia?
3) In my (western european biased) book, socialism is not a negative term. We have plenty of "socialist" parties around here who would never dream of taking away private property or outlawing democratic elections. Their main argument is creating a safety net for poorer people in an extremely competitive economy (strong medical and social institutions accessible for everyone). This requires a healthy (or powerful, if you will) governement.
What was my point now? Damn, gotta go to sleep
Re:let the free software switch begin. (Score:2)
I wish I lived on the same planet that you do. On my homeworld, the people blindly throw away their freedom at every opportunity.
---
Re:let the free software switch begin. (Score:2)
Every day, I come closer and closer to believing that the only way to rectify this situation is hacktivism. I used to believe the legal pendulum would eventually swing the other direction and provide balance. I now think this may never happen as our government sinks deeper and deeper into the pockets of corporate interests. Perhaps the only way we can stop this is to make it effectively impossible for anyone to control IP. "Velevet" terrorism, where the only harm is in the corporate bottom-line might be the only way. Unlike other usurpations of the rights of the individual in the past, WE hold enormous power in this instance. The weapons with which to fight are easily obtained, unlike firearms and explosives.
Re:Copyright used to control users (Score:2)
Windows 98 USB drivers will allow USB devices to run under Windows 95. There was no big change to the driver model.
So, instead of patching the OS to add the feature you needed
All you need is the drivers. Besides, the USB patch breaks a large amount of legacy stuff, and still doesn't come with the full compliment that Windows 95 does.
you downloaded a copy of a different OS. How can you not view that as piracy?
If the hardware vendor tells you to talk to the OS vendor, and the OS vendor won't give you the driver because they are monopolistic twits and want to force you into a $200 upgrade, what else can you do? You're only using the driver, which you are legally entitled to as owner of the hardware.
95 and 98 are *different* products
They are? Could have fooled me!
The problem is the "product" (Score:2)
Software isn't a manufacturing industry, it's a service industry. Programmers are more akin to mechanics than to assembly line workers.
Doesn't it seem odd to you to attempt to sell anything that costs nothing to duplicate, is easily duplicated, and easily distributed once duplicated? It's as flawed an idea as, say, basing one's national currency on blank white 8.5x11 inch paper.
Or in other words "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "Well, then don't do that!"
Of course, the common complaint against this idea is "I'm a programmer! How do I feed my kids if I can't sell software?" And the answer is - most programmers don't work in the for-sale software industry as it sits today! The vast majority are employed by banks, hospitals, manufacturing companies, and so on as in-house problem solvers. The for-sale software provider is (statistically speaking) a minor player, and a bit of an abberation.
If you are a for-sale software programmer, and you are losing sales to "pirates" (I actually prefer the term "librarians" myself) well, it's YOU who are shoveling your money out the door. Why do that?
Re:The problem... (Score:2)
There are those of us who apologize for neither state communism or capitalism. We think that, in the end, they are basically the same thing: People attempting to take control through power structures like government.
I say, abolish all government, eliminate authority, and move towards local autonomy and direct democracy. Nobody can represent the needs of you and your community better than you and your community, respectively.
Anarchism FAQ [infoshop.org]
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
the death of copyright... (Score:4)
Kuro5hin.org is now having a discussion on the death of copyright [kuro5hin.org], started because of a discussion on the Freenet mailing list. What if Freenet really took off and copyright became unenforcable? What would happen to artists?
Re:Tangible medium of expression (Score:2)
The key idea behind "tangible" is that it's sufficiently permanent for someone to disprove a claim of infringement. Or as I like to reword it, it's tangible enough that you can prove the Vice President really did say what Jay Leno was mocking him for saying. One minicassette recorder can disprove a roomful of eyewitnesses.
Re:Interesting, and informative. (Score:5)
I agree with you completely! If only that damned Adobe would open the file specification [adobe.com]. Obviously they are trying to get a stranglehold on the market and blight out the common man.
We need open programs that can read [foolabs.com] and create [wisc.edu] pdf files. Without such programs, the PDF format is useless.
So let's fight the power and boycott Adobe until they free the format!
Re:NO nononononononooooooooooo (Score:2)
What does Natalie Portman have to do with this?
Re:In Fairness... (Score:3)
The result of this probelm has often been copy protection schemes. These schemes usually end up as a deterrent to only those who don't feel it's worth the effort to get around the copy protection. So now we have a law which prohibits circumventing the copy protection. Such a law even makes some sense to me at first thought. The probelm is that the law is being abused. The recording industry is using this law to dictate how you can use the copyrighted materials. They are using "copy protection" to extend limit how you use the material beyond the rights they are given by law. If you circumvent thier "protections" they say you are breaking the law, even if you your actions would have been considered fair use.
I doubt this is what Congress intended when they passed the law, at least not all of the Congressmen that voted for it. The courts need to overturn the parts of the law that interfere with fair use, and Congress needs to create a better balanced copyright law. This time they have to remember that the goal of copyright law is not to simply protect the rights of copyright holders. The law must also limit those rights. The framers of the law must keem in mind the actions of the recording industry to subvert the law and take away the rights of individuals. It's the recording industry that's trying to circumvent the law in this case. The law provides for fair use, and the recording industry is attempting to subvert that. Hopefully the recording industry will lose the lawsuits, but be forced to pay the legal costs of those they are persecuting.
Re:55 years (Unconstitutional?) (Score:4)
Re:NO nononononononooooooooooo (Score:2)
Just to nitpick, I think you meant Turing complete. Waitaminit - you mean that's the reason PostScript is so slow - it's NP complete, and each possible display of the document has to be enumerated individually? Now I get it!
Re:The problem... (Score:3)
Godwin's Law prov.
[Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
M$ bashing karma whore (Score:2)
My GeForce, Modem, NIC, burner, CDROM and Monitor all came with their own drivers FROM THE MANUFACTURER. Are you saying M$ should have supplied those too?
Anyway you have the patches for 95 to have USB support so use 'em. If that isn't "viable" perhaps you should look at another O/S...Hmm..how about Linux? It seems to be the fav. of M$ bashing Zealots. USB for Linux [linux-usb.org]
Perhaps you can purchase some common sense with the "auto +3 for bashing M$" karma. Just because a product doesn't have exactly what you want doesn't mean they are using copyright to control you. If that were the case, any s/w you pay for to get an upgrade or added feature would be immoral in your world.
--Clay
Re:Its too late (Score:2)
We have to? You mean there is law which says that once in a while you have to buy some plastic? Or does a guy with a gun come by, collects your wallet and leaves some piece of plastic as a token of his appreciation?
If you don't think that this crazy shit is worth it, don't buy it.
Kaa
Re:Lessig is right about Thomas Jefferson (Score:2)
Of course you have to draw the distinction between an idea and an implementation of an idea. For example, Z-buffering and BSPing are ideas. The source code for Quake-3 Arena is not an "idea" in the traditional sense.
Now, Jefferson's notion that protection of intellectual property should be based on public benefit does bear a strong resemblance to the anti-premise expressed in Stallman's "Why Software Should Be Free" (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html, "The Question of Premises") but notice that Jefferson does not draw the conclusion that patents and/or protections should never be granted.
I don't necessarily disagree with Stallman's premise--only the conclusions he draws from it. I fear that if we don't learn from history, in particular the history of socialism, we will be condemned to repeat it.
The regular
Re:55 years (Score:2)
--
What about right and wrong? (Score:2)
Lessig's article is about the pragmatic motivations for IP policy; the reader posts are volleying on the same foundation. What about basic property rights? If I create an IP product, be it a song, program or article, should I not have full property rights? Why should this basic right be abrogated in the case of corporations?
The Constitution is a fabulous piece of work, but the artificial provision for patents is incongruous and infuriating. Instead of contextualizing IP as a human right (like press, speech, religion, etc.), the Framers prop it up using "promotion of progress." This is clearly a collectivist argument. What we need is a dialogue about the precise nature of property rights; the policy details would be easy to codify thereafter.
Perhaps, the Slashdot community cares about rights as long as they apply to the masses -- how sad.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Re:In Fairness... (Score:2)
Sure. But it's *absurd* to say that if I were to draw a painting of something that *your grandfather* created *fifty years ago*, you would be somehow injured --- yet, if your grandfather had been a writer, I would be in violation of his copyright.
Re:The problem... (Score:2)
>in Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler very clearly states
>his agenda, and the book almost reads like a
>play-by-play of what he will do in the decades to
>come. Had these people read his work, Adolf
>Hitler would probably not have been elected, and
>have ended his life as a minor political
>functionary.
Wonderful how hindsight's always 20/20 eh?
Of course now, almost everybody does it the other way around. They get elected, THEN they get the lucrative book deal.
So do you mean that I *MUST* read all of the ramblings of the likes of pat robertson and jerry fallwell so that I will not vote for them? Sorry, I don't plan to subject myself to that tripe.
And for that matter, you don't really HAVE to have read Mien Kampf in order to know where hitler stood. He merrily blamed jews for all of germany's problems in public while he was running for chancellor.
Oh... you think that a biggoted fascist will not get elected if people know about him beforehand? Well, I think you overestimate the average voter. How then, prey tell, does someone like strom thurmand, well known to be a segregationist, manage to keep his senate seat? How about the guys in serbia who elected slobodan milosovich?
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Re:The problem... (Score:2)
Ahem. That's not what socialism was, that's what some soft-headed intellectuals intended it to be. As to reality...
Socialism: A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a close-knit political elite, total socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of aggressive expansionism.
Kaa
My Stupid anology (Score:2)
Re:55 years (Unconstitutional!) (Score:2)
Which is unconstitutional. Article 1, Section 9. No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
Well, it should be. The Supreme Court stupidly held that that only applied to criminal law, not civil law, back in 1789. Schmucks. The Sonny Bono act would have been unconstitutional. And, frankly, should still be. See here [cato.org].
Re:The REAL problem... (Score:2)
It's not an all-or-nothing deal though. We already have socialist aspects integrated...like socialized health care and education and some socialized, or at least heaviliy regulated and hand-picked, industry. We don't have to "switch over". We *can* fix what we've got by introducing some common sense reform...instead of having knee-jerk reactions that imaginary "socialism" and "communism" will turn our country into some fascist tyrannical police state. It's all so tired and stupid.
Re:A Word on Thomas Jefferson (Score:2)
Our darkest days have occurred when we turn our back on the careful balance of freedom and responsibility embodied in the Constituition for expediency.
President Jackson decided that the Constituition was in the way of modern politics, and said "The Supreme Justice has made his decision, now let's see him enforce it." He then marched the Cherokee off to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears.
SoupIsGood Food
Re:The REAL problem... (Score:2)
I'm not very good at explaining the whole deal, but there is a good (huge) FAQ at:
http://www.anarchism.ca/faq [anarchism.ca]
It's been awhile... (Score:2)
((rant mode on)those F-ing required HU/SS electives... BOREING!!! who assigns "required electives" anyway, what an oxymoron. The least they could have done if I HAD to take non-CS classes is let me take PS chemistry or physics electives. But NOOOOO You *HAVE* to put up with that humanities/social science (heh "social science" there's another oxymoron) crap. sigh... no wonder our educational system is going down the toilet. At least *I* got my BSCS while it still is a *CS* degree and means something. ok well, (rant mode off))
But one of the primiary tenants of the socialist philosophy, as I recall, is the establishment of the socialist state by means of a violent overthrow of democratic society. And subsequently any private property WOULD be siezed by the government and redistributed as it saw fit. "The socialist manifesto", or something it was called. Supposedly, it was written by the guy who invented socialism in the first place.
Hardly sounded like "never dreaming of taking away private property or outlawing democratic elections" when I had to sit through it. Oh, and was this professor EVER a socialist. He went out of his way to make it sound like a "workers paradise" or some nonsence like that. God that class was torture.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Re:Software (C)opyright (Score:2)
I used to do it for short programs, esp. hardware tests and diagnostics.
I've run into hardware engineers who wrote all their firmware in machine code. They believed the use of an assembler was reserved for pascal coding, quiche eating, wimps with poor memories.
Re:doh! (Score:2)
Which was exactly my original point.
Re:Copyright used to control users (Score:2)
Sorry. Typo. Thet should read
still doesn't come with the full compliment that Windows 98 does
Anyway..
But you didn't use the driver they provided...
Don't buy too many cheap USB devices, do you? Half the time they count on the driver being on the Windows install media and DO NOT INCLUDE ONE. I cannot use a driver I do not have.
Take for example my buddies USB webcam. The driver for it wasn't included in the patch. (which is moot; I think MS vaporized it to sell more copies of 98) The manufacturer of the webcam tells him that he should contact the reseller for it. The reseller points out that the instructions say to 'contact your OS vendor for unsupported platforms' and tells him to call MS. MS tells him 'We're not releasing the driver'.
He called me, I went over with a copy of Windows 98, and installed the driver.
Re:The problem is the "product" (Score:3)
It all depends on what businesses you deal with and what sort of computers they use. The job description is usually "systems programmer" or "systems analyst", and these are usually mainframe programming jobs.
This job is only possible because most of the big mainframe packages are distributed as source code, and companies that use them need to customize them. It is difficult to install and maintain an MVS system without having someone on staff who understands IBM assembly language and can do some simple programming. These programming systems typically have hooks in them called "exits" that you need to write short assembly routines for. Most systems programmers spend their time making little customizations or tweaks to large, vendor supplied source-code based systems, not writing big applications.
Look in the technology want ads for the keyword "BAL", which means, "Basic Assembly Language", i.e. IBM 370 assembler. Also, MVS, CICS, and VM. Those are the main in-house programming jobs, and they are always in demand. Even more so, now that most universities don't teach mainframe programming anymore.
Most would rather let someone else deal with developing and maintaining software, so that they can concentrate their efforts on the things that they do best.
The cost of having a software vendor make and maintain custom modifications to their product for your company will generally exceed the salary of a good systems programmer. Remember, we are usually talking small changes, not wholesale development, although some well-established companies develop their own software systems. The advantage to having an in-house programmer is that they can do something this week that would take months of negotiations with the vendor to get done. Also, the in-house programmer is the go-to person when disks crash, software crashes, etc. A systems programmer can rip through a huge core dump, find the symptoms, get on the phone with IBM, and have a five line source code patch downloaded and installed in an hour that fixes that specific bug without touching anything else.
Companies that buy pre-packaged, object-code-only operating systems and software packages don't need systems programmers, because they have no source code to customize. They also have no choice but to install big service packages, if they even have that option, that often introduce more new bugs then they fix. They are at the complete mercy of their software vendors.
Different worlds.
Re:Making criminals via legislation (Score:2)
Who says I don't have a right to kill you, oh yea, we all do. Who says anyone has a right to use another person's creation? Same folks. These are our laws, we decide them, and if necessary, we can change them.
Just because you have created something, DOES NOT MEAN you have an exclusive right to control and protect it. These rights are determined by law. Unfortunately, old Walt got enough money together to change the law so nobody else can draw his mouse. Fortunately, enough people are finding out how crooked this whole situation is and are working towards solutions.
You also leave out the question of Time in your statement, this is the most skewed part of our current copyright system.
--
Re:55 years (Score:2)
coincidentally enough, just prior to when Mickey Mouse cartoons started.
That's not quite right.
Works written before 1923 are all in the public domain. Works published with a copyright notice between 1923 and 1963 are in the public domain unless the copyright owner filed a renewal form with the copyright office at the correct time. All works published with a copyright notice between 1963 and 1977 are still under copyright. All works created since 1978 are copyrighted, whether or not a copyright notice was affixed.
Works that did expire were retroactively given their copyright back - this is why you don't see "It's a Wonderful Life" EVERYWHERE anymore around Christmas. You have to pay for it again.
This is also incorrect. In the case of "It's a Wonderful Life", the copyright on the film expired, and the work was considered to be in the public domain. Later, the original copyright owner determined that both the underlying story and parts of the musical soundtrack had been copyrighted separately, and those copyrights had been renewed. They then acquired those copyrights, and based on those copyrights, were able to suppress the film, not because the film itself was copyrighted, but because showing the film would infringe on the music and story copyrights.
The copyright on the film itself was not retroactively restored though.
Re:My radical philosophy (Score:2)
Aren't all (english) words, and therefore all texts, simply an arrangement of 26 letters that are in the public domain? You can break down anything to the component level, molecular level or whatever, but that doesn't nullify copyright or patent protection any more than murder can be justified by refering to your victim as a construct of component elements.
carlos
Re:In Fairness... (Score:2)
But consider: Disney took about 50 years to re-do Fantasia. With a 14-year time limit, we'll see Walt's original concept carried out...And after all, most of their profits come from new or derivative works. When was the last time you saw "Steamboat Willie" and paid for it?
BTW -- I think 14 years is still reasonable. If you get it too short, derivative works will be rip-offs or publishers will just wait until a work enters the public domain.
Re:Making criminals via legislation (Score:2)
Walt Disney was a creator of art. The Disney Corporation is not. The Disney Corporation is a tax entity that employs creators of art. It is not a legal instrument whereby Walt Disney can reach out from the grave and control the American media in perpetuity.
Except I guess congress is trying to make it that way. Thanks, guys.
Re:Intellectual Monopolies (Score:2)
Mickey poping up everywhere (Score:2)
If Di$ney's copyrights were to expire, we would not see Mickey poping up everywhere. Mickey is not covered by copyright, he is covered by trademark. And as long as Di$ney defends the trademark, and has it in use, they will continue to hold it. Copyright only covers the movies Mickey was in. So, should the copyrights fail, we could distribute "Steamboat Willy" to our hearts content, but we couldn't use Mickey's image in anything we created without infringing upon Di$ney's trademark.
This is all the more reason that the arguements that "we must extend copyright so that our characters won't show up in porn." don't wash.
He's dead Jim and its still copyrighted (Score:2)
Even sour cream has an expiration date, but a once its under a copyright, it and its dead author will never cease to expire and become free again.
Re:My Experience With The DMCA/RIAA This Week (Score:2)
I would certainly agree that such an auction is illegal, which is what I imagine you meant. I'm not convinced it's a morally bad thing, though. It's not causing financial loss to the artist or the publishers (assuming they haven't intentionally kept supply scarce to drive the price up, a la Disney videos). It's not invading the artists' privacy, since the material is already available. It is, however, allowing fans to get hold of material which they couldn't otherwise obtain. If there is profit to be made here, and the publisher has failed to cash in on the opportunity, then it only has its own stupidity to blame.
The idea of allowing copyright holders to restrict the distribution of a work is so that they can reap some reward from it. If they withhold distribution of that work, without attempting to gain any reward from it, then the value of that work is being wasted.
"Intellectual property" isn't like real property. It's not a basic economic right, at least in most legal systems; it's a privilege which is granted so as to gain benefit for society.
Re:Intellectual Monopolies (Score:2)
Your argument sounds good, is in tune with what seems the prevalent view among Slashdot readers, and has clearly gone down well with the moderators, but to me seems lacking in substance.
If we are intimately dependent on one another as you say, shouldn't the things that this dependence is grounded in be the object of property rights so that we can give others the incentive to provide them even when it is not in their self interest to do so. If we don't assign these property rights, we have an externality - a positive one in this case - and externalities lead to what economists call Pareto inefficient outcomes, which means that everyone could be made better off without making anyone worse off. There are two solutions to externalities: (1) government regulation, and (2) assigning property rights and letting the market determine the outcome. Now, I hope that most people would agree that government is no competent for this task single handed. So assigning property rights seems the right thing to do.
Maybe this is what you mean by a balanced intellectual property doctrine, and all you are saying is that these property rights should not last forever. But you following attack on capitalism suggests otherwise. The capital system you are attacking need not and does not depend on infinitely lived intellectual property.
NB this is intended more as a question than an attack.
It's about fair use and privacy (Score:2)
Fair use is the clause that says it's OK for you to photocopy several pages out of a book you own to bring along on a trip. It's OK for you to make a mix tape of your CD's. It's OK for you to print out that article you read online because you want to read it on the john. You can do all of these things now, perfectly legally, for no cost, and without writing anyone a letter, turning over your credit card number or Social Security number or home phone. All of this is possible partly because our Government had the wisdom to carve out a place for reasonable use, and partly because it's awfully hard to sucessfully enforce restrictions on these behaviors.
In a copyright-enforcing digital world, potentially none of those things are true. As someone above mentioned with shrinkwrap licenses, in the digital world, they can easily write code to prevent you from copying, printing, or reading a work twice in the same day. You can be charged for every time you listen to an album. You can be prevented from copying a short section to add to your journal. And, perhaps most ominously, you can be required to submit personal identification every time you do one of these activities.
For an example, check out eBrary [ebrary.com], a site implementing software to charge you a quarter to highlight and copy text, or print it.
Re:Intellectual Monopolies (Score:3)
The missing piece in many of the uber-IP enthusiasts arguments is often where they got their own ideas from. Taken to its logical conclusion, what they currently propose is atrocious, and will ultimately have a chilling effect on learning, competition, and commerical and cultural development. Beyond that, I think what already we have now is seriously flawed. Coming up with better answers will be tricky, but that does not reduce the imperative. Creating massive "criminal classes" are not a particularly good way to run a society.
Re:your original point was about copyrighting comp (Score:2)
Blockquoth the poster:
I can only assume either (a) I am being more obfuscated than usual or (b) you're not reading the actual posts. Here is the contention: A computer file is a collection of bits, in that it is recorded as a series of binary states (one being designated "on" or 1, and the other as "off" or 0). Every file has a definite start and a definite end. You can therefore string the bits together, with the start bit being the least significant and so on. Taken togather, that string of bits becomes a binary number. That's the connection that was being made.Concrete example: Let's take the following "picture" and encode it. My picture is simply a crude letter L, as follows:
Now, we'll encode that as four pixels, meaning we really have or, assuming "X" is the on state, I'll assume our tiny encoder (gPEG?) takes the upper left corner as the first bit and then proceeds left-to-right and then top-to-bottom. Our gPEG would then consist of the following bits in a file: This is sort of significance-reversed (although that isn't terribly relevant). I can view this as the binary number 1101, or the base ten number 13. My "picture" is really just a number. Of course, the gPEG conversion would allow me to reverse the transformation and produce a picture. But another program (gNOTE?) could instead read this as a sequence of pulses to the speaker in my computer, making a little ditty.Same file, different interpretation. It's just a number, and what you do with the number determines what it means. In that sense -- admittedly, as my original subject line indicated, a radical sense -- the file itself is not copyrightable, because it is just a number. Sure, playing it through the gPEG makes it a picture, but playing it through gNOTE makes it a sound.
Hypothetical: I take a CD which I own and rip a track to MP3. I take the MP3 file and, using a specially-written program, interpret the data as pixel hues for a PNG. Perhaps, if the original MP3 happens to have especially nice behavior, the picture that comes out is aesthetically pleasing. (It'd have to be an abstract thing, of course.) If I then sell the PNG, am I violating copyright?
PROCEED WITH CAUTION: If you say "yes", you are saying that encoding an MP3 entitles someone to ownership of a number ... allowing that someone to sue a different artist, expressing himself/herself in a different way (say, PNG), were to create an image whose binary representation happened to match the MP3. Given that, I'd rush out and artificially create MP3s that happen to be the binary strings 0 (easy), 1, 10, 11, 100, etc. And then I'd own most of mathematics.
Also blockquoth the poster:
No, a file is none of these until interpreted by a given algorithm. A tape recording is physically different from a book, which is physically different from a painting. But digitize them, strip them of their associated extension, and suddenly they are indistinguishable. If a file doesn't end in MP3, how do you know it's a song?I know you won't agree but that's OK -- you're just wrong. The system is fundamentally flawed, because it does rest upon a fallacy; i.e., that songs, books, articles, pictures, etc. have physically meaningful distinctions in the digital domain. They don't -- they are each just a number -- and therefore the system creaks and groans and (I believe) ultimately crashes.
Eventually the IP system will Blue Screen of Death . What happenms next will be extremely interesting.
Re:Making criminals via legislation (Score:2)
Do I have that right?
Define "well rounded"... (Score:2)
>an entirely different story.
They're not effective because they use totally the wrong approach. I can become a well-rounded individual on my own WITHOUT sitting through the rantings of some clueless ivory-tower type about how how evil capitalism and democracy are.
HU/SS classes use the "this is how I think, therefore this is how you should think. Now memorize and regurgitate it" approach. So that's what you do memorize his rantings, regurgitate them onto the exam papers, and forget the entire horrible expierence when the semester's over.
Real classes, OTOH, such as the CS/PS/MA series give you problems that require thought. They teach you how to solve problems. They require you to exercise your brain. Therefore the knowledge is retained.
The difference between the "ranting zealot" and "challanging taskmaster" approaches to education is why, while the author of the "socialist Manifesto" escaped me till you replied; I can still knock out the pseudocode for Cohen-Sutherland or UNIX Quicksort in a few minutes, and have them functional in C shortly thereafter.
Mabye SOME people CAN just photographiclly remember all of the random spewings of clueless old geezers. I, usually have to have to THINK about something to retain it past finals time, however.
OTOH... You want well rounded? Well, hundred year old politics is definately NOT by forte. Wanna talk history of Ska music, and the influence of first and second wave bands on the current third wave and ska-core bands? How bout the evolution of punk rock/straight edge/anti-racist action culture? Or perhaps vulcanology? Or underwater sound propagation? Fun with pyrotechnics? The merits of Rollerblade in-lines vs. Oxygens or Bladerunners? Or, speaking of Blade Runners, classic and modern SciFi? Or plate tectonics (well, perhaps that should fall under vulcanology (my next vacation is to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.))?
Or if you MUST talk politics, how 'bout modern, relevant stuff; like DMCA issues? Or the Fed's idiotic "war on drugs" where armed robbers, rapists, and other violent criminals are being set free to make room in the jails for durg offenders with mandatory minimum sentences? Or perhaps the archaic and barbaric death penalty and the people about to be executed despite many discrepancies in the trial evidence? Or why I won't shop at the gap, and why I won't buy nike shoes or exxon gas?
There's plenty intresting of stuff to be "well rounded" about without obsessing about a proven-wrong 100-year old dead crackpot.
>The group involved, however, wasn't to be a
>totalitarian regime e.g. Stalin's, but rather
>all of the working class, in a free society.
Ah, but that's the kicker isn't it... Socialism, as it has been practiced in every socialist regeim that existed, HAS been a brutal, oppressive, police state. Take your pick: USSR, China, Cuba, N Korea, N Vietman, Cambodia, etc... So what is "real" socialism... The theoretical ideas of a long dead philosopher; or the actual fruits of his work, as it has been put into existance?
>worker's paradise, since the worker would not
>be owned by corporations, but rather the
>corporations by the workers.
Well, lets see... Last I checked, I don't live in a socialist country (Limbaugh-esque rantings about the "People's Republic of Kalifornia" notwithstanding) and yet, I, and all of my co-workers, have these papers in our bottom-left drawers that say "Option Grant" on them...
>propaganda spewed about socialism and
>communism in the U.S.
>Luckily, many European countries haven't been
>infected with McCarthy's nonsense, and Reagan's
>witch hunts,
Well, they DID threaten to destroy the US you know... does "We will bury you" ring a bell? AND there's the little matter of the conquest of half of Europe, and the threats to take the other half, right after we...
(and before you jump on me being US-centric, I KNOW the US was not alone, and that England was just as important, if not moreso. I *AM* a CS major after all, And I would be majorly remiss to not know where Alan Turing was from. If you can find a copy of "The Ultra Secret" by F.W. Winterbotham, you should read it. It's a fascinating first hand look at the exploits of Bletchley Park.)
...fought the largest war in history to stop the nazis from doing the same thing. Such would be described by PR types as a BAD THING(tm) if you want people to have a good impression of you.
Oh, and there is the little matter of the cuban "revolution" and pointing nuclear missiles at us from 90 miles, right in the perfect position for a no-warning "decapitation" strike. The Berlin blockade and Berlin wall, and the Afghanastan invasion are also not very good ways to convince people that you're "peaceful socialists" trying to bring about a "workers' paradise".
Now, McCarthy was, of course, inexcusable. A cliche to the tune of "when you obsess about your enemy you become like that enemy" comes to mind. And I'm not familiar with any "witchhunts" under Reagan. But I can sure understand the concern. There we had the largest military power in the world promising our annhilation; and they were happily gobbling up big parts of the rest of the world as stepping stones towards that goal. Not exactly something that *wouldn't* engender a good deal of distrust, and yea... outright paranoia.
But remember... just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Re:Intellectual Monopolies (Score:2)
I fall back upon a tenet of American politics: Create powers in tension. Don't allow the concentration of power into any particular sector, but create a system where the power structure is divided and shiftable. It can lead to paralysis but it does not generally lead to great evil.
The threat to the liberty of individuals and the dignity of humanity comes from this: More so than ever, the State and the Corporation are allies. The one kowtows to the other, and thus the inherent tension is lost. So we have no one looking to contain corporatism. And like an unbalanced engine, the system will spin faster and faster until it destroys itself.
Technological mechanisms (Score:2)
Technological measures which attempt to preserve copyright. Those can be broken.
So how do we vote the crooks out? (Score:2)
White House Dinner (Score:2)
I like what Lessig writes. I was 1st introduced to him via /. Many moons ago, /. featured the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School. If you don't understand what this means then I suggest that you search the web to figure this out.
Anyway, I'm out of here. I'm going on vacation. If you see me post when I'm on vacation, then you know that I'm one sick puppy.