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How do the IP laws in place in Western economies constitute shooting oneself in the foot?

One problem is the problem of doing an exhaustive check of copyrights and patents. Though trademark checks are easy (use Google search), copyrights and patents are much harder to check in an automatic fashion. Given only the source code of a program, it's nearly impossible to determine whether or not that program infringes any of the more than two million subsisting U.S. patents. Given only the notes and rhythms of a melody, it's nearly impossible to determine whether or not that melody infringes any of the millions of subsisting U.S. copyrights on published musical works. Though copyright law requires access to the original work in addition to similarity, if the original work has hit the pop charts, the burden of proof seems to fall on the alleged infringer to disprove access (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music).

The terms are too long. Why did Congress feel the need to grant 20 years of exclusive monopoly protection over something as simple as sending the user's identifying information along with the request to purchase something (the Amazon one-click shopping patent)? And why did Congress see fit to grant upwards of 120 years of monopoly on a melody?

But the fact is, as long as something is illegal, and there is money to be gained by enforcing the prohibition, America will find a way.

(Regarding 802.11b WiFi in coffee shops, there's many ways you might be tracked: if it's a paid-access arrangement, then they probably have your credit card. Or your Starbucks-Saver card, or whatever. Or the Feds can require that the MAC addresses of users be logged for some period- and begin to outlaw software which modifies the effective access. Steps like that would be a blow to free software as well)

The only really good strategy for keeping P2P transfers possible is to make them legal. Fighting to reduce the power of copyright is the way to start.

(Encouraging the developement of a safe, reliable micropayment system is an alternative approach, as it might provide an alternative economic model for the RIAA)

Why not utilize a TAR based pseudo FS?

I actually did this once. It's called GBFS, and it's designed to hold graphics, text, and audio assets for programs running from ROM on embedded systems such as the Game Boy Advance compact video game system. I would have used GNU tar, but I dropped it when I saw that the header for each file took half a kilobyte and that I could reinvent a better wheel for my purposes.

The problem with doing a general file system in an archive file format such as .tar, .zip, or .gbfs is that you cannot change the size of a file without copying the whole file system to another file. Nevertheless, .zip and .gbfs do work well as read-only file systems.

Are you claiming that Duke Nukem Forever will not be released within the next ninety-five years?

(context: bad heroin/heroine homophone joke)

Or Milla Jovovich as Leeloo Dallas in The Fifth Element. Mool-tee-pass!

If you lived in a geographical area without a cable Internet service provider and without a DSL provider, would you be whistling the same tune? It costs $200,000 to change which geographical area you live in.

They are slow to upload to

So increase your number of simultaneous uploads. If you have 128 kbps outbound, you can serve approximately three dial-up users at full speed, or six at half speed.

and generally dont share anything either.

Many dial-up users share, but their queues fill up real fast.

I don't think 684 versions of Tetris, each with slightly different graphics, should count as distinct games.

As far as I know, the puzzle gaming community accepts that Tetris, Columns, Klax, Dr. Mario, Puyo Puyo, Zoop, Tetris Attack, and Puzzle Fighter II are distinct games. But should six versions of Tetris with different rules count as distinct games? What about a falling tetramino game where the screen rotates, zooms, and eventually shears like a TV tuned to a scrambled channel?

Find a better ISP

Better ISP? That's not always a reasonable answer. In the United States of America, there is generally only one cable modem ISP in a given area, and DSL isn't available everywhere because of the 4 km distance limitation. Thus, switching to another high-speed ISP could cost $200,000, which includes all the costs of moving your family and getting a job in another state.

This is a call to civil disobedience.

And this is a response to your call. It violates the Bono Act and no other laws.

This was in the United States Supreme Court - the final point of appeal.

This was the final point of appeal in the judicial branch. The actual final appeal is to the United States Congress. If we can present to the Congress a round of overwhelming evidence that the Bono Act is unjust, Congress may reconsider. This begins with civil disobedience.

windows machines ... The year: 1989.

Microsoft Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were in essence pretty shells around DOS. Windows 3.0, the first "Mac killer", wasn't released until May 1990.

The cause: Tetris.

If you're still addicted to falling tetraminoes, if Tetris is still your drug, then by all means shoot up!

Disney's Pinocchio 2.0 (2002) starring Roberto Benigni is much more faithful to the novel than Disney's Pinocchio 1.0 (1940) was, but it got bad reviews and AFAIK didn't do that well at the box office. Fidelity to a classic literary work doesn't guarantee ticket sales; the movie must be adapted to the cultures that exist 95 years later. It's possible to pull this off, but it's also possible to screw it up to hell as in The Time Machine (2002).

Thoreou's (sp?) Civil Disobedience.

You can find a copy of On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau on my Bono Act page.

I predict that you will die before the copyright on any proprietary video game you have ever played expires.

It's the fault of legislators like Sonny Bono who push ever-increasing copyright terms through legislatures.

For 95 percent of published works, is there a real benefit in copyright beyond the 28 year maximum term established by the Copyright Act of 1790?

Audio Stream Recorder 2, bundled with the Creative Audigy 2 [creative.com] allows you to record any WMP or Real audio stream

No it doesn't. If a Windows audio driver is signed by Microsoft WHQL, it turns itself off when playing any WMA file that requests a "secure audio path". If it's not, Windows won't send a "secure audio path" through any unsigned driver.

i've heard (from non technical-type friends) that the shoulder buttons are either a) pressure sensitive or b) "2 state" (semi pressure sensitive)

That may be true of the GCN or the PS2, but I am a GBA programmer, and the GBA provides one bit each for the L and R buttons, bits D9 and D8 of the 16-bit register at 0x04000130.

Sonny Bono's failure to grasp rudimentary physics can be seen as yet another case of evolution in action.

But can Sonny Bono's failure to grasp rudimentary constitutional law be seen as yet another case of evolution in action?

but the most obvious is sound (it cannot play the same number of instruments as the SNES could)

The Super NES could mix eight channels in stereo. Most TVs of the era were mono, and few people connected their consoles to a stereo system. Therefore, we might as well consider Super NES sound mono.

I am a GBA developer. I have written a mixer that, for eight mono channels, takes about 16% of the CPU. In addition, for another 1% of the CPU, I can use the four tone generators from the Game Boy side to add even more voices to the music. A good composer can make nice sounding music with four PCM channels and four GBC channels.

But the nice thing about the GBA sound hardware vs. Super NES sound is that because the samples fed to the GBA hardware are uncompressed 8-bit signed PCM, it's possible to generate samples in real time. Applications include tightly compressed voice and drumloop samples and realtime synthesis such as TB303 emulation.

Attach homebrewed screenshot app here

Not if the kernel goes into a special graphics mode where video memory is write-only. Microsoft Windows already does something analogous for audio, not allowing unsigned drivers to play secure streams and not allowing trojan drivers (Total Recorder, What-U-Hear) to be signed unless they turn themselves off when the Secure Audio Path is open.

[Possession of small amounts of drugs] is not a crime; it may be illegal, but it shouldn't be, and as far as I'm concerned there's nothing criminal about it.

If a fellow can go to jail for committing an act, then by definition, the act is a crime. The "illegal but not criminal" acts are those acts that can get a fellow sued in civil court but can't put him behind bars, such as patent infringement and trademark infringement.

you have no right to perform something created by another without the permission of the creator.

Do you have the right to perform "The Lord's Prayer", first published by Jesus of Nazareth in the first century A.D.?

Do you have the right to perform works created by J. S. Bach?

There does exist a public domain. My question as to the criminality of performing a 1925 work was a crime was an attack directed at the questionably-constitutional Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

But do jaywalking, possession of small amounts of drugs that the pharma companies are probably paying the FDA to ban, and infringing questionably-valid copyrights, even though they are crimes, merit a death penalty? I don't think so. I believe that giving the death penalty or even life imprisonment to a mere jaywalker constitutes cruel and unusual punishment as defined by the Bill of Rights. Of course, the RIAA and the MPAA would love to lock up copyright infringers until the copyrights expire, but that's not how the United States judicial system works.

If there was anything actually redeeming about the so-called "intellectual property" released in the US, a person might be pushed to civil disobedience.

Like civil disobedience? Come break the law with me.

No, in the US at least, there are no copyright expirations right now. In 1975 there were, when materials published in 1921 were expiring and becoming Public Domain. But in 1976, copyrights got 19 years added onto them. So everything pre-1923 had expired already, but things published afterwards wouldn't start expiring again until 1997.

There was a brief period of renewed PD growth, but then copyrights were retroactively extended again. So now we can wait for 2018 for the next work to expire.

And that's assuming Congress doesn't roll it back yet again.

(The "strange" part, of course, is the surprised feeling a USian gets upon noticing entire planet doesn't suffer the same laws quite yet. A situation the RIAA will surely rectify, if the MPAA doesn't beat them to it.)

(My dates may be off by a year here or there, but the principle is the same. Here's an informative anti-copyright extension page that only has vague chronology)

If you are underage or do not consent to viewing such material, please click here. [Walt Disney Company web site]

Why do so many erotic web sites link to the one entertainment company that had the most to do with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act?

rest peacefully in their graves.

Copyright can be transferred in a will.

The film is *old.* There are no copyright holders.

Any film first published on or after January 1, 1923, is still under copyright. You can thank the late Sonny Bono for that.

I love the way this is pitched as being a "development system". It's a flash device....with common uses being to trade pirated games online and download them to your GBA.

I love the way the VCR is pitched as being a "timeshifting system". It's a video recorder...with common uses being to trade pirated television shows and movies with friends and download them to your TV.

In other words, these GBA flash cartridges have substantial non-infringing uses, such as to put multiple programs onto one cartridge and to act as a platform on which to test homebrew GBA programs such as TOD. The decisions in Sony v. Universal (the Betamax VCR case) and RIAA v. Diamond (the Rio MP3 player case) have affirmed the right of Americans to time-shift, space-shift, and format-shift copyrighted works, provided that such copies are not distributed to others, granted by exceptions in copyright law such as fair use (17 USC 107).

I'm interested. I'm tired of having music that sounds too much like Marilyn Manson's band and Puff Daddy's band jamming together (the music in TOD for GBA), and I want something fresh.

But how do you plan on guaranteeing that the music you write is actually original and not unconsciously cribbed from something else?

Lik-Sang is neither a hardware manufacturer

Actually, Lik Sang does manufacture a few devices such as the excellent MBV2 cable, which connects a Game Boy Advance system to a PC in much the same way that Nintendo's cable connects a GBA to a GameCube console. The MBV2 cable lets you run homebrew software on the GBA by copying a binary from the PC into the GBA's 288 KB of internal RAM. But because proprietary commercial games are 2 MB to 8 MB in size, the MBV2 won't let you play those on a GBA. Thus, Nintendo turned a blind eye turned to the MBV2 cable and let Lik Sang continue to sell it.

Plug: Tetanus On Drugs, a homebrew falling tetramino game for GBA. Works with MBV2 cable.

Gamepark GP32

It's not available at USA brick-and-mortar stores (Wal-Mart, Meijer, Toys "Ya" Us, Best Buy, Circuit City), and it's not advertised on USA national TV. Thus it won't have any brand recognition in the average American gamer's mind, not near what the name "Game Boy" evokes. Because it doesn't have the brand recognition, none of my neighbors will own one. And if none of my neighbors own one, I won't be able to play multiplayer games.

And how good are its official titles?

This little handheld game has a much bigger screen than the GBA

But its video is a dumb frame buffer, which means you have to do 2D in software, unlike on the GBA where you get hardware acceleration for 2D and simplistic 3D graphics.

And how long do eight AA cells power the GP32? Eight AA cells will power the GBA for 40 to 60 hours (4 x (2 x AA) = 4 x 10 to 15 hours), or even longer for "battery-friendly" GBA software such as Tetanus On Drugs that loads itself mostly into the system's 288 KB of work RAM instead of taking the power-drain hit of constantly accessing the cartridge.

Why don't they just make "extensions" for copyrights.

Treating the copyright term like the trademark registration term, renewable every ten years, would not work because countries other than the one that allows term renewals would be free not to recognize any copyright term extensions beyond the life plus 50 years that the Berne Convention guarantees. Even Sonny Bono never got to Canada (a tree got in the way).

Why don't they just make "extensions" for copyrights.

Treating the copyright term like the trademark registration term, renewable every ten years, would not work because countries other than the one that allows term renewals would be free not to recognize any copyright term extensions beyond the life plus 50 years that the Berne Convention guarantees. Even Sonny Bono never got to Canada (a tree got in the way).

...Tetanus On Drugs?

Wasn't the Bono act a good thing?

No. Retrospective copyright term extensions devalue the public domain.

To keep our kids from accidentally skiing into trees or something?

The contents of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act had nothing to do with Rep. Bono's cause of death. If you want safety tips for alpine skiing, look here.

Yes, I got the joke, but I didn't find it funny.

Wasn't the Bono act a good thing?

No. Retrospective copyright term extensions devalue the public domain.

To keep our kids from accidentally skiing into trees or something?

The contents of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act had nothing to do with Rep. Bono's cause of death. If you want safety tips for alpine skiing, look here.

Yes, I got the joke, but I didn't find it funny.

Even if Disney's Treasure Planet does rake in some dough late into its theatrical release, or if it sells exceptionally well on DVD and VHS, DisneyCo is in danger of losing two of its cash cows: the copyright on Mickey Mouse (© 1928 Disney) and the USA copyright on Winnie the Pooh (© 1925 Milne, licensed exclusively to Disney).

While you're waiting for the Supreme Court to decide on whether or not to free the mouse, you can civil disobey right now.

Electronic Arts won't be the next DisneyCo until EA starts lobbying to the United States Congress for copyright laws that further restrict consumers and other authors and publishers. Look how much money DisneyCo contributed to get the Bono Act passed in a desperate attempt to keep Mickey Mouse locked up.

Electronic Arts won't be the next DisneyCo until EA starts lobbying to the United States Congress for copyright laws that further restrict consumers and other authors and publishers. Look how much money DisneyCo contributed to get the Bono Act passed in a desperate attempt to keep Mickey Mouse locked up.

on PC you can play games from 1980s to 2002

You can't play games from 1981 to 1995 on a computer that primarily boots to a Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional operating system or a Microsoft Windows XP operating system without emulation or virtualization, because 1. NT operating systems have poor support for DOS apps, and 2. those DOS games that do work with NT may run too fast to be playable.

on PC you can use a lot of freeware/shareware games, Free Software is also much closer to PC than consoles

Same on GBA. Have you played Tetanus On Drugs for GBA?

Pinocchio - Grim

The Adventures of Pinocchio is not by the Grimm Bros. but rather by Carlo "Collodi" Lorenzini. You can read about Collodi, or read an English translation of Pinocchio .

books in the Public Domain that have been hijacked by Disney, and are aggressively defended by them.

The Walt Disney Company does not own the rights to the novel Pinocchio or to the name "Pinocchio". DisneyCo owns only the copyright on its film adaptation[1], including the likenesses of the characters as drawn by Disney animators, and has no grounds to prevent other publishers' film adaptations of the original novel. DisneyCo most definitely does not own the rights to "Noddy", a character created by Enid Blyton that may have been inspired by Pinocchio.

The Jungle Book - Kipling

Which exemplifies . No less than one year after The Jungle Book went PD in a major market, DisneyCo published a film adaptation. The company was obviously waiting for the copyright to run out. Now DisneyCo has closed the door behind itself by pushing copyright term extensions through Congress.

Peter Pan

NOT IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN WORLDWIDE! The European Union recognizes a monopoly on literary works for the life of the last surviving author, plus the remainder of the calendar year, plus 70 years. Because J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, died in 1937, copyright in Peter Pan does not expire in the European Union until 2007, and DisneyCo has to pay GOSH a royalty for every Peter Pan and Return to Never Land disc sold in the EU. In fact, the United Kingdom has granted a statutory perpetual copyright on the work, with royalties going to a children's hospital.

[1] DisneyCo may lose even that if the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft happens to strike down the 1976 extension along with the Bono Act.

Uh, copyright does expire. Albeit after something like 75 years.

The basic copyright term in the United States for works made for hire and works published before 1978 was extended to 95 years four years ago. And Congress reserves the right to add twenty more years every twenty years. Sick.

Just a note, that patent runs out in a couple months, then GIF will be patent free!

U.S. Patent 4,558,302 encumbers LZW compression until late June 2003. On July 4, I will celebrate not only the independence of the United States from the United Kingdom but also the independence of LZW compression from those who are not willing to license its use in free software.

But we still can't count chickens yet. Congress could pass a Cherilyn Lapierre Patent Term Extension Act. If Sonny could get a copyright extension onto the books in the USA, certainly Cher could be a spokeswoman for the pharmaceutical industry to demand longer patent terms.

You caputer the digital out of your sound card

Make that "analog out". Windows ME and Windows XP operating systems have a Secure Audio Path that disables digital outputs and unsigned drivers when playing restrictions-managed audio files.

I also find it useful, although potentially illegal for you Americans, to search the australian, or canadian archives, as both have a shorter copywright timeline (author's life + 50 years).

Illegal? Or just civil disobedience? I'm a US citizen and resident, and I'm mirroring a dozen or so non-US books on my web site. If (like me) you feel that you have little to lose, and you're not afraid to sit in the front of the proverbial bus, come with me and practice some civil disobedience of unjust and possibly unconstitutional laws. But don't try it with your school's name on it, as the school has much more to lose than you have.

but the 70-year plan is pretty ridiculous.

The 95-year plan is even worse.

(I get the joke, but here's what OP was trying to say: OP meant that St John's College has had the Great Books Program for 70 years, and OP goes to St. John's College.)

OK, I guess this Tectoy SMS is probably licensed, but now I'm curious about Brazilian copyright and patent law.

Here we have patent law just like in the us.

In Brazil, do you also have software patents?

Do you have companies that apply for a patent, get it, hide it for years, and then enforce it, so as to harm other firms in the industry?

Do you have broad look-and-feel copyrights, which the USA had until Lotus v. Borland?

Do you have life+70 jail s^H^H^H^H^H^H copyright terms?

Do you have lawsuits over copying a mere four notes?

I've only got 56k and left it downloading Moz 1.2 last night

A Mozilla web browser release for Windows is 10 MB. A V.90 modem can typically download that much data from mozilla.org in about 40 minutes. Many of us spend more than that on Slashdot every day. Just put it in the background and surf with IE or play a video game or something.

It's not a Disney movie. It's from Studio Ghibli in Japan

Monsters, Inc. is not a Disney movie. It's from Pixar. So is that Nemo movie.

Cents from every dollar you spend on tickets to see this movie are still going to the defense of bad copyright laws such as the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and to lobbying for their sequels: the CBDTPA, the Broadcast Flag, the two Berman bills, and the Chastity Bono Act of 2018 that adds yet another 20 years to Mickey Mouse's copyright term.

It's not a Disney movie. It's from Studio Ghibli in Japan

Monsters, Inc. is not a Disney movie. It's from Pixar. So is that Nemo movie.

Cents from every dollar you spend on tickets to see this movie are still going to the defense of bad copyright laws such as the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and to lobbying for their sequels: the CBDTPA, the Broadcast Flag, the two Berman bills, and the Chastity Bono Act of 2018 that adds yet another 20 years to Mickey Mouse's copyright term.

Ok, now since this is the fourth Tuesday this month we like and support Disney?

I buy from the MPAA, but I also give to EFF because I take the Lessig Challenge. But even so, I don't buy from The Walt Disney Company because the company had a hand in not only the DMCA but also the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

If you use a product such a vmware, it's a simple matter to start up windows in a virtual machine with a virtual sound card i.e. vsound.

Recent versions of Windows Media running on Windows ME and Windows XP will not play copy-restricted audio over unsigned drivers. The driver for VMware audio is not signed.

"So apply to get the driver signed." Microsoft won't sign a driver unless it turns off all cleartext digital outputs when playing copy-restricted audio, which means that the virtualizer would have to open a Secure Audio Path on the host operating system.

"Then just use an older Windows OS." And risk newer versions of WiMP not installing.

"Then just use an older WiMP." And lose support for new proprietary codecs such as Sony's, which is (knowing Sony) probably based on MiniDisc ATRAC3.

"Then try something else." And risk doing several years of hard time in prison the next time you step into the UK or the USA, both of which have banned circumvention of access restrictions.

I wish someone would make it a requirement that, to hold a law licence, you must do X% of your time as pro bono.

I hope you mean "pro bono" as in "volunteer legal work" as opposed to "pro bono" as in "defending repeated extensions to the term of copyright".