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Well, to be fair, if we can infer anything from the recent music studies, the same people that are hardcore enough to mod their xbox and steal some games are still buying other games. In music's case, it's been shown a few times those people downloading music frequently are still legally buying more music than the average consumer.

recent reference: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090828/0444096038.shtml

Having said that, we can't really know for sure right now since nobody has studied games specifically, as far as I'm aware. It's probably not that far off.

I'm a little torn on this though, since I have a modded original xbox for xbmc, but my 360 is unmodded. I like the idea of getting rid of cheaters, but there still are some valid reasons to mess with your box in some cases.

The Kindle DRM works about as well as any can (for eBooks).

The same Kindle that won't tell you how many times you can download a book you've bought? The same Kindle that can arbitrarily delete eBooks you've purchased?

Stop deluding yourself. By its very nature, DRM can never "work" in the favor of the consumer. It has zero benefit for the consumer, regardless of how one might sugarcoat its benefits (including statements such as it "works about as well as any.") It's a twisted mockery of the printed word, and any consumer who buys into this deserves what they get.

I'm genuinely curious.

Don't worry that you can't see a business model without copyright: the so-called Captains of Industry can't see one either. The easy answer to your question of how people could be expected to make a living without worrying about copyright is found by reading a blog called TechDirt. There are plenty of examples there, and it's a good starting point if you're interested in this topic.

Mandatory reading for the topic of copyright and patent protections is a 10-chapter book found at Against Monopoly.

I have not been keeping it updated, but I occasionally add stuff to my journal as well.

Nobody browses sites all day as their exclusive usage, so I fail to see your point. Some people actually email, or download things, and the websites we load nowadays are not as small as geoshitties laden animated gif pages.

That's like saying "if you only use a disproportionately small amount of realistic usage, of course you won't hit the cap"

If they did a 3 hour slow throttle, they'd also release it over 3 hours, which would just be as stupid. Don't think a company with a COO that says "we need to change consumers" as opposed to changing their business is going to flex even an inch without it being required by law.

http://news.cnet.com/Study-File-sharing-boosts-music-sales/2100-1023_3-898813.html

http://nme.com/news/44688

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=25462&mode=threaded&pid=225929

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/01/20/dutch.study.file.sharing/

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090828/0444096038.shtml

Actually there was one study that showed the opposite -- it was done by the IFPI. It took all of one minute on Google to find those citations.

By the purest coincidence, TechDirt is reporting that Canada copyrghts their money: http://techdirt.com/articles/20091102/0418556762.shtml

Clearly, this whole subject is very, very muddled!

The placebo effect isn't getting weaker, it's getting more effective. The /. article linked even states that. It the reason why if prozac was a new drug today it more than likely would have been rejected by the FDA.

Also see these Wired & TechDirt articles.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090827/0212446014.shtml

Would it have made a difference if it was called "The Legal Bay" ?

The Pirate Bay was not created specifically for works to be shared without permission from the authors, it was created for people to share their creations.

It just so happens that some people share music videos or music tracks honestly believing it's nothing wrong with that, thinking they promote the bands this way. Other people buy something legally and believe they're allowed to share it with some people, just as they would physically borrow it to other friends (a book for example) - they really see nothing wrong with that. Other people are just jerks and upload illegal files knowing well what they do.

The problem is that the Internet is INTERNATIONAL, and copyright laws are NOT international. There will always people in some countries where there are absolutely no laws or very lax laws about copyright infringement, people that are not educated or simply don't understand what all this copyright talk is about and will upload torrents with illegal content.

This happens with any site, including Youtube for example - no matter how many warnings you see before you get the chance to upload something, you'll easily find clips on Youtube with copyrighted audio tracks in them because in some countries there simply isn't even the notion of copyright infringement.

Youtube is even a worse offender than The Pirate Bay because it also stores the content with copyrighted audio on their server so they can do checks on the file any time they like and they can hire people to manually view and listed to each track - The Pirate Bay can't, they only store a torrent file holding just some file names and some file sizes and they'd have to download each torrent to view the contents which would be almost impossible.

But Youtube gets off easy because they implement the faulty audio identification scheme where publishers send Youtube signatures for audio files and Youtube removes audio from videos when an audio signature is found - but this has problems as this article says:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091028/0306106704.shtml

A publisher simply decided it owns copyright for a public domain audio track so they sent the signature to Youtube. Result: account disabled.
Person decides to post a clip with public domain video recording from NASA. Associated Press gets permission from NASA to post the clip on their site, then claims the videos on Youtube infringe their copyright. Result: account disabled

The lawsuit the article is about is stupid. A court in Sweden says because they couldn't find out who is behind Reservela, the company owning "The Pirate Bay", they just assume those two people are still the owners and decide those two people are no longer allowed to work on it even though The Pirate Bay is no longer physically located in Sweden, the two people are no longer the owners and they're not even living in Sweden anymore.

Frankly, I'd like something other than just looking up studies to try to prove a point. I can cite too.

#1: from PBS.
#2. from kotaku
#3 from Harvard .

How many more do you want?

PTSD being treated by videogames is possible, but that has no correlation to violence.

Oh wait, I'm not done. Here's a summation by techdirt of both your studies and my studies linked .

A whole lot of questions are not precisely answered with all this as it's not only a new area of research but the answers are not straight up conclusive. There is a lack of causation between the correlation, if you will. Reading the last paragraph of the techdirt article shows exactly why I question this (blockquoted below).

Of course, nowhere does it explain why, if the study's findings are true, youth violence has decreased significantly over the same period of time that violent video games have become much more popular. If violent video games really made people consistently more violent, you'd expect to see that increase. And, if that number is not increasing, then you have to wonder if any reported increase in youth violence is even at a level that matters. If there's a marginal increase in aggressive behavior that doesn't lead to any increase in illegal behavior, is that really an issue? Also, when compared with another recent study that shows it's the small percentage of kids who don't play video games who are more likely to actually get in trouble, it makes you wonder if there are some completely independent factors at work here, rather than any direct correlation between violent video games and real world violence.

Couldn't they just make bulk orders through a distributor such as Ingram Micro? Or is Ingram Micro being prohibited from selling to Redbox?

That's exactly what they did.

But... what happened now is that these studios (Fox, Universal and Warner Bros.) told not just the distributors (Ingram and Video Product Distribution) but also retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart to not sell to Redbox. That's restraint of trade. The studios have every right not to sell videos to whomever they want -- but those distributors and retailers can then sell to whomever they want. The studios should have no say in the downstream sales of the videos once they've been sold to the distributor, wholesaler or retailer. That's where the antitrust issue is. The studios are successfully controlling downstream sales.

Source - TechDirt

Want to know the irony of this whole "3-strikes" bullshit? Nicolas Sarcozy, (Pres of France for my fellow ignorants) was the one who started this whole thing. His administration has openly engaged in copyright infringment...

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091008/2344176470.shtml

Apparently some DVD was made about him, to which the publisher only made 50 copies. Sarcozy's people then made an additional 400 copies without permission.

What a dumb fuck

occasionally companies do know to do so. Very very occasionally, and spoken as opposed to actually being done, as dell is hardly a customer friendly company.

Yes, and there's an awful lot of other countries that don't want censorship.

Changes need consensus in international organisations, this is a stupid argument, because you'd never get international consensus on this sort of thing so it wouldn't happen.

Whilst you have one country controlling it however, you get shit like this:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081020/0058002578.shtml

http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/02/us-judge-censors-wikileaksorg.html

Yes that's right, judges in single US courts being able to unilaterally order the effective take down of overseas sites for which they should have no jurisdiction over whatsoever.

Don't try and pretend the countries you list would magically get their way over Western nations if control was shared, and don't try and pretend the US has never done anything wrong whilst in control of the internet.

When you have opposing views sharing power, stupid ideas get blocked indefinitely so the sort of situation in the above two articles would never happen, neither would censorship. Stuff like security issues that need urgent attention would get passed because everyone would agree they're a problem.

Effectively just as in hung or proportionally represented governments, the only stuff that gets blocked is controversal shit that half the people don't want, the only stuff that gets through is stuff that's agreeable to everyone. That's much better all round than having a single entity unilaterally imposing bad ideas on everyone else.

She also copied an entire article off of TechDirt and posted it on her website without attribution. That's two.

LOL - I liked this. I'm surprised the story hasn't made Slashdot (I keep meaning to submit it). For those who hasn't heard, Lily Allen joined in the filesharing "debate" by lobbying for the planned law to disconnected suspected filesharers from the Internet. She set up a blog (now deleted) to tell the Internet why they are wrong, making the same poor arguments that we've all heard before ("it's not free to make, so it can't be free, can it?")

Except she's now been exposed as a filesharing pirate herself - she made "mixtapes" of other artists' music (she admitted she didn't have permission), in order to promote her own career, and the mp3s were still on her (EMI owned) website until she was exposed.

She was also found plagiarising an article in her first blog post, without permission or attribution.

There's been some coverage in the mainstream media, but sadly most are only reporting "Lily Allen against filesharing ... and then shuts blog because of the abuse she received, poor her!"

So basically, it's okay for her to rip other artists off in order to promote her commercial career, as she "didn't have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry", but the rest of us are stealing when we download, and should be disconnected. As an open source software developer who bends over backwards to obey copyright licences (e.g., when I'm looking to include music in my games), I find it ridiculous that she lectures me on copyright law, and gets to lobby for a law I oppose, yet she's the one ripping off artists without permission, and evidently doesn't give a crap unless it's her own music. But when I criticise Lily Allen on her arguments on support for the law, I'm the one who gets labelled a "thief"!

Why isn't Lily Allen being hounded for being a "thief", or sued for millions? And given they were on EMI's owned website, are they going to have their Internet connection disconnected?

And whilst she whined about "abuse" she allegedly received, she was happy to post this offensive rant from James Allan.

LOL - I liked this. I'm surprised the story hasn't made Slashdot (I keep meaning to submit it). For those who hasn't heard, Lily Allen joined in the filesharing "debate" by lobbying for the planned law to disconnected suspected filesharers from the Internet. She set up a blog (now deleted) to tell the Internet why they are wrong, making the same poor arguments that we've all heard before ("it's not free to make, so it can't be free, can it?")

Except she's now been exposed as a filesharing pirate herself - she made "mixtapes" of other artists' music (she admitted she didn't have permission), in order to promote her own career, and the mp3s were still on her (EMI owned) website until she was exposed.

She was also found plagiarising an article in her first blog post, without permission or attribution.

There's been some coverage in the mainstream media, but sadly most are only reporting "Lily Allen against filesharing ... and then shuts blog because of the abuse she received, poor her!"

So basically, it's okay for her to rip other artists off in order to promote her commercial career, as she "didn't have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry", but the rest of us are stealing when we download, and should be disconnected. As an open source software developer who bends over backwards to obey copyright licences (e.g., when I'm looking to include music in my games), I find it ridiculous that she lectures me on copyright law, and gets to lobby for a law I oppose, yet she's the one ripping off artists without permission, and evidently doesn't give a crap unless it's her own music. But when I criticise Lily Allen on her arguments on support for the law, I'm the one who gets labelled a "thief"!

Why isn't Lily Allen being hounded for being a "thief", or sued for millions? And given they were on EMI's owned website, are they going to have their Internet connection disconnected?

And whilst she whined about "abuse" she allegedly received, she was happy to post this offensive rant from James Allan.

LOL - I liked this. I'm surprised the story hasn't made Slashdot (I keep meaning to submit it). For those who hasn't heard, Lily Allen joined in the filesharing "debate" by lobbying for the planned law to disconnected suspected filesharers from the Internet. She set up a blog (now deleted) to tell the Internet why they are wrong, making the same poor arguments that we've all heard before ("it's not free to make, so it can't be free, can it?")

Except she's now been exposed as a filesharing pirate herself - she made "mixtapes" of other artists' music (she admitted she didn't have permission), in order to promote her own career, and the mp3s were still on her (EMI owned) website until she was exposed.

She was also found plagiarising an article in her first blog post, without permission or attribution.

There's been some coverage in the mainstream media, but sadly most are only reporting "Lily Allen against filesharing ... and then shuts blog because of the abuse she received, poor her!"

So basically, it's okay for her to rip other artists off in order to promote her commercial career, as she "didn't have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry", but the rest of us are stealing when we download, and should be disconnected. As an open source software developer who bends over backwards to obey copyright licences (e.g., when I'm looking to include music in my games), I find it ridiculous that she lectures me on copyright law, and gets to lobby for a law I oppose, yet she's the one ripping off artists without permission, and evidently doesn't give a crap unless it's her own music. But when I criticise Lily Allen on her arguments on support for the law, I'm the one who gets labelled a "thief"!

Why isn't Lily Allen being hounded for being a "thief", or sued for millions? And given they were on EMI's owned website, are they going to have their Internet connection disconnected?

And whilst she whined about "abuse" she allegedly received, she was happy to post this offensive rant from James Allan.

There's also an increasing number of bands such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead who have legally released their own material for free online.

And the sky didn't fall in.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090429/0244064692.shtml

It's as though these people think they cannot be criticized by average people, just by the media.

/ Apparently prior art doesn't mean anything. / Exactly one of the main problems with software patents in the current system. Michael Masnick writes about this at techdirt: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090814/0439545883.shtml The problem is that obvious mostly only means there exists many hits in search results in USPTO:s database. For information (processing, calculation, business) its to darn easy to use other words in describing ... information. Searching gets silly... hence abstract. Hence mine field.

This was already mentioned in one of the links in the post.
And I sort of agree. But maybe they want the source code to see if Facebook actually associating a piece of data with multiple categories. I mean, maybe there are other ways of accomplishing what Facebook are doing, that makes them think that they are "associating a piece of data with multiple categories".
Still... don't get me wrong, I don't agree with such a patent.

Not really spot on at all, the stuff that google is doing is actually a pretty good thing. Right now, they cannot display whole books.

With the settlement, you can read books in their entirety online instead of getting a "this is the maximum amount of views" bullshit a page or two into a book.

Try to read into the understanding of what is going on and not accepting that all viewpoints are factual. Same people rising up the anti google machine are behind the anti healthcare machine.

~$200 may be low-end, but . . .

GBP100 != USD200. Not for a few years, currently we're at GBP100 = USD165.020., that's a near 20 per cent difference . . . But price isn't the problem for me it's the fact that reading e-books doesn't offer me anything over reading normal books, except the added stress about carrying around a fragile electronic device rather than a cheap paper back! Techdirt has a nice write up about the lack of any 'social' aspect to the Kindle specifically which may be holding it back, ebook readers are not taking advantage of the growing penchant for mashups, sharing and interacting with our 'media'.

Didn't bungie used to make Macintosh games? How many Apple titles are there from that shop nowadays?

If I were them I would be careful letting people know they are using multiple data sources, I heard its patented. http://techdirt.com/articles/20090831/0308556054.shtml

This is being widely discussed in the hosting industry. The full jury ruling is online, and there's additional analysis and discussion at the Web Host Industry Review, TechDirt and Data Center Knowledge.

Seems like whenever an story about Hulu/etc somes on all the non-USians come to complain about that. So can I complain about it not being offered here in the states and how that's so unfair so I'll just download the stuff instead of pay for it?

Difference is in Europe you can download without the risk of having to pay fines that are so far out of proportion that it's beyond sad. Of course the risk of getting caught is always there but I doubt you will find any country in Europe where your fine will be $750 per song!

Plus, you should have spotify in the US before the year is over.

So, to sum it up, I say go for the illegal downloads ^^

It's possible. In that case, by keeping the deals they make to different developers secret, they will have better negotiating power.

But this could also be more about Apple wanting control of what the media journalists, bloggers, and commenters on internet forums can say about Apple, their policies, and decisions. (E.g. the secrecy requirements may be "defensive" in nature, standard language they could use for all developer tools, possibly)

For example, if Google revealed certain information, it could result in the media publishing critical things about Apple.

Apple is very sensitive and aggressive in controlling their public image, and they are well known for their secrecy.

They are also well known for sending armies of lawyers at web sites or people revealing information they don't want puiblished, or that are excessively critical of them. Their tools include cease and decist letters, DMCA notices, threats to sue, and actual lawsuits....

Examples in recent years:

• Apple Computer ordered to pay more than $750k in attorney fees and court costs in a case that pitted the electronics giant against a group of online journalists who posted information about an unreleased Apple product on the Web.
• Apple Broke the law by lying about Steve Jobs' health
• Apple product failure results in gagging order
• Apple Lawyers set sights on new prey (after sending cease-and-decist letters to "Podcasting" websites over alleged dilution of the "iPod" mark)
• Apple Lawyers bully bloggers over iPhone skins
• Apple Lawyers Tried To Cover-Up Exploding iPod Stories,
• Microsoft Cows To Apple Lawyers, Changes 'Laptop Hunters' Ad
• Apple's lawyers shut down rumor site, 2 (Think Secret)
• Apple lawyers nix box pix
• Apple's lawyers attack everyone over iPhone icons - "Apple's lawyers also sent letters to journalists who simply reported on the fact that the skins were available."
• Apple's lawyers threaten fake Steve jobs (Parody site)
• Apple sued for threatening fan wiki - 2
• Apple sues Victoria School - over the use of a logo that is shaped like an Apple. [...] students are now afraid to give their teachers apples now because of the fruitâ(TM)s striking resemblance to the company logo.
• Apple Lawyers shutting down Iowa Bar's iPod Mondays
• Apple Cease-and-Decists Stupidity Leak
• A

Sydney, Australia.

Massachusetts and Oregon are working on shifting from a gas tax to a mileage tax for precisely this reason. No joke.

According to a funny news report years ago, personal experience, and
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=8162152
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090729/0022035691.shtml
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090723/ap_on_re_as/as_odd_japan_smile_meter_4

the Japanese have relatively recently become obsessed with learning how to smile to live up to the Western culture standard. In the show I watched, Japanese businessmen had learned to never smile or show much emotion... supposedly doing so was considered weak or feminine or something. They said it probably had roots in some of the kendo training/battles, where showing emotion could give away too much info to your opponent.

Also I think it's fairly standard consensus that Japanese tend to hide their emotions/opinions to themselves away from close family/friends for politeness sake. So before that meant even hiding smiles(?), but now means they need to smile more!?!?

Brought to you by the same assholes that loved Starforce (until they were sued for their crippleware).

Guess SecuROM isn't intrusive enough for them.

I was asking this as I heard about Germany wanting or doing wiretapping Skype, but this article says it isn't possible except by breaking AES. German police uses a trojan.

Probably the reason why China has its own version of Skype, TOM-Skype.

Ideas are NOT copyrighted and have never been

Copyright law draws a distinction between idea and expression. Expressions, according to the law, are copyrightable. Ideas are not. This is important because it preserves freedom of speech: you can express the same idea with a different expression. That's the theory.

Please, then, tell me, is Mickey Mouse an idea, or an expression? If it is an expression, what idea is it expressing?

A court actually ruled on this one. Its conclusion? The "idea" of Mickey Mouse is "mouse." Everything else is expression.

Great. We have the freedom to express "mouse" in different ways. But all of the cultural meanings and emotions and passions and history around Mickey Mouse? Those are part of Mickey Mouse too. Not of "mouse." They are ideas. And yet, they are protected.

Take a piece of music. What is the "idea" of a symphony? In the U.S., a single bar of music can be copyrighted. Music is all expression. No idea. What relevance does this strange division have for music?

Take Holden Caulfield. J.D. Salinger recently sued another author for writing an apparent sequel to Catcher in the Rye. Salinger won. Not because the other author used the same names, or the same plot, but because the story and the character were similar.

These immaterial things we hold in our heads? According to the law, most of them are not in fact ideas. They are expressions.

The law can define its terms however it likes. This is what we call an analytic distinction: it does not correspond to characteristics of the world. The distinction between idea and expression is invented, just like the arbitrary line drawn on a map and called a border. It's a legal fiction. Each individual case makes the difference between "idea" and "expression" more clear, and yet more complex: the border becomes every more jagged, ever more detached from ordinary human speech and experience. Case law can say what it likes, but it does not have the authority to redefine the English language. Its terms have nothing to do what ordinary people mean when they use these words.

Yes, you can copyright an idea. That's what copyright does.

Seems like there may have been some skulduggery going on in the deal, and it's not a foregone conclusion.

You forgot: Sue the companies for allowing employees to play music. (ala http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090709/1827455502.shtml )

One of the big problems with Internet businesses is that there's a huge disconnect between what will attract users and what will make money. In 1999, there were companies saying that growth was about "eyeballs", and only "old economy" people worried about revenue. That didn't work out too well. For a recap of this, see Downside's Deathwatch, which I did back then. (Where it says "Chart is not available for this symbol", it means they're long gone.) So we've heard that particular line of bullshit before.

Similar claims have been heard for social networks, few of which have paid back their original investment. Myspace, in their best year, (2007) made only $10 million. News Corp paid $580 million for Myspace. They'll never see that back. Investors in other has-been social networks (AOL, GeoCities, Orkut, Tribe, Friendster, Classmates, Nerve, etc.) did even worse.

Andreessen has a point that YouTube would have had to find a way to become profitable by now if they weren't part of Google. Of course they would. No VC would continue to fund a money drain like YouTube. YouTube couldn't even survive as a zombie; they cost too much to run. ("zombie": VC term for companies which can't come close to paying their startup investment, but generate just enough revenue to cover their operating costs. They're the living dead of startups.)

Google still gets something like 97% of their revenue from AdWords. Everything else they've done loses money. Google had one great revenue product - AdWords. They've been frantically trying to find another, without success. Google has a great capability for deploying money-losing free services, but none of them, from Gmail to book-scanning, are generating serious revenue.

There are lots of things that are interesting to do technically, and even useful and popular, but don't make money. I've done a few myself. Andreessen probably has some good ideas like that, and I'm sure he can find more. But if he's going to run money as a VC, he'll have to do better.

Better than the average VC, in fact. There are currently too many venture capitalists. VCs as a group lose money, and have been losing money since 2003 or so. Venture capital as a business used to be highly profitable, but it no longer is. Too much dumb money came in during the first dot-com boom, and the VC business overexpanded. Silicon Valley venture capital used to be about funding a few engineers in a lab to do something great. Those startups often failed, but didn't cost more than a few million when they did. If one in 10 did something good, that was a win. During the dot-com boom, VCs started funding companies into the deployment and operating phase, which is when it starts to really cost. That's a way to lose hundreds of millions a pop.

So we'll see how Andreessen does. Remember, though, that it's not a win until long-term profitability is achieved and the original investment paid back.

Techdirt has a post saying just this. Cuban fails to realize that all his arguments don't apply to only free models, but rather any business that sells a product or service, regardless of the price (free or otherwise).

China mandated micro-USB charging sockets in December 2006, so the EU is just falling in line. Yawn.

And South Korea did so a year earlier.

Maybe with EU on board we'll see handsets for the US market meeting the standard without having to wait forever while the US carriers get their shit together.

The specific case (covered heavily - check Techdirt for one) in question has actually brought in a much larger problem to light. How should students treat code written as part of assignments or as part of their course-work in terms of licensing? Is there a precedent for licensing? Most research activities conducted by universities have already adopted licensing framework. Here's an example. There has been debate whether such licensing should be free. Just check Medical Research and you can open Pandora's box. One more example is Singapore's A-Star which is more of a group focused on preparing research for industry adoption including licensing and legal usage terms.

How about code released in books on Data Structures, Algorithms, Fundamental C programming? To my knowledge (do correct me if I am wrong), the code is usually licensed under the same copyright notice as the book itself. In some cases, the author changes this licensing and makes it available. One example is "Numerical Recipes in C" where the licensing terms of the code from the author(s) of the book is explicit and can be found on a google search.

When it comes to university assignments, it is no news that the same template (if not the same course material itself) tends to get recirculated over a periodic basis. In some cases this period is annual and in others, the frequency is different. The debate raised is ages old. For most data structure or standard assignments of programming, you could find most of the code online. You could use this as a starting point or choose to write your own and learn your fundamentals. That's up to the student and the professor who is teaching and grading.

There is some truth in the statement (IMHO) that the Academia is shielded from the real commercial world. It works positive in some cases and is counterproductive in fields like Engineering (not Theoretical Computer Science.) In this specific case, if the University were to read all the fine print they have on students sharing course material (for which they pay for) and lecture notes and assignments, they would find the right solution. Bringing this (issue between a student and the professor) out to Open forums seems more of a publicity stunt that is going to get someone infamous for some and noticeable for a few others.

Focusing on the larger issue, a Varsity must be clear on how course-work and assignments from the students will be licensed and treated. They already have set legal precedents for most research work (which in some cases is funded by commercial bodies.) Hopefully this issue raises a flag and lets varsities understand and embrace Open Source, encourage students to use it particularly in programming assignments. At the very least they should at least reserve procedures to let a student obtain due permission for displaying his/her works online under appropriate licensing. In the absence of a precedent and clear guidelines, such confusion and unnecessary nerve wracking experiences between a Professor and a Student are more likely to surface. I hope not.

War certainly has driven a great deal of innovation.

That it has. Michelangelo got his engineering degree building war machines. Those machines have taught us a lot about ballistics, momentum, and other fields of physics.

But I think the question is why doesn't the government fund research outside of war?

The proper domains of the US government are to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty. You've covered defense. General welfare is covered by the USDA and the FDA, where they ensure the food and drugs we get are (supposedly) wholesome and nutritious. The blessings of liberty need no research - they need common sense (in rare supply these days, I'll admit).

The true answer to your post lies in the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, clause 8: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

By encouraging intellectual property suits and elevating copyrights and patents to their present position we've gotten to the point where these things prevent the progress they were intended to promote. Since progress is the essential good that exclusive rights to inventions and creations were created for, it only makes sense to do away with the protections now that have come to subvert that need. We should immediately abolish and vacate all patents and copyrights, and prohibit their issue except in the cause of progress. When they issue they should be for no more than the original terms - 17 years for patents, 27 years for copyright, no extensions and whether or not the inventor or creator is dead is irrelevant.

Also, to post a patent you should have to post a $100,000 bond that the material is original. If the material is unoriginal, the bond would be forfeit. This will to some small degree decrease the trolls who use the spare time on their lawyer retainer contracts to file unuseful or obvious patents.

Before you argue with me on this, consider this merit of copyright: Sonny Bono believed that copyright should last "forever". When informed that this would violate the US Constitution's mandate of "for limited times" he offered "Forever, less one day". A lawmaker and intellectual property rights activist himself, he co-authored and promoted The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998. This law prevented many thousands of works from falling into the public domain (your ownership and mine - essentially, "the pool of our culture"). Essentially, with this law they deprived you and me of stuff that would have been ours in due course. They stole from us. It spanned the time until the next extension of copyright which, although it doesn't guarantee perpetual protection of Steamboat Willie, does guarantee his protection until such time as they can extend it again, ad infinitum.

Cher, and Sonny Bono's estate are now suing Universal music over the profits from the rights to his music. Apparently this stalwart pillar of the community is accused of using accounting tricks and shell corporations to evade paying the estate of this esteemed artist his due share.

So when they say it's for the artist... beware. The truth is that in Hollywood a share of the net is a share of nothing - always. It's kind of ironic that the people he worked so hard to serve are robbing his grave, seeing as how he worked so hard to enable them to steal from us.

Right, it's what corporations do. It's not a Ballmer or Microsoft thing...though this _is_ Slashdot, so I guess everything digresses into Microsoft bashing.

"Forbes reports that Google has joined the ranks of Microsoft, Dell, Intel and others who are reducing their tax rates dramatically by crediting profits to new Irish operations. Ireland offers a tax exemption on patent income and a rock-bottom corporate tax rate of 12.5%, compared to 35% in the US." [ http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051214/1541223_F.shtml ]

I'd bet many other multinational companies do this as well.

Masnick's Law strikes again.

So let's pick a niche band that is utterly dependent on piracy (their own words). It works for all types of artists, if you do it right. The trick is that you actually have to work and keep writing new songs and doing shows and such instead of writing one hit and sitting on your ass collecting a toll every time someone listens to it somewhere.

Only terrorists use encryption!

Nooo, you're thinking Linux

Last I heard the Huffington Post was a blog... seems as if they're doing alright.

Why are bloggers not journalists? How many newspapers just reprint AP feeds? That's as much "journalism" as any blogger you complain about. And on top of that, there are many times where the blogger is the source of the story for newspapers.

Oh, and as for Watergate... those reporters just happened to be the recipients of big news. The FBI should get more credit for it. On top of that, it's not like you really get quality reporting from newspapers.

Why are bloggers not journalists? How many newspapers just reprint AP feeds? That's as much "journalism" as any blogger you complain about. And on top of that, there are many times where the blogger is the source of the story for newspapers.

Oh, and as for Watergate... those reporters just happened to be the recipients of big news. The FBI should get more credit for it. On top of that, it's not like you really get quality reporting from newspapers.

They're going to affect the best books too and I'm sure that piracy is going to reduce their sales even more and that's going to remove the incentives to create the better books even more.

Peter Coelho would strongly disagree with you - http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080124/08563359.shtml

"Among downloaders of music and movies, the percentage of buyers is as high as among non-downloaders and with games the percentage of buyers is even higher"

The quoted result actually doesn't necessarily mean that illegal downloading doesn't hurt sales. The downloaders might be just as likely to buy some product but actually buy less than they would if they couldn't download.

Unfortunately, there is really no way to generate hard "evidence" on this topic, since that would involve comparing the real world with an alternate reality where it was somehow impossible to copy illegally and yet somehow everything not connected with this was "still the same".