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The move to Linux or any other FOSS is a political/ideological issue.

As opposed to moves to Microsoft products being a financial incentive/bribery issue.

microsoft-pays-nfl-to-use-surface

microsoft-back-to-trying-to-bribe-people-to-use-bing

The move to Linux or any other FOSS is a political/ideological issue.

As opposed to moves to Microsoft products being a financial incentive/bribery issue.

microsoft-pays-nfl-to-use-surface

microsoft-back-to-trying-to-bribe-people-to-use-bing

Re "Do you know what the US Government would do to a corporation .. "
"The One Telco Exec Who Resisted The NSA Has Been Released From 4+ Years In Jail" (Sep 27th 2013)
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
This news just adds to the PRISM decryption and other issues that US brands seem to offer assistance with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If its important encrypt well away from any and all Apple products, send the communications.
Anonymity is hard to ensure but at least people can get their privacy back from Apple and the mil/gov.

But did the Appeals court consider if they have the right to *drain* them and take all the money left on their balances?

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

https://www.bing.com/search?q=...

Hell the man built a company just to help Hillary (search for Hillary, Eric Schmidt, Groundgame)

So just who is going to be able to fact check Google's already established bias ?
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
http://dailycaller.com/2016/09...

I think I am going to start rotating search engines. Variety is likely for the best.

Maybe this court ruling
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
Facebook could have TOS that prohibits LEO/government usage of APIs, directly or indirectly(shell company), unless with a court order.

What does MI5 and the GCHQ know about how the bespoke Apple network that all other hackers do not?
Does Apple have some unique global network of its very own that all data can be sent and extracted without GCHQ discovery?
If inflight collecting for the US and UK was no issue, how can hacking a consumer grade US watch go undetected?
Glenn Greenwald Says NSA, GCHQ Dismayed They Don't Have Access To In-Flight Internet Communication
https://www.techdirt.com/artic... (Dec 30th 2013)
"The very idea that human beings can communicate for even a few moments without their ability to monitor is intolerable."
Why did the UK not play on this ability and set up scripted meetings with the wide open Apple products left on?
Re "So, I'm begging the question, why would phones even be allowed in such a meeting?"
MI6 could have induced a new generation of "Operation Mincemeat" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... bouncing around consumer grade Apple accounts over the time Apple watches has fashion status.
Instead the UK goes full public for a few days sock puppet tech media repeating "Russia" did it and its magic Bear code in a watch? Tell the world they know who is looking and how and on what platform and how such action has been discovered and stopped?
The fun MI6 could have had with reading back fake projects, plans and fake operations.

Saying "an appeals court with a panel of judges" is redundant: Appeals courts are always judges, never juries. Anyone who has watched 5 minutes of any TV legal drama can tell you that. Here appeals judges were upheld a jury verdict.

For Jury Bias: http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

For Judge Bias: https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://news.ycombinator.com/i... http://arstechnica.com/civis/v... http://www.law360.com/articles... https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

Because someone has to pay for it and nobody likes paying for things anymore. Companies don't like investing when it negatively affects the next quarterly report, even if they'd see a return in 5 years. And homeowners aren't going to pay for a line that does exactly what their current line does (if they could even afford it in the first place.)

I mean none of that should be taken as absolutes -- obviously companies occasionally manage to think beyond 3 months and there's obviously some homeowners who get enough benefit from fiber over copper to drop the cash on it when their phone company refuses to do so, but neither of those are the common case.

Back in the day when the copper was being deployed originally, this was of course still true but the government stepped in and made sure the wires were run, either directly or through major incentives to local providers.

There was some effort to do that again with fiber but the government also doesn't want to spend anything anymore and we're culturally super against corporate oversight these days to boot leading to more than one fiasco where companies took the incentives and then just didn't bother following through (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/2021240.shtml.) That puts a fast damper on the attempts to incentivize companies and we're all left in a world where widespread fiber is a far-future, if ever, dream instead of a modern reality.

Hillary said US should use 'military response' to fight cyberattacks
"As President, I will make it clear that the United States will treat cyberattacks just like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic, and military responses"
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
And this was after blaming Russia for the hacks

Techdirt has covered this extensively. This is nothing more than typical Republican fear-mongering. Blocking the transition would actually make things *worse*. https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

those same idiots will be suing everyone who simply listens and remembers a piece of new music

They're already doing that and calling it "plagiarism lawsuits". See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music ("My Sweet Lord"), Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton ("Love Is a Wonderful Thing"), Gaye v. Thicke ("Blurred Lines"), Wolfe v. Led Zeppelin ("Stairway to Heaven"), and Ed Sheeran getting sued twice. This is not to mention other cases that you don't hear so much about because they're settled out of court: "Stay With Me" by Sam Smith is too close to "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty

The best one was John Fogerty getting sued for "Old Man Down The Road" sounding to much like "Green River" which he sold the rights to. "You sound too much like yourself!"

those same idiots will be suing everyone who simply listens and remembers a piece of new music

They're already doing that and calling it "plagiarism lawsuits". See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music ("My Sweet Lord"), Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton ("Love Is a Wonderful Thing"), Gaye v. Thicke ("Blurred Lines"), Wolfe v. Led Zeppelin ("Stairway to Heaven"), and Ed Sheeran getting sued twice. This is not to mention other cases that you don't hear so much about because they're settled out of court: "Stay With Me" by Sam Smith is too close to "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty

Imagine the following way to help your own folks, and the victims of your elite:

That there is an elite is not debatable. Also called the 1%, they have HALF the money in the world. If anyone should be doing great things with tech and everything else, it is the 1%. End Of Thread.

Score one for "batshit crazy"

Just expose the lies of the 1%, the war industry, the Cultural Marxists and their fellow Devil Worshippers. Those who literally want to make our children cut off their own balls:

Once again, none of this is debatable. 1%? Check. War industry? Check. Cultural Marxists? Check. Devil Worshippers? Check.

Anyone on slashdot claiming that any of these don't exist is part of the problem, or stupid. But you know what? Slashdot has less stupid people than any other place on the net. So back to the more likely possibility.

Score 4 more for "B. Crazy"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Ok, I took one for the team and loaded this link. Title is "Hillary Clinton lying for 13 minutes straight." The only quibble I have with stuff like this is, why don't they make a 26 minute youtube and give equal time to both parties of the duopoly? Maybe even show them both making the same lies. That would be fun.

How do you know when a politician is lying?
Right, when their YouTube is streaming.

Score 1 for Opportunist, because Dr. Crazy didn't provide equal time.

Obama and his goons tortured this boy until he wanted his own testicles to be cut off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Once again, into the valley of YouTube... Video is called "Gender Transformation In A US Military Prison".

Didn't play the video but simple point to be made. We'll never know. Stranger and sicker things have happened. In China, prisoners get their organs harvested while they are still alive.

Calling this "idiot conspiracy nutter" material is unbecoming, Opportunist. You. Don't. Know. (in part because I'm sure you, like me, didn't watch it).

Points awarded? None, because none of us will ever watch the video. Even though it could be as great as the Vimeo suggestion I watched some four years ago now. Found on Slashdot, it truly and profoundly changed my life. Thanks "thoughtlover", whoever you are.

So, something that is bin spam to you, may be priceless to someone else.

Score another point for the batlover.

Regarding Computers, they are Insecure By Design. The 1% want them to be hackable:

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Probably the most obviously factual points of the whole post. No additional comment needed.

Score: Two more points to the batshit crazy idiot conspiracy nutter. Who obviously cares. It is a thankless path these days. Whistleblowers used to be protected, today they get fired. People used to have "ABC sucks" web pages. Facebook routinely removes such "hate speech" today.

The people more batshit crazy than this alleged idiot conspiracy nutter are the 1% shills or karma whores who say there aren't conspiracies.

Life is saturated with conspiracies. Do something about them and you will be improving the world.

Let's not forget the several people investigated and/or charged for notifying a company that they had a flaw in their security... Although I can't find it now, I remember some years back someone being charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act for notifying a company that they had a payroll file or something exposed to the web without any authentication requirements....

The caps are not put in place by ISPs to make people pay for TV as the summary claims. (Why would an ISP that has no video services at all have caps if that were truly the reason? What is T-Mobile's TV service?) They're put in place to keep people who think they ought to have 100% fulltime use of a shared resource from keeping other users from getting what they are paying for.

So this is just about network management?

Comcast VP: 300GB data cap is “business policy,” not technical necessity
http://arstechnica.com/busines...

Another Broadband CEO Admits: Data Caps Have Nothing To Do With Capacity
https://consumerist.com/2016/0...

Leaked Comcast memo reportedly admits data caps aren't about improving network performance
http://www.theverge.com/smart-...

Comcast Admits Broadband Usage Caps Are A Cash Grab, Not An Engineering Necessity
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Wow-- You're Right! Funny, though, that Google news didn't make any money(no ads) and Spain still went after them to try and pony up cash to re-aggregate their news. https://www.techdirt.com/artic... Spain then realized that they should have put their foot in their mouths and begged for government intervention to stop google news from leaving Spain. https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Wow-- You're Right! Funny, though, that Google news didn't make any money(no ads) and Spain still went after them to try and pony up cash to re-aggregate their news. https://www.techdirt.com/artic... Spain then realized that they should have put their foot in their mouths and begged for government intervention to stop google news from leaving Spain. https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

They might be legit, but they use StartCom for certs

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://groups.google.com/foru...

Cox has a verified history of ignoring infringement notices and for quickly reactivating accounts of repeat offenders.

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

As we move forward in this challenging time we want to hold on to every subscriber we can. With this in mind if a customer is terminated for DMCA, you are able to reactivate them after you give them a stern warning about violating our AUP and the DMCA. We must still terminate in order for us to be in compliance with safe harbor but once termination is complete, we have fulfilled our obligation. After you reactivate them the DMCA ‘counter’ restarts; The procedure restarts with the sending of warning letters, just like a first offense. This is to be an unwritten semi-policy . . . We do not talk about it or give the subscriber any indication that reactivating them is normal. Use your best judgment and remember to do what is right for our company and subscribers. . . . This only pertains to DMCA violations. It does not pertain to spammers, hackers, etc.

-Jason Zabek, Cox’s Manager of Customer Abuse Operations.

there are good reasons why Cox was found to have lost Safe Harbor since they were violating the privisions in the DMCA that afforded them that protection.
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Basically Wikileaks has nobody there who is competent enough to actually implement a security framework for the site.

So, as a result, it basically becomes a dumping ground for all this crap.

Thus, when examples are pointed out to them, all they can do is nix the examples.

Wikileaks has withstood countless efforts to get their site offline, sometime by dedicated groups and/or state sponsored actors. You may remember how all hell broke loose with cablegate, including DDOS and Senator Lieberman's call to Amazon. Calling Wikileaks incompetent at security is completely ridiculous.

I bet that the whole thing went down like this: author of this backchannel article wanted to rag on Wikileaks for their dissemination of personal details, and wanted to bring up email #117 as prime example (medical bill!!) and got infected herself for lack of security competence. Author then contacted some security outfit to perform a security evaluation, security outfit performed a simple virus scan. Author then cooked up a click bait article, how Wikileaks is out there to recklessly infect everyone with malware.

Let's face it: Wikileaks is plenty competent securitywise, as evidenced by their very presence for so many years. They expect their readers, especially professional journalists scouring their site to bring at least a moderate skill set to the table, and Mrs. Upson apparently failed miserably.

It's becoming more and more clear, that Baltimore is going to require a truly massive purge of it's law enforcement ranks. Not just slaps on the wrist, or re-training, but a flat-out "You're fired, and law enforcement credentials revoked" kind of thing.

There won't be any mass riots or anything like that. Those happen because the firings haven't happened when they should.

If anything, it'll become the most peaceful, most pleasant city to live in, until a fresh crop of high-IQ, college-graduates can be convinced to take the job.

> Netflix has very little that would be playing currently on most cable channels people pay to watch

At one time, Netflix digital content was full of grade A movies instead of the mix of A, B, and C movies it has now.

Then the MPAA wised up and learned from the RIAA's deal with Apple's iTunes and decided they didn't want to cede content distribution to a single mammoth provider ultimately ending up with DRM-free music sales.

Netflix tried to split DVD and digital into two companies (Netflix and Qwikster) to allow them to bargain better with the studios, but the split failed and Netflix ultimately caved to MPAA demands to delay new releases on DVD in exchange for discounted DVD prices and the opportunity to be allowed to negotiate for streaming rights. (Notable competitor Redbox has not agreed to this release window and just pays retail price for new release DVDs.)

The studios renegotiated their contracts to make digital content prohibitively expensive for Netflix.

http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/...
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

This is why there are so many web sites with competing catalogs and no one place to easily watch anything you want. Hulu, Vudu (Wal-Mart), Amazon, Netflix, Crunchyroll, Funimation, Daisuki, iTunes, Crackle, Google Play, etc.

Some sites have tried to catalog into an easily searchable interface:
https://www.justwatch.com/
http://www.flixfindr.com/
http://www.canistream.it/

But still, there are some shows that are just not available anywhere (e.g. Rawhide tv western with Clint Eastwood).

tldr: Netflix would compete with cable television if it could.

The Main Problem With Patented GM Food Is The Patent, Not The Fact That It's GM

Roundup Cancer

Genetically Monetized Food

And my own skepticism. Genetically modifying food on the molecular level is not the same as breeding. You will never see in nature where mechanical and chemical means are used to cross species like it's done in the lab.

So, those of us with concerns about GMO crops have legitimate skeptical and informed reasons for being so. And I realize that there are some great things about GMO crops..

So, comparing us to uninformed ignorant people who don't want to hear the actual facts is completely unwarranted.

https://deals.techdirt.com/sal... I'm interested in Linux, should I take this course as a newbie? Also, I wanna start learnng programming. I would like to go with Java. Any primers? Thx!

Blizzard used copyright against their botting nemesis. Twitch doesn't have copyright on the streams themselves (just a license). So they have to fall back to the CFAA -- a legal argument that has not yet been successfully prosecuted.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160613/01084434693/pure-bullshit-amc-threatens-huge-fan-community-with-copyright-claim-over-spoiler-predictions.shtml

It would be great if the EFF got involved so The Spoiling Dead could take AMC to court. And IMHO this would be worth the EFF's time and money. Somebody needs to keep (re-)drawing the line between legitimate copyright claims, and spurious ownership claims made by corporations that piss on everything in sight like some not-house-broken dog in their efforts to mark it all as their own. Under the current civil law setup, average citizens simply can't afford to defend their own rights against bullies such as AMC.

"They love our work, lets alienate the ever-loving shit out of them!"

It's the CBS model for the Star Trek franchise.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151230/07472333198/cbs-sues-over-star-trek-fan-film-because-it-sounds-like-going-to-be-pretty-good.shtml

By "prepared" he meant, "this is as good as it gets, this is Olympics third-world pandemic version."

In a normal year, I might share concerns about open sewers. But with zika? That's a minor concern.

Why so many people put so much stock into a corrupt proceedings as the Olympics, I don't know. I'd at least suggest that they take all of the athletes to some islan to quarantine them for a few months after it is over.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/a...

http://deadspin.com/5919183/a-...

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

A long time ago, I watched them, but darn it, it's sleaze greed and bribes from beginning to end.

I'm pretty certain that they'd hold it among the corium in the Chernobyl reactor if paid the right sum. And if I were a betting man, I'd wager Zika will be globally distributed after the games.

Are they obligated? How about forming the question as "Should we make them obligated?" In your example, the cost of fixing a situation is much cheaper in proportion to the billions in profits an ISP can make. "Level3 is carrying a bunch of that Netflix traffic, and notes that it has more than enough bandwidth to carry it. It says the only problem is Verizon refusing to take 5 minutes to upgrade its system." https://www.techdirt.com/artic... I think that by now it should be pretty clear that ISPs are holding back progress in improving the quality of Internet speeds in order to increase profits and to try to slow the pace of people cutting the cord. I don't think that is an acceptable situation.

PGP doesn't protect the metadata nor even email subject. Also, it isn't popular even among highly technical crowd. Right now, among 704 mails in my INBOX there's just two encrypted (despite 86 being signed).

A good idea for privacy for mainstream users would be deploying DANE. It provides transport encryption that's not vulnerable to MITM -- and some ISPs already MITM all SMTP.

Obviously, transport encryption doesn't protect you against the server reading your mail. The likes of Gmail read your mail themselves and, despite loudly saying otherwise, hardly ever fight govt requests, be it with a warrant or without. Too bad, running your own server reveals metadata even when encrypted (the ISPs and govt know who sent mails to whom, when and the size of the message).

I don't really know how to solve the metadata problem. The best idea I have so far without inventing a new protocol are .onion MXes -- but I don't know of any server software implementing this.

The 6th amendment right to confront your accuser has caused many cases brought about by so called stingray devices to be dropped for fear of violating the NDA's signed by the department utilizing the devices, FBI included. I'm not saying they aren't out there or that many departments aren't over-stepping their bounds but any decent lawyer will challenge the source of transcripts and many cases have magically faded away for the lack of evidence unless they are major cases that can invoke secret warrants or such as national security issues.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

http://forums.theregister.co.u...

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Irrelevant. APIs can not be copyrighted, period. End. Of. Discussion.

According to the Federal Appeals Court-- whose opinion is the only one that matters (since the Supreme court declined the case)-- you are wrong. APIs can be copyrighted. End of discussion.

You may not agree, you may not like it, but that's irrelevant.

http://fortune.com/2015/06/29/...
http://readwrite.com/2015/06/2...
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

BTW, I am getting a 404 when going to your link: https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Was the article pulled? Do you have another source?

The FBI agents refused to deal with her lawyer, and intimated that they would pick her up off the street to interrogate her without a lawyer present.

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

I don't think their actions are the actions of people who are operating within the rules of law. Their actions are the actions of people who are afraid of being caught violating the supreme law of the land.

Another fact that the CNN article didn't make clear : the developer was already in the process of moving to Germany.

I would like to know what sort of level of verbal threat counts as worthy of investigation to the Absolute Freedom Of Speech people.

TechDirt cited 2 cases to justify their belief that Digger's statement was rhetorical hyperbole and not a true threat.

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

https://scholar.google.com/sch...
Rankin v. McPherson, 483 US 378 - Supreme Court 1987

After hearing of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, a black employee of the Constable of Harris County, was fired for saying,

"yeah, he's cutting back medicaid and food stamps. And I said, yeah, welfare and CETA. I said, shoot, if they go for him again, I hope they get him."

The Supreme Court decided that the Constable's office could not fire her for making that statement.

https://scholar.google.com/sch...
Watts v. United States, 394 US 705 - Supreme Court 1969

petitioner was convicted of violating a 1917 statute which prohibits any person from "knowingly and willfully . . . [making] any threat to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States . . . ."[*] The incident 706*706 which led to petitioner's arrest occurred on August 27, 1966, during a public rally on the Washington Monument grounds.

According to an investigator for the Army Counter Intelligence Corps who was present, petitioner responded: "They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J." "They are not going to make me kill my black brothers."

if you're going to suggest that a federal judge is corrupt, you should at least have some evidence to support your claim.

This article provides a fairly complete explanation: https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

The judges in the Eastern Texas Division actions may not have broken any laws (it's debatable), but it would be ludicrous to suggest that defendants in patent litigation are receiving fair trials there. A judicial system that unfairly favors one side in a lawsuit is, by definition, corrupt.

They make a big deal out of how there are 94 federal courts and yet most patent cases go to ED Texas, with a giant calculation that's entirely... irrelevant. As noted in the Slashdot headline, patent cases can be filed anywhere in the country. Criminal cases, for example, cannot, but have to be where the crime occurred (FRCP Rule 18). They also have time limits, under the Constitutional requirement for speedy trials. So, for example, if you file a patent infringement case in New York, where there's tons of crimes committed, your patent case will keep getting pushed down the docket. You might never actually get into court, because they have to handle the criminal cases first.

By contrast, nothing happens in the ED Texas. So, there's nothing on the docket to get in the way of your patent suit. TechDirt's suggestion that cases should be distributed evenly in all 94 federal courts completely ignores the fact that other cases cannot be distributed evenly. It's like saying you should load balance your webserver equally among your servers, completely ignoring the fact that one of them is also a production server operating at 99% load on another function.

if you're going to suggest that a federal judge is corrupt, you should at least have some evidence to support your claim.

This article provides a fairly complete explanation:
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

The judges in the Eastern Texas Division actions may not have broken any laws (it's debatable), but it would be ludicrous to suggest that defendants in patent litigation are receiving fair trials there. A judicial system that unfairly favors one side in a lawsuit is, by definition, corrupt.

Imagine we're talking about a car.

Comparing theft of physical property to intellectual property is an old, tired argument that has never ever worked. Please stop making this comparison. Stealing a Ford off of a lot deprives an entity of a physical asset. Paying for intellectual property under false pretenses due to locality restrictions is completely different. Even copying that IP for no remuneration is different, because it is not depriving an entity of a physical asset. Piracy is not the same as theft and never has been.

Does this justify piracy? No.

Does it justify using the same old tired argument and false analogy? Also no.

This is about landline ISPs introducing caps. A 1 GB cap on your home internet would be ridiculous. There is at least a fair argument about available bandwidth in the wireless space as it's a fixed medium that can't be extended. Wired infrastructure just needs more wires added if there's congestion at promised speeds.

"But investment costs money!" yes it does. Now ask yourself why these ISPs are blocking any other providers from moving into their areas? Because they don't want the competition and are buying (and actually writing!) the laws to do this. linky

There are plenty of examples already and keeping a set of backups physically disconnected from running infrastructure is pretty well established practice

Pixar circa ToyStory 2 springs to mind.

https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Your fallacy is you keep forgetting that copyright is for a LIMITED time.

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.

Originally it was 17 years. Now the duration is a retarded author's lifetime + 70 years.

Holding popular culture "hostage" for the sake of greed is immature.

The fundamental problem is copyright kills creativity, yet copyright is ignored in the fashion industry.

>> Q. How many friends can I loan my DVD / BluRay to before it becomes piracy?
> All of them. It only becomes piracy if they make a copy of it.

False.

1. If copyright is still ACTIVE then the answer is: All.
2. If copyright has EXPIRED then the answer is: None.
3. You're forgetting that in some places in the world, such as Canada, Germany, etc. you can loan your _original_ to a friend, and they CAN _legally_ make a copy, and return the original partially due to a) a levy tax on blank media, and b) due to a legal loophole:

With physical media like tapes or CDs the "owner" is the person in possession of the original copy. This definition made it legit, at least in Canada, to borrow original materiel, copy it, and then return.

Thankfully coercion for the criminal tax is ignored sometimes.

> It ain't fucking rocket science, dude.

No, shit Sherlock. However, Copyright Law is NOT black and white, when the law keeps changing:

* MPAA says making a backup copy is illegal. That is, you can NO longer legally archive your original DVD's which is retarded.

* When even lending your CD to a friend is illegal (WTF!?), the whole system has become corrupt.

You are under no obligation to follow bad laws.

Your fallacy is you keep forgetting that copyright is for a LIMITED time.

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.

Originally it was 17 years. Now the duration is a retarded author's lifetime + 70 years.

Holding popular culture "hostage" for the sake of greed is immature.

The fundamental problem is copyright kills creativity, yet copyright is ignored in the fashion industry.

>> Q. How many friends can I loan my DVD / BluRay to before it becomes piracy?
> All of them. It only becomes piracy if they make a copy of it.

False.

1. If copyright is still ACTIVE then the answer is: All.
2. If copyright has EXPIRED then the answer is: None.
3. You're forgetting that in some places in the world, such as Canada, Germany, etc. you can loan your _original_ to a friend, and they CAN _legally_ make a copy, and return the original partially due to a) a levy tax on blank media, and b) due to a legal loophole:

With physical media like tapes or CDs the "owner" is the person in possession of the original copy. This definition made it legit, at least in Canada, to borrow original materiel, copy it, and then return.

Thankfully coercion for the criminal tax is ignored sometimes.

> It ain't fucking rocket science, dude.

No, shit Sherlock. However, Copyright Law is NOT black and white, when the law keeps changing:

* MPAA says making a backup copy is illegal. That is, you can NO longer legally archive your original DVD's which is retarded.

* When even lending your CD to a friend is illegal (WTF!?), the whole system has become corrupt.

You are under no obligation to follow bad laws.

You seem to have some drastic misunderstandings of the boundaries of the law. Talking about a copyrighted work or trademarked term is not illegal, despite some companies happily pretending that they think it is in order to file lawsuits that stifle free speech by making it too expensive to defend in court.

Copyright law was never meant to overrule freedom of speech. Copyright law was written into the original constitution and the protections given in the first amendment supercede copyright law. In point of fact, some aspects of copyright law have been ruled as unconstitutional because of this.

So no. Copyright does not prevent us from talking about stories. We can talk with other people about Star Wars and dissect and argue over every tiny detail to our heart's content and Lucasfilm has no legal right to stop that.

At least not yet. Give Disney another 20 years of lobbying and they'll probably get enough laws rewritten to allow them to do it.

To be fair, it is a bit difficult to differentiate between them when the USPTO keeps issuing trademarks for purely descriptive phrases like square donuts and design patents for things that would barely qualify for copyright protection.

Like Verizon here: https://www.techdirt.com/blog/...

Eliminating workers in FF has been an idea for a long time. Example from 2003: https://www.techdirt.com/artic... when it is economically viable, it will happen. However, unlikely that we will see these totally unsupervised for a long time.

Meanwhile, FB is perfectly happy to censor for foreign governments, so why not build in back doors for them too?

Or is it only for agendas that zuck agrees with?

it works out to little under 2 billion dollars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

or total invalidation of toilet paper you call EULA
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...