Slashdot Mirror
Good Bad Attitude
teidou writes "Paul Graham has posted a new essay titled 'Good Bad Attitude' talking about the hacker attitude toward rules and government regulation of Intellectual Property. Choice quote: "(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.""
The (hackers), in most cases, cannot avoid the coming "storm."
Maynard wanted me to show you guys this:
Imagine - Real Stream
Treat others as you want to be treated.
Hmm, batman, my spider sense must be out of whack. I thought it was an oligarchy approaching.
Wow, that statement is insulting.
Hackers are as likely to be wrong as they are to be right. In their case it isn't an accute sense, but chronic pessimism.
totalitariansim coming a mile away"
Is it just me or is this one of the more ridiculous sounding things you've heard in a while? Let's see what other deep sounding vacuous statements we can come up with:
There is no group with such an ability for singleminded devotion to the pursuit of universal betterance than the New York Cab Drivers association.
More than any other group formed since the first descent of man from the trees, Sanitation Engineers are able to ensure the future of democracy in our nation.
I bet I have more support for either of these than he's got for his hackers. Too bad there's no taxidot.org or cleandot.org so I could get an article posted too.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
self congratulatory bullshit.
Choice quote: "(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm."
I sense an approaching bad essay.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance
Yeah, it's the sirens from the black and white coming for you in your basement.
Bored? Visit my exciting counter page!
Why do we need to know EVERY time Paul Graham posts yet another comment? It's like that one guy who runs his own small software company that was having his lame articles appear on Slshdot EVERY time he added one to his site. These are just random hacks. Their opinions aren't shit. Stop treating them like they're fucking Gods. Paul Graham, especially, is a questionable prick - based on some of his recent trollish articles.
Too bad that so many hackers understand well all about how to use tools (e.g., computers), but do not understand how to use the government as a tool for themselves and other ordinary people just like themselves. Instead, many hackers reject government totally. That attitude is akin to Luddism. Government is a tool that can be hacked to work for you, just as a computer can be hacked to work for you.
One problem is that young people seem to think that the wealth and the power is on THEIR side. They seem not to see that the the upper 10% of America owns most of the wealth.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
"(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.""
I think it's less sixth sense and more the fact that some people just pay attention instead of shuffling around in a fog all day looking at their feet while they stroll (or follow other lemmings) right off the proverbial cliff.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
"This is a despotic system. I know this."
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
The author argues that the amunt of civil liberties afforded to the population is proportional to GNP. He may be right. However, it can also be argues that the amount of protection of the individual's right to personal property (intellectual and physical) is also proportional. While the article was well written, we need to keep both halves of the equation balanced. If either of the two sides gets out of whack, they both come tumbling down.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
... when a server can sense a Slashdoting approaching from over 4 hops away.
"Why everything I write gets posted on Slashdot"
Good Bad Attitude
(This is one of the essays from Hackers & Painters that was not till now online.)
To the popular press, "hacker" means someone who breaks into computers. Among programmers it means a good programmer. But the two meanings are connected. To programmers, "hacker" connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someone who can make a computer do what he wants-- whether the computer wants to or not.
To add to the confusion, the noun "hack" also has two senses. It can be either a compliment or an insult. It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack. The word is used more often in the former than the latter sense, probably because ugly solutions are more common than brilliant ones.
Believe it or not, the two senses of "hack" are also connected. Ugly and imaginative solutions have something in common: they both break the rules. And there is a gradual continuum between rule breaking that's merely ugly (using duct tape to attach something to your bike) and rule breaking that is brilliantly imaginative (discarding Euclidean space).
Hacking predates computers. When he was working on the Manhattan Project, Richard Feynman used to amuse himself by breaking into safes containing secret documents. This tradition continues today. When we were in grad school, a hacker friend of mine who spent too much time around MIT had his own lock picking kit. (He now runs a hedge fund, a not unrelated enterprise.)
It is sometimes hard to explain to authorities why one would want to do such things. Another friend of mine once got in trouble with the government for breaking into computers. This had only recently been declared a crime, and the FBI found that their usual investigative technique didn't work. Police investigation apparently begins with a motive. The usual motives are few: drugs, money, sex, revenge. Intellectual curiosity was not one of the motives on the FBI's list. Indeed, the whole concept seemed foreign to them.
Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers' general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers. They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic corporate newspeech, but they also laugh at someone who tells them a certain problem can't be solved. Suppress one, and you suppress the other.
This attitude is sometimes affected. Sometimes young programmers notice the eccentricities of eminent hackers and decide to adopt some of their own in order to seem smarter. The fake version is not merely annoying; the prickly attitude of these posers can actually slow the process of innovation.
But even factoring in their annoying eccentricities, the disobedient attitude of hackers is a net win. I wish its advantages were better understood.
For example, I suspect people in Hollywood are simply mystified by hackers' attitudes toward copyrights. They are a perennial topic of heated discussion on Slashdot. But why should people who program computers be so concerned about copyrights, of all things?
Partly because some companies use mechanisms to prevent copying. Show any hacker a lock and his first thought is how to pick it. But there is a deeper reason that hackers are alarmed by measures like copyrights and patents. They see increasingly aggressive measures to protect "intellectual property" as a threat to the intellectual freedom they need to do their job. And they are right.
It is by poking about inside current technology that hackers get ideas for the next generation. No thanks, intellectual homeowners may say, we don't need any outside help. But they're wrong. The next generation of computer technology has often-- perhaps more often than not-- been developed by outsiders.
In 1977 there was no doubt some group within IBM developing what they expected to be the next generation of busin
This showed up at the bottom of the page while reading this thread...
:-) -- Larry Wall in
We question most of the mantras around here periodically, in case you hadn't noticed.
I think that sums this one up.
Another quote, "...Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries become poor; and poor countries are weak."
True... but the fact is the animals (in the headlined quote from story) are much more keen and aware then many "hackers" out there. The problem is that many people posing as hackers are really just cheap and are trying to deprive legitimate and earnest copyright holders of the money due them. Hack all you damn want, just don't break copyright or patent law, that's what I say.
This country has been so innovative because of its encouragement through patents and copyright law. I'm not saying our patent system doesn't need reform... it most certainly does. But I'm tired of people who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater... who actually are just cheap bastards in disguise.
jay
Now, if only we can get powers-that-be to understand the article and actually do something about the patent system and other restrictions that prevents innovations (Microsoft).
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
I've cracked copy protection and digital rights management code a few times in my life. I did it because it was an interesting challenge for a few days (though it's rarely been much of an intellectual challenge, more mindless stepping through routines with a debugger). I don't pontificate about how I'm helping to preserve the freedom of people everywhere.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Nice work, bud. It'd be fun to fill this idiotic article with comments of this nature. Get on it!
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
As informative as that article was, though, someone needs to hack the site and "innovate" it to fit better on a screen that is larger than the ghetto 320x240.
There are plenty of hackers who support Bush and his wars, so no, no they can't.
This is my response to your claim that it is chronic pessimisim:
"The skill of accurate perception is called cynicism by those who don't posses it" - Alan Millar
Perhaps that should be:
In other words, if the less-than-clever members of the population would refrain from stealing, no one would be copy protecting anything. Copy protection costs money, time and must constantly be reworked to have any effect upon the bottom line. The only reason that publishers of stuff bother with it is because they are trying to keep the intellectual rights they have loosed within the bounds they defined for that loosing in the face of a society that, by and large, winks at the thieves that bedevil them.
There's nothing honorable about being a hacker in the "I will invade your stuff for whatever reason" sense of the word. Speaking as a hacker in the "I am curious about everything but I completely respect the limits you put on your property" sense of the word.
Personally, I blame the parents.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I strongly agree with your disgust at hackers who write off the political system and thereby fail to have influence when they should be making themselves heard. However, I disagree with your comment about wealth not being on their side. I think it is. Computing professionals earn good money and tend to hang around with the people who will be very influential in society - if not now than maybe in a couple of decades time. Sometimes I am amused when hackers I hang around with talk about rising up against the elites, fighting off the powers, etc, etc because in many respects they are themselves the elite and don't realise it.
Right... Luddism was not a rejection of anything. The luddits were merely frustrated with their situation. They had no problem with the technology, their problem was with how it was used. If you truly read Chompsky you would know this. Now, this is very similar to what the article is saying about 'hackers'. It says nothing about their beef with the idea of government, but a rejection of how it is currently implemented.
If voting worked it would be illegal.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.
People can sense approaching thunderstorms too, all you have to do is look around. Watch the leaves on trees. Smell the air. If that fails, look for dark clouds in the sky.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And lately hackers have sensed a change in the atmosphere.
It just leads eventually to a world in which bad ideas will win.
Lately?
Having lived through Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Tush my perspective may be tainted but, recent economic train wreckage aside, when has it ever been different?
Woz/Jobs is a typical example. Talented hack with good intentions paired with greedy slick marketeer. Hack has fun, marketeer has money and monopoly.
Lately hacks are more likely to be gasping for cash and more likely to be unjustly incarcerated, just the way cheap labor conservatives like it. Always have, always will.
Unlike respawn camping, their idiocy has vast benefits.
Which is not to say that we shouldn't try to make it better, because we should. Just that it's going to be many many orders of magnitude harder to get anything useful accomplished.
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
You completely neglected to mention the FACT that the wealthy use government to deter competition and maintain their control.
Limited government and free markets undermine that entire system.
(And seriously... if you're going to say that we should use tools to get back at the wealthy, why stop at government? Why not expand into physical coercion with guns, like government seems to?)
Speckpot?
"(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm."
that's more apt than you realize. After all, how many times have I gone jogging down the forest trail and seen every small furry critter flee in a blind panic because I happened to pass near by.
In other words - for every time a rabbit correctly "senses danger" they over-react to 99 completely benign events.
Clear, Dark Skies
In several ways, perhaps it is not that bad a thing after all - there needs to be a mix of both the kinds - hacker and non-hacker.
The problem with the intellectual elite is just that - they are the intellectual elite. Often times, smart solutions on paper is not the same as applying them in the real world - socialism/communism is a classic example of this.
You can see this at work in real life, when you notice that geeks make bad business men. True, some of what the businesses needs is some amount of bullshitting capability, but that's not always true - it's not enough if you can just code up a smart hack. You need to be able to market it and sell it, if you want to be able to sell it to the _layman_. Hackers miss that vital element - they are almost quite incapable of thinking like the common man.
The common man does not care about the things that hackers care about, his needs are simpler - get the food on the table, buy the new SUV and get a holiday week off to some tropical island.
The problem is that the other side (corporate/government) is extremely anti-liberal, while hackers are most often extremely liberal. Both of these are bad, and a balance needs to be stuck.
We need that - a balance between the two. But entire control of America under hackers may not be a good idea.
Umm... no. Hackers or IT people or programmers or engineers are NOT members of the Elite. Maybe 5% of them are. Again, this is just another aspect of the shell game casino that has become America: work your ass off for most of your short life and maybe you will get a 1 in 10 shot at becoming a member of the elite.
Man, The House ALWAYS wins.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Your status as "Exception to 'The Hacker Rule' Number 00001" has been approved. Have a nice day, watch out for Nazis.
The threat to governments always lives in the gray, not the black or the white. Any destabilization of government takes the form of choices in the gray area, choices which are made for reasons which are in a perceived auxilliary environment to morality, and then leads to the polarization which destroys said government.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I started crying out like an animal sensing a thunderstorm shortly after November 2000.
If not Paul Graham then Roland Piquepaille. Pick your poison.
>A government, we have to share. And we don't have root on it. So while we're trying, in our small ways, to hack the gov't to do X, other people are working, oftentimes much harder, to make it do not-X.
Great! So now you've defined what to hack and its unique problems. Sort of like getting your PC and its strange sound card to work with Linux AND have it dual boot so other members of your family can use it too.
Nothing you have pointed out makes it impossible to hack. Is it hard to hack? Sure, but no one is implying that it isn't.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Politicians are like hackers, they find loopholes in systems, social engineer, and sometimes just break the rules to get power. They just hack human systems rather than machine ones. /. article about "the man who could have been bill gates." Bill Gates understood the human systems aspect, and was able to create billions with less technical talent.
Too many technically gifted people don't understand the value of the human systems. There was just a
One problem is that young people seem to think that the wealth and the power is on THEIR side
No the young think wealth and power is so overwhelimingly against them that they can't do anything about it, so reject the rules completely. They don't realize how to work together, to convince people, to use the rules to their advantage.
Rather than complaining the patent system is bad, start patenting things, form open intellectual collectives. Rather than complaining about goverment run for office, or form a geek coaliton that has enough voters to exert political influence.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
People who hack the government are called Lawyers. Think about it, Lawyers do the same things that hackers do but use the rigidness or the openness of laws to get what they want done.
Ex.
If person has signed paperwork then it is legally binding. So if there is a contract with general information and small print or using uncommon vocabulary and the person signs it they are still legally contracted. So the rigidity of that law allows the lawyers to hack the system and scam people and government to do things that are not nessarly right.
Or if there is a law that is vague. Lets say a zoning law about that says your house needs to be in good repair. So if there is a house that could be borderline the lawyer could push the case any way he needs it to be done.
Lawyers generally hack the laws to get things done for their clients most of the time they do it to help out the people in the community but there are a lot of them who use the laws beyond their intent.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'd say that, generally, old-school hackers are more respectful of intellectual property than new-school hackers. (yes, that was a generality)
For example, most grey-beards that I know don't really favor the idea of p2p being used to share files against the wishes of the author.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
You finally said something that had an inkling of truth to it!
you wrote:
You completely neglected to mention the FACT that the wealthy use government to deter competition and maintain their control.
I COMPLETELY AGREE! At least that is the case here in America. And that tactic has a LOOOONNNGGG history!
Now go over to Sweden, Finland, Norway, or Denmark (or study them over the Net), and tell me if you think that also applies to the same degee with those countries...
Limited government and free markets undermine that entire system.
No, it leaves a vacuum of power that only ONE group can fill--the Rich and Powerful. Nice going! (please see Russia for an example).
(And seriously... if you're going to say that we should use tools to get back at the wealthy, why stop at government? Why not expand into physical coercion with guns, like government seems to?)
Please read Howard Zinn's _A People's History of the United States_!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Is it just me or is this one of the more ridiculous sounding things you've heard in a while?
It's you. I thought the thunderstorm was a nice metaphor. Here's another good line:
"A society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people."
But here in the Rush Limbaugh era, we place as much value on making fun of something as on making an actual point. Oh well, too bad for us.
The same people who bitch about copyright laws get all bent out of shape when their personal information ends up in a database. So is govt totalitarian when it outlaws collection of personal data? The viewpoint is so egocentric as to be laughable.
The ignomy of it all.
I've always been wondering where the title of his book came from (recommended, BTW). Now I suspect it's what his boss said when he found him "working" on his office safe late at night...
--
Try Nuggets , our SMS search engine, which answers your questions anywhere across the UK.
The upper 10% are largely old and will die someday. That event is for what young America waits.
I'll wait it out in Sydney, thank you very much.
There are some intelligent and smart quotes in this essay, but I wouldn't say it is really good. The main reason it is too US centred. This article gives us the impression that all greatest hackers (or even most of brilliant minds) are from US and always will be.
>One problem is that young people seem to think that >the wealth and the power is on THEIR side. They >seem not to see that the the upper 10% of America >owns most of the wealth. But how did this 10% aquire their wealth. Possibly inovation, experimentation and an economic system that rewards these behaviors. Now ask yourself if you consider yourself inovative. Which type of system you would rather work under. One that provides equality of opportunity to do the same. Or one offers little opportunity but promises equality of results.
"More totalitarianist?" Have you been recently locked in a room with George Bush or something? I don't think you'll find that one in the dictionary.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Stop bragging about writing a fancy Hello world app.
Stop stealing old ladies IDs, and find Bin Laden.
Stop terrorist websites, track hijackers. I mean really if your so damn good why don't you do something good besides invent cute web names for yourself.
Just joking.
Jeoin
I think you might be dividing the classes too greatly. Why must a hacker not want to get the food on the table, buy a new SUV, and get a holiday week off to a tropical island? Some hackers aren't that different from "the common man", I'd even say most of them aren't. Of course you might be talking about the "common american idiot", but I don't think there are many of even those left...
I pwn this comment. "The Fine Print" says so.
"But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers." "Why are programmers so violently opposed to these laws?" "The government spying on people doesn't literally make programmers write worse code." a bit too much of generalization there, a lot of hackers are not very good programmers and on the other hand, some programmers don't know anything about hacking.
You are right: DVD copy protection is not really all that important in the big scheme of things. Worst case scenario, "all of your music and movies are belong to us". Not good, but it's not a catastrophe. The issue is that there are much more dangerous IP issues out there. What about patented vegetables? Monsanto is doing just that with genetically engineered crops. If the GE crop pollinizes yours, suddenly you're breaking the law. Worst case scenario: All sources of wheat/corn being owned/taxed by one or two companies. That seems like an unacceptable scenario to me.
In any case, the author's point has more to do with the hacker mentality than computers. It's similar to a good lawyer's mentality too. When, during your daily work, the first thing you do when in front of a new system is to figure out how to exploit it, figuring out how to break anything becomes almost instinctive. Lawyers try to find cracks in the legal system to the benefit of their clients every day. Using this, it's easy to put yourself in the 'bad guy' position, and figure out how, as a big corporation, crooked politician, or corrupted federal cop, our modern way of life could be twisted in your benefit. IMO, modern society needs more people that looks at life in this way. Looking for vulnerabilities in the big program that is any western legal system is a good thing.
The hackers' only claim to fame is that finding problems in IP law is mostily their turf. The essay's author is probably not delusional, as you seem to think. he just tries to cater to his audience, full of computer geeks. I don't think he was going to get a good, positive response if he said that accountants and lawyers were the best examples of this kind of thinking :).
This essay captures the current momentum of the numerous laws passed in the name of "intellectual property". From the essay: "They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic corporate newspeech, but they also laugh at someone who tells them a certain problem can't be solved. Suppress one, and you suppress the other." What is most important here is the word SUPPRESS.
... if music be fruit of love, play on
If we are looking to hackers to save us from any coming storm, we are all doomed.
Hacking is a joke, a bad one at that. Not listening to any bullshit about using the proper term either, this is not 1998 and everyone knows what is meant by "hackers" these days. You break computers, how remarkedly brilliant of you. Pathetic, get a real life and real job. Do something productive, you are not cool, not "elite", and you need a good solid ass-kicking as soon as possible.
Dude... a daughter's dress? In a discussion of IP matters? Nice to see you're one of those illuminated parents who doesn't consider one's feminine children property... or, uh, anything like that.
Ex. If person has signed paperwork then it is legally binding. So if there is a contract with general information and small print or using uncommon vocabulary and the person signs it they are still legally contracted. So the rigidity of that law allows the lawyers to hack the system and scam people and government to do things that are not nessarly right.
Actually many courts won't enforce contracts that they think were unfairly entered into. For example, when one side has a vastly stronger bargaining position, or when there's no consideration (i.e. one person gets something while the other party gets screwed), or if the terms of the contract are too vague, OR if an important clause is buried in pages of boilerplate fine print. And obviously, you can't legally contract to commit an illegal act.
But actually, you do have an important point beneath the similarity between law and hacking. The American common law system has been doing pure open source law for a lot longer than OSS programmers have.
LOL, were you locked in a room with Clinton - trying to mince words? Here are 666 results for you, you Satanic communist:
o x& ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=totalitarianist
http://www.google.com/search?lr=&sourceid=firef
Personally, I blame the parents.
Personally, I blame 100+ year copyrights and a system that made silence into private property in 1952.
By now, I should know better than to read the Paul Graham essays when they're posted on slashdot, but I can't help myself. I think it's my sick obsession with lisp.
Now that I've read a few in the space of a few weeks, I think I'm able to pin down what bothers me. Graham is really good at a certain rhetorical style: he talks at length about a topic that really isn't the topic at hand, until you start to wonder if you're really reading the essay that you thought you were reading, and suddenly the focus shifts to the target. "Maori customs are really a metaphor/synedoche for the perl philosophy!" or whatever. The change is so dizzying (because it is unexpected but not completly random) and such changes come so fast that the reader doesn't stop to evaluate the correctness of Graham's assertions or the depth of what he's saying. It's like a cheesy magic show...the magician distracts you by waving the wand around, so that you don't see that he's actually pulling the rabbit out of his sleeve, rather than out of the hat. To his credit, I think Graham does this trick really well, and it's hard to do.
The thing is, I can appreciate cheesy-magic-show writing, but at some point, I would like to take away an actual idea from what I'm reading. And what are Graham's ideas? Lisp is really l33t! Hackers are really l33t! Graham's ideas are really that simple; they're not refinements or unexpected corrollaries of ideas that were first trotted out ten or twenty years ago. After a few essays, it becomes apparent that all of these ideas really reduce to I, Paul Graham, am really l33t because I like this l33t stuff! I don't fault Graham in the slightest for thinking this, or even about writing it, but since I'm not Paul Graham, it's not a very interesting idea to me.
A.k.a. hypocrisy.
Well, Bruce Wayne, that's cool. I thought for a minute it was Lex Luther or Norman Osborn. Whew.
In Soviet Russia, the govornment hacks YOU!
That's not just to make a joke. The problem with 'hacking' the govornment is that you become corrupted by close proximity to it. In order to have any effect on it, you must become what you hate. Then you don't care enough to make a difference. Billy Gates got his first taste of hacking the govornment a few years back when he was trying to save his company from being broken up into little Baby Bells. Now he can't get enough. Now, he has enough financial power to get into the game before being corrupted, but then, he was on the Dark Side already so it's hard to see a difference. Still, he illustrates the point well enough- power corrupts.
You can hack a sewer system, too. But you're gonna come out smelling like sh*t.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
That we need to dual-boot our government?
Just my luck I was buying while it crashed and got stiffed.
Their interdependency is not as clear as author insists. They rather both depend on how much recources a nation has to spend on wars and military preparations. US developed in a situation where they didn't have any serious military competition nearby - nothing like Europe (until lately), Russia, China, Middle East or Africa. If US would have to constantly fight for a couple of centuries with, let's say, Canada for territories and resources, the situation would be completely different now. Again, if US would get a serious threat right on their borders, the situation with freedoms and economical prosperity would change pretty soon. Just look at how things have changed after 9/11 - two big buildings destroyed by an enemy. Now imagine the same on the scale of the hole country, with millions of casualties and whole cities in ruins - that's the real war on your territory. Do you get the picture now?
When, during your daily work, the first thing you do when in front of a new system is to figure out how to exploit it, figuring out how to break anything becomes almost instinctive. Lawyers try to find cracks in the legal system to the benefit of their clients every day.
And it's not just lawyers, but anyone else who tries to figure out how a system works. Hacking could easily apply to psychologists, anthropologists, linguists, archaeologists, stock investors, con-artists. etc.
In each case there is a system which can be tweaked for loopholes.
Hacking is a term which is limited to computers... but the endevour to take apart a working system is not. Those not in the technocracy don't see these positive "rebel" traits in hackers as something unique to computer related endevours.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
"(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm."
Sadly, we seem to live in a country full of people who love the sound of thunder.
"The common man does not care about the things that hackers care about, his needs are simpler..."
What pray tell, made you decide that you were more complex than the common man? Indeed, what prey tell, made you decide that you weren't just another common man?
That's a ridiculously pompous statement. Meant or not.
I'd relpace "hacker" with "artist" (particularly writer) and then accept that what is good about "hackers" is what has always been good about artists.
This would, of course, inflame those who have invested ego in the idea that programming is "a science" instead of an art.
They, in turn make bad scientists too, because good science is an art too.
Basically, anybody who understands how much their daily work depends on the exchange of information will be drawn into odd persuits and will "sense totalitarianisim like animals sense an oncomming thunderstorm." (or whatever the quote was.)
To lionize "hackers" over, say "sound techs" or "teachers" is huberous.
The problem is that the world is full of machinests and sheep. Machinests want the world to conform to plans, and sheep want someone else to handle it. Between those two large groups, it is hard to get an artistic thought in edgewise.
So South America or Aferica will "be the next America" and it is almost too late to do anything about that. Europe has learned to turn-on-a-dime and will hopefully maintian a stolid bullwork in the current first-world economic structure. America will be the new Africa (but with some good natural resources to totally exploit into garbage) whith increasingly "Bushist", "we cannot possibly be wrong" tendencies to ossification that will ride us deeply into hunta-styled default and decay.
Then who knows?
As a side note, wihout space, as in outer space, as a frontier, expansionisim cannot be sustained; and all we humans are expansionest. We have until the count of "no cheap fuel" to get off this planet, elsewise we will have to eat our own offspring and call it meet. So all this short term lionizing means little, and the real issues remain. Will the machinists hold us to the ground and kill us all, or will we escape?
Screw the hackers, lets get the artists and the scientists moving again. If some of that art is computer programming, all the better.
But I ramble... 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Man, The House ALWAYS wins.....
That's why, if you're smart, you put make sure you *are* the house.
... the only thing you can 'sense' is the overwhelming smell of shite.
..... he lived in Venice.
I once knew a man who went to Florence and told eveyone he had seen the world
Sounds like you can't read 'bud' else you'd manage to spell 'Florense' correctly.
Ha, betcha never even been to NY!
The US ROCKS!
My bollocks ROCK!
Touchy touchy. Did he imply that he was a hacker?
"A society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people."
You are so dead in third period dodge ball, nerd!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
However, it can also be argues that the amount of protection of the individual's right to personal property (intellectual and physical) is also proportional
You're working on the assumption that intellectual "property" (copyright and patnet monopolies) are a property right. That's like saying slavey was a property right - no it wasn't! It was a form of controll over other people, and so is this.
Just because a bunch of people scream very loudly that something is a right doesn't mean that it is. Just because they scream that it's a property right doesn't mean that it is either.
Communism is no more or less a smart solution on paper or in practice. If you can give a rigorous proof for the superiority of communism, then please do. If you can even express using models that communism is superior or inferior to something else, then please do.
Now if you think that writing "communism is good because it will remove the hierarchial class structure and provide true equality to the workers who construct all of the value in the world" is "smart on paper," then you're an idiot. Try getting a job as an engineer with that sort of perspective.
Just wanted to say, that essay was awesome.
"You can see this at work in real life, when you notice that geeks make bad business men."
I think you are generalizing. If you look at the present list of billionaires quite a few of them seem fairly geeky to me. Two examples?
Mr. Gates
Mr. Dell
I'm not saying that the world doesn't need different kinds of people. I am saying that the world is filled with countless sorts of geeks.
A very insightful commentary on the common law - a very organic body of law that has been developing since the foundation of the country (and before, if you count our jurisprudential ties to England). The analogy to open-source is very apt, since common law judges often rely on what other common law judges have done (effective and ineffective) to guide their own decision. Yes, IAILS.
failure of the soviet union is proof enough, imho.
you are the idiot here, communism was borne out of academic work on socio-economic systems.
although i suppose even capitalism could be argued as that, truth is that capitalism in some form or the other has always existed (colonialism is just an extreme form of it).
i think what the original poster meant was that all things equal, a theoretical solution is not a substitute for one that's evolved such as capitalism. if we have socio-neo-capitalism with socialist overtones coming off it, then so be it.
the original economic idea for communism was largely academic, while that of capitalism was largely real-life-ish.
Vote for a Man, Vote for Bush!
Not a liberatarian flipflop hippie.
That is a PERFECT example of the "turtles all the way down" thinking that is endemic in the Hacker-Youth-Libertarian-free trader-globalization mindset. Haven't you considered the idea that "being the House" is something that -- BY DEFINITION -- can happen only to a few??
I mean, where is your logic to tell N number of people, "Everything will be great for you! Just make sure you are one of the lucky top 10%!"? What about the other 90%?
If you want to know how to beat the house, look at what is happening in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, France, etc. The way to beat the house is to decrease the amount of leverage the powerful (the rich, the business owners, the corporations, etc) have over the populace.
You advocate raw Nature, red of tooth and claw. But why live as an animal?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
This guy is tiring. I bet he buys thousands of his own books. I would rather listen to Captain Murphy.
Why are the hackers seperate from the rest of the 'non-wave of totalitarianism?' Just because you can write code, or host a webserver doesn't seperate you from the greater body of the populace. The intellectual elite? That's a pretty grandiose statement to make about sitting around in front of computer all day. Albeit doing useful work. Why is your life so much more complicated, everyone(most), is trying to put food on the table, gain shelter, be happy, and try to uphold their values. What seperates a hacker from that vs the wave of totalitarianism? Other people, non-hackers even, are concerned about this so called wave of totalitarianism(I think I spelled this differently every time).
-I'd call myself a hacker except I am not elite.
In all fairness, the US is like the last frontier.
As a US citizen, I can't stand how intrusive our government is with civil liberties and with taxes, and especially frivolous tickets and things like zoneing and sue-happyness .... but I've studied the stats of countries all over the world, and the simple truth is that there is a very very tiny number of countries that even have marginal improvement. I wish there was a "really" better, but there isn't and that's just the way it is.
I own property in a desert area just north of the border, and hundreds of people have died arround that area in the last 10 years just trying to get in - you can't say that about very many places. oh yeah, the border patrol - another dislike, I really don't have faith in their ability to protect us from terrorists, and I resent being "protected" from fruit pickers and others who just want to make an honest living.
Anyhow, I don't think it's too US centered - it's just that the information age and all it's problems happened here first. I can only hope someday that there will be a better frontier of freedom. Perhaps vast cities on the ocean, perhaps in space. But right now it seems here physically and cyberspace for everything else.
IMHO, For now the biggest issue is copyrights. They are effectively dead even if noone wants to admit it - God help us. You can just tell the shit is about to hit the fan and when it does all hell will break loose.
I think it makes a valid point, and that the governments' willingness to bow to corporate interests because they have conslidated power in the form of money, whereas the consumers do not, is a good indications of the destabilizing of the integrity of the government.
What do you mean consumers don't have any money? Where do you think those mega corps get their money from?
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Due to their poor personal grooming habits, I can sense hakers comming a mile away.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
http://www.mvp-seattle.org/pages/pageFascism.htm ... or is that a bit beyond your amazing capabilities?
Need someone to join the dots up for you, you poor dears...
"Methinks it's more like there are optimists, pessimists, and realists. In that order and with about that degree of separation."
Well there's more than that. If people were really interested? Then they would have studied psychology.
The study of humanity, is like any worthwile study, a lifelong pursuit.
"moving away from Euclidean geometry".
The modern move away from Euclidean was done by Gauss and mainly Riemann, both Germans in the very repressive 19th century Germany.
If Graham had some decent education he would know this. But wait, he is from the US.
""A society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people.""
Another name for "energetic brownian movement of air molecules" is "hot air"
"I think it's less sixth sense and more the fact that some people just pay attention instead of shuffling around in a fog all day looking at their feet while they stroll (or follow other lemmings) right off the proverbial cliff."
Hackers are good at propogating myths too
Some forms protect against theft, but not copying; some forms just prevent copying, but well thought out mechanisms don't do that. The reason is obvious: The legitimate customer, the one who actually gave you money for your product, whatever it may be, is not the person you want to inconvenience (or outright screw.) A middle ground must be found, and there are several reasonable middle ground approaches available.
For instance, software from my company doesn't prevent you from installing in multiple venues. You're specifically allowed to do that by the license, because you bought the use of it, and we expect you to be able to have the use of it in any venue that is legitimate - meaning, any venue you are working in. Home, work, your brother's ultra-fast Penitum-Schmentium. However, you can't enable the software installation without your software key code, which we issue to you as something you are required to keep private. If you spread that key around, or allow it to become spread around, such that we figure it out, then you can lose your rights to upgrades, support, and so on. In this way, we are protected to some degree from the casual "sure, you can have a copy" level of theft, while the end user isn't in the least prevented from use or archival storage. That key has value just like the money you spent to get the legitimate use of it has value. If you lose your money, no one is going to replace it for you. You were stupid, and the loss of your funds is the penalty. Likewise, don't let your software key get out of your hands. However, unlike money, if you were to really lose - as in your house burned down with your money (computer crashed with your key) we are happy to replace your key, so in a way, you have permanent "money" insurance on it, as long as you don't lose it in the sense that your buddy Sancho walked off with it.
Now clearly, this is a compromise on our part, designed to keep from inconveniencing the legitimate end user while discouraging (yes, I picked that word very carefully) theft. That's all it does. Smart thieves don't spread the thing any further, and we don't learn about it, and there you go, we're screwed. But... at least it doesn't go very far under these circumstances. When we find keys on the net, we're pretty quick to make them invalid. So far-spread keys eventually bite the original purchaser and all those they spread to. So anyway, there is what I consider to be a reasonable example of copy protection that protects against theft, but not copying.
Often, this bitching and whining is about audio, so let me address audio for a moment (I am a musician and a recording engineer, btw.) Almost any audio format allows copying - grab a tape deck and run a couple of line-out/line-in cables to an analog tape deck. If you don't own one and want one cheap, see EBay. You can buy audiophile decks for a... song. :) If the bitch is that you can't make an exact digital copy, then feel free to bitch, and I'll feel free to ignore you. But if the bitch is simply that you can't copy, I call bullshit. You can make beautiful and 100% listenable copies (often on a format that is more capable than the original format, when we consider most online audio stuff, though certainly not all.)
Way back when (voice quavers slightly) when you bought an artist's performance on vinyl, no one bitched that you couldn't copy the thing. First of all, you could - you used tape. But you couldn't make an exact copy of it, because the gear didn't exist. No one bitched. Music was music, and we were pretty much ok. And funny thing, all those cassettes and reel to reels - didn't hurt the artists, because they were easy to make and easy to keep and required physical access to spread around.
If you don't recognize that commercial digital audio (and commercial software) is different, then I can't help you. It is different. You have to treat it differently
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You've got a good point, but I wouldn't really call that hacking the government. It's more like hacking the byproduct of government, not the government itself.
I think a better group for what you mean, are Lobbyists. They _really_ hack the government, trying to get laws passed or actions approved, that favour their own interests. They work directly on the government themselves, and obviously do a pretty good job at it, considering the current state of US Government.
thunderstorm....
It's probably the smoke rising from his pants that Paulo 'Mr Hatchett' Grahambino can smell.
Ooops, wrong again. Damn I need a new secretary.
In any government, the system will eventually hack you in your attempts to hack the government.
Also, government hacks are like trying to put backdoors into open source software; there are other hackers watching.
(a government hacker, would probably have to be well versed in law.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"Just because a bunch of people scream very loudly that something is a right doesn't mean that it is. Just because they scream that it's a property right doesn't mean that it is either."
The opposite can be as true as what you just said. Here's your homework for today. Research the history of copyright, and don't forget the legal aspects of it. There will be a test tomorrow. You will need to get a 4.0 to pass.
I scanned on down the list to see what sort of replies I might find, thinking if someone has said it, why should I repeat and bore.
Unforch, in about the first 75 or so posts, I didn't see a reply that even indicated the poster had actually read the article!
Color me an old fool maybe, but Paul has hit the nail of the problem square on the head, and his essay should be required reading for every congress-critter on the face of the planet, the american ones in particular. They are not just stiffling innovation, the innovation that made america what it was in the first 2/3rds of the past century, they are choking it to death and will not be satisfied until even the reflexive heaving of the chest, long after the heart has stopped, has itself stopped. Only when it is well and truely inspected by the attending physician and declared dead will the likes of Jack Valanti be happy.
I don't know how to make it any clearer to our senators and representatives, the damage they have done in the last 25 years, than to make Pauls essay required reading, and to have them say in public that they have read it and agree with Paul, and will work to revert these onerous laws, and do it before they get our votes on Nov 2nd. If they don't, then don't re-elect the incumbent, its that simple. We need a thorough house (senate too) cleaning that breaks the chain of $$$ command between hollywood, congress and yes, even the Supremes. If we don't do it now, by the next time election day rolls around, the disneys and the diebolds will have total control of the country, to rape and pillage as they please instead of undercover like they are doing now. Most of the Bill of Rights will either be ignored, or legislated out of existence. I give you the so-called Patriot Act as the worst example, but don't worry, they'll think up even worse ones given another 2, 4 or 6 years.
When that day comes, and if I'm still around, you'll recognize the likes of me, we'll be the ancient ones saying "I told you so". We remember when america stood for freedom, freedom to go out and make a million if you had a better idea, not spend the rest of your life and all your income in court trying to prove prior art against some copycat. We'll also have plenty of ammo loaded for when it gets noisy, and if it gets noisy before the message is heard, it will be a lot noisier than the Boston Tea Party was. We were relatively few then, but not anymore.
No Cheers this time, Gene
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"It really does sum up the problem facing the U.S. in these next 14 days plus whatever happens. "We" (hackers) can see the mess being created by the current regime and the corps. The majority of the voting population does not see any problem."
So it's been "hackers" all across the globe posting articles of "gloom and doom" for the past 30 years telling everyone else to wake up?
Sorry, but no. Hackers aren't the only one's who've been attentive to what's happening in the world. In fact some of them have gone on to form activist groups, that publish papers and articles that get posted to web forums like Slashdot (a place inhabited by "hackers".) who's citizens internalize what they read and say "I knew it all along, those sneeks". Then to top it off, they tell all who will listen "Damn! Those "nonintellectuals" don't have a clue."
Hmm... I certainly would describe certain actions of lawyers, accountants, and even politicians as "hacks" of the government, don't you think?
I think you're thinking too specifically about the word "hacker."
"Can he be taught? Let's try. Copyright is a copy protection scheme, it provides penalties for those who make unauthorized copies. Copyright was deemed to be ineffective so a minority of copyright holders have decided to layer further ineffective copy protection schemes on top of it to try to stop people from copying their intellectual property."
Sounds like the beginnings of the security industry. Who needs locks in a world were everyone respects everyone?
"If society approves of the copying of this protected media, clearly copyright is serving the few instead of the many and should be revised, as government exists not to serve a few, but to serve all its citizens. Well, that's the idea, anyway."
Governments may, but individual citizens don't.
"Essentially, hackers create tools or processes which can be used for legitimate or non-legitimate purposes. Some of these purposes are actually protected by law. This leads foolish and ignorant copyright holders to seek ever-more-restrictive tools to control their media, which leads to a sort of arms race between those who want to be able to have control over the media they paid for, and people who think that they should control the content they own to an extent not provided for by the law. It results in crap like only licensed DVD players being legally allowed to play DVDs, even though format-shifting is one of our guaranteed rights, at least here in the good ol' U.S. of A."
It's called "a slippery slope". Now the question is "who started it first?".
"So, my question to you is, do you respect the limits put on DVDs? The ability to provide price control by using region encoding? The fact that you cannot legally watch a DVD using an unlicensed player even if you are using it in a manner otherwise accorded to you by law and which does not violate any copyright, for personal use?"
And charging a uniform price is what we accuse Microsoft of.
"If not, then you do not completely respect the limits they put on their property. If so, then in my opinion you are not deserving of freedom as you are not willing to fight for it. I for one am not willing to allow the corporate masters to define our rights, although I'm frankly not sure what I can do about it as the majority of citizens of the US are willing to sit back complacently and let their rights fall by the wayside."
Look up the phrase "political activist" and it's history. The "I'm helpless" is all in your head.
Strawman sited in slashdot thread, news at 11 :)
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Same thing applies.
God, some perspective for once! Some standing back and looking at things for what they really are in our time! Thank you for reaffirming my extremely tenuous faith in Slashdotters.
thunderstorms.. nah.
More like gastritis, or foot and mouth disease.
Your observation is quite accurate, but do you get the motivation. Most people not only lead lives of quiet desperation, but the future isn't likely to get much better for most people, and very probably won't be anything like they planned. A strong sense of denial may be what keeps masses of people from rushing to jump off cliffs like lemmings. Perhaps I'm overly pessimistic, but... X!
"Kazaa is amoral. What people choose to do with it may or may not be moral."
This is the exact logic that has allowed Betamax (and other analog devices capable of duplication) to exist. If the device has a legitimate use then the device is legitimate. If the maker or marketter of the device or service specifically argues an illegal purpose then the service should be shut down or the specific marketter or seller should be targetted, but that does not mean that the users should be targetted unless it can be demonstrated that they are breaking the law.
Companies that sold multifunction card readers and writers, as well as blank cards were marketting these with the claim that it allows one to watch Cable or Satellite TV for free. This marketting strategy is illegal, and businesses advocating the illegal activity are subject to prosecution. The devices, however, have legitimate uses beyond TV, as the subscription TV industry risked using an industry standard card rather than developing their own technology. Subsequently I feel that prosecution solely based on the purchase of such equipment from one of the aforementioned retailers is wrong. If they can prove that the customer is actually using the devices for illegal purposes then they have grounds, otherwise posession is not a crime. Since posession is not a crime, there is no justification for even a search warrant to examine the customer's equipment. If the customer then has turned around and started selling copied key cards and the TV subscription company can prove this though obtaining one then they can make a case.
If I and a bunch of associates had such equipment and were all served, I wouldn't hesitate to find a lawyer with experience for this and counter with racketeering and extortion claims as a group, and to attempt to convince the local attorney general to criminally pursue the matter.
Portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act related to devices capable of copying or playing copies need to be re-evaluated and repealed, for the logic that copying can be done legally of material not protected by copyright, therefore DMCA is restrictive.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I only spent a month travelling around Scandinavia, - and both women and men are more attractive. Health clubs and fitness programs are very popular there, which accounts for some of disproportionate numbers of attractive people. There is actually already a large number of immigrants working in Scandinavian countries, and despite some friction, they deal with it better than us in the US. And aren't we going to have major problems in the future with our aging population, even with a less generous Social Security system?
Intellectuals have always been against totalitarianism.
Just say "Orwell" and the book "1984" comes to mind. Say "Bradbury", and you'll remember "Farenheit 451". The threaten of an all-seeing arm of the law, made not to serve people but to make people servants of the law, has very well been studied. Either for captialism (Farenheit), or communism (1984).
In an era of cybernetics, intellectuals have been forced outside the law. But this is not new. They've already been called witches, communists, anarchists, pirates... hackers - and who knows tomorrow. Always a name-calling for those who threaten the Status quo. And it NEVER fails.
Sure, we all fear embarrassment and prison if somehow a man in black knocks at our door saying we downloaded music. But many times the system doesn't question: "Are we doing the right thing?"
Is it really that the RIAA are protecting the musicians' rights, or is it more that they're protecting their OWN income, leaving musicians in bankruptcy?
I often think of Javert from Les Miserables, when I see the RIAA or MPAA trying to use the Law to enslave the people that the Law was precisely supposed to protect (the citizens).
"It's the Law!!!" Javert says.
But WHOSE law, I ask?
Common people (whom I call "hobbits", always ignorant of their approaching doom, isolated in their comfy houses in the Shire) just get scandalized. "oh! Hacker! Oh! Law breaker! Oh, criminal!".
But they don't step to realize. What happens when a law does more harm than good? What happens when citizens are manipulated by a political puppet of the CIA to invade Iraq? What happens when people give away their freedom of choice, to the ones that were supposed to protect this very freedom?
I'm not an anarchist. I like the Law. I LOVE the law (Without law, another law would reign, and it's the law of the strongest).
But we all have to remember, that when the Law isn't protecting the citizens, it must be abolished. If it's not, then the governments are just making a recipe for disaster.
Remember what happened in the French Revolution. Had the government (i.e. the King) given his rights to a democracy, so much blood wouldn't have been shed in the name of "liberty, equality, fraternity".
So very well the RIAA, MPAA, and George Bush should remember these words that the world seems to have forgotten:
Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
If you're going to pick apart people's grammar, you could at least learn to spell "ridiculous". Damn it.
Actually, I believe alot of the large wealth runs in familys. Also, wealth creates more wealth when applied properly.
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
"Protesting does nothing, but coding skype takes down the telcom industry. Get the idea?"
I get the idea that hackers are no wiser than anyone else. Technological solutions can't solve social problems. Selfishness and amorality isn't a technological problem, and can't be solved by such. Regardless of which side you're talking about.
Only a fool would think that communism is a good solution. A smart man realizes that people are not all good actors and that equality under communism is impossible. Nobody from the intellectual elite would truly believe that communism is good, except as a pie-in-the-sky-but-no-chance-of-working ideal. Those who only THINK they are in the intellectual elite might though.
"If the GE crop pollinizes yours, suddenly you're breaking the law. Worst case scenario: All sources of wheat/corn being owned/taxed by one or two companies. That seems like an unacceptable scenario to me."
No. You're probably thinking of the Schmeiser case, but he's a fucking liar.
His crop didn't get to 95% pure Monsanto canola by accident. And Monsanto wasn't seeding it under cover of darkness. The Canadian court system is not under the control of evil arch-capitalists. There's a reason they've ruled against this liar.
Besides, the courts would simply throw out the case if the Monsanto part of the crop was small enough that spraying your crop with roundup wouldn't be cost effective compared to seeding with regular canola (ie enough crop dies that there is a net loss) - what use is Roundup Ready canola if you can't use Roundup?
There's no way that accidental (or purposeful on the part of Monsanto, if you're the kind of conspiracy theorist who actually believes it would be possible to seed a field without getting noticed) pollination could produce enough RR canola to be a threat, except through gene pollution. You'd be much better off arguing from that point of view than the "oooh scary corporation" one.
And remember: they originally wanted to put in terminator genes to prevent RR crops from producing offspring, which would have prevented this from happening in the first place, but the rabidly anti-gmo/anti-corporation left (don't think I'm calling all anti-gmo people rabid, I'm just singling out the rabid ones) raised too much of an outcry. The blame for this is entirely on Schmeiser's shoulders... but if you absolutely *must* blame someone else, blame the rabid anti-gmo crowd.
"I only spent a month travelling around Scandinavia, - and both women and men are more attractive."
Of course I'll admit that many of the scandinavian people are attractive... I just simply don't think they're anymore attractive any any other "group" of people.
"There is actually already a large number of immigrants working in Scandinavian countries, and despite some friction, they deal with it better than us in the US."
Well, as I said, they kind of need new labor to keep the system afloat.
Though the numbers are still nowhere near immigrants into the U.S. At least I can't imagine the numbers being anywhere near it...
I've also read something along the way about Islamic immigrants raping scandinavian women... I can't seem to find the article. But I don't know if it's a large trend...
"And aren't we going to have major problems in the future with our aging population, even with a less generous Social Security system?"
Yes we are. It is a problem of all government ran social security systems. Not only are you paying for people to retire, you're also paying for the extra bureaucracy... and all the other issues with it.
Speckpot?
"Copyright involves a trade, a quid-pro-quo, as it is originally expressed in the constitution. "
Trade implies "amoung equals".
"The public gives up the natural right to make copies for a fixed time. "
One tiny flaw. There's no "natural right". You might consider it a "natural act", but that's not the same thing. Here's something to ask yourself. If the artists release nothing to the general public, what does that do to your "natural right"? Are you going to torture them, so you can exercise your "natural right"? Didn't work for slavery.
"The creator gains protection that will encourage him to create. "
Protection from what? We all are friends around here.
"If you've dome any of your work before 1994, your government unilaterally renegotiated your contract to simply give you some more of what was once my natural right. In your case, starting in the 70's, you've already had your contract with me renegotiated 3 times in your favor. How about you start honoring your end of the deal?"
I wasn't aware that the "artists" is the government? Maybe you need to talk to the right people?
"There were rules in effect at the time you wrote your works. You knew what they were, or you had every chance to learn. You presumably thought the law of that time was fair when you put the works into publication. Do you want to stand by the promises you made, or at least let the government make for you then, or let new governments keep breaking it for you, just so long as they do it for your side each time?"
Copyright is for everyone. Or are you under the illusion that it's just for the "artists"? If so then your posts makes you an "artist". Welcome to the club.
"So where did you get the +70 years of that life+70 clause? The government now takes the position that it made that +70 years up out of nothing. In practice, it's taken from my children's and grandchildren's natural rights, but legally, copyright becomes a created right instead of a transferred one."
So how many hours do you have to work in order to buy a TV? How about a car? A house? And yet you seem to have a problem with the same when what's being exchanged is a "natural right"
"Once the government is seen as creating your rights, it can take them away as well. "
As do individuals who like to play "government" with other people's lives.
"You're dependant on a government handout, just like anyone on welfare, and if the government decides to take that right away, what principle will you claim they are violating? If they shorten your copyright, will they give the natural right back to me and generations to come, or will they keep the parts they trim off for themselves? And if they can keep it for themselves, how long do you think it will be before that shortening begins?"
No artists aren't dependent on government handouts because they can always retrain to produce things that no one is in dispute as to the rightful exchange of money for labour.
Those who hew to their "natural rights" however have no such luxury, and must either do without, or whine in perpetuity about what they lost.
The idea that these so-called "hackers" are any better at detecting sociological/political trends than anyone else is just another name for geek elitism. A particular talent in programming (or "hacking", if you somehow think that's more cool) doesn't confer exceptional insight into anything other than coding.
The article, on it's face, is just an intellectual hand-job for the nerd set.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
It's getting late and my typing is getting hoarse, but keep up the good defense, and bring the rest of your friends to bring some balance to this crazy forum. It needs it badly.
.. is that it is, quite literally, to be found everywere. In all walks of life.
.. Fascist. Micro-Fascism, here even on /., is something we all contend with.
When the philosophers/radicals of the previous century predicted that Mankind was to evolve into a totalitarian regime, they were right. It wasn't that hard to predict.
You really don't have to go far to find a fascist point of view.
Totalitarianism is a radically contagious personality trait. Just turn on the TV. News presenters are totalitarian; this personality is contagious, just like other social diseases. People love to have an authoritative perspective on things - even me, right now, I'm doing it!!! - but the thing about it is that it is a transmitted personality. We learn Fascism, as a meme, all through life.
The "Ever Right" person, who has an opinion about everything and is "always close to righteousness"
Unless you doubt yourself, you will not rise.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
" Kazaa is amoral. What people choose to do with it may or may not be moral."
That's why they ask you to agree to the "End User License Agreement"
Howver some other P2P applications, the question of legality goes into a gray area.
Why have multiple layers who's sole purpose is to hide one's identity (and sap resources)(1)? We all aren't political refugees.
(1) Likewise don't forget to note the irony in such a stance, and people's "complaints" about AC's and how cowardly they are for hiding their identity, by all you card carrying UIDS.
"You can see this at work in real life, when you notice that geeks make bad business men."
>I think you are generalizing. If you look at the present list of
>billionaires quite a few of them seem fairly geeky to me. Two
>examples?
>Mr. Gates, Mr. Dell
It was obviously a genersalisation, and I agree with it. Two or three counter examples don't make it invalid. Look at the countless tech firms headed by geeks that go down the toilet. The classic pattern is geeks invent something, start a company to sell it, and if it starts to take off they are replaced, willingly or not, by less geeky businessmen. Those that stubbornly hold on to power rarely succeed. And if they do, good luck to them, but they usually have to give up being a geek to do so.
That's not all of it. 'Hacking' the government often requires a supreme confidence--arrogance even--that will allow you to impose your views and beliefs on others through force that hackers don't usually seem to have. To use your wording, while I may feel that X is good, I do not necessarily feel that hacking the government to impose X on everyone else is also good.
I do a lot of political lobbying on issues like GMOs (I happen to be for them, btw), etc., and the size/strength of the opposition never comes into play as far as my decision on whether or not to get involved. It all comes down to whether or not I believe that directing the government to impose a view through force of law is justified. I usually do not, and sometimes even fight organized movements whose aim is just that (e.g., the aforementioned issue of GMOs).
The government is not elegant. Having to use it is to resort to a kludge in the worst sense of the word, as there will inevitably be massive unwanted side-effects which affect far more than your intended target, and it will only work as a general approximation of what you had in mind. If you're lucky.
Could it be that such laws, though intended to protect America, will actually harm it? Think about it. There is something very American about Feynman breaking into safes during the Manhattan Project. It's hard to imagine the authorities having a sense of humor about such things over in Germany at that time. Maybe it's not a coincidence.
How about US in this time?
Hey, dyslexic as hell, but "meet" was a deliberate use of old english. Clearly our ofspring would be "meat" and we wouldn't need to repeat the obvious.
On the other hand, saying it is a good thing to eat one's children is an act of denial as profound as those happening to day.
Don't understand the Phrase? I suggest googling it:
"is meet" shakespeare
And yes, you need the quotes around the first two words.
(Now if only slashdot had any spelling checker, let alone one as effective as the one in gmail...)
Plus, I had like five minutes to think up, type in, and proof that while thing because I was wasting time at work. 8-)
You still got most of the point with all six spelling errors, and one inability on your part to catch a cultural reference.
so, (...ahem...)
bite me...
8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
You will be more comfirtable with radical islamic
rule or the "western communism"
... to rely on your code.
Choice of operators is as much an art as choice of words.
Bad artists make bad art. The "programming is not an art" people make bad code because they don't understand the nuance of their craft. [Some *are* artists despite themselves, but that is the profound exception.]
If you beleive that given the same plan, the same requriements, and the same docmuentation; twelve programmers of similar skill will each produce the same program, you are sadly mistaken.
Even the choice of the "non functional" bits, like choice of identifier names, is a *necessary* part of the art. Two people can produce two largely identical programs, and one can *still* be "better" because of excelence of craft. I have been forced to maintian code written by very smart programmers who were otherwise bereft of art. It was hell simply because "the nicities" were all wrong.
There are also cultural differences between various programs that do the same thing.
Programs instruct the computer and communicate with the user.
Doing that well is art, no matter what your egotistical opinion of "artists as inferiors" leads you to think. And you will likely never be much of a programmer as long as you think otherwise.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
If you couldn't figure it out form the Shakespeare reference...
look up "meet" at die.net (your aparent dictionary of choice), scroll all the way to the bottom...
now go up two:
Meet \Meet\, a. [OE. mete fitting, moderate, scanty, AS. m?te
moderate; akin to gemet fit, meet, metan to mete, and G.
m["a]ssig moderate, gem["a]ss fitting. See Mete.]
Suitable; fit; proper; appropriate; qualified; convenient.
So it technically isn't even old english, even if it is somewhat archaic...
And don't be such a snobb...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
"I think the actual use of P2P software to upload or download files might be unethical, but the phenomenon of file sharing in general is nothing more and nothing less than the invisible hand attempting to correct the price of the media being distributed. It's no more unethical than the phenomenon of male Lions killing cubs when they take over a pride. It might be nasty when each individual does it, but the practice has helped Lions survive as a species."
Uh-huh. Lions are we? Darwin's gift to humanity.
No wonder we're so fucked up in the head. Next thing you know, we'll be licking our balls like dogs do.
"The simple fact is that the market is hardwired into humans. Trade is in our nature. We may argue with actions people take, but there's very little that can be done to stop anything completely. We can no more stop file sharing than we can the drug trade or prostitution. There's demand, there's supply, the market takes care of the rest whether we like it or not."
Sounds like a good argument to dissolve the security industry. After all you can't stop the juggernaut known as "human nature", and there desire to walk away with that plasma TV you just bought.
"The problem with those trying to stop it is that they're fighting human nature. Human nature won't change. It's not that the **AA is wrong (or at least, exclusively wrong), it's that their goal is not achievable. They will either continue to fight, capitulate, or compromise. My money's on compromise, but no bets on when."
Or do like Disney and lock it in the vault till next time.
"The price of the media in question is higher than the market is willing to bear. I'm not saying it is or is not a fair price, only that it's higher than people are willing to pay. As a result, there were a lot of people that wanted the media but didn't want to pay for it. To the tune of several times the total volume of legitimate sales."
Amd yet I can walk around the corner and get used CDs from 3-6 dollars. I guess the "free" market can't "bear" that.
"It's the **AA's fault for ignoring the market. While I might consider the actions of the file traders themselves to be unethical, I recognize that they're following human nature."
The devil made me do it", also comes from "human nature".
Secondly, geeks generally have a different view of the way the world should be, since they tend to live and work in communities where things work very differently than they do in the Real World.
Thirdly, we have earned the right to be elitist... I'm not saying geeks are smarter than everyone else, I'm saying everyone else tends to be fscking stupid. At least where I've been hanging out. Watch, I'll bet you five bucks Bush gets reelected.
Besides, we're responsible for damned near everything. (Except for the app server going down this morning. *cough*)
You wake up in the morning with your alarm clock, get in your car with the bazillion little circuits -- maybe even GPS, DVD, OnStar, whatever -- drive to the DMV to renew your license with the magstripe on it with a computer that has your records on file. Then to the gas station, using your debit card that's linked to your bank account to fill 'er up, and then to the grocery store, where your membership card keeps track of what you're buying. Your girlfriend emails your cell phone and asks you to buy milk. You pick up a pack of batteries, a new DVD from the impulse isle, and a bottle of tequila, all of which have those little anti-theft devices. Oh, and, of course, the milk, from a farm in Wisconsin that milks its cows and pasturizes their milk by machine. Wait for the cash register to clear your check, then drive home, hit the garage door opener, wait for your car's radar to beep so you know you can stop, flip the lightswitch, fire up your TiVo and rewind the episode of the Simpsons you almost missed, microwaving a burrito and looking up movie times while you ignore the parts you already saw.
Which part of that didn't involve a geek? Except the burrito, and maybe the girlfriend, unless you're really lucky.
Shit. I fed the troll. Sorry. On the upside, I said "mod me down", maybe I'll get modded up.
In a very real sense Ahmed Chalabi and Iyad Allawi hacked the US govt. They infiltrated the govt and used the power of the mighty US military to get rid of their sworn enemy. In the case Ahmed things didn't go as well as he planned but Iyad is firmly in control of Iraq and is wielding his power with an iron fist.
evil is as evil does
"And why should people respect this idea of "intellectual property". I'm sorry, but thinking of something should not give you the right to forbid other people to think of the same thing."
So why aren't you making your own music, movies, books, and games?
"If you don't want people to use your idea, keep it for yourself. It is as simple as that."
And yet you're the one who can't keep your hands to yourself.
"I have no respect whatsoever for people who try to limit my freedom in order to "make money". "
You must hate your job then. Limiting you in so many ways, all so he can run a money making business.
"Patents and copyrights should only be there to encourage creativity. Nothing more."
Worked fine until the "human nature" lobby got a majority in society.
"This afternoon I just saw a little girl (8 or 9 years old) buying some bread and ketchup with some small change. This was the only food she could afford. In front of the cash register she was looking at some CD on display, probably dreaming of having enough money to buy one. And you are saying that we should be more respectful of intellectual property? Sorry, but you can go to hell. What I saw this afternoon disgust me. Britney Spears can go to hell. Long live P2P (unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that little girl didn't have a computer)."
It's nice to see that politicians aren't the only one's to use the "Think of the children" defense.
"BTW, I guess you think I say this because I'm selfish (thinking how better than me you are). Well, guess what... I don't use P2P. Of course, I dont buy CDs either. The only one I will buy this year is the new Rammstein when it's out on november 16. And the funny part is, from an ideological point of view, I know I should not buy it."
Your eye's say "No, No!" but your posts say "Yes, Yes!".
"I guess you think of yourself as someone "good". Sorry, but this is not my opinion."
Polite society is crushed.
He was doing well until the "rar rar america" bit. At that point, he lost the plot, and I stopped reading.
We are all tired from the crap this guy is producing at an alarming rate! Go ahead and mark me as a troll but he is an idiot!
Am I common when I don't eat excessively packaged foods?
Am I common when I eat naturally grown, genetically-unaltered fruits, vegitables, and grains?
Am I common when I don't even have the TV hooked up to anything besides a VCR?
Am I common when I would rather read a good book than drink?
Am I common when I would rather ride a bike than drive an SUV?
Am I common when I would rather learn something new, or discuss an idea, than make a baseless assertion as you just have?
As an American, I am, on all counts, not common. Please look up "common" in the dictionary. I think you'd be surprised by what you'll find.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Paul and Joel write engaging, thoughtful stuff.
I, for one, think your trollish personality would be improved by acquaintance therewith.
The government has already been hacked by big bussiness. The hack was getting personal rights assigned to corporations. That means the government is most useful for corporations and big money. Not for Joe and Jane, Bruce and Sheila or Johnny and Anita. Should be obvious if you take a closer look at the system.
"There is such a thing as American-ness. There's nothing like living abroad to teach you that. "
...yeah, to teach you why so many people hate Americans and their cultural imperialism.
"(Hackers) can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.""
...
Uhh, it's called PARANOIA, folks - in this case hackers feel as if the government is out to get them - BECAUSE THEY ARE... Hackers that steal IP and break into peoples' systems have no respect for the rule of law, and they know they are criminals. They try to justify their crimes by espousing these ridiculous "IP wants to be free" arguments or other similar senseless drivel.
Of course, the government wouldn't be after them if they didn't break the law, but they continue to refuse to play by the rules.
Here's a clue: Change your title to "Systems Security Specialist" or something similar and GET A JOB. I'm tired of hearing hackers ranting and raving about all of the injustices that are directed toward them. They are the ones who are responsible for their situation.
When I'm a student, or too sick to do anything, I certainly can't afford to buy DVDs or CDs. I still buy the odd used game, but $10 for a game that will provide twenty to fifty hours of entertainment is within ANY budget.
But whenever I have dinner with my aunt and uncle, he regales me with stories of all the free software he downloads. It kind of disgusts me since he can obviously afford to purchase it legit. I switched to Linux precisely to get away from having to pirate software. I always encourage people to switch, so that they can benefit from truly a free operating system and office suite. I've gotten quite a few people to switch to OpenOffice.
FTA: " It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or Germany, or England, or Japan. In those countries, people color inside the lines."
Which is why 50% of useful inventions since WWII have come from the US. Oh, wait, I typed S when I meant to type K...
I like the bit about the people over there coloring inside the lines. I'm not sure this was meant as humor, but it sounded to me like a classical case of "there be dragons".
If this guy can write off an entire continent as docile, by just seeing (probably some limited places in) Florence, then it makes me wonder about his judgment in general.
Please review that basic text on homeland security, "Peter and the Wolf".
Clear, Dark Skies
There was an editorial article in 2600(Summer 2003 issue) titled "Disrepecting The Law".
Basiccaly it talks about goverments double standards regarding to law. They'll adopt a law as they see fit and conviniently (without due reason or process) kick out when its not. or the different intreprentation of the law for the goverment and the people.
cough**bechtel**cough cough kyoto*** halliburton**cough
Civil disobidience(breaking the law) is sometimes needed to protest agianst this.
;The law does not equal ethical; the law does not equal what is right. There is lots of friction.
Timang tinggi tinggi
parang sudah asah
alang alang mandi
biar sampai basah
It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not France, or Germany, or England, or Japan. In those countries, people color inside the lines.
What a load of rubbish. Japan is colouring inside the lines but America is the world's innovator. It may have been true in the distant past but now that makes me laugh. What arrogant and patently absurd garbage.
The population of Norway has been rising steadily since after WW2. If I recall correctly, it hasn't dipped once. This is partly due to immigration, yes, but Norway also has a fairly high birth rate. (I really can't be bothered to dig up English documentation right now, sorry ppl:)
I'm not digging up anything on the number of immigrants in Norway and USA right now, either:)
As for Islamic immigrants raping Scandinavian women ... You must have picked up that from some far-right idiot arsehole. That is rubbish (and I wonder what sites you frequent to piuck up crap like that). Immigrants of Islamic faith aren't bigger rapists than non-Islamic immigrants. Or native Norwegians, for that matter ...
Oh, I forgot to mention: I'm Norwegian.
Human Development Index
The knuckles, the horrible knuckles!
(I'm a girl, you know)
Hack the government? I thought that was what Attorneys and Politicians were for...
Caution: These comments may or may not reflect the actual opinion of the author.
The problem with the intellectual elite is just that - they are the intellectual elite. Often times, smart solutions on paper is not the same as applying them in the real world - socialism/communism is a classic example of this.
I submit that socialism/communism are not smart solutions on paper, once human nature is taken into account. Thus the problem is that the designers were not smart enough, and not that they were intellectual elite. I have a problem with the "works on paper but not in real life" argument in general, for this very reason.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
The problem is that the world is full of machinests and sheep. Machinests want the world to conform to plans, and sheep want someone else to handle it. Between those two large groups, it is hard to get an artistic thought in edgewise.
I continue to wonder why people like you prefer democracy at all. I suspect that you really don't ...
I think it's less sixth sense and more the fact that some people just pay attention instead of shuffling around in a fog all day looking at their feet while they stroll (or follow other lemmings) right off the proverbial cliff.
and you like democracy because ...? I wish /. elitists would just attempt a coup and be done with it already ;)
I do not see him mentioning anywhere that he was/was not a common man.
You drew that conclusion, and blame him for that?
Wow. Nice argument. And you actually got modded up to +5 for that, too.
Sorry, but I heard this story myself. It was a pretty thorough multi-part series on issues caused by the surge of middle eastern immigration to parts of Europe.
There are few people that would call NPR a "far-right idiot arsehole", in fact they tend to lean left IMHO, but they are generally considered a credible news source. There is no text on the rapes issue, but you can listen to the audio on NRP's web site
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There's this thing called "sarcasm"... -yndrd1984
Well, you seem to be making most of your judgements based on stereotypes, stereotypes that are based on hearsay rather than going out in the world and acquire experience. That is not uncommon, but when you fail to appreciate the beauty of our women, that's just too much! :-)
That said, I have travelled a lot around the world, and found there are certain traits that are just very beautiful in most people. In Europe, Bulgarian women are very beautiful. In South America, the Inca-Spanish mix high in the Andes has resulted in many astoningshly beautiful women. Also, I suspect that there are really a lot of beautiful women in Iran and Afghanistan, too bad they're covered up like that. I shall admit, however, that I do find those who are not too different from myself most appealing.
I suggest travelling more, it helps to form a balanced opinion.
That's why his new book is called "Hackers and Painters." He's arguing that they are pretty much the same.
Exactly.
I eat organic and am a vegetarian, I do not own a TV or a car, I read books rather than watch something (other than anime on my computer ofcourse) and spend my time doing things that help society, rather than while it away.
And I would definitely say that I'm not a common man. I may not be the intellectual elite, but I'm not the common man, either.
And besides where did the original poster mention that he was the intellectual elite? He was pointing out the differences that is all.
I think your parent poster does not even know what he is talkin' about.
What pray tell, made you decide that you were more complex than the common man? Indeed, what prey tell, made you decide that you weren't just another common man?
I was pointing out the differences between two broad generalizations that I had made, nothing more. Where did I say that I was or was not the common man?
Hackers is a very general term - it also includes countless chemists, physicists, mathematicians and biologists out there, too - not merely geeks with their gadgets. Hell, it even includes lawyers and several other professions.
And usually, these people are called hackers precisely because they're so darned good at what they do. That would indeed make them the intellectual elite, no matter how you look at it.
True, some of them may indeed have characteristics in common with what I described, but that is not what drives them. They are worried about those needs because they are essential, but what really motivates them is the work they do. Sure, my physics advisor has a car and a job, but what drives him is not how best he can make some quick cash and go to the Bahamas for a vacation. What drives him is how to prove that odd theorem in physics that no one has proved in a couple of hundred years. What drives him is the single minded devotion to science and striving for scientific truth. And the fact that he has spent his entire life in this pursuit. If that doesn't make him different from the common man, I do not know what does.
It's neither pompous nor humble - it's just a factual statement on the fundamental differences.
Government is a tool that can be hacked to work for you
Sure, if you believe in the paradigm of government. But I'm not a believer -- I don't believe in using force as a means to an end.
Instead, many hackers reject government totally. That attitude is akin to Luddism.
I realize that for the statist, turning to government for the solution to any problem is just "common sense". But as a statist, you have to realize that not everyone thinks as you do.
I'm not arguing with you, just pointing out that not everyone automatically accepts the statist mode of thinking (that it is moral and just -- even natural -- to initiate force as a means to an end). So next time you encounter a person who "rejects government totally", consider that there may be a reason for it.
You are making the same stupid mistake as a lot of pompous bastards out there:
The majority of people doing menial work (eg. flipping burgers, punching a cash register) do not do it because it is the pinnacle of their possibilities. They currently need the dough, that's all.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
The problem with this analogy is that government still holds the key. The lawyers cannot change government by their own will; they can only influence the people who actually do control government (the ruling class). Hackers, on the other hand, create and modify things out of their own will. You don't have to appeal to some higher power to create a computer program, do you?
1. Geographic isolation
2. Abundant Natural Resources
3. Getting in and out of WWII at the right time.
Pure comedy gold.
You are very common in your belief that the things you list actually differentiate people.
Adorning yourself in feathers does not make you fly.
But according to my commute, animals can't tell an SUV roaring 20 feet away.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
There are numerous other examples. One that I find particularly striking is Ludwig von Mises. First of all, his works consistently advocate the very economic freedom that Graham talks about as a necessary pre-condition to creating economic prosperity. And his book Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis was first published in 1992 in German. He certainly saw it coming and said so.
where did I advocate communism?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
... is that we need to dig up and reanimate some of the old mainframe hackers to teach us how to hack a system so it works for us wihtout destroying its usability by others?
Back when the United States Revolution was taking place Europe was positing a similar rooster-in-the-barnyard mentality by saying Americans were dull and the continent of America was boring.
Armed with that Good American Finger waving motive Thomas Jefferson wrote his book "The Virginian" to counter the Europe snobbery and show that America was indeed equal or superior to Europe. America had something to prove and Jefferson wasn't above trying to prove it. Hey, we got the Moose which is the largest land animal outside of Africa. Benjamin Franklin was our emissary to Europe and France partly to demonstrate that hey, we can grow 'um smart over here. To this day France still considers Franklin the quintessential American.
But I have to say, what's up with the cultural superiority thing? Aren't we beyond that at this point in history? Europe did it us and we didn't like it at the time, as Jefferson's book and many other writings of the American revolutionary period clearly demonstrate.
Nobody likes a snob. Besides, the British don't like the competition in the snobbery department. Leave the snobbery to the Brits I say and lets stick with good ole American, Paul Bunyan exageration. We can just continue our merry tradition of blowing out the candle and jumping into bed before the light goes out.
Cheers!
Mybrid
I've read the last few Paul Graham links on /., and I'm already tired of his longwinded and useless generalizations. The last one was essentially flaming Java, and this one seems to be little more than American chest thumping. For example:
If I remember right, the OS I'm using was created by a guy in Helsinki and followed up by an international effort (not involving Lisp). One of the best cracks in recent history was hacking DVD encryption, not by a God-fearing 'merican, but by a kid in one of those stifling socialist countries (also without the help of Lisp).
Can someone tell me why I should care about what Paul Graham has to say, or is he just another Katz? When can I get a button to filter him out?
For the record, I'm a US citizen, and I'm fond of Scheme, though I can't say I use it very often.
I can't believe you wrote all that after missing my point completely. I'll give you a hint: nowhere there did you say anything about theft. You were talking about copying.
Please give me an example of how your copy protection stops somebody walking into a shop, picking a box off a shelf, and walking out without paying.
This article went to crapland when the word "America" appeared. It went from arguing open source to arguing that America is the best, and then to saying that no other country in the world has what it takes to make improvements. .. Dude, just stop writing already. My eyes are bleeding.
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
Actually, your whole argument stays or falls with the presumption downloading songs is illegal.
It must be noted, that in several jurisdictions (of even western countries), it's not illegal to *download* songs, it is illegal to upload them.
In those cases, your argument is worth nothing, because then, indeed, they can't stop him (as long as he doesn't upload). So actually he may have a point: he might have the right to download it, and no1 can stop him.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
"The only way they "encourage creativity" is by allowing folks like me to profit from our endeavors."
Yes, but only for a limited time. It is NOT meant to be a life-long paycheck; it's meant to be a stimulus for you to make other creative works.
That the 'limited' is paramount to it, has been made clear more then once. Alas, current laws, lobbied by the big corps, have abused and made that provision hollow, converting the original wise law to something to stuff your pockets with indefinately, instead of giving it to the public, so the whole of society can benefit from it.
If a law gets abused and made into a shadow of its real meaning and purpose in that way, I really can't shed a tear when people are breaking it en masse.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
"The population of Norway has been rising steadily since after WW2. If I recall correctly, it hasn't dipped once. This is partly due to immigration, yes, but Norway also has a fairly high birth rate. (I really can't be bothered to dig up English documentation right now, sorry ppl:)"
... You must have picked up that from some far-right idiot arsehole. That is rubbish (and I wonder what sites you frequent to piuck up crap like that). Immigrants of Islamic faith aren't bigger rapists than non-Islamic immigrants. Or native Norwegians, for that matter ..."
Just speaking of Europe in general...
"As for Islamic immigrants raping Scandinavian women
It wasn't a site I frequent, which is why I couldn't find it...
"Oh, I forgot to mention: I'm Norwegian."
Hello, Norwegian.
Speckpot?
However, in simple terms: Our copy protection stops YOU from walking of with our enable codes because the legitimate owner, who bought the right to use them, isn't likely to give them to you because they know it may cause them serious distress.
I was talking directly and specifically about theft. If you don't think I was talking about theft, then say, right out and clear, that you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, don't believe that intellectual property is a valid concept and you reject the idea that you can steal IP. If that's the case, then you are completely at odds with society, and with me, and there is nothing to discuss. That's fine, just say so. If your point is "other", then please make your point clearly.
Don't expect me to agree with you, though. My creation of IP (music, written works, hardware designs, software) takes real work, real time, and real dollar investment. I look to recoup that investment at a minimum, and like anyone else, actually hope to do better than that. I have a family to support, as well as numerous employees, and just like a guy who digs a hole for your septic tank, or an accountant that solves a problem you couldn't solve without them, the work I do has value. Which concept you directly validate if you steal it. If your thesis is that the work I do, and the work that others do in these same veins does not have value, I call bullshit on your entire thought process - that's naive and stupid, and at the root, entirely selfish and lacking any social foresight whatsoever.
There is nothing whatsoever wrong with someone giving away they work they do, if that's what they want to do with it. What you apparently have done, however, is assumed that because some people give away their creations, that such creations have no value. This is not true even if the item is given for free. That is social charity, the giving of something for no fiscal return, and you should be grateful for this charitable act - that is an appropriate form of payment, by the way. I put it to you that if the item did not have value, you would not spend the effort to get it, read it, learn it, use it, whatever.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This post really deserves to be modded up. Kudos, Jtheletter!
-- TTK
(Slashdot needs a function for transferring points from one of my own posts to someone else's.)
Your thesis, apparently, is that the only thing that is theft is picking up a physical object and walking out with it. That is a confused, and naive, position.
My "thesis" is that copyright infringement is not theft. This is backed up by the dictionary definition of the word "theft" (requiring something to be taken from its original position to be stolen), U.K. law (please refer to the three Acts that define theft), and a U.S. Supreme Court decision (cf Dowling vs USA, 1985).
Confused and naïve? Not me, I have the dictionary and the law on my side. You, on the other hand, have bought into the RIAA and MPAA's "copyright infringement is theft" bullshit wholesale. It's perfectly obvious who the confused and naïve one is.
Our copy protection stops YOU from walking of with our enable codes because the legitimate owner, who bought the right to use them, isn't likely to give them to you because they know it may cause them serious distress.
If the legitimate owner gives their code to you, nobody is stealing anything. I was talking about theft. I'll quote myself:
Please give me an example of how your copy protection stops somebody walking into a shop, picking a box off a shelf, and walking out without paying.
You dodged the question and answered a different one.
I was talking directly and specifically about theft.
No, you were talking about copyright infringement.
If you don't think I was talking about theft, then say, right out and clear, that you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, don't believe that intellectual property is a valid concept and you reject the idea that you can steal IP.
Why on earth do you think that I don't believe that intellectual property is a valid concept? I do. But that doesn't make copyright infringement into theft.
Don't expect me to agree with you, though. My creation of IP (music, written works, hardware designs, software) takes real work, real time, and real dollar investment.
If you are trying to imply that I don't think creation of original works takes work, time and/or investment, then that is a ridiculous straw-man argument, and I don't support it. Nor can anything I wrote above be misconstrued as to reach that argument. Your attempt to discredit my point that copyright infringement is not theft is poor.
I have a family to support
What, exactly, does that have to do with the fact that copyright infringement and theft are two very different things?
If your thesis is that the work I do, and the work that others do in these same veins does not have value, I call bullshit on your entire thought process - that's naive and stupid, and at the root, entirely selfish and lacking any social foresight whatsoever.
I said no such thing, and you have to have some pretty bullshit thought process yourself to think that I did. Everyone can see what I wrote. I said nothing even remotely similar to the argument you attribute to me.
What you apparently have done, however, is assumed that because some people give away their creations, that such creations have no value.
I am curious to know where you are getting these ideas about what I think. They are completely wrong. Nothing I posted is even remotely similar to what you claim I think. You've gone off on a mindless rant about something I don't think or support. You, in short, are a fucking loon. Pull yourself together.
About the blue box : go and get your copy of "Pirates of Silicon Valley" at ... ehh, geez its nowhere for sale anymore... I guess thats what Paul Graham wanted to point out. There's still a review to be read at :http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/
about Grahams fear and description about a nation falling down freely :
"Let me put the case in terms a government official would appreciate. Civil liberties are not just an ornament, or a quaint American tradition. Civil liberties make countries rich. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs. civil liberties, you'd notice a definite trend. Could civil liberties really be a cause, rather than just an effect? I think so. I think a society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people. Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries become poor; and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there is a Laffer curve for government power, just as for tax revenues. At least, it seems likely enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out. Unlike high tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns out to be a mistake."
To see a example in action of a nation falling down, go watch and see "Masked and Anonymous" by Bob Dylan, a masterpiece to be. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319829/
Robert
In addition to the fact that your arguments are childishly naive, the ad hominem attacks cap off your position perfectly. Good job. That's how to get people to pay attention to your viewpoint. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"So the downloader doesn't respect the artist, and the artist doesn't respect the downloader.
What this "artist" is forgetting, is that you have to respect the downloader because it's his potential client.
The downloader doesn't have anything to lose from the artists disrespect."
And by your logic, the raped should respect the rapist, because they are potential husbands.
And until such a time the "downloaders" start producing their own movies, music, books, and games (which automatically makes them "artists"). They very much do have something to lose from the artists "disrespect".
Oh, goodie. The consititution and the Bill of Rights. Definitive, eh? Bring it. Show me what you got. Here's my opening sally:
The constitution's 9th amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Now, from there, lets look at how the law actually works. Do you have a "right" to a lawyer if you are arrested? No. You don't. They can hold you as long as they want without a lawyer. You can have a lawyer if they let you have a lawyer, otherwise, you'll not be having no flipping lawyer, there, Ahmed. We saw this happen these last couple of years, because why? Because of new laws, that's why. No recourse, no lawyer, no phone call. This is the reality of the legal system, which utterly trumps everything the constitution says. That's the facts.
The fourth amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated
Oh, yeah. Unless there is law that says they can do it, then they will do it, and in fact there is such law, and guess what - you are not secure against unreasonable searches, nor against unreasonable seizures. Happens all the time, only its a lot more common since the ironically named PATRIOT act became law.
How about the first amendment?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, (or of the press); [or the right of the people peaceably to assemble], and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
See bold highlight above. OK, now get on the radio, and say "fuck" a few times. Shortly, you'll learn quite directly about how law trumps constitutional provisions. I hope you have some savings for the fine money. They're a little rabid about what free speech means these days. That also touches directly on the 8th amendment:
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Did you watch the news this year about Powell and the FCC's little fining exercise? Does half a million bucks feel excessive to you for saying a single word, never mind that it was actually in proper, common-use context? Jeez, it sure feels excessive to me. Maybe you really don't like the word, though, and think just about everything an earned millionaire's income results in after taxes is the appropriate, non-excessive amount for saying... wait for it... waaait... "fuck"!
See square bracketed region above. Now, assemble a group in NYC without a permit. Wear towels on your heads just so we can tell your group from the people on the sidewalk who aren't in your group. Let me know which jail they take you to. Assuming they don't club your ass to death right were you stand, that is. And assuming they ever let you have a phone call. Feel free to quote the constitution to the cops during the entire process. I'm sure they'll be vastly amused.
See parenthetical region above. Now, think back to WWII. What do you think would happen if the papers printed something that was censored? Think law, then think jail. Simple. Factual. Reality.
I could continue to chew up the first amendment, but jeeze, it's such an easy target, and I like to jump around to keep things interesting.
Here's another good one:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Pretty straightforward, eh? So... you'll be having a license. Unless you've been convicted of something or other, in which case, I guess you're not "the people" any longer, are you? Assuming you're not a felon, you'll be not owning Arms unless they are very specific types. You'll be not be
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"Since when?"
;-)
Since its conception.
Originally (in 1790), the US copyright term was 14 years after publication, with an option for another 14 years.
Clearly you do not know what you are talking about. Your argumentation is factual false (even in europe the original copyrightlaws didn't incorporate a 75 year term), and you are wrong in your rationalisation, because people in the 18th century already lived much longer then 28 years. It had nothing to do with how long they expected inventors to live.
With all your elaborate argumentation, you fail to acknowledge that the law originally strived for a balance between stimulating invention by giving a compensation for a limited time, and the interest of society as a whole, when it becomes public.
The goal was always to stimulate new invention for a limited time (I believe it says so almost to the letter, at least in USA law), not to provide a life long pocket-filling. In fact, it could be argued that unlimited copy&patent rights actually hamper the creation of new inventions today, thereby perverting the actual reason why copyrightlaw was founded in the first place (which aren't the reasons you gave, thus).
If you do not recognise the benefits it brings to a society when a work/invention becomes free, and instead only accept as valid the (never-ending) profits it brings to the one that has invented something, then I guess you have troubles understanding the use of any limitation in this respect.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
In case you are unaware, an ad-hominem attack is when you attempt to discredit an argument based upon who makes it. Anybody with full command of the English language would be able to see that I did no such thing - my arguments against your position stand alone, and the comment at the end regarding your lunacy was perfectly appropriate given your attitude. If you took that away, my arguments would still stand. No ad-hominem there.
The fact that you haven't addressed my argument at all, which is backed up by multiple authorities, not to mention common sense, speaks for itself. I may have included an insult in my argument, but you seem to base your argument around insults without actually having points.
If you can actually address anything I have said, then feel free to include insults along with your comment. But if you can't address my argument, then insults alone are a pretty pathetic substitute.
With all your elaborate argumentation, you fail to acknowledge that the law originally strived for a balance between stimulating invention by giving a compensation for a limited time, and the interest of society as a whole, when it becomes public."
... though I haven't read them all). So the only one which mentions it is US Law. With Copy right having existed for almost 200 years previously, it is reasonable to say that it wasn't originally intended to stimulate invention.
Okay, my use of the term "Original" Copyright is erroneous. I admit that. Let me elaborate though, because your arguement that it originally "strived for a balance between stimulating invention by giving a compensation for a limited time" is not correct either.
I think the bit you are refering to is from the US Constitution. Not all copyright law is the same through out the world.
"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." (Article 1 Section 8, US Constitution).
This wasn't the original copyright law, copy right was already prevalent in Europe. The copyright law Washington signed in 1790 came about because the copyright laws from England were no longer in force in the US (with it being it's own sovereign nation).
If we go back to the "Original" ones of Europe, (UK had one in 1606) you will find they were so Printing Companies could Monopolise on works by Authors. When people had their books published they basically sold them to a publishing company who took out copyright on them for use for 14 years, followed by the 14 year addition usage, if they were still selling well.
Obviously that use wasn't to encourage or stimulate anything, except to line the pockets of those who ran the printing presses.
Of course, this defeats my arguement that copyright came about to protect the creator, because obviously it wasn't.
I mistakenly thought the 75 years before 1923 was what the law was back then. Silly me! So I didn't arbitrarily pull the number out of a hat or anywhere else!. I stupidly looked it up on the internet.
Copyright law in Australia (where I am) doesn't mention stimulating invention (nor any of the European ones I have read
Modern Copyright law though, as has been explained to me (and as I have read from my legal books here in Australia), is about protecting the property of the Copyright owner (which is normally the creator). Not sure how they view it now in the US, but I would say that after what Sonny Bono did, the US Law is looking at it in similar terms. Protecting the artist (or owner of the work) from exploitation from big record companies etc.
Owning a never-ending copyright on something doesn't necessarily stagnate creativity. The cost of copyright on something is usually pretty small. For instance, on using a song it is 6.6 cents. That means if someone plays one of my songs at 100 venues in a year, they owe me a total of $6.60. Do you really think society will benefit from that person not paying me the $6.60? They just used my work 100 times. I don't think it brings a benefit to society, because usually the collection agencies dont, worry about small fry who might infringe a copyright here or there, they usually only worry about the BIG ones who are making extensive use and profit from it.
Excuse me if I come from a music/artist background, but that's basically where my understanding of copyright comes from. The law books I have on it, come from that background too. So as far as I am concerned, unless I give someone permission to use my work for free, (which I have done in the past), then I expect people to seek permission to use it (in this case from APRA), and they can pay me to use it.
The current laws obviously agree that the artist is entitled to this. With bands like 'The Beatles' and 'Led Zepplin' still selling quite well, the record companies ar
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
As an experiment why dont you post your IP's and root passwords and we'll see how much forward progress we can make or your box.
As I have said; if you do not acknowledge that it is beneficial (as a whole) to society when copyrights and patents become free, and you only accept economic/capitalistic reasonings for the individual, then you will have trouble to see why any limitation is imposed.
In that respect, I think we have a diametrically oposing viewpoint of it. And, contrary to what you claim, currently, most countries have NO unlimited copyrightlaw. The reason they do not have such laws, is that they DO see that it's about balancing the right of the creator with the good for society.
What you propose is actually "Common law copyright", where the author (or heirs) gets perpetual benefits. It worth noting that this idea is not accepted (exept in special circumstances) by the courts in most countries, and I quote:
"Common law copyright is the legal doctrine that contends that copyright is a natural right and creators have the same inherent right to it as they would tangible property. The doctrine has been repudiated by the courts in the United Kingdom (Donaldson v. Beckett) and the United States (Wheaton v. Peters)."
Now, how comes the state and the courts do not agree with the vision of perpetual rights for copyrights and patents? Because they realise, unlike yourself, that copyrights and patents cover the rights of intangible creations, and thus are not the same as the rights for tangible objects, like houses and land. And furthermore, they acknowledged the public interest in these matters, and that it is beneficial for society that it is not perpetual.
If they only agreed with the economic value it brings for the creator, they would have made everything ad infintum a long time ago. They did NOT intend to do so, as is obvious by the original 14 years limit, even when people already lived longer then that in that time. And they still don't give perpetual rights to it now. And that is not because they haven't got a grasp of the concept 'property'. The only reason why they make a difference between copyrights and patents and tangible property, is because it *does* differ, and society has a higher stake in it.
It isn't even all that difficult to see why the concept of everlasting copyrights&patents are devastating in the long run. Imagine that it would have existed since the beginning of time, then you, even today, might have to pay someone if you used fire, or the wheel. Fact is, most of the inventions and works done today are based on earlier works; if all things were covered by perpetual rights, it would become totally impossible to make any invention (more so the further in the future you go), without breaking one right or another, and getting sued.
Also, copyrights and patents create monopolies. They simply do; it gives the exclusive right to the one that has done it, or comes up with it (first). As we can all agree (I hope), monopolies are not good for society as a whole, only for those that own the monopoly (and even then only financially speaking). If monopolies are bad, then perpetual monopolies are perpetually bad.
But are they bad? I fail to recall any instance in where a monopoly was actually a good thing, inovative wise and also towards the public. Monopolies, IMHO, create lazyness, not incentives for further research - which is why it is paramount that copyrights and the lot are limited in time. They create artificial high prices, which not all of the populace can afford. They often hold back and limit other ideas or improvements, unless they have full control of it. In short: it sucks.
So, yes, it does harm society. It's not about 6 cents, it's about giving back to society your ideas and thoughts, which didn't form out of the thin air. It's about making sure that someday, people will be able to use and improve upon your work, in all freedom. I can't imagine anything worse then a med.company having eternal rights on its medicines; in one stroke, you would destroy all generic medicines and people would have to pay whatever price they asked, untill the end of
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
The first know use of the term "intellectual property" was in 1846. (Actually it was in French "propriete intellectuelle".)
The current fashion of arguing for copyrights, patents, trade secrets, and trademarks as "property" is a recent phenomena. International differences in law notwithstanding, they are covered by entirely different bodies of law than property law. They are fundamentally different than property rights because information is fundamentally different than physical things - property.
The actual purpose of the very first copyright law was to enforce censorship, censorship of books of which the church and crown dissapproved.
The foundation of US law, and most nations laws, is that copyright exists for the public benefit, to encourage people to create and to distribute their creations. A temporary atrificial monopoly for the public benefit. Any benefit/profit to the author/artist is merely a side effect. The US Supreme court (and apparently at least the UK as well) has explicitly ruled that there is no inherent right to copyright protection. The US Supreme court (and apparently at least the UK as well) has explicitly rules that benefiting authors is not a valid justification for copyright, that the only valid purpose and ultimate motivation can only be the public benefit.
It is the publishing industry attempting to drive the view of copyright as a property right. They WANT propertery-like rights. The publishing industry has been appallingly effective in spreading this "intellectual property" meme. When legislators beleive that copyright is a property right they are surprised when they look at copyright law and see that it does *not* grant proerty rights, they are lead to beleive there is something *wrong* with the law that it does not grant property rights. It is then quite easy to lobby them to *change* the law to "fix" the apparent "mistakes" in copyright law.
So "intellectual property" is actually an attempt to change traditional copyright into something it was never intended to be.
Tradtional copyright had a good puropse and was a beneficial thing. Our current copyright laws are an abomination. I'm not sure what has happened with the US-Australia "Free Trade" treaty in the last month or two, but it is LOADED with all sorts of terms forcing AU to impose draconian increases and changes in copyright law. You will be getting all of the worst of US copyright law and none of the "fair use" safeguards we have. You will be screwed even worse than we are.
If you thought region coded DVDs were a problem just you watch as Trusted Computing rolls out. That is a huge subject, but it's insanely evil. You will no longer own your own computer and it will be impossible to aviod. There will be no stopping it uness there is a massive public backlash against it in the next year or so.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
But no, it's /not/ better to think you see a tiger when you don't. When that happens you get stress fatigue and, ultimately, people just stop looking for tigers.
Clear, Dark Skies
Actually, UK and Australian copyright did refer to it as being a property in 1842. This is before the French and supports the "meme" that it was thought of in terms of 'property'. As per act of 1968 confirming this.
"2 Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), s 196. Copyright was not described as a right of property until 1842, in s 25 of the Literary Copyright Act 1842 5 & 6 Vict c 45 (UK)."
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
I agree that copyrights and patents are not the same, though they show familiarities. It's both about intangibles, they are both placed under 'intellectual property' and they are both being lobbied hard for by megacorps to extend their limit to the infinite, thereby making a mockery of the term 'limited', as I am sure you can agree, since you seem a reasonable dude.
But copyrights are bareable and have some validity of their own, because it's true you have made the product and thus you deserve something for it. Patents for intangible creations should be abolished, IMHO, because they do more harm then good, and don't have the same validity. If I thought of something fully independently, but another thought about it a second earlier, I'm supposed to give him money till the end of times? I don't think so. It strikes me rather as unfair. And patents have a huge amount of more speaking aginst it, as I've demonstrated in my former posts.
So, yes, the level of damage resulting of copyrights is less, but it is still there, nevertheless. So it still need a balance. It is still a monoply, with all the resulting drawbacks I described. It is not even hypothetical, but a real issue, that thousands of works are slowly degrading into dust and will be lost forever for society, in essence because copyrights forbid even those that want to save it for the public for nothing, can not copy them.
All those thoughts, ideas and knowledge are wasted for society, because of copyrights, and the longer the term will become, the more this will happen. This too, I call damage to society.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Er... the phrase is Latin, not English.
Anyway, ad hominem is to attack the arguer's character, rather than the arguer's argument, in an attempt to discredit the argument. Not an attack based upon who a person is, as you incorrectly surmise above, but an attack based upon characterization such as "you're this", "you're that", "you're the other."
As soon as you begin name calling, you're into ad-hominem territory. You're also generally discrediting your own stance by flinging mud intead of reason. Name calling is often one of the first signs someone is being cornered in an argument; in your case, this is exactly what we see, as you attempt to draw lines where none exist (insisting that a store is the only venue where you can define theft prevention, for one of many instances) which you then follow up with name calling in a feeble (and fruitless) attempt to make your position stronger.
Now, I pointed out you had made an ad hominem attack. What was my reason for this? Simple: Your attack and characterization, as in this direct quote from your missive: "you sir, are a fucking loon."
You could, if you so chose, avoid this error/fallacy in the future if you (a) avoid calling people names, and (b) avoid disparaging their character in other manners and (c) actually address the argument presented to you instead.
One of the larger problems of your chosen method is that when you begin name calling, cultured people will generally withdraw from speaking with you, as I did. Then you've lost the respect of your respondent, and whatever point your arguments might have had is lost. Assuming they had value, of course. The sad thing is that in an attack that attempts to impress a lack of respect for your opponent based upon irrelevant characterization, respect for you is the first casualty.
This ends your latin lesson for this session. You may now return to calling me names. :)
You have a nice day.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You read it once already. Allow me to repeat it at greater length. Silence was copyrighted in 1952. Obviously, silence did not exist before that year. Assuming no further term extensions, silence will be owned by the John Cage foundation until the year 2052, as he died in 1977. You are hereby forbidden, under penalty of law, to copy, distribute, or publicly perform silence without permission of the John Cage foundation for the next 48 years. You may have the right to remain silent when arrested, but exercising that right without proper permission puts you in violation of copyright law. Penalties can be as great as 5 years in prison and $150,000 per offense. Can you honestly tell me that is not absolutely the most utterly ridiculous perversion of copyright law you have ever heard?
So, back to you. How do I "automatically" have rights to stuff you thought up? Simple, you told me what you thought up. What, you can collect money and then erase your idea from my mind? No, I didn't think so. You have it backwards. What gave you the right to dictate what I could do with an idea you shared with me? Without copyright, absolutely nothing. That's the point of Copyright; to give you just enough incentive to share what you know to promote progress. Copyright is about making sure you want to share that great idea with the rest of us. That way, we as a whole can make use of it for the good of mankind. It is not in any way compensation for work of any kind. Allowing you and your descendants to play idea dictator with copyright is expressly against the intention of copyright. If you didn't want to share your ideas with the world, you should have kept them to yourself. If you need further elaboration, I suggest you read this.
Hopefully after reading that you will understand my point more thoroughly. However, my guess is you've already labeled me a whiney p2p pirate who has some sense of entitlement to free stuff and skipped into skim mode. You are the one with the mistaken sense of entitlement. I have presented this argument, at length, a number of times to people like yourself. To date, no one on your side of the argument has attempted to read or understand what I have presented. They simply continue to spout **AA duckspeak.
I am not against copyright. Nothing could be further from the truth. Copyright is extremely useful. Copyright is, after all, what gives the GPL its teeth. Copyright gives me incentive to create software. But I am very much against ridiculous copyright terms, penalties, and restrictions. Those things only serve to destroy the very system you and I live by. Infringement on P2P networks is not a cause for 'tough, new' copyright laws and enforcement. It is the effect of the overly restrictive and oppressive copyright laws we have already. Continuing down the path you so fervently defend is to seek the destruction of copyright in its entirety.
And there I go pulling a John Kerry; describing complex issues in detail when the average joe just wants a sound bite. Well, here's one of those for you too:
Chuckle, you actually quoted an entirely modern (1999) characterization of copyright as a "right of property".
UK and Australian copyright did refer to it as being a property in 1842.
The copyright itself, not the subject of the copyright. A very fundamental difference. (I googled up the text of the law.) Neither the 1842 nor the 1968 law refer to copyright as a property right. Neitehr refer to teh subject of copyright as property.
The term "intellectual property" has only been in wide use very recently. It advocates a very fundamental change in the perception and nature of copyright.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
" Chuckle, you actually quoted an entirely modern (1999) characterization of copyright as a "right of property"."
It's from the Australian Copyright act of 1968 section 196. In fact, here is section 196 point 1
"Copyright is personal property and, subject to this section, is transmissible by assignment, by will and by devolution by operation of law."
I have it sitting on my desk, I didn't need to google it up. I did get a reference for you from the web, because obviously I can't send my copy to you.
Fundamental differences occured in copyright, when the owner of the copyright shifted from the publishers to the creators of the works. The old type of "copyright" which allowed publishers/printers to capitalise on a work, have been shifted into what are now the modern publishing rights.
Copyright certainly has been considered as property in Australian law from that time on. I quote from the case: PACIFIC FILM LABORATORIES PTY. LTD. v. FEDERAL COMMISSIONER OF TAXATION (1970) 121 CLR 154
"It lies in the failure to distinguish between the copyright as incorporeal property and property in the material thing which is the subject of the copyright."
They clearly refer to copyright as 'incorporeal property', which today they probably would refer to as "intellectual property".
This is from 1970, and was a case before the High Court of Australia. This is only two years after the 1968 law.
I also quote from another case: "COLBEAM PALMER LTD. v. STOCK AFFILIATES PTY. LTD. (1968) 122 CLR 25" (Again High Court of Australia). "Protection of property, rather than abhorrence of fraud, was thus said to be the foundation of equitable jurisdiction in cases of common law trade marks: Leather Cloth Co. Ltd. v. American Leather Cloth Co. Ltd. (1863)"
Note, this is a reference to a case from 1863. The protection of one companies 'Trade Mark' being considered 'protection of property'. If they were not thinking in terms of it being property, then why would they use the term "protection of property".
So I would say that the 1842 laws as I said previously, considered "Intellectual Property" to be property as per their ruling in 1863. (21 years after the law was passed.)
I am sure I could probably find many more cases if you want.
So as I said previously, in Australian Law, Copyright is considered a property.
(And I agree, the subject of Copyright as property is a different kettle of fish.)
I am a bit worried though about something you said in a previous post concerning the publishers being behind the push.
"It is the publishing industry attempting to drive the view of copyright as a property right. They WANT propertery-like rights."
Copyright is owned by the artist/creator of the work. The Publishing industry don't own the copyright, so for them to push for it to become property, is actually a bit of a null point. They don't pay copyright, nor do they receive it. The end buyer pays the copyright on the book/recording etc that they purchase, and the copyright royalties go to the artist/creator of the work. Why would the publishers push for something (which is already in Australian Law), which doesn't effect them?
Cheers.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
"(And I agree, the subject of Copyright as property is a different kettle of fish.)"
Woops, should have been more specific, it should read. "The Subject of Copyright" as property to distinguish from Copyright as a subject. D'oh!
ie, I am talking about the "work" which get's copyrighted. lol
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
It was indeed a modern writer you quoted calling copyright a right of property. A reference to the subject of copyright.
"Copyright is personal property and, subject to this section, is transmissible by assignment, by will and by devolution by operation of law."
The copyright itself, not the subject of copyright. The legal entity of a copyright has properties much closer to physical property than information does. A copyright itself is owned by a single person, is transferable, non-reproducable, etc etc. A sequence of words is not property. When you sell someone a book you do not retain "property" rights in the sequence of words in that book. The words themselves are not property, you do not have a property right on them. You have a copy right (two words) on them, and it is a very ill fit to call it a property right.
Copyright is owned by the artist/creator of the work. The Publishing industry don't own the copyright
The vast majority of publishers - at least in the US - do not publish anything unless the copyright is transferred to the publisher. They are fighting to change copyright into expanded "property-like" rights.
The idea of the subject of copyright being property is behind absurd laws like the DMCA. You can repeatedly find DMCA advocates arguing that someone who has bought a DVD is tresspassing on their property when they use their own sofwtare or player to circumvent region coding, to watch a region 1 DVD in Australia. Calling it trasspassing is just plain stupid. We are talking about the legal owner of that copy making absolutely non-infringing use of his own copy.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"The copyright itself, not the subject of copyright."
At no time have I argued about the "Subject of Coyright" being property. In fact in the last post, I agreed with you.
""(And I agree, the subject of Copyright as property is a different kettle of fish.)" "
If you go back to the very first post, the fact that I have been arguing, is that Copyright is considered a type of Property under Australian Law. I think I have adequately proven this with quotes from various court cases and the Copyright act of Australia 1968 section 196 POINT 1. Which I also provided a link to.
The court cases also prove that they were interpreting the 1842 Copyright Act in this same way, with the case of "Leather Cloth Co. Ltd. v. American Leather Cloth Co. Ltd. (1863)"
Your last two posts are really the only place that I have seen the "Subject of Copyright" even being debated. As I have already pointed out, I have not been discussing this, except to agree with you in my last post, as it is a "different kettle of fish."
The other point that you brought up, that I disagree with, is that 'Intellectual Property' being considered property is a modern invention. I have quoted from an 1863 court case. Though it doesn't use the term 'Intellectual Property', it does specifically say that the case over a disputed Trade Mark, was a property case. (Which the owner of the Trade Mark won).
"You have a copy right (two words) on them, and it is a very ill fit to call it a property right."
First of all, Copyright is ONE word. And as I have quoted from the Australian Copyright Act, in Australia, Copyright is considered a TYPE of property.
If you are going to argue that anything intangible is NOT a type of property, you might as well give up your money, because it has been Intangible for years, with the majority of Money being stored in computers. I am sure you (and almost anyone else), would argue that they OWN their MONEY. It really only has value due to an agreement in society. Even when the majority of it was circulated as paper notes and coins, it was still intangible, as the notes and coins were only representations of value. The coins and Notes certainly never were the same value as what they represented. If someone emptied your bank account tomorrow, and you took them to court, it would be a case of Theft of Personal Property.
I will quote the AUSTRALIAN COPYRIGHT AT OF 1968 Again in case you MISSED THE POINT:
"Copyright is personal property and, subject to this section, is transmissible by assignment, by will and by devolution by operation of law."
This is NOT a quote from someone else, it is a QUOTE from the LAW itself. You claimed previously that you googled the Act up and read it, yet you seem to keep ignoring what it actually says.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Ok we were having a bit of language and interpretation trouble, and we have more agreement than we realized.
The other point that you brought up, that I disagree with, is that 'Intellectual Property' being considered property is a modern invention.
'Intellectual Property' is often used in terms of the subject of copyright. As in 'Windows source code is Microsoft's intellectual property' and 'the movie Pinocchio is Disney's intellectual property'. If you are reading "intellectual property" as a reffernce to copyrights themselves rather than a reference to the subject of that copyright then that clears up our misscommunication there.
Copyright is ONE word
I was indicating that a copyright is a right of copy, not a right of property. The "of" indicating a refference to the subject of the copyright. Copyright is a copy right, not a property right.
I will quote the AUSTRALIAN COPYRIGHT AT OF 1968 Again in case you MISSED THE POINT:
"Copyright is personal property and, subject to this section, is transmissible by assignment, by will and by devolution by operation of law."
This is NOT a quote from someone else, it is a QUOTE from the LAW itself.
Whoa! You're switching quotes! You originally wrote:
"2 Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), s 196. Copyright was not described as a right of property until 1842, in s 25 of the Literary Copyright Act 1842 5 & 6 Vict c 45 (UK)."
With that emphasis in your original quote. It was indeed a 1999 writer who characterized copyright as a "right of property". The very portion you put in bold. And I read that the "of" in there as a refference to what it is a copyright of - the subject of the copyright.
Hopefully that clears up who was talking about what, and how we each interpreted what, and that we are essentially arguing over nothing. Chuckle.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.