Slashdot Mirror
World Intellectual Property Day
Dotnaught writes "The Business Software Alliance wants everyone to know that today is World Intellectual Property Day, 'an initiative to educate young people about how intellectual property rights foster innovation, creativity and economic opportunity.' To mark the occasion, CopyNight, a monthly gathering of people interested in restoring balance in copyright law, is hosting a get-together tonight in various cities throughout the U.S."
The Creation of Spam Sig Opt Out
I've spent lots of time, maybe too much, pondering the phenomena of the free iPod sig. At 4:13 pm on Saturday, March 19th I had a moment of clarity that put things in perspective. People with free iPod sigs are useless. This was a startling discovery. I had previously been aware that they are both annoying and spammers, but it had never occurred to me that they would also be useless.
Allow me to explain for the non-pyramid scheme spamming users who still read this site. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who upon seeing a "'free' iPod" sig gets as angry as when I see a homeless person who is obviously able to work harassing cars and washing windshields in a busy intersection for liquor money. These people, spammers and beggars are the scum of the earth. They smear your windshield with their dirty halfassed non-attempt at cleaning and put out their grubby palm for a handout all at the same time.
People with free iPod sigs are the windshield washers of slashdot. They put up useless groupthink compliant babbleings or piss-poor mirrors to slashdotted sites to ingratiate themselves with equally stupid moderators. Their hope is to get modded up and fool some equally pathetic other user into joining their spammer pyramid scheme. But pyramid scheme participants have something in common with black market human brains. They are pretty stupid. Intelligent people are smart enough to work a real job to pay for their toys or at least know that it is not appropriate to spam on a site where every 5th story is about the scourge of spamming. As a general rule smart people don't join pyramid schemes.
Here-in lies the largest problem with free iPod spammers: they are stupid. They post stupid things. They add nothing to the discussion. With their every useless spam sig post this site slides further and further into the toilet. Of course not having a spam sig is by no stretch of the imagination the sign of an intelligent, valuble poster, but having a spam sig is almost always the sign of an utter retard. I could post examples but I think just causal browsing of slashdot is enough to demonstrate that what I have said is true. To drive the point home though, check out http://developers.slashdot.org/. Notice how in the stories that didn't make it to the home page there is not_a_single_spam_sig. not one. I rest my case.
How do we fight the scourge of 'free iPod' spammers? In the past I have gone through the site methodically replying to free iPod spammers as AC, reminding them that spammers suck. I frequently included my own fake sig which read like:
--
Free iPod sigs are spam. You are a retard.
This approach was somewhat satisfying and kind of effective. The downside is that my IP address is now banned from posting anonymously, and will probably be banned from posting logged in soon. In the time I have had to sit by and watch as retard spammers ruin this site I have had the opportunity to think of another way: my Final Solution. I have created this account, Spam Sig Opt Out, for use as a filter against the increasing torrent of spammers that this site has attracted. To use this filter, simply add Spam Sig Opt Out as a 'friend' and set the 'foes of friends' modifier to -6 in your preferences. Feel free to report users with spam sigs in my journal. With every addition this site gets more readable. It may be too late to save this site from the spammers, but that doesn't mean we have to read their garbage.
list of spammers
has anyone here seen the online ads where they ask if you want to get back your old employer by reporting them to the BSA?
This guy is way out there
The BSA.... aren't they the ones that terrorize small businesses and threaten to audit their software licenses? (And without a glimmer of a search warrant, either.)
By signing up with allofmp3.com. Wish I had done it sooner, it's absolutely fantastic.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Personally, I would love to see a worldwide Libre (Free) Software Developer Appreciation day. The authors of free software have given all of us so much, that some thanks and recognition would seem to be the least we could do for them.
The amusing thing is that there is a huge list of inventions that are reliant upon both. Ex: the modern RAM module.
Noone would have put the funds into designing it if they hadn't had the ability to patent the thing. Once they developed it, they patented it. This is just fine with me. However, what's really neato is that all these other companies decided they would reverse engineer / one up them, and therefore a year or two later have faster chips. Works all good.
The real problem I have with patents / copyrights is more in the software and artistic industries. Once you have a creative community that is farmed like today's music and movies are, your creative community is, well, a victim rather than a beneficiary. Everyone feels as if they depend upon making it big, and therefore supports the idea that if you 'make it big' you should still 'own' all the 'content' you have produced for your entire life. This seems fair, but more and more artists don't own this content.
When it comes to software, people are trying to patent / copyright basic interface. There's often not much new in the interfaces / systems being patented except the involvement of lawyers. This is lame.
But there still needs to be room somewhere for people / companies to create and have a window of profit based upon this creation if it is useful enough that people will pay for it. Without that, we wouldn't have many of our modern items. Think Bell Labs ran on sheer good will? Just because a few knowledge-producers have been world-class jerks doesn't mean the system is COMPLETELY broken.
My little site.
Patents protect inventions (and other assorted brain farts that made it past the patent office screening procedure), copyright protects creative works.
Anyway, do you think companies like IBM would be so enthusiastic in their research into new technologies, if any competitor were allowed to just sit back and copy IBMs methods as soon as they hit the market? In such a patent-free market, those doing the research would actually be at a disadvantage. They'd be first to market, sure, but their competition would not have to recoup any investment in research, which can be substantial.
Similarly, do you think it's right that a publisher in Russia can just bang out copies of O'Reilly books, without a penny of the profits going to the authors or original publisher? Copyrights and patents exist for a good reason, even though we have let certain people get away with patenting things that should never have been granted one. On the other hand, I think copyright law works quite well and fairly.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
We have to recognize, and incorporate into our dialogue, that these concepts are better termed IP conventions; ie, things which are adopted because they are convenient in practice.
Only then will we be able to cogently argue against them when they cease to be convenient for the public as a whole, and decide how to adjust them to maximize their convenience.
Re: minix
I deliberately chose that example not because it's Free Software but it was still created in response to the restricted nature of the UNIX source code.
Andy needed something to base his class on, copyright law kept him from being able to use UNIX, so he wrote Minix. The license he distributed it under (which was a result of the needs of his publisher, if I remember right) is neither here nor there to the point I was making.
"Your admirers in the street
Got to hoot and stamp their feet
in the heat from your physique" -King Crimson
I am a fan of IP as well. that last line of your post I take issue with. Every day patents expire, even software patents, however, here in the US copyrights have not expired in years, and it is quite likely no copyrights ever will.
Yes, you are quite right. I too am not a big fan of these eternal or hereditary copyrights.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
"We must continue our shared public-private efforts to deter piracy and promote intellectual property rights in every corner of the globe. Our children's ability to learn, create and innovate must be protected now and in the decades ahead."
A classic maneuver; stating two unrelated topics in the same paragraph deceiving lay readers into drawing nonexistent conclusions between them. This is especially prevalent with statistics, where correlations between two data sets are often shown (which do exist), but where any actual connection between the two is purely happenstance. For example: "After using product X for 2 weeks Rob's weight dropped 25 pounds." At first glance Rob's use of product X and his weight seem to be related, but their not. The real reason for his weight drop was he stopped having his hourly burrito during that time period.
- Piracy and children have nothing in common, and this man's an asshole for even implying such a connection exists.
P.S.: apologies for the very US-centric map which makes Toronto appear not to be on dry land - I'd welcome pointers to any usable (public domain or Creative Commons) maps that include Canada. - David
What a surprise, they don't want to pay for intellectual property either.
Anyway, do you think companies like IBM would be so enthusiastic in their research into new technologies, if any competitor were allowed to just sit back and copy IBMs methods as soon as they hit the market? In such a patent-free market, those doing the research would actually be at a disadvantage. They'd be first to market, sure, but their competition would not have to recoup any investment in research, which can be substantial.
Yes, I think they would be. I think that a great deal of the stuff they get patents on would be worth working on even without a patent. And there are research costs involved in competing, since without patents there isn't as much disclosure either.
Patents serve as an incentive to get people to invent when they otherwise would not. If they would anyway -- as is the case for probably the vast majority of software patents -- then it's a waste of public resources to grant a patent.
Plus, invention isn't the end-all be-all of patents. You only want to provide the minimal possible incentive. This is because the public is just as interested in having a public domain as it is in having new inventions. Inventions do the most good when anyone can use them for free. Restricting freedom is merely how we pay to get them created -- it's not a goal, it's an unfortunate compromise that should be carefully reexamined lest we over-incentivize.
Similarly, do you think it's right that a publisher in Russia can just bang out copies of O'Reilly books, without a penny of the profits going to the authors or original publisher?
Doesn't bother me. Would O'Reilly have written those books if there were a wall around Russia and no Russian could possibly buy them? I bet they would. In that case, they don't need the incentive of the Russian market.
Plus, it's for the Russians to decide. If they want to encourage creation, they'll do so. If they want to encourage competition, they'll do that. They are the best judges of their own best interests. Whatever they decide, I support their right to pick for themselves. We shouldn't lecture them. We too should pick what we think is best.
If our system is really all it's cracked up to be, it will get adopted elsewhere on its own merits; because it serves the best interests of other countries. If not, then maybe we should rethink what we're doing.
Certainly I'm against copyright treaties, patent treaties, etc. I think that the whole of international copyright should be 1) national treatment, 2) formalities are okay, but shouldn't be such that authors are forced to choose between two mutually incompatable countries.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well I for one intend to celebrate by reposting this ....
A Bitter Protest Against Copyrights
If they said there was no incentive to do good things unless the government could choose your religion ... or they said there is no
incentive to grow food, unless farmers
could rip up your garden ... most people would
see these as the awful values that they are.
But if they say that there is no incentive to
make beneficial or creative works without the
power to restrict what people copy (copyrights),
then all too many people just take it on
faith. They don't even question it, as if
incentive makes rights, as if society would fall
apart without them. But just as much of the
Renaissance happened without copyrights so
should the information age.
Calling copyrights "intellectual property" is intellectually dishonest. The moral and historical foundation of property derives from mutual respect and the fact that not everybody can posses something at the same time. The foundation of copyrights derives from kings who granted publishers monopolies in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. Copyrights are about control, censorship, and not a free market property. In fact, they cheapen property rights by treating things that have natural limits in supply such as food, shelter, and medicine like information that does not.
Worse, is how people who copy are slandered with names such as "thief" and "pirate", as if copying was akin to boarding a ship and murdering people. They are even accused of stealing food out of the mouths of starving artists. Yet these verbal assaults hide a cold and calculated lie, the one that says "copyrights benefit creative people". The truth is that for every artist or writer that has made it "big", there are unmentioned thousands whom copyrights haven't helped a bit, hindered, or even destroyed. Some are even barred or sued from sharing their own creations in public, while others die with the world never truly knowing their artistic genius as the mass media drowns them out. Most creators are far better off sharing and distributing their creations freely to make a reputation for themselves. Copyrights not only cause them to be drowned out in a sea of hype, but do so deceptively.
However, these aren't the only problems related to copyrights. They are just a sample of many that are constantly blown off, glossed over, or ignored. Like the failures of Hollywood culture, the failures of big media to offer quality material, the failures of the market to offer competitively priced books for college students while tabloids are dirt cheap, and massive anti-trust behavior in the software industry to name a few. Their hypocritical pleas like, "how will we make money without copyrights?" is like a mobster asking "how will I make money with out victims to extort?"
The burdens of imposing copyrights might have been bearable a quarter century ago when the biggest issue was copy machines. But today in the information age there is no technical distinction between copyright content and free speech content. Information is so easy to copy and manipulate, there can be no "middle ground". Our society must make a choice: Our communications will either have to be monitored or free, our privacy will either have to intruded or protected. Our speech, writing, and free expression will either have to be abridged or unabridged. Any institution that has the power to control one, must have the power to control all. Copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off our freedoms until we cut it off at the root!
Consider parallels to other periods of transition like the industrial revolution:
History teaches that during the 1800's there were many people who believed that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. Ironically just the opposite was
On the surface David, it looks like you're someone who wants their hands on everything for free. If you want to replace this system -or any system of ANYTHING- you're going to have to replace it with something better. Maybe it's true what you say that the copyright system has its roots in evil but that isn't good enough. WHY?! Because man we don't live in the Past. We're in the Here, the Now. My first copyright I was real poor. I wrote a small instructional booklet that I would later market in the National Enquirer Classifieds. My wife & I were separated. Her and my 2 kids lived with her Mom. I talked her out of her share of our income tax return that year to pay a professional printer close to $400.00 to help me in the pre-print re-write and printing of several hundred initial booklets. The first one off his press, WOW, I was really proud of it. And we walked over to the Mall in Richmond VA to get some film for his camera to take pictures of me to use in the marketing as I needed. I was hopeful of getting my family back together on its feet. I showed my booklet to the saleslady. WOW. She liked it so much she asked to show it upstairs, or at least that's what I THOUGHT SHE WAS GOING TO DO. The b^tch took my booklet to the upstairs COPIER and brought it back... Since then I've become an inventor. I've gotten my websites copyrighted mostly, but not for Copyright protection as I realize that is an illusion. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PROTECTION FROM A WIRED SOCIETY. I copyrighted my sites because I released several of my inventions there and I wanted legal Proof of Invention, using my Copyrights as "documentation", what's called a "Record of Invention". And even that didn't save me. Oh, it would IF I had money to hire a lawyer and contest the rip-offs, which I don't because I'M STILL POOR. And my family had the wonderful experience of learning to buy their clothes at the Goodwill Store because I pursued my course. Oh yeah, we also became the buying poor who buy stuff at flea markets and yard sales. Seems to me that your long diatribe there would put the World's creative people in my shoes, living my life, and staying poor. I don't think you're going to be successful selling that LIFE PROSPECT TO ANYONE. But, like I said, if you had a better system where people still got paid, might would work. However, for that to happen you'd have to GET ALL THESE CREATIVE, IDEA-RIDDLED PEOPLE TO AGREE WITH YOU "ACROSS THE BOARD". How are you going to accomplish that?! Do you have ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO SELL PEOPLE ON ANYTHING?! I fixed an engine that runs on 2 energies (hot/cold energy riding in on two inert elements of steam & liquified air) instead of one (gasoline, diesel, fossil fuel), a non-polluting engine. After 21 Months of telling it freely, word of mouth has refused to kick in, AND THE VERY IDEA OF AN ENGINE THAT DOES NOT POLLUTE IS SO CONTRARY TO WHAT PEOPLE CAN DIG DOWN INTO THEIR SOULS TO ACCEPT THAT IT SEEMS LIKE IT WILL NEVER BE PICKED UP AND BUILT. I can't do it because I'm on disability, never getting paid for my creations (at least not yet eh?). I MAY HAVE JUST AS WELL SLIPPED FROM MY MOM'S WOMB YESTERDAY. But, I'm learning. I have what I imagine to be my last great invention. I combined some aspects from 16 years of inventions to put together an engine that accomplishes an over-gravity force. A "Space Engine" that overcomes Gravity, reaches Earth orbit without needing to hurl people at 18,000 mph for "Escape Velocity"... and once such a craft (yes, I've designed the craft also) gets out far enough to be free of Earth's gravitational field it should go EXTREMELY FAST. Possibly close to Light Speed. But this time I've put a modest price tag to it instead of freely printing it online. After a few months, nothing. Imagine, an engine that could raise a person's car above an earthquake or tsunami, an engine that -attached to each floor of a building- would yield a building that no earthquake could bring down because it would be floating. EACH FLOOR WOULD BE INDEPENDENTLY FLOATING INSIDE A PAPERLIGHT FRAMEWORK, MAKI