Slashdot Mirror
An IP Environmentalism for Culture and Knowledge?
An anonymous reader writes "An article by James Boyle in the FT argues that we are (slowly) moving towards a 'cultural environmentalism' that tries to protect the public domain in the way that the environmental movement tries to protect the natural ecology. Apparently there will be a (free) conference at Stanford on the subject soon, organized by Larry Lessig's Center there."
Besides, for 'software' in these days of public Internet, the real question is 'Can I maintain the software ? Can I resolve defects, or get them resolved, as they are found'. When the answer to that becomes 'no', the software cannot be used; it gets exploited, and you get eaten by worms and viruses.
So, what kind of "hugger" does that make me now? An patent-free tree hugger? I just want to know what it is before conservatives start thowing it my way.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I've never thought of it in quite that way... It really is a wonderful analogy... the only difference being that the 'IP-ecosystem' was created by us.
...and indeed both sides of the issue have been polarized in nearly the same ways.... the "whacko environmental extremists" and "evil big business" who will destroy anything in the path towards profit.
Is this dichotomy a natural progression of such issues or is it truely the way things are.
I know what I believe...and I've picked my side.
~Dan
Ahh...I can see it now...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
So is this a good thing or bad thing for the Slashdot community?
Publish them and see who sues. Then figure out if they really own the copyright.
---Please, help support your local Bar Association. They're starving on $200K+ a year
Ecological environmentalism hasn't exactly been a success story.
It messes with readers, if you end with a preposition.
Please transform the following disputed sentence into a sentence that ends other than with a preposition: "The public domain should be cared about."
The point is that if Congress or the Library thereof announces a study into what the law should be changed to, you'll get the haves (incumbent publishers who want more restriction on speech that competes with theirs) on one side and the have-nots (the unorganized masses and charitable organizations who wish to speak) on the other, and the money-is-speech effect will tilt the odds in favor of the haves. Legislation is like a random walk, but unequal financial bargaining power biases it: even if you make some steps, one step forward for fair use and other exempt uses will likely be more than counterbalanced by two steps back.
I'm not sure what the AC was going on about...but to easily address your challenge:
"People should care about the public domain."
See section V.
Here's the orphan works problem in a nutshell.
Say you want to make a 30-minute documentary containing 1-minute clips from a dozen different movies from way back in the 1940's. You can only find the copyright holders for 5 of the movies--for the other 7, you are either not able to figure out who holds the copyrights, or not able to track that entity down.
Now what?
If you release your documentary, there are up to 7 parties out there who could see your documentary and decide to sue you into oblivion. If any one of them does, it could easily bankrupt your small business (or your non-profit organization, or you personally--costing your family its house, car, and life savings).
The Orphan Works problem is huge. There are so many works out there. Many of them aren't labelled with their copyright holder. Some of the copyrights have been transferred and attributions might be incorrect. Most copyrights are not necessarily registered in any central place (at least until they decide to sue over them). The copyright holders might be dead or senile or might have moved to Jamaica for a few years.
Creators ought to be allowed to make use of all those copyrighted works after making *reasonable efforts* to identify and locate the copyright holders. If a copyright holder surfaces later and complains, there should be mandatory licensing at reasonable and non-discriminatory rates.
FT argues that we are (slowly) moving towards a 'cultural environmentalism' that tries to protect the public domain in the way that the environmental movement tries to protect the natural ecology.
If we try to "protect" culture the same way that the enviornmental movement tries to "protect" the enviornment, the solution is to have all culture monitored and strictly controled by the government.
The public commons for ideas and artistic works is better off the more populated with diversity it is. This connects closely with the idea of Memes (related to the idea of the selfish gene by Richard Dawkins). For my own part, I do copyright some things, but I am starting to use Creative Commons licenses for more and more of my writing and music (not that I make a big contribution, but hey... every little bit helps :-).
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
I'm sure they tried very very hard to create a feel-good phrase but "cultural environmentalism" doesn't work. Ecological environmentalism seeks to prevent any human-made effects in ecological systems -- preventing any human-made changes to pristine ecologies and removing the effects of humans from sullied ecologies. The true parallel that could be considered "cultural environmentalism" might include splitting or censoring the internet to prevent the flow of "deleterious" culture from one country to another (just like the USDA tries to regulate the import for foriegn plants and animals). Some of the issues raised by Islamic fundamentalism might be true examples of cultural environmentalism in that they seek to avoid pollution from western cultures. The point is that China and Bin Laden are doing more for true "cultural environmentalism" than are Lessig and crew.
This version of "cultural environmentalism" is less about prevention of change or pollution of cultures by "bad" cultural influences and more of an economic fight about who pays and who does for so-called "cultural" properties. Lessig et al have only made use of a positive buzzword.
Its just another example of co-opting a word for its connotations, not its true meaning (like calling every act of violence or non-patriotic idea a "terrorist" threat).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This analogy is certainly compelling and has some truth to it. In biology/ecology, there have been differing levels of competition throughout time. At first it was RNA vs. DNA in the competition for genetic storage. DNA won, with RNA relegated to second place (DNA was like a RAID 1 of RNA). Then it was single cellular organisms against multicellular organisms. Even though cells in a multicellular organism lost their direct ability to pass on their genes (the endgame in evolution), the made the rest of the organism more successful. Since all the cells were related, they were passing on there genes by proxy.
Multi-cellularity clearly won, and then the competition moved on to society. Social animals were generally more successful than their non-social counterparts. Certainly there are exceptions, but I think humans are a good example of the success of social behavior. With the social/non-social debate settled, I propose that the competition has moved up a tier into culture. We now have a battle of cultures, with each vying for dominance (consciously or unconsciously? I'm not sure).
Carrying this analogy over to cultural environmentalism, I think it somewhat holds. In the past, the superior competitors created products based on proprietary technologies and innovations. While this is still somewhat the case, many of the same features found in proprietary products can now be found in open products. The competition has moved up a level from providing a product with X features to providing a service on top of that product. The question is no longer, "Can you provide X?" but, "Can you do this with X?" The product has been commoditized. The real competition is now for those services that can be provided on top of X.
I know this is not a ground-breaking idea, but it proves that his analogy holds some water. Some businesses have already realized the commoditization of the product. UPS has moved into inventory management. IBM has thrown their weight behind consulting services, services that often work in conjunction with open solutions.
The future is not just open products, but what you can do with those products to set yourself apart from the competition.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
Tree-hugging wacko is a term used to often and inappropriatly. I'm green, but there are some real nutjobs. There's an interesting book called Green Death by an author who's name escapes me right now. It explores the damage that fanatical environmentalism is doing to developing nations. There's even a quote by the co-founder of Greenpeace saying that the environmentalist movement has really gotten out of hand. All sides have nuts, know yours.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
the Americans will make a mess of it....oh wait
Ladies, germs, and other types of keyboard users...
I appreciate folks that are willing and able to take the time to work towards reasonable means of managing Intellectual Property (we weren't talking about Internet Protocol, were we?). Without hard-working folks where the rubber meets the road, awareness would be low and reason might actually be lacking.
Do I think we should have folks chaining themselves to filing cabinets, patent office doors, and the like? Well, I don't know... If a fundamental and important issue is getting slammed by a troll or by someone who's only interested in the money - then, maybe it is important to be an activist. OTOH, if one believes that militant behavior is the only way to handle all Intellectual Property issues, then I think over-the-top behavior is not appropriate.
I don't think that burning Hummers is quite the right approach - I think being an active participant in the process to lend intelligence and reason is probably the right approach.
A Passionate Independent Musician
"People should care about the public domain."
You miss. The unstated agent of the sentence "The public domain should be cared about" may have not been "people".
Those who disapprove of preposition stranding in English tend to cite the rewrite rule that transforms the dependent clause (THAT clause preposition) into (preposition WHICH clause) or the question (wh-word vso-inverted-clause preposition) into (preposition wh-word vso-inverted-clause). Rewrite rules such as these do not work so easily in all cases. Specifically, rewriting sentences of the form (patient passivized-intransitive preposition) requires depassivizing the sentence to (agent intransitive preposition patient), and undeleting the agent can almost never happen automatically, as it requires encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter. In fact, some words traditionally advertised as prepositions function more like adverbs. Nowadays, many grammarians consider this rule obsolete, and it should not be unquestioningly adhered to.
ObTopic: The public domain should still be cared about, even those works whose authors habitually end sentences with prepositions.
Nuff said
while most of us behave in a contradictory way - 'I want artists to get paid, but I like free downloads'
How about "I want artists to be paid, but I don't want to pay inflated marginal costs for works, nor do I want to be shut out of works completely." Thinking like this is what let collective licensing programs such as those offered by BMI and ASCAP take off, and the EFF has expressed interest in extending collective licensing to other media.
that there are these discussions about freedom and so forth. We are now at the point when DRM is coming towards a definite reality and we need these discussions to make sure that the DRM technologies do not in themselves violate the law.
I am pro-DRM in principle, it is obviously not a popular point of view here but this is a public forum and we can be civilized about it (hopefully.) I am pro-DRM in the following sense: I want an ability to create a document (text/music/video/CAD drawing/object code/etc.) that I could trust to be moved around in the world as a limited resource. I could send this document to anyone I wanted (whether money is involved or not is actually irrelevant,) and they couldn't make copies of it, or could make the preset number of copies. I would like the ability to have the document lock itself after certain amount of time has passed or after certain number of viewing/usages whatever. This also could be used for legal documents, and other sensitive data. Basically this would make the document into almost a real thing.
Now, I am still in favour of the discussions on these issues from point of view of public domain rights etc. People are not willing to accept the fact that some producers want their data to be really their data forever. Well, we could implement a standard, that would unlock the DRMed document, that is meant to go to public domain after the copyright period expires.
Say you are buying a CD (for example,) on this CD you have your DRMed files that can be plaid by your CD player. It is possible that the outcome of these discussions would be a standard, which would allow the original buyer to copy this music file a specific number of times onto his/her other CD players/computer/backup/whatever. Maybe there would be a way to make a backup copy, and then make say 2 or 3 copies that could be moved around from your portable MP3 player to your computer HD. When I say 'moved around' I literally mean moved, not just copied. Thus we could satisfy the laws regarding fair-use. On the other hand this file that you have in your possession must become public domain at some point, so the DRM must probably take care of that by unlocking the restriction part of the DRM after the copyright expires.
I think DRM can be actually an incredible tool for real file sharing, not the what they call file 'sharing' today. You could actually share a file but in a sense, in which you could share your CD or your watch. DRM can also be used for protection of sensitive data. But we need discussions about the rights of the public to the public domain, and so DRM could also be the tool that guaranteed the public domain safety by implementing time unlocking mechanisms.
Just a thought.
You can't handle the truth.
On the one hand, you have copyrights: the notional right of the copyright holder to prevent others from using the ideas that they've put considerable time and effort into discovering. In the US, this is a constitutional right, and from what I understand, it's thus inalienable.
:-(
On the other hand, you have the right to free speech: the right to say something even if someone else has said it; the right to expand upon an idea and produce derivitive works. This is a vitally important right that's the basis of freedom; the right to think and to communicate your thoughts is a basic, fundamental right that almost all nations now respect.
These two rights conflict, and the laws aren't usually very clear where the boundries lie: in most countries, there's a tonne of case law to read, and it's never clear in advance how a judge will rule. Sometimes, it's terribly hard to predict; and not even the judges are clear on what the statues mean.
For example: in Canada, there's an explict right listed in the Copyright Act that lets you re-frame a picture. But does that apply to chemically peeling the the paint off a picture, and putting it on a canvas backing? Four Quebec Supreme justices thought that it didn't; five judges thought that it did. If the judges themselves can't agree on such a simple question, how is the average citizen supposed to know what verdict some future court will reach?
A local department store was sued by an artist for changing the look of his artistic display of mobiles, despite them being a safety hazard. There's an explict right stated in the Canadian Copyright Act for educators teachers to read "reasonable portions" of a book out loud for teaching purposes; presuably, this implies that copyright normaly prohibits the act of reading books out loud.
The vagueness of the laws regarding derivative works is the maddening part. For example, Is it legal to reproduce a certain shade of blue from a nice painting, or is the colour a "significant part" of the artistic work? What about if I want to clone the eyes or the teeth from a digital picture? What about running an edge detection algorithm on a jpeg image? What about making an audio recording when there's copyrighted speech or music playing in the background?
The statues don't say what's allowed and what isn't, and good lawyers can cost $600/hr or more. Even then, you'll just get a "best guess" on whether or not you're likely to get sued for practical purposes; that still won't tell you what the law is, or what you need to do to be a proper law abiding citizen. The lawyers can't tell you what the statutes really mean, because in many cases even the judges can't agree! It's frustrating, and it's a chilling effect for creative expression.
I long ago gave up on any hope of working in AI or robotics, in large part because of the legal issues: anything vaguely intelligent will need to take in information, process it, and take action based on what it's learned. And as soon as something inputs information, copyright and other IP laws get involved, and there's no way to sort out what is and isn't legal without either a huge legal budget, risking breaking the law, or both.
And since copyright now applies to public performance, it can literally apply to anything, from dance choreography to martial arts to whatever some lawyer can argue in court. Since copyright belongs to the first person to make a tangible recording of the idea, this makes most hobbies a legal minefield; did someone record the dance steps you thought you invented? If anyone did, it's a copyright violation for you to do "their" dance, and you can't dance like that anymore.
It's like that for almost anything you may have once thought you invented; I once had to destroy a tape recording I made for my girlfriend because even though I wrote original lyrics, the tune I thought I'd "invented" was straight from the Phantom of the Opera (although sufficiently off key that I didn't recognize it myself -- which was the other reason to destroy the tape!)
In short, the copyright conflict is a problem: it can really block your right to be creative unless you have access to an expensive IP lawyer, and I just... don't.
--
AC
'cultural environmentalism' that tries to protect the public domain in the way that the environmental movement tries to protect the natural ecology
I'm sure it will be just as succesful. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going outside to enjoy the unnaturally hot weather we're having this year...
...I'll snag a copy of this conference and sell it to you for a few bucks so you can find out.
Also, look for copies of this conference, released on Disney DVD, to hit store shelves in the fall.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Is this culture limited to a niche audience? E.g. the Slashdot crowd? Taking a look at the real world for a moment we have millions of people embracing DRM because it comes in a nice shiny iPod package, the MPAA telling us that unless you have end-to-end HDCP you won't be watching the HD content you just bought in HD, TPM for the next generation of operating systems, the RIAA telling us that ripping a CD we bought to a PMP is not fair use while suing people who can't afford to defend themselves left, right, and center, companies whose core busines model is to buy IP then do nothing more than sue alleged infringers, and congressmen who push legislation for the studios and recording industries that deteriorate our rights in the digital world with seemingly no reckoning. Is this new movement kind of like Greenpeace then? It's cool, we support it, but really nothing much is going to change?
I think you've got the germ of truth here, and yet I can't help think that while producers should have every right to DRM their files, I don't see why it's the FBI's job to make sure people don't crack it. The trouble with the scheme is that it effectively extends copyrights forever.
You say:
"People are not willing to accept the fact that some producers want their data to be really their data forever. "
But that's backwards. I'd say some people are not willing to accept that fact that they have no legal rights to hold onto their data forever. It's supposed to go into the public domain after a limited time.
Companies extending copyright this way is the moral equivalent of people just downloading stuff from P2P. Neither of them likes the rules, so they figure out a way around it.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
This comparison, while apt, is a teriffic way to pigeonhole the movement. Now all people opposed to the patent and copyright laws as they stand are just more commie wacko enviro-nazis that everyone already hates. Me being one of them, unfortunately.
And all I do is recycle, drive a Prius, and post my music and stuff to the creative commons. What a scourge my type is. Someone has been running a pretty effective smear campaign.
Cheers.
No, copyright protection is not an "inalienable" right in the US, it is a legislated right which Congress could make disappear at any time.
It's not just Congress. There are lots of ways to make "inalienable" rights disappear -- martial law, for example.
-kgj
-kgj
Typically, the environmental movement takse as a premise of faith that we need very very large levels of government microregulation and manpulation of business, property, and commerce to protect the environment.
Typically, the annti copyright and patent movement simply wants the government to get out of the way more by not helping to impose restrictions on what people can copy and immitate.
...the difference between an inalienable right and a legislated one ...
Good points. You're right, I was confused about the matter. Thanks for clarifying.
-kgj
-kgj
its a human characteristic that separates us from other creatures.
The ability to advance and create upon what other humans before us have done.
Intellectual property rights (the ability to say no, you cannot use) had its purpose. But today its really losing ground on the reasons it was created it the first place.
Thats what you are seeing in the efforts to extend them further. Copyright has become a joke in that its limited length terms has in all practicality become a deception of continually extending them into infinity.
When in reality, with todays technology it is easier to create and market/distribute works within the shorter time length of the original copyright length terms. Yet the length terms are getting longer.
Where did all this IP build up come from?
A: by those who want to constrain us more and more for their benefit, and its not so often the actual creators doing it.. what some call capital-ISM...
Some environmental groups use donations to actually buy land they want preserved. If it's so important to have copyrighted works in the public domain, use donations to buy the works and release them to the public domain yourself.
Vote for Pedro
Sure there's some nice environemental theory, but it comes down to calling for laws. There are very few environmentalist libertarians. It tends to run strong among the anti-IP types.
How about *sharing* some of your big fat salary?
I just noticed that this wasn't trivial-semantics.slashdot.org.
Come on you guys, focus on the big picture, not the details. Who cares if it's not perfect? It gets the point across, doesn't it?
=\
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
Please dont associate me with bleeding heart tree-huggers...
> The corporations of-course want to release the data and then have the perpetual copyrights, well that is why I think the DRM schemas must have the time copyright time limiters built into them.
How do you time limit data? How does data know its expiration date? How does it know whether its author is alive or dead? How does it know whether 95 years have passed since death?
You may go around in circles trying to describe a mechanism, but the fact is that it cannot.
The only reasonable mechanism would be this: If I attempt to copy a piece of data, the system would ask me "is this file copyrighted or does its license permit this operation, yes or no?" I would answer the question honestly to the best of my knowledge. The process would continue or not. This is the only system that respects the sovereignty of individual freedom.
DRM (in essentially any form) violates the basic contract the constitution describes for copyright in the first place: In exchange for growing the public domain we the people grant artists and inventors time-limited monopolies. We the people agree to honor these monopolies, just like we agree to honor every other law. If we don't, we face the music, as we do whenever we commit a crime.
I don't see how anyone can expect software to enforce the law. Or at least, not until software systems can be fair and just and personally responsible. This seems like a huge distance into the future.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Big error in this boolean: ""is this file copyrighted or does its license permit this operation, yes or no?""
:-D
This should have read "is the file copyrighted or does its license forbid this operation, yes or no?"
Hehe, otherwise the operation would always be forbidden.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
this is *exactly* what hollywood did to make movies without licensin the patents on moving pictures.
Enlightenment, Liberty, Freedom of Speech are just examples of spin banded about by "wacko commie copyright thieving IP environmentalists". Ideas aren't abstract things, they are concrete, definite, with walls, ceilings, central heating and cutesy french patio doors - that's why they are property and need to be owned.
We need DRM, cookyright, perpetual copyright and much more, otherwise nobody will invest in research and society will grind to a halt. Innovation needs ownership.
If proof was ever needed of these obvious points, I'd like to refer you to my previous comments on Slashdot and how my "original, physical, property like and therefore owned by me" parody was then obviously (to me only) rehashed, re-written into a completely different parody on Groklaw with no resemblance to the original. The act was so cunning that any right minded person would say that both articles are completely different, that's why we need ownership on everything and DRM everywhere to stop such "free thinking" (another spin word) events.
The full story is here, in my society's letter to Groklaw
The Kabal for Notional Abstract Conceptual Knowledge and its Empowerment through Regulation, Enforcement and Dividends [KNACKERED] has recently discovered the following publication on GrokLaw.
Cold Pizza, by Scott Lazar http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200601041 61112858 published in January 2006 - a so called parody of EULA within Food.
However, the ColdPizza parody would appear to us (if looked at obtusely in just about the right amount of pitch darkness) to be a derivative work of our business proposal, that of physical rights management (PRM) - as published on Slashdot by one of our members (Dove_From_Above) in Nov 2005 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168546&cid=140 52469
As such it is in breach of article 5 of the KNACKERED society's list of great ideas, namely that of:-
5. Creative Rights Management - all new works are to some respect derivative products, hence the printing press was based upon writing which was based upon slapping coloured material on cave walls. This is a fascinating project under our "all new knowledge is theft" programme.
This is a concept which we hope to introduce shortly into your legal systems, through our extensive use of lobbying and freebies.
Legal Analysis
The following is an in-depth analysis of why ColdPizza is a derivative work - provided by our legal sleuths of BlockHead and Tackle.
1. Both articles mention Pizza.
Furthermore
2. Both system use registration at point of sale.
3. Both systems provide greater choice to the consumer by removing the burden of freedom.
4. Both systems provide a clearly inaccessible EULA which can be conveniently agreed to without inconveniencing the consumer.
5. Both systems have possible minor but unlikely side effects which on first glance look pretty depressing.
Legal Conclusion
Though our legal sleuths suggest that points 2 to 5 may in fact be universally common to many rights management systems - there can be no doubt on point 1.
We hereby give notice that any further publication of ColdPizza is obviously a breach of our rights (once we've implemented them) and you owe us. However, in the interests of an open and free society, we are willing to compromise on the first part (publication, breach of rights) but not on the later (you owe us).
Future Opportunity
At this point, we wish to propose our societies latest and greatest idea -
One of the problems with limited people copying is, you just can't. Humans are like computers and they have the inate ability to copy things that they see. If a human can view a file, a human can copy the file.
Ghods, I love a post that makes me sound concise and intelligible.
Keep up the good work, and next time log in!
All the environmentalists I know simply want to live within the constraints of an ecology capable of reliably supporting human life. They fear that current trends will result in cockroaches and scorpions being the best fitted organism to live on earth. Most of them love trees and free-running, self-maintaining, human-drinkable streams - but the point is to avoid human extinction, not to model it.
Let's see... We've banned lead in gasoline. Sulfur levels in gas have been plummeting, so acid rain, while it hasn't vainished, is much less of a problem now. Huge swathes of land have been set aside as environmental preserves. The bald eagle is being taken off the endangered species list, because the population has recovered. Most states now require a fraction of their electricity to come from renewable sources. Appliances are getting significantly more efficient -- a new refrigerator or washing machine uses far less power than one from a few decades back, with no noticeable decreace in useability, and new toilets and dishwashers use less water.
While the cleanups of rivers have been slow, consider that thirty years ago the Saginaw River in Michigan lit on fire (which baffled the fire department, because what were they going to do, pour water on it?), and had nothing larger than algae living in it. Now people fish in it, and the fish are even edible (though the health department warns against eating very many of them).
New construction now needs to check that it isn't destroying wetlands or other sensitive habitats, and major projects need to do environmental reviews.
The worst pesticides have been banned, many toxic additives to plastics and fabrics have been banned, and there are restrictions on fertilizers and other chemicals that run off from farms.
Environmentalists certainly haven't won all of their battles, and there's a long way to go (CO2, many specific wildlife habitats being lost, etc...), but they have won huge successes as well. If the "IP environmentalists" do as well, I'll be pretty happy with them.
>> You may go around in circles trying to describe a mechanism, but the fact is that it cannot.
> The standard for DRM must include encryption of the actual useful data and the envelope that is more like a program itself that is capable of holding state, securily connect to servers for status updates and such.
This is why I said that you would go round and round describing a mechanism... but you and I both know that that a piece of data in an envelope that must contact a third-party for proof that copyright has now expired is not in compliance with Article 1.8.8. That mechanism is perpetual-by-default (what happens when the servers aren't there? What happens when the data reader isn't connected to a network? What happens with the data reader is no longer compatible with the server? (Because we both know that in the term of copyright, at least 95 years adding in the life of the author, that technology will change, while the artifact with the data does not.)
How does the data-envelope even know the time to determine an expiry date? Is it affixed to a tangible medium like a clock? Why do you need DRM if it's fixed in a tangible medium? If the data asks the time from the user, or the user's system isn't this vector obviously exploitable (falling back on trust; trusting the administrator to honestly set his clock).
Encrypted by default is incompatible with time-limited rights protection unless the key is also included with the caveat that it cannot be used until such time as the work is out of copyright.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
I don't think passive voice adds clarity to your sentence. I think it weakens its meaning.
What should a writer do if he or she genuinely cannot discern the agent? What should an automated process, such as a grammar checker, do to machine-translate sentences into a subset of English that lacks passive voice?
I argue that when you deleted the agent using passive voice, you implied the most general agent subject that made sense in context. Within context that was "people" rather than "most Atlantic-based octupi and sea lions".
I meant "Legislators". In this context, "People" makes less sense because the Supreme Court of the United States, whose decisions are binding in the United States and persuasive throughout much of the common-law world, ruled in Eldred v. Ashcroft that only the Congress has power to decide what is fair to the public. Only "encyclopedic knowledge" (in the sense of Cyc and Mindpixel) could have described such a context.
People should care about protecting public domain content.
Your "protecting" wording lacks precision because all too often, publishers use "protect" in a sense referring to protecting incumbent publishers from other persons, namely as a code word for "restrict".
> - but obviously we cannot trust people, we know that majority of people do not care about copyright laws, we also cannot jail everyone who brakes these laws, so it makes sense to use technology to enforce laws.
... obeying the law.
Then the laws are broken and the laws need to be fixed. The data does not require "rights management" it needs "recipients management". If "everyone" breaks these laws there is either a fundamental problem with the law or with its enforcement.
If your clients can't be trusted with data, it should not be given to them. We already have legal structures that cover this.
> DRM does not violate anything if the standard is done properly, and that is why we need these public domain discussions, user rights, author rights, copyrights etc.
There is no way to create a proper standard for DRM that doesn't obsolete its very existence. Viz. my prior example of trusted by default. If I let you borrow my car I would trust you to obey the law while driving it, I would trust you to return it undamaged. I don't need to use special technologies and envelopes to make sure that you cannot speed while using my car, that you can only drive on approved routes and roads, that the car will prevent any actions of your free will that will result in damage, etc. If I said, "you may drive my car as long as you return it to me undamaged within a week," and you chose not to do so, I would sue you for breech of contract (trust). If you chose to break the law while driving my car, you alone would be answer to the police (personal responsibility).
Will cars one day lawfully drive themselves without allowing drivers to speed or run red lights? I'm sure they will. Probably around the same time our houses will only let us out when we're allowed to be out and our stereo will only play when we're allowed to listen to it. I hope I'm dead by then.
> As I said, DRM can be a great tool for limiting access to sensitive information
Encryption -- which is currently lawful -- already does this, without "DRM".
> and it can be a great tool to help people not violate copyrights.
Just like Property Rights Management help people not violate property rights! Oh wait, Property Rights Management is called
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
> I would propose capital punishment for copyright violation [...]
Sure. That seems reasonable enough. Maybe the capital punishment should be tempered though. Let's see... how do we compare depriving some of their life with depriving someone of their time-limited state-granted monopoly on a single expression. Hmmm. I know -- let's deprive them of their freedom for the duration of the copyrights on the works infringed! Authors life plus seventy years or so!
This would be a great way to raise awareness of both: the absurd length of copyright terms, and the flippant attitude of some law breakers.
(Sadly, this might incite the murder of many authors depending on the number of people locked up for the duration of his life, and who the infringers "friends" are. On the plus side -- those works would reach the public domain that much sooner! Maybe the likelihood of murder would encourage more creators to release their work under less restrictive licenses. See also: Assassination Politics.)
Thanks for the tangent into the absurd.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
If you want to be a grammar nazi, you have to know your Mein Kampf. "Agent" and "patient" are theta roles. In English and other accusative languages, an intransitive verb does not have a direct object. "Passivization" is transformation of a sentence to the passive grammatical voice.
Sometimes fully-automated processing is not practical, and it should not be shoe-horned into every corner-case situation.
If only the hardcore prescriptivists realized this.
Having the active subject in mind but purposefully omitting it is an excellent example of what annoys me about some people's communication skills.
Except "some people" who are in positions of power omit subjects on purpose.
My advice is to screw semantics and grammar. Work on clarity of thought and expression.
Which may mean abandoning Slashdot, as it's full of grammar nazis.
You're the writer, so tell us what you mean.
Tell that to the people pulling the lawmakers' strings.
[Use of "protect" to mean "restrict" is] a nonsensical inference derived from taking a single word out of the context that I--as the author--established in that sentence.
But it's a nonsensical inference that the incumbent commercial TV news media, which are all controlled by movie studios, will tend to use.
Wow.. 2 years in Auschwitz.
Half my family stayed in europe at the dawn of wwII, we never heard from them again, all we have are a couple tin types of some of them, so the "i'm the sole victim of wwII" routine doesnt buy sympathy from me.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
We're clearly having separate, tenuously related conversations here.
Which are the only way I can see to avoid having the thread moderated Offtopic.
What is the connection between [your lack of clarity and Big Media's lack of clarity], in your mind?
It must have been my Asperger syndrome acting up, sorry :-( But seriously, I guess that in order to deal with Big Media's lack of clarity, you first have to deal with lack of clarity similar to what my writing was showing.
I'm using a global context of clear communications in life, and you're using a focused subset context of /. I don't understand the context change, and I don't care about /.
On Slashdot, even if A => B is tenuous, (A + The Article) => B may not be. People have gone from Excellent to Terrible karma in one day over not assuming the context of The Article.
It seems you're lost in a conversation regarding legislators that I never knowingly joined.
You joined it by posting in this Slashdot article. Otherwise you risk your posts being moderated Offtopic.
Opponents in a debate can not co-opt the definition of a specific word to argue their points.
In their own media, and to the sheeple, I allege that Big Media publishers can do so and that they have. See "piracy", "theft", etc. People think of "file sharing" and "P2P" as if they referred to something that deserves to be made/kept illegal.
"That others may also use it to frame their opposing perspective is, in fact, entirely irrelevant."
--Big_Al_B
"Librarians' and libertarians' opposing perspectives are, in fact, entirely irrelevant."
--Big_Media
> The DRM could keep the contents encrypted, until the library system recognized that the copyright expired. This could be a different version of the DRM standard, designed only to keep the content secure until the copyright expires. Again, there are various possibilities here.
Various futile possibilities. E.g., how does the library system recognize that the copyright has expired? Does it get data from an external source? External sources can be comped; Does it have preprogrammed dates for the materials? The duration of copyright is variable depending on the life of the author and the whims of government, therefore hardcoded dates would either violate Article 1.8.8 by holding works too long or violate the copyright if not protected long enough; Location based DRM? Would it depend on one technology remaining static for 200 years or would it need to be adaptable to new technology? Adaptable systems can be comped by compromising the update or the update mechanism. And on and on and on...
If we can spit-ball techniques and their attacks ad hoc then it seems reasonable that the most committed criminals could do even better.
DRM is impossible until human eyes are replaced with digital eyes and human ears are replaced with digital ears (and even those inevitable systems will be circumvented by the criminals; until we have complete government coercion -- when human freedoms are replaced by digital freedoms, er, Rights Management -- concievably through psycological 'alignment' or 'programming' or quaintly, brainwashing).
You can go around and around with your location based schemes, or your server-mediated access, but the fact remains that electronic systems like this can and will be comped by criminals. We don't need DRM, we need monopoly-infringement-deterrents. E.g., even though murder is illegal we don't keep everyone in seperate impenetrable bubbles just to make it less likely; even though war is illegal we still keep nukes.
If there is no technological solution to murder, how can there ever be a technological solution to infringement? I think it's better to trust that citizens won't kill (rights-infringe) each other and punish those that do.
Your world without trust is a sad world, and again, I hope I am dead before the day it is implemented.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
You may be interested in my further conversation with Roman.
7 66035
7 67275
The thread starting here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178021&cid=14
And my sibling replies at: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=178021&cid=14
Slashdot needs a mechanism for personal messaging, social-networking is so 'in' these days!
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.