Um, I don't recall anyone saying 'if you do a bit for bit copy, minus the part of the disk with the keys on it'. If you perfectly duplicate a DVD, you can play it. The fact they take steps to make that harder, like not allowing random applications to read the key areas, and zeroing the key area on blank DVDs they give out, does not make that statement any less then 100% true. If you can read the key area of the disk (Which I think you can if you unlock it. I think it's even possible with some windows DVD players to start them up, and have them unlock the disk for you.), and if you purchase blank media without the key are zeroed, you can certainly make an exact duplicate of a DVD that works perfectly.
And, I have to add, the 'CSS' isn't either of these protections. One of them is a hardware setup where a program has to unlock it before doing certain things (which doesn't even involve the content, just the keys), and one of them is just selling disabled media. CSS is the actual content scrambling system that the keys decode. CSS is not involved in the lack of key copying ability.
Except bar codes themselves are not copyrighted, so decoding them isn't a copyright violation. A bar code is just a identifier code and is no more copyrightable then a social security number or a serial number on a car engineer. Not to mention that manufactors don't want those numbers copyrighted, and they aren't the cuecat's people's numbers in the first place! Thus the DMCA doesn't appy at all.
Which poses the question: Can song titles be copyrighted? I would doubt it, but argueably, if the titles are the entire bases of sending out copyright violation letters, then decoding them to do that has to count as a DMCA violation. Fair's fair. If they can harrass people for having the titles, we can keep them from decoding them.
Fuck the government! Overthrow it Friday! Refuse to pay taxes!
If the FBI wants to arrest me, I'll be glad to give them my address.
. ..
No takers? Hey, I guess the government is smarter then you. You're allowed to advocated pretty much anything you want. Personally, I advocate shooting you in the head.
I think that the images of a vice-principal having sex with homer is funny. I also think it is wrong.
Wrong? As in unethical? Immoral? Illegal? Obviously, it's not the last, so it must be one of the first.
Should the VP taken action in civil court instead?
Would have lost, it's parody. D'oh. No one on the planet would ever win a libel suit for a picture of them having sex with a cartoon charactor, as that is clearly not possible.
What would have happened if the student used one of the jocks in his class. He would have had his butt kicked. Would justice prevail then in his case.
Justice probably would not prevail, but this would be a bad thing. I'm not sure of your point.
The action of the VP might have been incorrect, but a stiff warning from the VP to the childrens parents might not have worked.
A warning for doing what? Worked how? Just giving random warnings and vague threats? We've already figured the webpages were legal, as exidenced by this ruling.
Parents seem to think that most kids are innocent and that it is another kids fault. Just you wait when there is a gun criss in your local school and your daughter is trapped in there. You will do whatever it take to get your kid out. And when you find the other kids parents you want to take a 2x4 to there head. "oh my kid never showed any angry behavior, he was always a good boy..."
Now you're ranting. What are you talking about?
I ask the following:
What makes it OK for a student to mock a Vice Principal but it's not OK to place on the web a student hit list??
The same thing that makes it okay for someone to post any sort of parody, but not hit lists. Is this sarcasm?
It's OK to have bomb making instructions, but it's not ok on a web site that a student makes from his home on his own server.
Oh, I see where you were talking about threatening things earlier. Of course, this is completely unrelated to the topic at hand, which was a parody page about the principle. If you started putting up bomb related information, it probably would be a clue for the school to talk to you, or someone to. But it's still not grounds for suspension.
Please don't reply with the basic arguement that one might be a violent action and another is parody.
Yes, heaven forbid we use the difference between then to point out inherit flaws in your analogy. This is just like killing hundreds of people. And don't reply with the basic arguement that you haven't killed anyone.
The parody arguement does not hold up if your the target, abuse from your fellow class mates if your on the hit list is a form ( in my eyes ) violent action.
Now you're on the opposite side! While parody is protected speech, if someone at school sets up a parody page about another student, it might be worth checking into the relationship between the students to see if one of them is bullying the other. More then likely, it's probably it's probably the mocked bullying the mocker, but might possibly be the other way. It still doesn't require disciplinary action alone.
Do you understand? It's not ILLEGAL. It's not on SCHOOL GROUNDS. It's not THE SCHOOL's BUSINESS.
Remmember that were talking about 12 to 17 year olds.
Two copies would essentially allow two users to always use the song simultaneously, in which case two user licences would have been bought. The RIAA will never go for this.
People don't license music. They purchase a copy of it. And it's not the RIAA's business what you can and can't do with it, it's written into copyright law.
Libel actually usually is legal. It's as legal as selling someone near boiling coffee, or leaving the top off a swimming pool with no fence, and letting kids play in it.
Suddenly I'm picturing everyone spinning away in space along with the rubble of earth and America and Japan blaming each other because someone forgot to take into account the date line, and they passed two giant meteors past the earth at the same time and ripped it apart...;)
Nonono. If you know it's logical to default on round 10, then you can figure your opponent knows that. So your opponent already is going to default on round 10, as are you. So, defaulting on round 9 can't possible change their behavior, as they already should default on 10 no matter what.
And so on and so forth. Once the game has a set ending, no matter if it's thousands of moves in the future, it makes sense to default on the first move, because the 'The other player has nothing to lose by defaulting on this move, so I should default on the move before that.' moves all the way up the line! However, if there is no set end, then you can't applies this.
This is one of the really wacky examples of game theory.
But, if you can figure out to do this on the last round, so can he. Tada. You both come out with 28.
Actually, since we now know this...why don't we defect on round 9 instead, because we know we're not going to alter their behavior on round 10, as they have no incentive not to defect.
Oh, crap, now they're defecting on round 9 too. Well, if they've figure that out, I might as well defect on round....
Wait a minute...why did we both end up with only 10 Skittles each? And that team got 30 each! Well, this idea sucks.
It's really kinda funny to watch people come up with ideas that will 'win' this game. Everyone's thought of it before, guys. This game has the interesting property there is no way to win it. The logical stragity will cause you to get a horrible score, if your opponent is as logical as you. An 'unlogical' person playing a 'logical' one will lose horribly. But two unlogical people playing each other come out ahead of any players in any other combination.
I probably haven't gotten enough carbs today. Change all 'zero-sum' to 'not zero-sum'. I have no idea what I was thinking, or why I didn't catch that in preview.
It is worth noting that just because a game is competitive, that does not imply that it is zero-sum. Consider, for example, a competitive game where a "tie" is possible. If two kids play this game, the possible outcomes are 1 win-1 lose, and both tie. Unless you assign the value 0 to a tie, the game has a variable sum.
A game is never zero sum if, by defination, one player can score higher then the other. I.e., to get the highest score someone else has to get a lower one. Just having people abe to tie doesn't make it zero-sum, you have to have the fact you can 'win', aka, get the highest possible score, independent from the fact someone else can 'win'.
Um, zero-sum games mean a game where someone doesn't win or lose. Losing a pawn is in the middle of the game. You can call it a zero-sum move if you wish.
But someone does win the game, or you tie. To win, you must make the other side lose. That makes it a zero-sum game. That is the defination of one, actually. For someone to win, another person has to lose.
What does that have to do with anything? Prior art is still prior art, even if it's by exactly the same complany that holds the patent. You publish something in a book in 1991, then try to patent it in 1998, too bad. It's already published.
In fact, in this case, it's even worse, cause the company can't even argue they didn't know about the prior art. It's in their own frigging book!
So you're trying to claim that every cubic meter of every vessel that comes within a mile of New York is inspected before it gets there? I don't buy it.;)
If something that I do benefits me but harms you..
We're talking past each other. I just said my copying music you created does not, in fact, harm you at all, and you will not even know about it if I do so. That is my entire point. The action does not harm you anymore them me looking at a clock you have on the wall harms you. We don't need to 'assign rights' to looking at clocks at all, because looking at a clock doesn't inconvenience the owner, and neither does copying a song they have produced.
You're begging the question, assuming that you have a 'right' to sell your song, and when I copy it, I am depriving you of money. Well, by reading this comment without paying me any money, you have deprived me of money. In fact, by merely existing without giving me money, you continuelly deprive me of said money. This doesn't mean I have some sort of right to your money, anymore then you have the right to get money from me when I do something that doesn't affect you. Affecting people is what property rights are based on.
Within the last couple of hundred years, though, we invented the idea that people can, in certain circumstances, limit the use of idea they had first (patents and copyrights) (Trademark laws is based on harm. Fakes can ruin your reputation.) We do this purely to give incentive to creators. However, the cost of production has continutally gone down (think how much cheaper it is, in real money, to produce a CD, as opposed to a record. It used to require teams of people, and nowdays you can produce a passible CD in your bedroom with a one time fee of 2000 dollars and per CD cost of 30 cents.), while price has also gone up (in real money), and copyright times have continued to go UP. Way up. Something is wrong here, and what it is is people forgetting 'intellectual property' is just a legal fiction intended to get incentives for production, not to have them make insanely large profits. Oh, and the people making the profit in some industries, like music, aren't even the people making the music! Many many of these artists are taking huge risks making these songs, spending all their time and a lot of their money, along with some of a music producer's, and ending up with a CD they get 25 cents off of everytime someone buys it, and they have to pay back the forty thousand dollars they borrowed from the producers in the first place...maybe, just maybe, we don't need so much inventive out there. If people are willing to do this for just the barest chance of making any money out of it. (I feel like the Grinch now, at the end of the book;), then maybe a lot of musicians aren't in it for the money at all!
With the road tolls, I was listing things that inconvenience/harm you, not things we should have for free. I'm actually all for road tolls, it's a good idea, as long as we can actually move around fairly easily without paying them if we take the uncongested long way. (Which isn't any kind of moral stand, I just think it's not nice to lock people up who don't have money.) But this isn't very relevant to the discussion at hand.;)
People do a lot of things that inhibit your 'use of something to earn a living'. If I plant food on my own land, and don't paying you for the right, you are inhibited in your use of my land to earn money. If I drive down the street, you're inhibited from travelling down that exact same piece of road. If you're panhandling, and I don't give you money, I have inhibited your use of my money to earn a living. If I rob you while you're standing in line at the bank, same thing.
Just because you aren't able to earn money is no business of mine. The ethical consideration is not whether I have not compensated you or not, but whether I have harmed (or at least inconvienced you) you and then not compensated you. You don't have some magical right to be compensated by me. You can get that before the harm, or after the harm, or, as a last resort, after the lawsuit.;)
The point was, whether I copy your music or not, you and your music have not been harmed by said act. In fact, like I said, assuming I copy it from something then your copy, you'll never even know I copied it. Perhaps you would rather I paid you for the music, but I'd rather people paid me for reading these comments instead of reading them for free. In fact, I'd much rather people paid me for loafing around on the net all day.That doesn't mean it's going to happen, or there's some moral obligation there for people to do so..
Your house argument doesn't exactly hold water, because having random people living in your house can damage it. It also can waste your time finding a new house to live in, with a worse locations, or waiting for them to move out when you want to use it.
However, I think if someone takes something that's 'yours', and uses it without damaging it in anyway and without inhibitng your use of it (Say they sleep on your steps while you're on vacation, or copy your music, or set a book down on your car while it's in a parking lot, or pop an outgoing letter in your mailbox (That's tricky because they might mess with your mail, but let's pretend outgoing and incoming are different boxes), or look at your clock...), I think they should be able too.
Think about that. Some of them these are legal (sleeping on your steps probably is, setting a book on your car is, and looking at your clock is), and some of them are not (it's simply illegal to mess with someone else's mailbox, and copying music is a violation of copyright laws). Why is this? Well, mail has odd legal protections in this country...and copyright law...um...protects the 'owner' of the music.
I just wanted to bring this up. Do we, as a society, really want to let 'owners' of things charge people to do stuff with those things that doesn't affect those things or said owner in anyway? Why don't we have them spread the wealth? We can consider it a tax on owning things. If you own something that people can use without affecting your use of it or affecting it in general...you have to let them. (Of course, if it really didn't affect you, you wouldn't even know in the first place...which raises the question of why you want to forbid it.)
P.S. You will note that I said 'raises the question', instead of 'begging the question'. Please remember you do not say 'begs the question' when a question is raised, you say it when a theory is proven by first assuming the theory is true. In other words, if the proof only proves the arguement is logically consistent, and doesn't prove it true. This has been your offtopic grammar lesson for the day, and has nothing to do with the comment I'm replying too.;)
Artists who receive no payment for their hard work will simply keep it to themselves.
Are you serious here? They might not have incentive to create, or they might not have the time/money to create even with the incentive, but surely, if they create the work, they aren't going to lock it up in the cellar just cause they won't get paid for it!
Almost as long as we've had commercial software, we've had copyright law to stop people from copying them. And, before that, some companies were claiming it was covered as a novel, which was iffy. But, anyway, we have copyright laws to stop people from copying stuff, and that's all the rights that content creaters are supposed to have, and its really amazing people are accepting crazy restrictions. And the only reason, the only reason they're legally able to do this is because they 'license' software, without actually informing people who 'purchase' the software of this before they buy it.
This really is completely crazy. No analogy I can make makes any sense. No other type of goods are purchased like this, to get around various laws, and it's a reasonable question what happens when other markets catch on. Most laws are in reference to things you own...what happens when your network cards are only licensed to work with a certain kind of network cable, or your car stereo is not only incapable of certain tuning stations, but it is illegal to modify it to do so?
And, actually, I don't use 'licensed' software, at least not software with usage license.
Have you ever heard of the 'right of first sale'? It basically says you can resale any purchased copyrighted material, as long as you don't copy it, just sell the entire thing. Have you check the license on your OEM copy of Windows? It stops you from doing this.
Have you seen the license on PQMagic? It claims you can only run it on one computer. Now, under copyright law, it's perfectly legal to install it onto a machine, run it, delete it, install it on another, run it, delete it, and so on. Or, even better, install in once, burn it to CD, and from then on run it off said CD. The license stops this also, which is basically equivilent to saying you can only read a book in one room of your house.
Do you remember copy protected software? Did you notice some of them had EULA saying you couldn't try to get around the copy protection and make 100% legal backup copies?
Have you noticed that you can't clip a still frome from DVDs? Fair use, period. What about fast forward over commercials. While copyright laws doesn't say you have a right to do that, the copy is, in fact, your property (look up the law if you don't believe me) and you can legally do anything with it you like except certain public performances and/or copying it, including fast-forwarding over commercials, breaking the DVD into a billion pieces and eating it, using it as frisbee, or making it part of some abstract art and selling that. If it was technically possibly, it would even be legal to sell off the first half of the movie and keep the rest.
Except, now, thanks to the DMCA/EULAs, you can't do things with your own legal copies of things.
It's really scary that people have fallen for the idea that all copyrighten work is under the control of the copyright owner. It's not. The only thing they get to control is making copies (performing in public counts as a copy), period. That's it. No more. The GPL grants people extra rights to make copies under certain circumstances. All this other stuff takes away rights that 'consumers' (The legal owners of a copy of the work.) have had ever since copyright laws was invented.
Slashdot Mirror
And, I have to add, the 'CSS' isn't either of these protections. One of them is a hardware setup where a program has to unlock it before doing certain things (which doesn't even involve the content, just the keys), and one of them is just selling disabled media. CSS is the actual content scrambling system that the keys decode. CSS is not involved in the lack of key copying ability.
-David T. C.
Which poses the question: Can song titles be copyrighted? I would doubt it, but argueably, if the titles are the entire bases of sending out copyright violation letters, then decoding them to do that has to count as a DMCA violation. Fair's fair. If they can harrass people for having the titles, we can keep them from decoding them.
-David T. C.
I seriously doubt anyone has a copyright on Jabberwocky, considering it was written over 100 years ago and the copyrigth has long expired. ;)
-David T. C.
If the FBI wants to arrest me, I'll be glad to give them my address.
. . .
No takers? Hey, I guess the government is smarter then you. You're allowed to advocated pretty much anything you want. Personally, I advocate shooting you in the head.
-David T. C.
I think that the images of a vice-principal having sex with homer is funny. I also think it is wrong.
Wrong? As in unethical? Immoral? Illegal? Obviously, it's not the last, so it must be one of the first.
Should the VP taken action in civil court instead?
Would have lost, it's parody. D'oh. No one on the planet would ever win a libel suit for a picture of them having sex with a cartoon charactor, as that is clearly not possible.
What would have happened if the student used one of the jocks in his class. He would have had his butt kicked. Would justice prevail then in his case.
Justice probably would not prevail, but this would be a bad thing. I'm not sure of your point.
The action of the VP might have been incorrect, but a stiff warning from the VP to the childrens parents might not have worked.
A warning for doing what? Worked how? Just giving random warnings and vague threats? We've already figured the webpages were legal, as exidenced by this ruling.
Parents seem to think that most kids are innocent and that it is another kids fault. Just you wait when there is a gun criss in your local school and your daughter is trapped in there. You will do whatever it take to get your kid out. And when you find the other kids parents you want to take a 2x4 to there head. "oh my kid never showed any angry behavior, he was always a good boy ..."
Now you're ranting. What are you talking about?
I ask the following:
What makes it OK for a student to mock a Vice Principal but it's not OK to place on the web a student hit list??
The same thing that makes it okay for someone to post any sort of parody, but not hit lists. Is this sarcasm?
It's OK to have bomb making instructions, but it's not ok on a web site that a student makes from his home on his own server.
Oh, I see where you were talking about threatening things earlier. Of course, this is completely unrelated to the topic at hand, which was a parody page about the principle. If you started putting up bomb related information, it probably would be a clue for the school to talk to you, or someone to. But it's still not grounds for suspension.
Please don't reply with the basic arguement that one might be a violent action and another is parody.
Yes, heaven forbid we use the difference between then to point out inherit flaws in your analogy. This is just like killing hundreds of people. And don't reply with the basic arguement that you haven't killed anyone.
The parody arguement does not hold up if your the target, abuse from your fellow class mates if your on the hit list is a form ( in my eyes ) violent action.
Now you're on the opposite side! While parody is protected speech, if someone at school sets up a parody page about another student, it might be worth checking into the relationship between the students to see if one of them is bullying the other. More then likely, it's probably it's probably the mocked bullying the mocker, but might possibly be the other way. It still doesn't require disciplinary action alone.
Do you understand? It's not ILLEGAL. It's not on SCHOOL GROUNDS. It's not THE SCHOOL's BUSINESS.
Remmember that were talking about 12 to 17 year olds.
-David T. C.
People don't license music. They purchase a copy of it. And it's not the RIAA's business what you can and can't do with it, it's written into copyright law.
-David T. C.
ln -s
ln -s
Thank you, come again.
-David T. C.
However, you can be sued for it.
-David T. C.
Shush! It's a surprise. ;)
-David T. C.
Suddenly I'm picturing everyone spinning away in space along with the rubble of earth and America and Japan blaming each other because someone forgot to take into account the date line, and they passed two giant meteors past the earth at the same time and ripped it apart... ;)
-David T. C.
And so on and so forth. Once the game has a set ending, no matter if it's thousands of moves in the future, it makes sense to default on the first move, because the 'The other player has nothing to lose by defaulting on this move, so I should default on the move before that.' moves all the way up the line! However, if there is no set end, then you can't applies this.
This is one of the really wacky examples of game theory.
-David T. C.
Actually, since we now know this...why don't we defect on round 9 instead, because we know we're not going to alter their behavior on round 10, as they have no incentive not to defect.
Oh, crap, now they're defecting on round 9 too. Well, if they've figure that out, I might as well defect on round....
Wait a minute...why did we both end up with only 10 Skittles each? And that team got 30 each! Well, this idea sucks.
It's really kinda funny to watch people come up with ideas that will 'win' this game. Everyone's thought of it before, guys. This game has the interesting property there is no way to win it. The logical stragity will cause you to get a horrible score, if your opponent is as logical as you. An 'unlogical' person playing a 'logical' one will lose horribly. But two unlogical people playing each other come out ahead of any players in any other combination.
It's a great game to teach kids.
-David T. C.
I probably haven't gotten enough carbs today. Change all 'zero-sum' to 'not zero-sum'. I have no idea what I was thinking, or why I didn't catch that in preview.
-David T. C.
A game is never zero sum if, by defination, one player can score higher then the other. I.e., to get the highest score someone else has to get a lower one. Just having people abe to tie doesn't make it zero-sum, you have to have the fact you can 'win', aka, get the highest possible score, independent from the fact someone else can 'win'.
-David T. C.
But someone does win the game, or you tie. To win, you must make the other side lose. That makes it a zero-sum game. That is the defination of one, actually. For someone to win, another person has to lose.
-David T. C.
The linux floppy and CDROM drivers are modularized.
-David T. C.
In fact, in this case, it's even worse, cause the company can't even argue they didn't know about the prior art. It's in their own frigging book!
-David T. C.
Well, see if I give you any money for that comment! ;)
-David T. C.
So you're trying to claim that every cubic meter of every vessel that comes within a mile of New York is inspected before it gets there? I don't buy it. ;)
-David T. C.
We're talking past each other. I just said my copying music you created does not, in fact, harm you at all, and you will not even know about it if I do so. That is my entire point. The action does not harm you anymore them me looking at a clock you have on the wall harms you. We don't need to 'assign rights' to looking at clocks at all, because looking at a clock doesn't inconvenience the owner, and neither does copying a song they have produced.
You're begging the question, assuming that you have a 'right' to sell your song, and when I copy it, I am depriving you of money. Well, by reading this comment without paying me any money, you have deprived me of money. In fact, by merely existing without giving me money, you continuelly deprive me of said money. This doesn't mean I have some sort of right to your money, anymore then you have the right to get money from me when I do something that doesn't affect you. Affecting people is what property rights are based on.
Within the last couple of hundred years, though, we invented the idea that people can, in certain circumstances, limit the use of idea they had first (patents and copyrights) (Trademark laws is based on harm. Fakes can ruin your reputation.) We do this purely to give incentive to creators. However, the cost of production has continutally gone down (think how much cheaper it is, in real money, to produce a CD, as opposed to a record. It used to require teams of people, and nowdays you can produce a passible CD in your bedroom with a one time fee of 2000 dollars and per CD cost of 30 cents.), while price has also gone up (in real money), and copyright times have continued to go UP. Way up. Something is wrong here, and what it is is people forgetting 'intellectual property' is just a legal fiction intended to get incentives for production, not to have them make insanely large profits. Oh, and the people making the profit in some industries, like music, aren't even the people making the music! Many many of these artists are taking huge risks making these songs, spending all their time and a lot of their money, along with some of a music producer's, and ending up with a CD they get 25 cents off of everytime someone buys it, and they have to pay back the forty thousand dollars they borrowed from the producers in the first place...maybe, just maybe, we don't need so much inventive out there. If people are willing to do this for just the barest chance of making any money out of it. (I feel like the Grinch now, at the end of the book ;), then maybe a lot of musicians aren't in it for the money at all!
With the road tolls, I was listing things that inconvenience/harm you, not things we should have for free. I'm actually all for road tolls, it's a good idea, as long as we can actually move around fairly easily without paying them if we take the uncongested long way. (Which isn't any kind of moral stand, I just think it's not nice to lock people up who don't have money.) But this isn't very relevant to the discussion at hand. ;)
-David T. C.
Just because you aren't able to earn money is no business of mine. The ethical consideration is not whether I have not compensated you or not, but whether I have harmed (or at least inconvienced you) you and then not compensated you. You don't have some magical right to be compensated by me. You can get that before the harm, or after the harm, or, as a last resort, after the lawsuit. ;)
The point was, whether I copy your music or not, you and your music have not been harmed by said act. In fact, like I said, assuming I copy it from something then your copy, you'll never even know I copied it. Perhaps you would rather I paid you for the music, but I'd rather people paid me for reading these comments instead of reading them for free. In fact, I'd much rather people paid me for loafing around on the net all day.That doesn't mean it's going to happen, or there's some moral obligation there for people to do so..
-David T. C.
However, I think if someone takes something that's 'yours', and uses it without damaging it in anyway and without inhibitng your use of it (Say they sleep on your steps while you're on vacation, or copy your music, or set a book down on your car while it's in a parking lot, or pop an outgoing letter in your mailbox (That's tricky because they might mess with your mail, but let's pretend outgoing and incoming are different boxes), or look at your clock...), I think they should be able too.
Think about that. Some of them these are legal (sleeping on your steps probably is, setting a book on your car is, and looking at your clock is), and some of them are not (it's simply illegal to mess with someone else's mailbox, and copying music is a violation of copyright laws). Why is this? Well, mail has odd legal protections in this country...and copyright law...um...protects the 'owner' of the music.
I just wanted to bring this up. Do we, as a society, really want to let 'owners' of things charge people to do stuff with those things that doesn't affect those things or said owner in anyway? Why don't we have them spread the wealth? We can consider it a tax on owning things. If you own something that people can use without affecting your use of it or affecting it in general...you have to let them. (Of course, if it really didn't affect you, you wouldn't even know in the first place...which raises the question of why you want to forbid it.)
P.S. You will note that I said 'raises the question', instead of 'begging the question'. Please remember you do not say 'begs the question' when a question is raised, you say it when a theory is proven by first assuming the theory is true. In other words, if the proof only proves the arguement is logically consistent, and doesn't prove it true. This has been your offtopic grammar lesson for the day, and has nothing to do with the comment I'm replying too. ;)
-David T. C.
Are you serious here? They might not have incentive to create, or they might not have the time/money to create even with the incentive, but surely, if they create the work, they aren't going to lock it up in the cellar just cause they won't get paid for it!
-David T. C.
This really is completely crazy. No analogy I can make makes any sense. No other type of goods are purchased like this, to get around various laws, and it's a reasonable question what happens when other markets catch on. Most laws are in reference to things you own...what happens when your network cards are only licensed to work with a certain kind of network cable, or your car stereo is not only incapable of certain tuning stations, but it is illegal to modify it to do so?
And, actually, I don't use 'licensed' software, at least not software with usage license.
-David T. C.
Have you seen the license on PQMagic? It claims you can only run it on one computer. Now, under copyright law, it's perfectly legal to install it onto a machine, run it, delete it, install it on another, run it, delete it, and so on. Or, even better, install in once, burn it to CD, and from then on run it off said CD. The license stops this also, which is basically equivilent to saying you can only read a book in one room of your house.
Do you remember copy protected software? Did you notice some of them had EULA saying you couldn't try to get around the copy protection and make 100% legal backup copies?
Have you noticed that you can't clip a still frome from DVDs? Fair use, period. What about fast forward over commercials. While copyright laws doesn't say you have a right to do that, the copy is, in fact, your property (look up the law if you don't believe me) and you can legally do anything with it you like except certain public performances and/or copying it, including fast-forwarding over commercials, breaking the DVD into a billion pieces and eating it, using it as frisbee, or making it part of some abstract art and selling that. If it was technically possibly, it would even be legal to sell off the first half of the movie and keep the rest.
Except, now, thanks to the DMCA/EULAs, you can't do things with your own legal copies of things.
It's really scary that people have fallen for the idea that all copyrighten work is under the control of the copyright owner. It's not. The only thing they get to control is making copies (performing in public counts as a copy), period. That's it. No more. The GPL grants people extra rights to make copies under certain circumstances. All this other stuff takes away rights that 'consumers' (The legal owners of a copy of the work.) have had ever since copyright laws was invented.
-David T. C.