For a loooong time before 1709, stories and songs were freely traded, even commissioned works. Granted, you had to be able to procure a copy of the book (and know how to read), or know how to play an instrument to hear a song, but the oral tradition pretty much makes public domain the natural state of a creative work.
Copyright is an artificial limit imposed on works, which places them in an artificial state. The oral tradition is alive and well; witness all the movie quotes flying around everywhere. The copyright robber-barons have hoodwinked us into believing that their artificially imposed limits on the oral tradition and the public domain are the natural state. This is simply and obviously not true. It's not that information wants to be free; it's that information is free. Stories are told. Songs are sung. Unless people are artificially prevented from doing so.
The artificial state of copyright is advantageous for a short period of time, but it is not, and should never be mistaken for, the natural condition of art. Art belongs to the people.
Having faith in something frees you from doubt and worry in regards to that thing. And ultimately if you seek to lead an enlightened life, you need to rid yourself of such worries and doubts. You will be healthier, live longer, and have a much richer spiritual experience of life.
So ignorance is bliss, is it? How, exactly, does sticking your fingers in your ears and going "La, la, la" in the face of evidence make you "enlightened"? What you're essentially saying is, "Thinking is hard and icky, so I'll just believe what the nice man in the shiny robes tells me." It's intellectually dishonest and ethically reprehensible.
Ignoring something that, by all conceivable tests, does not exist, also frees you from worry about that thing. And it allows you to focus on real experiences and seek real enlightenment.
...Which in turn clearly outlines exactly what rights you have according to the US government...
Wrong! Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG!!!
The Bill of Rights does not tell you what you can do; it tells the government what it cannot do. Believing otherwise is the kind of thinking that got us into this mess.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Recognize that? It's the Ninth Amedment. In a nutshell, what it says is "just because it ain't listed here don't mean you can't do it." The Founding Fathers were very careful about this; this amendment makes it clear (or should) that the Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the citizens. It instead limits the rights of the government to interfere in the lives of the citizens.
That, above all else, is a fact I wish they would drill into students' heads in Civics or History classes.
Information IS different from a physical item; I can't carry around a TV or a sack of money in my mind. I can, however, hear a song play in my mind, and quote from movies, and remember the good parts of a book, and know how to operate software, without depriving anyone else of the exact same thing. If I'm humming a song, that song does not disappear from the master tapes at the recording studio, or from any of the other millions of copies distributed throughout the world. If I pick up a guitar and play the song, I am not depriving the artist of any concert revenue. If I write down tablature for the song that is a pretty good approximation of how it sounds to me, so I can teach it to someone else so we can jam, I am not depriving a sheet-music company of any revenue, especially if sheet music is not available for that song (which is the much more common situation). If I copy that recording of a song, I am not (necessarily) depriving the record company of revenue, again, especially if they have chosen not to make it widely available.
And you forgot one necessary ingredient in the creative process: you need time, talent, effort, and exposure to everything that has come before. 100 percent of art is derivative; you might find a new angle, but it all comes from somewhere. For art to survive, artists need to be able to see, hear, feel, love, study, and understand art.
Making a bunch of bean-counters and lawyers the guardians to our cultural heritage, and therefore the gatekeepers to our cultural future, is a sure-fire way to ensure there is no cultural future. Are they the ones for whom you would have us show compassion?
When you have a bunch of yahoos shouting about their imaginary friend every chance they get, and trying to force their 2000-year-old slasher novel down everyone's throats, it becomes much more difficult to use the proper qualifiers. You almost have to make assertions in that situation, so you don't get shouted down: "You don't know? HA! It must be Jeebus, then! See, you guys are all going to Hell! Jeebus, Jeebus, Jeebus..." It's wrong to state things as fact, but I can't really fault people for doing it.
Those of us who are brave and smart enough to accept the answer of "we don't know" are in the minority. Maybe someday in the future, we can get the God-botherers to shut up long enough to make the methodology of science widely enough understood to be able to speak intelligently in public about the findings of science.
Yep, me too. Had the same one for at least five years. Just pop the ball out and clean the gunk off the supports once in a while, and I swear it'll last forever.
I just went through that exact thing last night setting up AT&T DSL service. Their online setup didn't work with Safari or Firefox, and I'm not savvy enough to do it myself (but brave enough to admit it), so we had to call tech support.
My wife was hilarious; she called first, and yelled at the guy when he blamed us for having a Mac.
Tech support: "Well if it doesn't work in Safari or Firefox, you'll have to use Internet Explorer."
My wife: "Internet Explorer sucks. We don't even have it. Look, can you just give me someone who isn't busy kissing Bill Gates's ass?"
So I took the phone and played "good cop," at which point they put us on hold for 20 minutes while they "found someone who could help us." The second tech was very helpful, and it took about a minute to finish up once we got through.
The trouble is that corporations have no sense of respect or common decency. They're only interested in grabbing as much as they can.
They're like an untrainable dog; if you have to have them in your living room, you'd be wise to keep a leash and muzzle on them, and keep newspaper under their ass.
We don't choose people to rule at all. We choose people to serve, and that's a distinction that those who serve (and apparently some voters) need to be reminded of.
Learn to use CorelDraw, and you'll resent having to ever touch Illustrator again. It's so much easier to use, so much more flexibe in its import/export formats, so much more powerful in its editing tools. Oh, and 1/3 the price.
Photoshop is definitely the gold standard for image editors, but if they're going to charge so much for it, they deserve to have a pirating problem.
If I had mod points, I'd do something about that "flamebait," but since I don't, I'll just agree with you.
If I see the phrase "kid-friendly" one more time I'm gonna hurt somebody. Things intended for mature rational adults should be the default, and they would be, if only we had more mature rational adults...
Ditto on the drive-in, but I actually was there to see Star Wars. I was 4, and my mom had no interest in seeing it, so my dad took me. I may have seen another movie before that, but Star Wars is the first one I remember. There I sat in Dad's beige '69 Beetle, with the speaker hanging in the window, absolutely entranced.
It was a double feature with something else, but I'll be damned if I remember what. But I do vividly remember cheering Luke on as he fired at that exhaust port.
I'll not let later sins of the franchise spoil that memory.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with sarcasm these days is you can never go far enough over the top for people to realize you're kidding.
Your "+5 Insightful" mod does worry me a bit, though...
Yeah, the "Buy Now" button as the first thing you see on the website doesn't bode well.
It appears you still have to provide your own filter for snake-oil.
Actually, copyright is the new idea.
For a loooong time before 1709, stories and songs were freely traded, even commissioned works. Granted, you had to be able to procure a copy of the book (and know how to read), or know how to play an instrument to hear a song, but the oral tradition pretty much makes public domain the natural state of a creative work.
Copyright is an artificial limit imposed on works, which places them in an artificial state. The oral tradition is alive and well; witness all the movie quotes flying around everywhere. The copyright robber-barons have hoodwinked us into believing that their artificially imposed limits on the oral tradition and the public domain are the natural state. This is simply and obviously not true. It's not that information wants to be free; it's that information is free. Stories are told. Songs are sung. Unless people are artificially prevented from doing so.
The artificial state of copyright is advantageous for a short period of time, but it is not, and should never be mistaken for, the natural condition of art. Art belongs to the people.
So ignorance is bliss, is it? How, exactly, does sticking your fingers in your ears and going "La, la, la" in the face of evidence make you "enlightened"? What you're essentially saying is, "Thinking is hard and icky, so I'll just believe what the nice man in the shiny robes tells me." It's intellectually dishonest and ethically reprehensible.
Ignoring something that, by all conceivable tests, does not exist, also frees you from worry about that thing. And it allows you to focus on real experiences and seek real enlightenment.
But hey, enjoy your yummy Kool-Aid.
Wrong! Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG!!!
The Bill of Rights does not tell you what you can do; it tells the government what it cannot do. Believing otherwise is the kind of thinking that got us into this mess.
Recognize that? It's the Ninth Amedment. In a nutshell, what it says is "just because it ain't listed here don't mean you can't do it." The Founding Fathers were very careful about this; this amendment makes it clear (or should) that the Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the citizens. It instead limits the rights of the government to interfere in the lives of the citizens.
That, above all else, is a fact I wish they would drill into students' heads in Civics or History classes.
Information IS different from a physical item; I can't carry around a TV or a sack of money in my mind. I can, however, hear a song play in my mind, and quote from movies, and remember the good parts of a book, and know how to operate software, without depriving anyone else of the exact same thing. If I'm humming a song, that song does not disappear from the master tapes at the recording studio, or from any of the other millions of copies distributed throughout the world. If I pick up a guitar and play the song, I am not depriving the artist of any concert revenue. If I write down tablature for the song that is a pretty good approximation of how it sounds to me, so I can teach it to someone else so we can jam, I am not depriving a sheet-music company of any revenue, especially if sheet music is not available for that song (which is the much more common situation). If I copy that recording of a song, I am not (necessarily) depriving the record company of revenue, again, especially if they have chosen not to make it widely available.
And you forgot one necessary ingredient in the creative process: you need time, talent, effort, and exposure to everything that has come before. 100 percent of art is derivative; you might find a new angle, but it all comes from somewhere. For art to survive, artists need to be able to see, hear, feel, love, study, and understand art.
Making a bunch of bean-counters and lawyers the guardians to our cultural heritage, and therefore the gatekeepers to our cultural future, is a sure-fire way to ensure there is no cultural future. Are they the ones for whom you would have us show compassion?
When you have a bunch of yahoos shouting about their imaginary friend every chance they get, and trying to force their 2000-year-old slasher novel down everyone's throats, it becomes much more difficult to use the proper qualifiers. You almost have to make assertions in that situation, so you don't get shouted down: "You don't know? HA! It must be Jeebus, then! See, you guys are all going to Hell! Jeebus, Jeebus, Jeebus..." It's wrong to state things as fact, but I can't really fault people for doing it.
Those of us who are brave and smart enough to accept the answer of "we don't know" are in the minority. Maybe someday in the future, we can get the God-botherers to shut up long enough to make the methodology of science widely enough understood to be able to speak intelligently in public about the findings of science.
But unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath.
...I think I found my new band name...
I'm in ur airports, plottin ur demise... Newklear bomb, I has it... I can has Sharia law? (did I forget any?)
"The American media should be more than aware of the fables like Chicken Little, and Crying Wolf."
We're aware of them, but Disney copyrighted them, so we have to wait for a special edition re-release of the DVD to actually see the stories.
Yep, me too. Had the same one for at least five years. Just pop the ball out and clean the gunk off the supports once in a while, and I swear it'll last forever.
Can't the planes just burn politicians? Same thing, and FAR more of a problem...
I just went through that exact thing last night setting up AT&T DSL service. Their online setup didn't work with Safari or Firefox, and I'm not savvy enough to do it myself (but brave enough to admit it), so we had to call tech support.
My wife was hilarious; she called first, and yelled at the guy when he blamed us for having a Mac.
Tech support: "Well if it doesn't work in Safari or Firefox, you'll have to use Internet Explorer."
My wife: "Internet Explorer sucks. We don't even have it. Look, can you just give me someone who isn't busy kissing Bill Gates's ass?"
So I took the phone and played "good cop," at which point they put us on hold for 20 minutes while they "found someone who could help us." The second tech was very helpful, and it took about a minute to finish up once we got through.
But why should we have to go through that?
I was waiting for this to show up... Can somebody please take this guy's CRTL, C and V keys away until he learns to behave?
Easy - Tell Bush that the RIAA funds terr'rists.
(but let me move out of Los Angeles first.)
The trouble is that corporations have no sense of respect or common decency. They're only interested in grabbing as much as they can.
They're like an untrainable dog; if you have to have them in your living room, you'd be wise to keep a leash and muzzle on them, and keep newspaper under their ass.
My sleep-addled brain parsed it as "Judge Deals to Blow RIAA."
Coffee. Must have coffee.
And it's coming here next year: Smart USA
Wait-- they broke Notepad?!?
They can't even keep Notepad running right on it?
Oh, that's funny.
Well, that's enough to get started...
We don't choose people to rule at all. We choose people to serve, and that's a distinction that those who serve (and apparently some voters) need to be reminded of.
Oh really?
Learn to use CorelDraw, and you'll resent having to ever touch Illustrator again. It's so much easier to use, so much more flexibe in its import/export formats, so much more powerful in its editing tools. Oh, and 1/3 the price.
Photoshop is definitely the gold standard for image editors, but if they're going to charge so much for it, they deserve to have a pirating problem.
If I had mod points, I'd do something about that "flamebait," but since I don't, I'll just agree with you.
If I see the phrase "kid-friendly" one more time I'm gonna hurt somebody. Things intended for mature rational adults should be the default, and they would be, if only we had more mature rational adults...
Sure, I'd take to the streets.
Of Canada.
That fucker serves ONE DAY past January 20, 2009, and we aren't the USA anymore. And it's just not worth fighting for at that point.
Ditto on the drive-in, but I actually was there to see Star Wars. I was 4, and my mom had no interest in seeing it, so my dad took me. I may have seen another movie before that, but Star Wars is the first one I remember. There I sat in Dad's beige '69 Beetle, with the speaker hanging in the window, absolutely entranced.
It was a double feature with something else, but I'll be damned if I remember what. But I do vividly remember cheering Luke on as he fired at that exhaust port.
I'll not let later sins of the franchise spoil that memory.