It depends on how realistic you can get "virtual reality", what advances you can make with human hibernation (so you'd be asleep most of the way), etc. This won't happen any time soon, but I do expect it to happen before the end of this millennium.
This won't be a surprise tour; robotic explorers and terraforming/resource mining/etc. will all have preceded the human visitors. Step 1 is finding rocky planets in the habitable zone around "nearby" stars (currently the first steps are being set towards achieving that goal); Step 2 will be fly-past probes; this will be a next-next-next-generation propulsion system to allow for the necessary accelleration phase. Step 3 - for 'perfect' candidates that have landmass and liquid water and a breathable atmosphere - will be orbiters. But that will take a few hundred years; just getting there and sending data back will take decades. Sending humans to colonize these worlds, given that we DO find a habitable world "in the neighbourhood", will be inevitable and, I believe, even when some form of primitive life is found on the target world.
And who decides which artists get that tax revenue?
From TFA: "The Union des producteurs phonographiques francais independants (UPFI) praised the decision."...so we already know where they think the money should be going.
My opinion: hands off the Internet. What percentage of recent (1945-2011) music has fallen into the Public Domain? Well? 0.00%. None. Nothing. So, for music to be legally used on the Internet, this has to be licensed. Since all the "collection agencies" are supposed to pass foreign artists' royalties over to their respective countries, we can assume that any French-owned royalties end up with the respective French agencies. That is where mr. Sarkozy should knock on a door and hold up his hand. This is the guy that gave us the three-strikes law. Now this guy wants to introduce some special ISP-tax... are there any French slashdotters? If so, please answer me: who in hell votes for this guy? Senile old grannies?
It's only "WAY TOO VAST" if you are thinking in a standard 80-year lifespan. If you could enhance a human's lifespan to 1,000+ years, how "way too vast" is it then (one-way trip; colonization not visiting)?
The fact that you can actually copyright a song that is >ALMOST 50 years old, authored by someone else is actually even more apalling
Right, but nothing can be done about that anymore. The good news is that it doesn't matter, because we can retroactively reduce copyright term (and all related rights) to 20 years, and those problems will be over.
This will be called Bastille Day, where the public storms the Great Wall of Copyright, behind which nearly all commercialy released sound recordings are hidden (there is an inner wall, which contains and protects the works from the last 20 years, and we'll all be glad to help to make sure no commercial users try to sneak works from behind this inner wall without proper payment).
Wearing "pirate" as a badge of honor gets literally less than zero respect from me (and just shy of wholehearted contempt), because I believe that copyright holder's interests should be preserved, and not disrespected. As the whole point of being a pirate is to practice the latter, I find no reason to respect their attempt at reappropriating the term as a positive thing. One might as well be, in my view, reappropriating a term like "embezzler", for example.
I would agree wholeheartedly with you but only after the copyright reforms, people who THEN infringe on copyrights, should be called something else and should NOT have any sympathy as they are endangering the creation of new works. As it is now, you are likely infringing on some copyright if you rip a 78 rpm shellac grammophone record and distribute it to your jazz-loving friends.
This is what WIPO's boss, Mr. Gurry, had to say earlier this year:
The Pirate Party may be an extreme expression, but the sentiment of distaste or disrespect for intellectual property on the Internet that it voices is widespread. Look at the incidence of illegal down-loading of music. We may argue about the right methodology to use to measure that phenomenon, but we are all certain that the practice has reached alarming dimensions.
In order to effect a change in attitude, I believe that we need to re-formulate the question that most people see or hear about copyright and the Internet. People do not respond to being called pirates. Indeed, some, as we have seen, even make a pride of it. They would respond, I believe, to a challenge to sharing responsibility for cultural policy. We need to speak less in terms of piracy and more in terms of the threat to the financial viability of culture in the 21st Century, because it is this which is at risk if we do not have an effective, properly balanced copyright policy.
People indeed don't care about respecting copyrights; every album in the Rolling Stone Top-500 albums is still under copyright, and this includes albums from the 1950s, not one that has entered into the Public Domain. Copyright expiration and "Public Domain" are a scam, a ruse, a carrot dangling from a stick, when it comes to sound recordings.
The Pirate Party also supports copyright, they know very well that without a short period of having a monopoly on a work, you don't have a business case for its creation. In reality this means that it's about: 1. which works can be protected; 2. length of copyright term; 3. which exceptions (fair use/dealings); 4. drm and circumvention. Since I hardly see any Pirate Party "as is" gain a majority in any country, these things will have to be negotiated. It's only understandable if the Pirate Party wants to start out at the bare minimum.
How about the "Green Party"... I guess their symbol is the incredible Hulk... and they love lettuce, spinach, beans and peas... and prefer grass in their backyards... granny smith apples... right? So how silly is calling yourself "Green"?
It's all abound marketing your brand. I know where "pirate" comes from; people who infringe on copyrights being called "pirates" by the Gentlemen Rightsholders; this term has been reappropriated as a badge of honour. A pirate party is attractive to those being branded pirates by the Vested Business Interests. Pirate Parties International needs to work on their brand recognition with the national affiliates as mark-t isn't the only one making this suggestion.
her votes were not enough to beat fellow pirate Christian Engstrom
Christian is doing great work in the EP (he almost stopped the 20 year copyright term extension for sound recordings), so I'm glad he made it in. While I'm happy to see the PP getting an extra seat, I'd prefer these seats coming from people that stop voting for their same old, same old party they supported for the last 20 years and give off a clear signal about their digital rights and privacy rights.
I'm pro-copyright, but I believe the copyright term should not exceed 15 years (with the possibility for a one-time, 15 year extension provided: 1. the work be registered, 2. a DRM-free copy be provided in the highest quality available, and 3. a hefty fee be paid to avoid frivolous extensions, limiting this to Triple-A "properties"). That being said, non-commercial, private-use copying should be legal as well as a generous fair use/dealings provision.
The problem is that quite a number of politicians appear to be in the pocket of Big Content, and the masses do what they do but don't really care if it's legal or not. Even if they did, the so-called "democracy" in the US is even more a choose-your-poison than Canada: D or R and it really makes no difference for most issues, including copyright/patents/IP. Perhaps that is why the polarization around those few issues where there is an actual difference.
> P.S. No, writing to elected officials will not work.
especially if you never try.
Sure. Try all you want. But it won't work. The only thing is leveraging electoral consequences against the influence of the *AA's. Party membership numbers is also a relevant metric in the "from what direction is the wind blowing?" game.
"Please grant Palestine full membership in WIPO, preferably yesterday."
Why is the parent modded 5, Insightful? The statement is not an insight or observation at all, just a request. Are people just modding this up because they happen to agree with the politics behind the statement?
No, they don't really care about Palestine's membership in WIPO. They care about the US (or should I say: RIAA/MPAA/*AA) to get out of WIPO, so we can reform patents, copyright and related rights to match the realities of the 21st century. Right now the US has WIPO in a chokehold.
While the *AAs can just use the WTO and ACTA to continue their chokehold, with a Respected International Organization no longer blindly echoing the *AA's carefully crafted spin but perhaps offering something 180 degrees opposed, maintaining this hold will be a lot harder.
Take some time to read this speech by Francis Gurry, WIPO Director General, at the Blue Sky Conference in February of 2011. There is some movement there, and there are a couple of sensible ideas (like simple global licensing) in there, too.
Throw away everything you've ever been taught about copyright, neighboring rights, moral rights, etc.
Treat copyright the same as patents: allow exclusive rights for a limited time to earn back investments made. Art in the mainstream is and has been treated as products/merchandise, so we might as well let the legislative side reflect that fact and forget about that small world of a few publishers and creators, and a huge world of consumers. The public are still consumers but at the same time are creators and publishers, too. Inventors that spend years to develop their inventions get 20 years of protection, why shouldn't suffice for creators?
Can you imagine a world where every work (including "orphaned works") published before 1990 is Public Domain and free for everyone to use, modify and do whatever they please? This will break the power of the RIAA/MPAA. Right now there is no Public Domain, other than some very old literature. Every commercially released DVD-Audio, SACD, CD-Audio, 33rpm vinyl LP, 45rpm single, and even a significant fraction of old 78 rpm recordings are still kept behind the Copyright Wall which is what gives the *AA their power.
I found a petition to stop software patents, but was unsuccessful in finding one that demanded a drastic reduction in copyright term in order to create a strong public domain for e.g. sound recordings.
Since I'm not a US citizen it wouldn't be right for me to create one, but it makes one wonder: did no one think about this, or have they been removed?
From what I have read, the renegotiation part only made the tool more effective, such that under optimal conditions a single laptop on ADSL was enough to bring down a server on a 30 gigabit connection. An SSL handshake still requires server resources, so perhaps we'll see this used in DDoS tools like LOIC.
It's a well-written article, and touches a couple of excellent points on necessary changes in Big Contents' business models, but one issue remains only lightly touched on by way of a link to Mickey Mouse Copyright Term Extension Act: excessive copyright terms, with no further explanation what this actually means for the average user. The Public Domain going mainstream is what Big Content is afraid of more than piracy.
The 33 rpm vinyl recording was introduced shortly after World War II ended; as you can imagine the sheer number of albums released on that format worldwide is incalculable. How many of those have fallen into the public domain by now, almost 30 years after the introduction of its intended successor, the compact disc? How many 78 rpm records, quickly abandoned after the introduction of the LP, are actually still under copyright today?
Do you have any idea how much music, literature, sound recordings, etc. would be freely available, freely available again after decades of being unavailable, and available for remixing/re-interpretation/whatever else creative you can do with it? Granted, this wouldn't make any difference for those that run after current trends only (Gaga, Bieber), but it still would enrich the lives of many that actually enjoy exploring.
"Do you come from a land down under?
Where business rules and their men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover."
If you're living in Australia, visit your local Pirate Party and consider to join for free. That is the only way to stop this madness; the same-old, same-old parties will never give in.
According to Wikipedia, they couldn't run due to registration requirements. It turns out they tried to register but this wasn't completed when the election was called.
According to Pirate Party Australia's website joining the party is free of charge at the moment, so if you agree with their constitution, by all means, do sign up and even better: become an active member. As far as I know Australia doesn't have the undemocratic "first past the post" system so, just like in Berlin, you actually have a change to score some seats. Provided, of course, that you get your message out, in particular to the younger voter and that you can actually get them to go out and cast their ballot. Again, it worked in Berlin (8.9% of the votes).
...so which of the two is a remake of the 1984 Atari 8-bit game The Scrolls of Abadon? Darn confusing titles! Star Trek vs. Star Wars, Miami Vice vs. CSI Miami... there should be a law against that!
Of course there's an Italian chapter of the Pirate Party. Perhaps they can, motivated by the success in Berlin, start to oppose these measures in parliament and start promoting true digital age copyright reform.
@AstroRobonaut That's nothing. Wait until you see c-beams glitter in the dark near the #TannhauserGate
Fear Confirmed: non-replaceable battery
on
PS Vita Specs Announced
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This means that the life of your Vita will be equal to the life (as in: able to hold a reasonable charge) of your internal battery.
I'm on my 3rd battery for my June 2005 PSP-1000, so this is not without precedent. I'm sure you'll be able to find specialist stores that will put in a new battery for you, but this won't be cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
It depends on how realistic you can get "virtual reality", what advances you can make with human hibernation (so you'd be asleep most of the way), etc. This won't happen any time soon, but I do expect it to happen before the end of this millennium.
This won't be a surprise tour; robotic explorers and terraforming/resource mining/etc. will all have preceded the human visitors. Step 1 is finding rocky planets in the habitable zone around "nearby" stars (currently the first steps are being set towards achieving that goal); Step 2 will be fly-past probes; this will be a next-next-next-generation propulsion system to allow for the necessary accelleration phase. Step 3 - for 'perfect' candidates that have landmass and liquid water and a breathable atmosphere - will be orbiters. But that will take a few hundred years; just getting there and sending data back will take decades. Sending humans to colonize these worlds, given that we DO find a habitable world "in the neighbourhood", will be inevitable and, I believe, even when some form of primitive life is found on the target world.
And who decides which artists get that tax revenue?
From TFA: "The Union des producteurs phonographiques francais independants (UPFI) praised the decision." ...so we already know where they think the money should be going.
My opinion: hands off the Internet. What percentage of recent (1945-2011) music has fallen into the Public Domain? Well? 0.00%. None. Nothing. So, for music to be legally used on the Internet, this has to be licensed. Since all the "collection agencies" are supposed to pass foreign artists' royalties over to their respective countries, we can assume that any French-owned royalties end up with the respective French agencies. That is where mr. Sarkozy should knock on a door and hold up his hand. This is the guy that gave us the three-strikes law. Now this guy wants to introduce some special ISP-tax... are there any French slashdotters? If so, please answer me: who in hell votes for this guy? Senile old grannies?
It's only "WAY TOO VAST" if you are thinking in a standard 80-year lifespan. If you could enhance a human's lifespan to 1,000+ years, how "way too vast" is it then (one-way trip; colonization not visiting)?
The fact that you can actually copyright a song that is >ALMOST 50 years old, authored by someone else is actually even more apalling
Right, but nothing can be done about that anymore. The good news is that it doesn't matter, because we can retroactively reduce copyright term (and all related rights) to 20 years, and those problems will be over.
This will be called Bastille Day, where the public storms the Great Wall of Copyright, behind which nearly all commercialy released sound recordings are hidden (there is an inner wall, which contains and protects the works from the last 20 years, and we'll all be glad to help to make sure no commercial users try to sneak works from behind this inner wall without proper payment).
Wearing "pirate" as a badge of honor gets literally less than zero respect from me (and just shy of wholehearted contempt), because I believe that copyright holder's interests should be preserved, and not disrespected. As the whole point of being a pirate is to practice the latter, I find no reason to respect their attempt at reappropriating the term as a positive thing. One might as well be, in my view, reappropriating a term like "embezzler", for example.
I would agree wholeheartedly with you but only after the copyright reforms, people who THEN infringe on copyrights, should be called something else and should NOT have any sympathy as they are endangering the creation of new works. As it is now, you are likely infringing on some copyright if you rip a 78 rpm shellac grammophone record and distribute it to your jazz-loving friends.
This is what WIPO's boss, Mr. Gurry, had to say earlier this year:
The Pirate Party may be an extreme expression, but the sentiment of distaste or disrespect for intellectual property on the Internet that it voices is widespread. Look at the incidence of illegal down-loading of music. We may argue about the right methodology to use to measure that phenomenon, but we are all certain that the practice has reached alarming dimensions.
In order to effect a change in attitude, I believe that we need to re-formulate the question that most people see or hear about copyright and the Internet. People do not respond to being called pirates. Indeed, some, as we have seen, even make a pride of it. They would respond, I believe, to a challenge to sharing responsibility for cultural policy. We need to speak less in terms of piracy and more in terms of the threat to the financial viability of culture in the 21st Century, because it is this which is at risk if we do not have an effective, properly balanced copyright policy.
People indeed don't care about respecting copyrights; every album in the Rolling Stone Top-500 albums is still under copyright, and this includes albums from the 1950s, not one that has entered into the Public Domain. Copyright expiration and "Public Domain" are a scam, a ruse, a carrot dangling from a stick, when it comes to sound recordings.
The Pirate Party also supports copyright, they know very well that without a short period of having a monopoly on a work, you don't have a business case for its creation. In reality this means that it's about: 1. which works can be protected; 2. length of copyright term; 3. which exceptions (fair use/dealings); 4. drm and circumvention. Since I hardly see any Pirate Party "as is" gain a majority in any country, these things will have to be negotiated. It's only understandable if the Pirate Party wants to start out at the bare minimum.
I knew this long ago... I just asked "Siri, what protocols are you using to communicate with your server?"
her votes were not enough to beat fellow pirate Christian Engstrom
Christian is doing great work in the EP (he almost stopped the 20 year copyright term extension for sound recordings), so I'm glad he made it in. While I'm happy to see the PP getting an extra seat, I'd prefer these seats coming from people that stop voting for their same old, same old party they supported for the last 20 years and give off a clear signal about their digital rights and privacy rights.
I'm pro-copyright, but I believe the copyright term should not exceed 15 years (with the possibility for a one-time, 15 year extension provided: 1. the work be registered, 2. a DRM-free copy be provided in the highest quality available, and 3. a hefty fee be paid to avoid frivolous extensions, limiting this to Triple-A "properties"). That being said, non-commercial, private-use copying should be legal as well as a generous fair use/dealings provision.
The problem is that quite a number of politicians appear to be in the pocket of Big Content, and the masses do what they do but don't really care if it's legal or not. Even if they did, the so-called "democracy" in the US is even more a choose-your-poison than Canada: D or R and it really makes no difference for most issues, including copyright/patents/IP. Perhaps that is why the polarization around those few issues where there is an actual difference.
> P.S. No, writing to elected officials will not work.
especially if you never try.
Sure. Try all you want. But it won't work. The only thing is leveraging electoral consequences against the influence of the *AA's. Party membership numbers is also a relevant metric in the "from what direction is the wind blowing?" game.
Kiwis that object to this system, feel free to take action.
P.S. No, writing to elected officials will not work.
"Please grant Palestine full membership in WIPO, preferably yesterday."
Why is the parent modded 5, Insightful? The statement is not an insight or observation at all, just a request. Are people just modding this up because they happen to agree with the politics behind the statement?
No, they don't really care about Palestine's membership in WIPO. They care about the US (or should I say: RIAA/MPAA/*AA) to get out of WIPO, so we can reform patents, copyright and related rights to match the realities of the 21st century. Right now the US has WIPO in a chokehold.
While the *AAs can just use the WTO and ACTA to continue their chokehold, with a Respected International Organization no longer blindly echoing the *AA's carefully crafted spin but perhaps offering something 180 degrees opposed, maintaining this hold will be a lot harder.
Take some time to read this speech by Francis Gurry, WIPO Director General, at the Blue Sky Conference in February of 2011. There is some movement there, and there are a couple of sensible ideas (like simple global licensing) in there, too.
Throw away everything you've ever been taught about copyright, neighboring rights, moral rights, etc.
Treat copyright the same as patents: allow exclusive rights for a limited time to earn back investments made. Art in the mainstream is and has been treated as products/merchandise, so we might as well let the legislative side reflect that fact and forget about that small world of a few publishers and creators, and a huge world of consumers. The public are still consumers but at the same time are creators and publishers, too. Inventors that spend years to develop their inventions get 20 years of protection, why shouldn't suffice for creators?
Can you imagine a world where every work (including "orphaned works") published before 1990 is Public Domain and free for everyone to use, modify and do whatever they please? This will break the power of the RIAA/MPAA. Right now there is no Public Domain, other than some very old literature. Every commercially released DVD-Audio, SACD, CD-Audio, 33rpm vinyl LP, 45rpm single, and even a significant fraction of old 78 rpm recordings are still kept behind the Copyright Wall which is what gives the *AA their power.
President Obama, Tear Down That Wall!
I found a petition to stop software patents, but was unsuccessful in finding one that demanded a drastic reduction in copyright term in order to create a strong public domain for e.g. sound recordings.
Since I'm not a US citizen it wouldn't be right for me to create one, but it makes one wonder: did no one think about this, or have they been removed?
From what I have read, the renegotiation part only made the tool more effective, such that under optimal conditions a single laptop on ADSL was enough to bring down a server on a 30 gigabit connection. An SSL handshake still requires server resources, so perhaps we'll see this used in DDoS tools like LOIC.
Any US Citizen around that would like to start a petition to limit copyright and related rights to a maximum of 20 years?
Thanks, the Rest of the World.
It's a well-written article, and touches a couple of excellent points on necessary changes in Big Contents' business models, but one issue remains only lightly touched on by way of a link to Mickey Mouse Copyright Term Extension Act: excessive copyright terms, with no further explanation what this actually means for the average user. The Public Domain going mainstream is what Big Content is afraid of more than piracy.
The 33 rpm vinyl recording was introduced shortly after World War II ended; as you can imagine the sheer number of albums released on that format worldwide is incalculable. How many of those have fallen into the public domain by now, almost 30 years after the introduction of its intended successor, the compact disc? How many 78 rpm records, quickly abandoned after the introduction of the LP, are actually still under copyright today?
Do you have any idea how much music, literature, sound recordings, etc. would be freely available, freely available again after decades of being unavailable, and available for remixing/re-interpretation/whatever else creative you can do with it? Granted, this wouldn't make any difference for those that run after current trends only (Gaga, Bieber), but it still would enrich the lives of many that actually enjoy exploring.
"Do you come from a land down under? Where business rules and their men plunder? Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder? You better run, you better take cover."
If you're living in Australia, visit your local Pirate Party and consider to join for free. That is the only way to stop this madness; the same-old, same-old parties will never give in.
According to Wikipedia, they couldn't run due to registration requirements. It turns out they tried to register but this wasn't completed when the election was called.
According to Pirate Party Australia's website joining the party is free of charge at the moment, so if you agree with their constitution, by all means, do sign up and even better: become an active member. As far as I know Australia doesn't have the undemocratic "first past the post" system so, just like in Berlin, you actually have a change to score some seats. Provided, of course, that you get your message out, in particular to the younger voter and that you can actually get them to go out and cast their ballot. Again, it worked in Berlin (8.9% of the votes).
Re-dun-dant (adjective)
1. characterized by verbosity or unnecessary repetition in expressing ideas;
2. expression of ideas characterized by unnecessary repetition or verbosity;
3. characterized by unnecessary repetition or verbosity in expressing ideas;
4, expression of ideas characterized by verbosity or unnecessary repetition;
...so which of the two is a remake of the 1984 Atari 8-bit game The Scrolls of Abadon? Darn confusing titles! Star Trek vs. Star Wars, Miami Vice vs. CSI Miami... there should be a law against that!
Of course there's an Italian chapter of the Pirate Party. Perhaps they can, motivated by the success in Berlin, start to oppose these measures in parliament and start promoting true digital age copyright reform.
@AstroRobonaut That's nothing. Wait until you see c-beams glitter in the dark near the #TannhauserGate
This means that the life of your Vita will be equal to the life (as in: able to hold a reasonable charge) of your internal battery. I'm on my 3rd battery for my June 2005 PSP-1000, so this is not without precedent. I'm sure you'll be able to find specialist stores that will put in a new battery for you, but this won't be cheap.
Office 2003 2007 2010 2011 (the 2003 -> 2007 was a pretty big UI bump, but otherwise mostly the same)
Internally, version numbers are used:
Office XP = 10.0; Office 2003 = 11.0; Office 2007 = 12.0; Office 2010 = 14.0
There is no Office 13.0 (yes, superstition).
NO CARRIER