However, anyone can purchase the property for that claimed value amount.
That would be very bad for open source. The Linux kernel is estimated to be worth more than $1 billion. Should the copyright owners be required to pay 5% of that ($50 million) to keep someone else from snapping up the kernel for closed-source purposes?
Or consider Windows. Microsoft claimed Windows NT cost $4 billion. Does that mean Sun can spend $4 billion to yank Windows out from underneath Microsoft? And then stop supporting it? And how would this play into derivative works? Can I buy the copyright to version 1? Would the author still have control over version 2? How would that effect the value of version 2?
It may also violate the constitution since copyright must be granted to the author but this would be a compulsory shift to someone else.
I'm of the opinion everything should have the same copyright length. Suppose I record a song and license it to be used in a movie. I continue to renew my copyright but the author of the movie allows their copyright to lapse. Does my song enter the public domain? What about the movie?
Taps was composed by Daniel Butterfield in 1862 during the U.S. Civil War. He died in 1901, so under current copyright law it would've entered the public domain in 1971. If it was considered a work for hire, the copyright would've been valid for 120 years, which would mean it entered public domain in 1982. (This is just worst-case. It probably entered public domain before then.)
In 1862 copyright lasted 28 years with a possible 14 year extension. The law did not change again until 1909. So Taps would have entered the public domain in either 1890 or 1904.
For reference, see this legal brief from Eldred v Ashcroft. The relevant part starts at paragraph 61.
What else could they be looking for that they are not telling us about?
They're looking for 'leakers' who spread misinformation through government documents. Once they identify which government official's cell phone was in the same vicinity as the reporter who published the leaks they're gonna smack the leaker down.
Oh. They're also digging up dirt to discredit the leakers.
Smoking is no longer permitted in restaurants in California. It's the same kind of thing. People don't get to do that anymore. Felons don't get to own guns anymore.
So congress passes a law saying anyone who has ever been convicted of j-walking can't assemble at a protest. It's the same kind of thing. Felons don't get to own guns any more. And j-walkers don't get to protest. Never mind that such a penalty did not exist at the time they committed the offense or that they have a constitutional right to protest!
Felons can argue that it's a violation of their rights, but I don't think you can reasonably call that ex post facto.
The parent post ends with a definition of ex post facto. The definition was written just a few years prior to the constitution. Clause three of the definition:
3: Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.
Something to keep in mind. The internet isn't so different from the mail. Simply knowing who someone communicated with provides the government with enough knowledge to track down someone who leaks embarrassing information to the press. From the U.S. Postal Museum in Washington, D.C.
At the beginning of the new America, nearly all the news came by mail. When the Constitution was signed, it was rushed by post riders to every town that had a printing press. And that's how the newspapers were able to bring the resounding news of how we were to govern ourselves. The newspapers knew of it first by mail.
In England, for centuries, the mail was frequently scrutinized by agents of the Crown or of the Parliament. It could be worth your life to write a letter that might be seen as having the seeds of treason. This did not happen here. From the beginning, by and large, the U.S. mails have been free of eyes other than our own and those of the sender.
To the framers of the Constitution, the mail made the engine of democracy run--along with the newspapers. And newspapers then printed a good deal of correspondence. Rufus Putnam, a key military figure in the Revolutionary War, said, "The knowledge diffused among the people by newspapers, by correspondence between friends" was crucial to the future of the nation. "Nothing can be more fatal to a republican government than ignorance among its citizens."
As a journalist, I have sometimes been asked where my leads for stories come from. Much of the time, they come from opening the mail. Readers from all over the country send personal stories, newspaper clippings, local court decisions, and student newspaper editorials arguing for the First Amendment rights of students. There is no other way I would have known about these stories except through the mail. It is through letters that I often receive highly confidential stories about unfairness in the justice system from people who would not trust any other form of communication.
The framers of the Constitution knew how vital the mail would be when Article I was written to protect privacy of communication through the mail.
Thanks for the info on the relationship between employers and insurers. I've never understood why the two are so needlessly interlocked. Actually, I still don't. Health insurance should cost the same whether I work for Charles Schwaab or sell used books on eBay.
It's convenient you chose those two examples. Other lines of work involve different kinds of risk. The lumber industry faces far different risks than the financial services industry, which faces far different risks than semiconductor manufacturing. One reason for employers to provide health insurance is that the safety of the work environment directly affects the company's bottom line. The safer a company's work environment, the cheaper their health insurance will be.
I realize there is worker's comp, but that only applies when it's obvious an injury was caused on the job. Health insurance also applies to exposure to carcinogens, repetitive stress injury, and other ailments that the employer has some control over but the employee can not prove was caused by their job.
In fact, for profit insurance is stuck in a fundamental conflict of interest; they will be most successful by finding ways to weasel out of their obligations. Government insurance, on the other hand, is beholden to the voters, and doesn't embezzle premiums off into profit.
There are many mutual insurance companies that are owned by and answer to the policy holders. On the other hand some mutuals (e.g. State Farm) seem to have forgotten who they work for.
If the uncontrollable desire to play games of chance (gambling) is classified as an addiction, how is an uncontrollable desire to play games of any other sort not? Can online gambling be considered an addiction?
To be classified as a disorder, someone's activity has to interfere with their day-to-day life. Clearly bankrupting oneself at the casino falls neatly into that category.
Of course the real reason they want video gaming addiction added to the DSM is because many insurance companies will not pay for treatment unless a psychologist identifies a specific disorder out of the DSM. That's why the DSM contains everything from PMS to ADHD.
Consider that, in order to fully support OOXML, you have to actually go and buy all of those different versions of Office, plus random crap like WordPerfect, and reverse-engineer their behavior.
I agree with most of your post, but there is another solution to this. The latest version of Office presumably supports OOXML in its entirety[1]. You can reverse engineer that and be done with it.
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[1] Actually, I think we'll find that MS Office doesn't actually follow OOXML. The last thing Microsoft wants is for its competitors to have compatible file formats. In that sense, it's actually better to reverse engineer the defacto implementation than to implement the standard as defined.
They should be open for anybody to use. There should be no licensing costs associated with implementing the document readers, and the specs should be freely (as in beer) obtainable.
I believe every single one of those requirements is satisfied by MS Office Open XML formats.
Please explain how to implement "autoSpaceLikeWord95" and "lineWrapLikeWord6". Microsoft's proposed 6000 page standard does not define these, along with many other parts of the specification. Even if you can reverse engineer Microsoft's products and determine how to implement those features, Microsoft's covenant not to sue does not "apply to things that are merely referenced in the specification". As you can see MS Office Open XML fails on all three requirements.
MS also provide free viewers for most of their formats so access to these documents is available
Virtually every historic event is going to involve government documents. It does not matter that Microsoft provides a reader in the present day that works in a very limited scope. One of the key points of requiring an open format is to ensure the documents can be read by historians hundreds of years from now. Such a guarantee can not be made without a clear published standard.
When the full-time proffessional army is not allowed to use its full potential for killing and all of the destruction methods that exist in its arsenal (including biological, chemical and nuclear weapons,) because bleeding-heart liberal-minded tree-hugging society doesn't want to see 'those images' on their TV sets
Do you have any idea what would happen if the US started nuking Iraq? Aside from the fact that it defeats the point of freeing the people and forming a democracy?
Assuming no one nukes us back, every nation in the world would place an embargo on the US. Our economy would crumble. All the cheap goods we import from elsewhere would dry up. The market for other goods that we export would disappear. The government would have to reinstate fuel rations.
Other nuclear-capable nations would build up their arsenals. Non-nuclear capable nations would rapidly accelerate their research. There would be a huge military build up throughout the rest of the world, including our former allies.
Assuming the US withdraws it's military it could end at that. If not, we would likely have war on American soil for the second time in history.
an additional requirement should be the intent of the author to make a creative work
An additional requirement should be to promote the progress of useful arts. The New Jersey Turnpick Authority clearly has no intention of ever publishing this video.
"The video serves no worthwhile purpose and shows a tremendous lack of common human decency towards the family of the victim"
Instead they intend to dispose of the video keeping it out of the public domain, effectively making their exclusive right last an unlimited time.
This is true in the United States as well, but the law is rarely enforced. The FBI generally won't get involved unless there is a substantial amount of money involved.
You seem to have missed the point. What happens if the copyright on the book lapses before the copyright on the photo, which is contained in the book? Does the book not actually enter the public domain? Is it okay to distribute the book with the photo as long as you don't distribute the photo by itself? How is someone to know that the photo is still copyrighted?
It doesn't even have to be as high as $20. $1 would suffice
A $1 tax would lead to major publishers paying a few thousand dollars each year to renew the copyrights on all of their content, even if they never intend to publish it ever again. They would not even blink at the price. For that matter, they would not hesitate at $20 per work.
To tax it, you have to appraise it. To appraise it, you have to know what others are willing to buy it for.
The overwhelming majority of content loses virtually all of its revenue value within five years of publication. A masterpiece is still a masterpiece even if everyone has seen it. The appropriate appraisal for such works is to look at the amount of money they have brought in so far and tax based on that. In such a way it costs more to keep a masterpiece locked up with copyright than it does to keep lousy crud out of the public domain.
So I take a fantastic, award-winning photograph. I license it to be published in a book. I keep paying taxes on my photo but the author of the book does not. What happens? Does my photo become public domain? Does the book become public domain?
All works should have the exact same copyright. If a collective work enters the public domain, I should be able to take any piece of that work and reuse as I see fit. I should not have to dig through the library of congress to figure out if some small portion is still protected by copyright.
he knows some *crucial* piece of information that we don't
It may be that he knows the true value of his company. Perhaps he has already stashed away enough money for the rest of his life so he isn't worried about the company going broke. Perhaps he is expecting his company to continue to grow in value. Maybe he just doesn't like Viacom. Perhaps he loves his job and the respect it garners; and perhaps that's worth more to him than $750 million.
It failed because everyone hates the idea. The people pushing to segregate pornography hate it because it would legitimize pornography instead. People who support free speech hate it because it sets another bad precedent in regulating speech. Pornography publishers hate it because it would put them under the control of a single DNS service provider. Academics hate it because they may some day be required to put all of their controversial material (i.e. medical diagrams, pictures of aborted fetuses, articles considered inappropriate for children) in that domain. The entertainment industry hates it because most content is considered pornographic by someone. It failed because it's an all-around bad idea.
This is the same route ISPs could take. An HTTP->HTTPS redirect for the company website is transparent to the end-user.
Unfortunately, we have sites like Slashdot which redirect right back to HTTP. Web sites don't want to support encryption when it means running twice as many web servers.
The price is not set by markup in stores. It is set by the copyright holders. Copyright is a government-granted monopoly. Copyright holders price the content in such a manner as to maximize profits. If the store has to mark up the price, the copyright holder will lower their share just to sell more copies. If the markup is smaller, the copyright holders will raise prices so the product will cost whatever the market will bear.
As long as the content is copyrighted consumers will not see any savings. If the material came out of copyright the price would drop below a dollar.
Another poster brought up the interesting point that if the product does not face competition from copyright infringement the market may actually bear a higher price.
Slashdot Mirror
That would be very bad for open source. The Linux kernel is estimated to be worth more than $1 billion. Should the copyright owners be required to pay 5% of that ($50 million) to keep someone else from snapping up the kernel for closed-source purposes?
Or consider Windows. Microsoft claimed Windows NT cost $4 billion. Does that mean Sun can spend $4 billion to yank Windows out from underneath Microsoft? And then stop supporting it? And how would this play into derivative works? Can I buy the copyright to version 1? Would the author still have control over version 2? How would that effect the value of version 2?
It may also violate the constitution since copyright must be granted to the author but this would be a compulsory shift to someone else.
I'm of the opinion everything should have the same copyright length. Suppose I record a song and license it to be used in a movie. I continue to renew my copyright but the author of the movie allows their copyright to lapse. Does my song enter the public domain? What about the movie?
In 1862 copyright lasted 28 years with a possible 14 year extension. The law did not change again until 1909. So Taps would have entered the public domain in either 1890 or 1904.
For reference, see this legal brief from Eldred v Ashcroft. The relevant part starts at paragraph 61.
They're looking for 'leakers' who spread misinformation through government documents. Once they identify which government official's cell phone was in the same vicinity as the reporter who published the leaks they're gonna smack the leaker down.
Oh. They're also digging up dirt to discredit the leakers.
So congress passes a law saying anyone who has ever been convicted of j-walking can't assemble at a protest. It's the same kind of thing. Felons don't get to own guns any more. And j-walkers don't get to protest. Never mind that such a penalty did not exist at the time they committed the offense or that they have a constitutional right to protest!
Felons can argue that it's a violation of their rights, but I don't think you can reasonably call that ex post facto.
The parent post ends with a definition of ex post facto. The definition was written just a few years prior to the constitution. Clause three of the definition:
It's convenient you chose those two examples. Other lines of work involve different kinds of risk. The lumber industry faces far different risks than the financial services industry, which faces far different risks than semiconductor manufacturing. One reason for employers to provide health insurance is that the safety of the work environment directly affects the company's bottom line. The safer a company's work environment, the cheaper their health insurance will be.
I realize there is worker's comp, but that only applies when it's obvious an injury was caused on the job. Health insurance also applies to exposure to carcinogens, repetitive stress injury, and other ailments that the employer has some control over but the employee can not prove was caused by their job.
There are many mutual insurance companies that are owned by and answer to the policy holders. On the other hand some mutuals (e.g. State Farm) seem to have forgotten who they work for.
To be classified as a disorder, someone's activity has to interfere with their day-to-day life. Clearly bankrupting oneself at the casino falls neatly into that category.
Of course the real reason they want video gaming addiction added to the DSM is because many insurance companies will not pay for treatment unless a psychologist identifies a specific disorder out of the DSM. That's why the DSM contains everything from PMS to ADHD.
I agree with most of your post, but there is another solution to this. The latest version of Office presumably supports OOXML in its entirety[1]. You can reverse engineer that and be done with it.
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[1] Actually, I think we'll find that MS Office doesn't actually follow OOXML. The last thing Microsoft wants is for its competitors to have compatible file formats. In that sense, it's actually better to reverse engineer the defacto implementation than to implement the standard as defined.
Please explain how to implement "autoSpaceLikeWord95" and "lineWrapLikeWord6". Microsoft's proposed 6000 page standard does not define these, along with many other parts of the specification. Even if you can reverse engineer Microsoft's products and determine how to implement those features, Microsoft's covenant not to sue does not "apply to things that are merely referenced in the specification". As you can see MS Office Open XML fails on all three requirements.
Virtually every historic event is going to involve government documents. It does not matter that Microsoft provides a reader in the present day that works in a very limited scope. One of the key points of requiring an open format is to ensure the documents can be read by historians hundreds of years from now. Such a guarantee can not be made without a clear published standard.
Do you have any idea what would happen if the US started nuking Iraq? Aside from the fact that it defeats the point of freeing the people and forming a democracy?
Assuming no one nukes us back, every nation in the world would place an embargo on the US. Our economy would crumble. All the cheap goods we import from elsewhere would dry up. The market for other goods that we export would disappear. The government would have to reinstate fuel rations.
Other nuclear-capable nations would build up their arsenals. Non-nuclear capable nations would rapidly accelerate their research. There would be a huge military build up throughout the rest of the world, including our former allies.
Assuming the US withdraws it's military it could end at that. If not, we would likely have war on American soil for the second time in history.
An additional requirement should be to promote the progress of useful arts. The New Jersey Turnpick Authority clearly has no intention of ever publishing this video.
Instead they intend to dispose of the video keeping it out of the public domain, effectively making their exclusive right last an unlimited time.
This is true in the United States as well, but the law is rarely enforced. The FBI generally won't get involved unless there is a substantial amount of money involved.
It doesn't even have to be as high as $20. $1 would suffice
A $1 tax would lead to major publishers paying a few thousand dollars each year to renew the copyrights on all of their content, even if they never intend to publish it ever again. They would not even blink at the price. For that matter, they would not hesitate at $20 per work.
The overwhelming majority of content loses virtually all of its revenue value within five years of publication. A masterpiece is still a masterpiece even if everyone has seen it. The appropriate appraisal for such works is to look at the amount of money they have brought in so far and tax based on that. In such a way it costs more to keep a masterpiece locked up with copyright than it does to keep lousy crud out of the public domain.
All works should have the exact same copyright. If a collective work enters the public domain, I should be able to take any piece of that work and reuse as I see fit. I should not have to dig through the library of congress to figure out if some small portion is still protected by copyright.
It may be that he knows the true value of his company. Perhaps he has already stashed away enough money for the rest of his life so he isn't worried about the company going broke. Perhaps he is expecting his company to continue to grow in value. Maybe he just doesn't like Viacom. Perhaps he loves his job and the respect it garners; and perhaps that's worth more to him than $750 million.
It failed because everyone hates the idea. The people pushing to segregate pornography hate it because it would legitimize pornography instead. People who support free speech hate it because it sets another bad precedent in regulating speech. Pornography publishers hate it because it would put them under the control of a single DNS service provider. Academics hate it because they may some day be required to put all of their controversial material (i.e. medical diagrams, pictures of aborted fetuses, articles considered inappropriate for children) in that domain. The entertainment industry hates it because most content is considered pornographic by someone. It failed because it's an all-around bad idea.
I have to wonder where you're getting your numbers. I think it's already 1 in 10 for males.
Perhaps he realizes that he can get his name off of TV if he simply gives the media something they are pushing for.
Unfortunately, we have sites like Slashdot which redirect right back to HTTP. Web sites don't want to support encryption when it means running twice as many web servers.
It's too bad the new approach violates patents from Nokia, Microsoft, and Apple...
As long as the content is copyrighted consumers will not see any savings. If the material came out of copyright the price would drop below a dollar.
Another poster brought up the interesting point that if the product does not face competition from copyright infringement the market may actually bear a higher price.