The removal of copyright reduces the number of paying customers,
I never suggested removing copyright, just reducing the length to something reasonable. This way, if a company wants to continue making good profits, they must continue creating things that for customers will pay for. I bet that companies will still be able to sell their software very well after it has entered the public domain anyway. People like shrink-wrapped boxes, physical media, and convenience.
Intermediaries did own printing presses and these would be the alternate suppliers to the mass market
I am sure very few people had printing presses. Because there were few that could mass produce books, it would be easy to prevent them from copyright infringement as they would be easy to spot. Before computers and copying machines, copyright law was simply something individuals did not have to worry about at all. It was a wonderful tradeoff.
how does an increase in the number of unauthorized publishers change anything?
More "unauthorized publishers" means people, from the public who is supposed to be main group benefitting, are negatively effected by current copyright law. The public gets less from the deal.
Why was it wrong to deprive authors of this revenue in the pre-digital age but OK in the digital age?
We are talking about law, not right and wrong. These are two unrelated matters.
Limiting copyright will harm open source by effectively removing the GPL for example
I am sure that cost would be worth the benefit. Copyleft turns copyright law upside down, so the stronger copyright law, the stronger copyleft is. Richard Stallman, the man behind the GPL (I am sure you know), said this about copyright lengths, "In my own field, computer programming, three years should suffice, because product cycles are even shorter than that."
Hobbyist developers will always be there regardless. Free software is how they scratch itches. As for GPL software falling into public domain, they could and would be turned into proprietary software. However, we have BSD software works like this fine. There are corporate contributers to OpenBSD, for example.
This is off the top of my head here, but maybe there would be a rule about software falling into the public domain: once distributed software falls into public domain, the source code must go with it. Maybe this could only work with registered copyrights. This would help balance propreitary software against GPL once things fall into the public domain.
In short, I do not think you have thought these things through very far.
Actually, I am plucking almost all of these ideas from various Richard Stallman essays (if I am understanding them properly). This is someone who has spent half his life thinking about these things.:-)
Every 20 years, copyright is extended by another 20 years, so copyrights have been getting worse. This is why I said "no longer".
Why is copyright any more or less unfair now that goods are digital in nature rather than physical?
First of all, copyright exists to promote the arts and sciences, not to make anyone money. It is a tradeoff made by the public, where they give up some rights (being able to copy works) in order to encourage authors to make works. After a short term, those works would then fall into the public domain, where anyone could use them to derive more creative works. A big, full public domain of free material then gets built up.
Now to answer the question. Originally, copyright had no effect on individuals. No one had the ability to make mass reproductions. To copy a book, an individual had to hand copy it, since individuals didn't own printing presses. Copying two books took twice as long as copying one book. It wasn't worth it. When it came to copyrights, the public wasn't actually losing anything, since they didn't have the ability to excersise those rights in the first place. Copyright was an industrial limitation, to keep publishers from publishing books before the author got a chance to make some profit.
This is different in the digital age. We all have printing presses now. Copyright needs to be reevaluated.
Demand for software decreases, supply will decrease.
Thanks to the digital age we have, the software supply is infinite. Really, copyright creates an artificial cap on this infinite supply. Another way to look at this, I guess, is that there is a limited supply of unique software. But why does demand go down? People won't stop needing software if copyright law changed. I am not sure that the supply-demand curve applies well to creative works, anyway.
Copyright encourages authors to not only create works, by providing a profit motive, but needs to also allow works to fall into public domain so that they can be used to create even more works. Copyright fails the second part, along with the unreasonable restrictions on personal freedoms. The public is the important side of the deal, and should be getting the bargain. Copyright law is backwards right now.
anyone who is intellectually honest must 'acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world'
I think and "intellectually honest" person might look at this and say, "This copyright things is all wrong and unfair. It no longer serves its original purpose. It needs some severe reworking, such as reducing terms to 5 or 10 years."
If the length of copyrights were 5 or 10 years, guess what? There would be very little "unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content" online.
Considering that this is that third thing you forgot to mention, called trademarks, it really isn't too unreasonable. In order to keep their trademarks, they have to defend them rigorously. If they stood back and did nothing, they are putting themselves at risk. This is the same reason Adobe's official stance is don't say "I photoshopped that image", but "I enhanced that image using Adobe Photoshop." I am sure they love that their product is a verb, but they can't officially advocate it.
The part that is unreasonable is how they shut down making the car calander. They could have, perhaps, sent a letter telling them about the legal situation and granting them permission, right there in the letter, to go ahead.
I couldn't find a link for this, but I remember reading about an incident with Get A First Life getting a letter from Linden Labs. Linden Labs told them about a trademark issue with the Get A First Life website, and in the same letter granted them permission to go ahead and use it. The letter was their rigorous defense of their trademark, but the defense didn't require shutting anyone down. Yeah, Linden Labs is pretty cool, I guess (even though I hate Second Life).
So, will this be a tool that you can buy in the upcoming Wii version of Harvest Moon? So that your lazy little guy will stop pooping out after roughly 2 minutes of labor?
Just printing the budget puts a nice dent in the budget, huh?
Think about this: let's say everytime we make a change to the budget, we have to print out those changes (and just those changes, so the printing cost is proportional to the number of changes). But each time we print the budget, it changes the budget, incurring the printing cost, so another smaller correction printing is made. Then another, and another...
We now have an interesting differential equation to solve.
Switching from Linux to OSX [...] ranks up there as one of the largest impacts, for the better [...]. Now, I just tell people to go buy a Mac and let the computer work for you instead of having to learn (what is to the lay-person) a bunch of voodoo magic.
I can share my operating system and all of the installed software with my friends. You can not.
Adams attributes the increase to drivers' assessment of their own level of risk being reduced, hence they tended to drive more quickly and in a more dangerous fashion, until their personal risk threshold was restored.
That is why all cars need to have knives sticking directly out of the steering column.
I will have titanium plates surgically placed in my jaw next week. I saw the headline and thought, "Heh, I could cehck if it really is titanium!" Then I got here,
Hold any genuine titanium metal object to a grinding wheel
I think I will take the doctor's word on it instead.
A GUI doesn't belong in Octave. Octave is simply an interpreter. It is like asking where the Perl GUI is. Separate programs that provide a GUI already exist as a front end to Octave.
If you want to understand road traffic, you need only understand data traffic on CSMA/CD half-duplex Ethernet.
In true Slashdot fashion, we are discussing cars and use a computer analogy. I guess it works both ways.
But seriously, things are a bit better in packet routing. When there is a jam, you can toss excess packets and let the higher layers deal with it. In a traffic jam, you can't toss excess cars off the highway. That would be interesting to see, however.
The reason that Linux is largely unaffected is that it is not very widely used.. If/when we succeed in bringing Linux to the masses, this layer of protection will be torn away
I would argue that this is another reason to make new users are aware of software freedom. Why would they go grab that suspicious screensaver when they might look at it and say "this is not free software, so I have no use for it."? With a system like Debian GNU/Linux, if they want screensavers, its just a simple sudo apt-get install xscreensavers (or whatever the package would be). The repository packages are signed and are as safe as far as you trust the Debian maintainers (the repository mirror can be untrusted).
Since when are being either of these wrong? Remember, just about everyone who has been in the US for more than a week is a criminal. Some people might argue the former as well.
It's GPL, but if you want to use it in a commercial product you can license it for money.
The GPL is precisely why you can use it in a commercial product and make money. The GPL places no restrictions on making money. I could legally sell you that GNU/Linux distribution CD I downloaded off a torrent for a million dollars, if you would only agree to pay that much.
The only scam here is the removal the copyright notices, not the profit. The Paint.NET guys gave permission for anyone in the world to make money selling their software. Legally, this is simple copyright infringement. Nothing new here.
Unfortunately it gets taken advantage of every once in awhile by scum who are trying to profit from the work of others
Looks like Rick Brewster doesn't understand the MIT license, under which Paint.NET is distributed. Besides it not being "freeware" as stated in TFA, the MIT license allows anyone to sell the software and re-brand it however they want (while preserving copyright notices). I believe there is a name for "scum" who do this: Red Hat.
Slashdot Mirror
I never suggested removing copyright, just reducing the length to something reasonable. This way, if a company wants to continue making good profits, they must continue creating things that for customers will pay for. I bet that companies will still be able to sell their software very well after it has entered the public domain anyway. People like shrink-wrapped boxes, physical media, and convenience.
Intermediaries did own printing presses and these would be the alternate suppliers to the mass marketI am sure very few people had printing presses. Because there were few that could mass produce books, it would be easy to prevent them from copyright infringement as they would be easy to spot. Before computers and copying machines, copyright law was simply something individuals did not have to worry about at all. It was a wonderful tradeoff.
how does an increase in the number of unauthorized publishers change anything?More "unauthorized publishers" means people, from the public who is supposed to be main group benefitting, are negatively effected by current copyright law. The public gets less from the deal.
Why was it wrong to deprive authors of this revenue in the pre-digital age but OK in the digital age?We are talking about law, not right and wrong. These are two unrelated matters.
Limiting copyright will harm open source by effectively removing the GPL for exampleI am sure that cost would be worth the benefit. Copyleft turns copyright law upside down, so the stronger copyright law, the stronger copyleft is. Richard Stallman, the man behind the GPL (I am sure you know), said this about copyright lengths, "In my own field, computer programming, three years should suffice, because product cycles are even shorter than that."
Hobbyist developers will always be there regardless. Free software is how they scratch itches. As for GPL software falling into public domain, they could and would be turned into proprietary software. However, we have BSD software works like this fine. There are corporate contributers to OpenBSD, for example.
This is off the top of my head here, but maybe there would be a rule about software falling into the public domain: once distributed software falls into public domain, the source code must go with it. Maybe this could only work with registered copyrights. This would help balance propreitary software against GPL once things fall into the public domain.
In short, I do not think you have thought these things through very far.Actually, I am plucking almost all of these ideas from various Richard Stallman essays (if I am understanding them properly). This is someone who has spent half his life thinking about these things. :-)
Source for RMS quote: Misinterpreting Copyright.
Every 20 years, copyright is extended by another 20 years, so copyrights have been getting worse. This is why I said "no longer".
Why is copyright any more or less unfair now that goods are digital in nature rather than physical?First of all, copyright exists to promote the arts and sciences, not to make anyone money. It is a tradeoff made by the public, where they give up some rights (being able to copy works) in order to encourage authors to make works. After a short term, those works would then fall into the public domain, where anyone could use them to derive more creative works. A big, full public domain of free material then gets built up.
Now to answer the question. Originally, copyright had no effect on individuals. No one had the ability to make mass reproductions. To copy a book, an individual had to hand copy it, since individuals didn't own printing presses. Copying two books took twice as long as copying one book. It wasn't worth it. When it came to copyrights, the public wasn't actually losing anything, since they didn't have the ability to excersise those rights in the first place. Copyright was an industrial limitation, to keep publishers from publishing books before the author got a chance to make some profit.
This is different in the digital age. We all have printing presses now. Copyright needs to be reevaluated.
Demand for software decreases, supply will decrease.Thanks to the digital age we have, the software supply is infinite. Really, copyright creates an artificial cap on this infinite supply. Another way to look at this, I guess, is that there is a limited supply of unique software. But why does demand go down? People won't stop needing software if copyright law changed. I am not sure that the supply-demand curve applies well to creative works, anyway.
Copyright encourages authors to not only create works, by providing a profit motive, but needs to also allow works to fall into public domain so that they can be used to create even more works. Copyright fails the second part, along with the unreasonable restrictions on personal freedoms. The public is the important side of the deal, and should be getting the bargain. Copyright law is backwards right now.
I don't want to plagairize, but I read this article: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/reevaluating-copyright.html a couple years ago, and I was using things I remebered from it in writing this.
I think and "intellectually honest" person might look at this and say, "This copyright things is all wrong and unfair. It no longer serves its original purpose. It needs some severe reworking, such as reducing terms to 5 or 10 years."
If the length of copyrights were 5 or 10 years, guess what? There would be very little "unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content" online.
That is totally fake. How do I know? The stearing wheel is on the wrong side of the car in the beginning.
Considering that this is that third thing you forgot to mention, called trademarks, it really isn't too unreasonable. In order to keep their trademarks, they have to defend them rigorously. If they stood back and did nothing, they are putting themselves at risk. This is the same reason Adobe's official stance is don't say "I photoshopped that image", but "I enhanced that image using Adobe Photoshop." I am sure they love that their product is a verb, but they can't officially advocate it.
The part that is unreasonable is how they shut down making the car calander. They could have, perhaps, sent a letter telling them about the legal situation and granting them permission, right there in the letter, to go ahead.
I couldn't find a link for this, but I remember reading about an incident with Get A First Life getting a letter from Linden Labs. Linden Labs told them about a trademark issue with the Get A First Life website, and in the same letter granted them permission to go ahead and use it. The letter was their rigorous defense of their trademark, but the defense didn't require shutting anyone down. Yeah, Linden Labs is pretty cool, I guess (even though I hate Second Life).
IANAL, btw.
So, will this be a tool that you can buy in the upcoming Wii version of Harvest Moon? So that your lazy little guy will stop pooping out after roughly 2 minutes of labor?
During the winter months, is it warm enough down there in your parent's basement?
Easy! Like this,
*claps hands on ears*
LA LA LA LA!!!
Think about this: let's say everytime we make a change to the budget, we have to print out those changes (and just those changes, so the printing cost is proportional to the number of changes). But each time we print the budget, it changes the budget, incurring the printing cost, so another smaller correction printing is made. Then another, and another ...
We now have an interesting differential equation to solve.
WTF month is the 25th? LOL!!1! Don't you know there are only 12!
(I am kidding. I also think the non-US way is better myself, though I am not used to it yet.)
That's right! Look in your history books and you will see that there were no creative works made before copyright law was around. :-P
I can share my operating system and all of the installed software with my friends. You can not.
I win.
That is why all cars need to have knives sticking directly out of the steering column.
Looks like he fundamentally misunderstands what's going on.
Access his computer, install Fedora, and
Bet he wouldn't even notice.
I will have titanium plates surgically placed in my jaw next week. I saw the headline and thought, "Heh, I could cehck if it really is titanium!" Then I got here,
Hold any genuine titanium metal object to a grinding wheelI think I will take the doctor's word on it instead.
A GUI doesn't belong in Octave. Octave is simply an interpreter. It is like asking where the Perl GUI is. Separate programs that provide a GUI already exist as a front end to Octave.
In true Slashdot fashion, we are discussing cars and use a computer analogy. I guess it works both ways.
But seriously, things are a bit better in packet routing. When there is a jam, you can toss excess packets and let the higher layers deal with it. In a traffic jam, you can't toss excess cars off the highway. That would be interesting to see, however.
I would argue that this is another reason to make new users are aware of software freedom. Why would they go grab that suspicious screensaver when they might look at it and say "this is not free software, so I have no use for it."? With a system like Debian GNU/Linux, if they want screensavers, its just a simple sudo apt-get install xscreensavers (or whatever the package would be). The repository packages are signed and are as safe as far as you trust the Debian maintainers (the repository mirror can be untrusted).
Now that pine, in the form of alpine, is free software, maybe it's worth taking a look at now. I never bothered before due to the non-free license.
Since when are being either of these wrong? Remember, just about everyone who has been in the US for more than a week is a criminal. Some people might argue the former as well.
No it's not. Not even close.
The GPL is precisely why you can use it in a commercial product and make money. The GPL places no restrictions on making money. I could legally sell you that GNU/Linux distribution CD I downloaded off a torrent for a million dollars, if you would only agree to pay that much.
The only scam here is the removal the copyright notices, not the profit. The Paint.NET guys gave permission for anyone in the world to make money selling their software. Legally, this is simple copyright infringement. Nothing new here.
Unfortunately it gets taken advantage of every once in awhile by scum who are trying to profit from the work of othersLooks like Rick Brewster doesn't understand the MIT license, under which Paint.NET is distributed. Besides it not being "freeware" as stated in TFA, the MIT license allows anyone to sell the software and re-brand it however they want (while preserving copyright notices). I believe there is a name for "scum" who do this: Red Hat.
But UFO's do exist. Any object that is flying around but is unidentified is, by definition, a UFO. Doesn't need to be an alien.