You can also complain to the Legal Complaints Service about the solicitors who sent you the letter, rather like ACS Law who are currently being investigated for their alleged threatening behaviour. Once a few solicitors are struck off for this then they'll begin to think twice.
I spent many a pleasant hour on the beach this summer reading my cybook. No need to squint and no problem with batteries. The only downside was that it's something that I wouldn't want to lose so I couldn't leave it unattended when going for a swim. However, there are now many things like that: wallet, phone, car keys etc.
I do agree though that there is no way that ebooks are going to replace pbooks anytime soon.
It doesn't take into account the many hundreds of children who exhibited symptoms of autism and stop talking immediately after not getting a vaccination. In those cases, the parents have nothing that they can identify as being the "cause" and they don't get reported. However, if your child stops talking directly after having their vaccination and you've heard of this happening before of course it's going to positively reinforce your belief that the vaccination must have caused it.
All the credible studies that have shown incidents of autism in countries which have the MMR vaccination and those that don't appear to show that there is no difference in rates of autism. Hence, MMR cannot be a factor in increasing autism risk. (Maybe it does cause autism in some children, but then the evidence must suggest that it prevents autism in the exact same number for these studies' finding to be true).
Essentially, anecdotal evidence cannot be taken as a basis for decision, only as the basis for hypothesis that is then tested. Here the hypothesis has been thoroughly tested and shown to be false.
When considering combined vaccinations against multiple single vaccinations, it's not just a "little bit more pain", you need think about:
Extra cost of single vaccines, which could have been spent on something else
Extra time taken by doctor or nurse giving additional shots, which could have been spent with other patients
Lost patient time taken by seeing a doctor for the additional shots
A small point, but the risk of an accident in the extra travel required to visit the doctor for the additional shots, I would imagine outweighs the potential risk savings of having multiple shots rather than the single one - given that there is no evidence that the single shot is less effective or more risky than multiple shots.
And finally, as has already been pointed out, the chance of a child completing the full set of shots is significantly reduced the more shots that are involved and hence impacting on both the immunity that that child has and the herd immunity of the community that help protect those for whom the vaccine either didn't work or who cannot have the vaccine for whatever reason.
Overall, comparative studies show that the combined MMR vaccine is safe (for all reasonable meanings of 'safe').
More to the point, why are e-books MORE expensive than printed ones. From the small sample of books I've looked at, Macmillan's books shows that ebooks are often priced up around the hard cover recommended retail price, let alone the hard cover street price, and certainly not near the paperback price even when a book has been out in paperback for months or years. Here's an example of a two year old book: Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber. When I can get the paperback for $8, why is the DRM'd ebook $14?
If Macmillan were to price their ebooks at the street price of the current edition being sold then I'd be happy for them to set whatever price they want for the book. They'd still make more money than the printed edition since they have none of the physical distribution costs. But while they have this crazy pricing scheme I just cannot support them. They clearly wish that ebooks didn't exist and want to price them out of the market so that they can stick with their comfortable printed world.
On the other hand, Google are a multi-billion corporation trying to make even more money off someone else's work. If they want to scan it and sell it then why can't they spend the time and money to get permission. If the work is truly orphaned then apply to the court to rule that it and that they can scan it.
I just don't get why Google should have a special right to breach copyright just because they are a new and trendy company. They aren't trying to preserve material for future generations, they're trying to make a profit, any preservation is a side effect.
Saying that it's not much of a burden on an author to send a letter to Google, is ignoring that Google are just the first, what happens when it's 10 companies doing this, how about 100, how about 1000 a day doing it? I say again, if Google want to make money from someone else's work then the burden should be on them to get permission; that or get rid of copyright all together.
In Britain you are allowed to use reasonable force to defend yourself and your family and property from attack; and the important part is that it must only be reasonable to you at the time of using that force. If in the cold light of day it might seem unreasonable, if you thought it was reasonable (and can get a jury to agree with you that you thought it was reasonable) then you should not be found guilty.
The problem comes when someone uses clearly unreasonable force, then they cannot claim self-defence. In the case that has recently been in the news, the householder, once he'd driven off the attackers went on to chase them down the street and when he caught them he smashed a cricket bat over his head inflicting permanent injury on him. Pursuing an attacker once the threat to yourself and family is clearly over is no longer self-defence.
From what I heard of the case, I would agree that he went beyond the use of reasonable force to defend himself and his family and so should not have been able to use the self-defence defence. However, I do agree with the appeal judge also that this was an exceptional situation and given the extreme provocation of the attackers, he should not be significantly punished for going beyond self-defence.
The main debate in Britain at the moment is whether the law should be changed so that people won't be guilty if they go beyond "reasonable" force; only if they use "grossly disproportionate" force. If this proposal from the Tory's gets into law then it will be legal to use unreasonble force to defend yourself, and legal to use disproportionate force to defend yourself. Personally I like the term the reasonable force - there haven't been any cases that I heard of in Britain where someone used anything like reasonable force in their defence where they've been convicted, so to me it feels like the law is working as it stands (but then I'm not a Daily Mail reader who thinks it should be justifiable to kill someone who has trespassed on your property).
Verified-by-Visa is intended to be a card holder authentication step. If you cancel then all that means is that the merchant hasn't authenticated the card holder and they can decide to take the risk themselves and rely instead on other fraud checks.
But if they are on a plane travelling for business then they're pretty likely to have a laptop to do any spreadsheet crunching; if you've got to have a laptop for that then you'll use the laptop for those jobs since it will still be much easier to use a keyboard for that type of business work. The iPad is only good for those types of travellers where it can be a replacement for their laptop and at the moment I don't see that - I could well be wrong, and I certainly don't downplay the effect that hype will have on people.
But perhaps they'll be able to have pension benefits or life insurance pay outs depending on the contract you had.
To answer your question though, the main reason is that authors are basically entrepreneurs, they invest a lot of effort up front with no guarantee that they'll get a return. We as a society have decided that we quite like the idea of authors writing books to enrich our lives and culture and have decided that we'll create copyright laws to guarantee them a limited time monopoly so as to allow them to benefit from writing their book, and to make it further encourage them to produce these books that we generally like we've allowed that monopoly to continue after their death so that their dependent can benefit from their hard work.
Ultimately it's because we as a society value creative works.
In reality, I think the only contentious point for most people is the length of copyright not the principle.
Corps need to pay back their stock holders this year, not in 50 or 100 years. So taking out a contract on JK Rowling now wouldn't really benefit them in the short or medium term (and of course risks them being caught and their executives going to jail). If on the other hand there was a realistic possibility that if she died today and that they could make a fortune selling copies of her books this year then the risk equation of whether they'd be caught vs the immediate profit soon changes.
While I do agree with you, the counter-argument is that if there is so much stuff available in the public domain then there might be less revenue (and hence) available for a new work (since some/many people will choose to go for the cheaper/free public domain works) - thus meaning that fewer new works get produced since there is less profit. Of course it would settle down to a new equilibrium pretty soon anyway and society as a whole would be much better off. Unfortunately media corps don't like the idea of potentially less profit.
And where would you advertise it?
This is just another opt-out scheme. You have to know to keep checking the Google web site to see if they've decided that your book is orphaned. And once there are 1000 companies pulling the same trick you suddenly find it is a disproportionate amount of effort, you might as well scrap copyright at that point.
I agree with Le Guin, a corporation should not be able to abuse copyright just because it is inconvenient to them.
I see two alternatives:
Reduce copyright terms back to something like 20 years. Then there will be fewer orphaned works that are still under copyright, and the majority or authors will still get exactly the same revenue as before
Allow anyone to petition a government run "copyright office" to get a truly orphaned work to be declared public domain such that anyone can reproduce it. Then it's not a corporate who decides what is orphaned and what is not, it is controlled and there is a level playing field.
Because lots of people have used it for their private networks - which means that when you run your wonderful new service on 1.1.1.1 then a significant portion of your potential paying customers won't be able to reach you. Therefore less potential income therefore less desirable.
Yeap, anyone with any reasonable amount money that they might want to "forget" to tell the government will already know that the government doesn't know about it. Joe Bloggs might not know it but actually the amount of tax that he would get away without paying when compared with the huge cost of processing the returns is miniscule.
It would be much more cost effective to accept that a little tax won't be collected and to make huge saving on handling the returns. Especially if they make it so financially disadvantageous to be found out, and use some of the money saved to beef up anti-evasion measures.
The actual problem is that it will cost a lot of money to change the system and that up front cost and change to processes is a major barrier.
The terrestrial broadcasters do indeed lose out to Sky in bidding for imported content, but in many respects that is not important to this debate. You're talking about imported content. BBC shows are no longer made by the BBC, they commission shows from production companies in the UK. This proposal would mean that that content (Doctor Who, Survivors, Hustle etc) is DRM'd. This is much more about the shows that the BBC commissions. They after all want everyone to have to buy the DVD/BluRay rather than keep it on their PVRs. The BBC couldn't really care less if they succeed in buying in foreign content, there is always something that someone will sell to them (even if there is no DRM) to fill the gaps in BBC commissioned content.
Of course the copyright holders want a long copyright not so much so that they can earn money from older works, but to prevent them becoming public domain and diluting the market for new works that they produce. If copyright were 25 years, then all the films, books, music and TV from before 1985 would be available for everyone. I would think that quite a lot of people would be completely happy to spend their leisure time with just that material - it is still within cultural relevance for most people; whereas century old material is of much less cultural relevance, except for the really great classics.
He has been arrested and questioned. The police have no reason to justify holding him in custody and have not yet determined if he should be charged or not, so they have released him on bail while they continue their investigations. While he remains innocent until proven guilty, until the charges are dropped he will remain under caution and so has been released on police bail and must return to the police station at a future date.
"Even tobacco companies wouldn't be so stupid to wipe out their own customers and their own employees, right?"
There is a long history of companies who were completely willing to sell products that end up killing their customers, provided that they made a profit from them first.
Of course the reason for that is that most people don't believe that anti-terrorism measures will directly affect them (except in the additional inconveniences at airports etc) but might do them some good (reducing an already very low risk minutely).
However, tell them that unhealthy food will cost them a little more, then it'll directly impact them at the check-out and they'll be up in arms. Even though it will do vastly more to prolong their lives than any security theatre might.
You know, you don't have to travel. Weigh up the benefit of travelling against the inconvenience, cost, invasion of privacy etc. I no longer travel to the USA. It's just too much hassle and has too much environmental cost; it's outweighed the benefits I previously felt about travelling to the USA.
If your job requires you to travel but you're not comfortable with the security measures/hassle etc, then get another job. I know it's not necessarily easy, but we all have the choice.
With the Cybook, you can select to have the blank step on or off. On it flashes black to clear the old text and then displays the next page (effectively taking two 'page turns'); off it just draws the next page - but there is a little ghosting left of the previous page where it hasn't completely cleared - no worse than in a real book where you can see the ink from the reverse of the page through the paper.
It can be annoying if the previous page had some graphics on it, but for normal text I hardly notice it.
With the Bookeen Cybook, you can specify how long before it switches itself off. I have mine set to 30 mins - which allows me to be distracted by a phone call or go and make a cup of tea etc. So it's not a problem for me. I assume the Kindle is similar.
Slashdot Mirror
You can also complain to the Legal Complaints Service about the solicitors who sent you the letter, rather like ACS Law who are currently being investigated for their alleged threatening behaviour. Once a few solicitors are struck off for this then they'll begin to think twice.
I spent many a pleasant hour on the beach this summer reading my cybook. No need to squint and no problem with batteries. The only downside was that it's something that I wouldn't want to lose so I couldn't leave it unattended when going for a swim. However, there are now many things like that: wallet, phone, car keys etc.
I do agree though that there is no way that ebooks are going to replace pbooks anytime soon.
The problem here is two fold:
Essentially, anecdotal evidence cannot be taken as a basis for decision, only as the basis for hypothesis that is then tested. Here the hypothesis has been thoroughly tested and shown to be false.
When considering combined vaccinations against multiple single vaccinations, it's not just a "little bit more pain", you need think about:
And finally, as has already been pointed out, the chance of a child completing the full set of shots is significantly reduced the more shots that are involved and hence impacting on both the immunity that that child has and the herd immunity of the community that help protect those for whom the vaccine either didn't work or who cannot have the vaccine for whatever reason.
Overall, comparative studies show that the combined MMR vaccine is safe (for all reasonable meanings of 'safe').
More to the point, why are e-books MORE expensive than printed ones. From the small sample of books I've looked at, Macmillan's books shows that ebooks are often priced up around the hard cover recommended retail price, let alone the hard cover street price, and certainly not near the paperback price even when a book has been out in paperback for months or years. Here's an example of a two year old book: Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber. When I can get the paperback for $8, why is the DRM'd ebook $14?
If Macmillan were to price their ebooks at the street price of the current edition being sold then I'd be happy for them to set whatever price they want for the book. They'd still make more money than the printed edition since they have none of the physical distribution costs. But while they have this crazy pricing scheme I just cannot support them. They clearly wish that ebooks didn't exist and want to price them out of the market so that they can stick with their comfortable printed world.
On the other hand, Google are a multi-billion corporation trying to make even more money off someone else's work. If they want to scan it and sell it then why can't they spend the time and money to get permission. If the work is truly orphaned then apply to the court to rule that it and that they can scan it.
I just don't get why Google should have a special right to breach copyright just because they are a new and trendy company. They aren't trying to preserve material for future generations, they're trying to make a profit, any preservation is a side effect.
Saying that it's not much of a burden on an author to send a letter to Google, is ignoring that Google are just the first, what happens when it's 10 companies doing this, how about 100, how about 1000 a day doing it? I say again, if Google want to make money from someone else's work then the burden should be on them to get permission; that or get rid of copyright all together.
In Britain you are allowed to use reasonable force to defend yourself and your family and property from attack; and the important part is that it must only be reasonable to you at the time of using that force. If in the cold light of day it might seem unreasonable, if you thought it was reasonable (and can get a jury to agree with you that you thought it was reasonable) then you should not be found guilty.
The problem comes when someone uses clearly unreasonable force, then they cannot claim self-defence. In the case that has recently been in the news, the householder, once he'd driven off the attackers went on to chase them down the street and when he caught them he smashed a cricket bat over his head inflicting permanent injury on him. Pursuing an attacker once the threat to yourself and family is clearly over is no longer self-defence.
From what I heard of the case, I would agree that he went beyond the use of reasonable force to defend himself and his family and so should not have been able to use the self-defence defence. However, I do agree with the appeal judge also that this was an exceptional situation and given the extreme provocation of the attackers, he should not be significantly punished for going beyond self-defence.
The main debate in Britain at the moment is whether the law should be changed so that people won't be guilty if they go beyond "reasonable" force; only if they use "grossly disproportionate" force. If this proposal from the Tory's gets into law then it will be legal to use unreasonble force to defend yourself, and legal to use disproportionate force to defend yourself. Personally I like the term the reasonable force - there haven't been any cases that I heard of in Britain where someone used anything like reasonable force in their defence where they've been convicted, so to me it feels like the law is working as it stands (but then I'm not a Daily Mail reader who thinks it should be justifiable to kill someone who has trespassed on your property).
Verified-by-Visa is intended to be a card holder authentication step. If you cancel then all that means is that the merchant hasn't authenticated the card holder and they can decide to take the risk themselves and rely instead on other fraud checks.
But if they are on a plane travelling for business then they're pretty likely to have a laptop to do any spreadsheet crunching; if you've got to have a laptop for that then you'll use the laptop for those jobs since it will still be much easier to use a keyboard for that type of business work. The iPad is only good for those types of travellers where it can be a replacement for their laptop and at the moment I don't see that - I could well be wrong, and I certainly don't downplay the effect that hype will have on people.
But perhaps they'll be able to have pension benefits or life insurance pay outs depending on the contract you had.
To answer your question though, the main reason is that authors are basically entrepreneurs, they invest a lot of effort up front with no guarantee that they'll get a return. We as a society have decided that we quite like the idea of authors writing books to enrich our lives and culture and have decided that we'll create copyright laws to guarantee them a limited time monopoly so as to allow them to benefit from writing their book, and to make it further encourage them to produce these books that we generally like we've allowed that monopoly to continue after their death so that their dependent can benefit from their hard work.
Ultimately it's because we as a society value creative works.
In reality, I think the only contentious point for most people is the length of copyright not the principle.
Corps need to pay back their stock holders this year, not in 50 or 100 years. So taking out a contract on JK Rowling now wouldn't really benefit them in the short or medium term (and of course risks them being caught and their executives going to jail). If on the other hand there was a realistic possibility that if she died today and that they could make a fortune selling copies of her books this year then the risk equation of whether they'd be caught vs the immediate profit soon changes.
While I do agree with you, the counter-argument is that if there is so much stuff available in the public domain then there might be less revenue (and hence) available for a new work (since some/many people will choose to go for the cheaper/free public domain works) - thus meaning that fewer new works get produced since there is less profit. Of course it would settle down to a new equilibrium pretty soon anyway and society as a whole would be much better off. Unfortunately media corps don't like the idea of potentially less profit.
And where would you advertise it? This is just another opt-out scheme. You have to know to keep checking the Google web site to see if they've decided that your book is orphaned. And once there are 1000 companies pulling the same trick you suddenly find it is a disproportionate amount of effort, you might as well scrap copyright at that point.
I agree with Le Guin, a corporation should not be able to abuse copyright just because it is inconvenient to them.
I see two alternatives:
Because lots of people have used it for their private networks - which means that when you run your wonderful new service on 1.1.1.1 then a significant portion of your potential paying customers won't be able to reach you. Therefore less potential income therefore less desirable.
Yeap, anyone with any reasonable amount money that they might want to "forget" to tell the government will already know that the government doesn't know about it. Joe Bloggs might not know it but actually the amount of tax that he would get away without paying when compared with the huge cost of processing the returns is miniscule.
It would be much more cost effective to accept that a little tax won't be collected and to make huge saving on handling the returns. Especially if they make it so financially disadvantageous to be found out, and use some of the money saved to beef up anti-evasion measures.
The actual problem is that it will cost a lot of money to change the system and that up front cost and change to processes is a major barrier.
You mean like the "broadband" tax that will be applied to every fixed telephone line later this year?
The terrestrial broadcasters do indeed lose out to Sky in bidding for imported content, but in many respects that is not important to this debate. You're talking about imported content. BBC shows are no longer made by the BBC, they commission shows from production companies in the UK. This proposal would mean that that content (Doctor Who, Survivors, Hustle etc) is DRM'd. This is much more about the shows that the BBC commissions. They after all want everyone to have to buy the DVD/BluRay rather than keep it on their PVRs. The BBC couldn't really care less if they succeed in buying in foreign content, there is always something that someone will sell to them (even if there is no DRM) to fill the gaps in BBC commissioned content.
Of course the copyright holders want a long copyright not so much so that they can earn money from older works, but to prevent them becoming public domain and diluting the market for new works that they produce. If copyright were 25 years, then all the films, books, music and TV from before 1985 would be available for everyone. I would think that quite a lot of people would be completely happy to spend their leisure time with just that material - it is still within cultural relevance for most people; whereas century old material is of much less cultural relevance, except for the really great classics.
He has been arrested and questioned. The police have no reason to justify holding him in custody and have not yet determined if he should be charged or not, so they have released him on bail while they continue their investigations. While he remains innocent until proven guilty, until the charges are dropped he will remain under caution and so has been released on police bail and must return to the police station at a future date.
See Bail
"Even tobacco companies wouldn't be so stupid to wipe out their own customers and their own employees, right?"
There is a long history of companies who were completely willing to sell products that end up killing their customers, provided that they made a profit from them first.
Of course the reason for that is that most people don't believe that anti-terrorism measures will directly affect them (except in the additional inconveniences at airports etc) but might do them some good (reducing an already very low risk minutely).
However, tell them that unhealthy food will cost them a little more, then it'll directly impact them at the check-out and they'll be up in arms. Even though it will do vastly more to prolong their lives than any security theatre might.
You know, you don't have to travel. Weigh up the benefit of travelling against the inconvenience, cost, invasion of privacy etc. I no longer travel to the USA. It's just too much hassle and has too much environmental cost; it's outweighed the benefits I previously felt about travelling to the USA.
If your job requires you to travel but you're not comfortable with the security measures/hassle etc, then get another job. I know it's not necessarily easy, but we all have the choice.
It can be annoying if the previous page had some graphics on it, but for normal text I hardly notice it.
With the Bookeen Cybook, you can specify how long before it switches itself off. I have mine set to 30 mins - which allows me to be distracted by a phone call or go and make a cup of tea etc. So it's not a problem for me. I assume the Kindle is similar.