Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world. If you blame the US' unilateral embargo for the failure of the "revolution", then I think it's you who are deluded.
When you are convinced that no one could possibly disagree with your pet cause and that anyone who claims to disagree is an astroturfer, you've lost the plot.
Google seems to have simply removed the picture from Blogspot (no different from someone removing a picture from a website they own), which is where the top-ranked pic was hosted. It still shows up on other sites, just ranked way down. I wouldn't call this Google censoring their search results. The image was hosted on their servers, so all they had to do was take it down.
Pirating GPL'd software removes freedom, making works less available and making people less able to use it. This game can't be sold now, it seems likely that we won't get to see the source or any improvements to it, etc.
If Nintendo OR the GPL were less restrictive, the games wouldn't need to be discontinued. It's not just Nintendo who's deadlocking the situation here.
If copyright didn't exist, you'd likely see less open source, not more, as corporations would guard their sources more closely than they do now, and even restricted OS licenses, like Microsoft's "shared source" license would disappear. All code would, for all intents and purposes, become BSD-"licensed", and so software houses not already committed to free software would abstain from releasing any sources at all. Why? Because in a world with no copyright, where "piracy" doesn't infringe on anything, all the money would be in support, training, and customization services, and having your source code in the wild would create way too much competition.
A Christian, strictly speaking, is a follower of Christ. There's no requirement to believe that all scripture is to be read literally.
That said, I used to be a fan of the "God of the gaps", too. Then I realized I was just trying to make my old beliefs fit in with reality, as if they were a security blanket. Over time, I let go of those beliefs and accepted I am an atheist.
p51d007, you're an atheist (or at least strongly agnostic), you just don't realize it yet. Come out of the closet whenever you're ready.
Copyright only exists to encourage content creators to create more work, not to guarantee them money for the rest of their lives (and that of their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc...). When Disney decided that copyrights should be perpetual and bought a bunch of politicians to make it so, THEY didn't uphold their part of the bargain (as stated in the Constitution).
Meaning, I have no moral qualms pirating anything where the creator wouldn't receive any benefit from my purchasing it. Pirating Louis Armstrong songs is not morally or ethically wrong, for example, since purchasing it isn't encouraging his zombie to produce further work.
True enough, and I agree.
The same goes for a stunning amount of music where the band receives very little to no benefit from album sales. For example, if you go buy a Beatles CD, no one from the band receives a cent, so why is pirating it wrong?
Two members of the band, one of whom was responsible for half their hits, are still alive, and certainly receive album royalties.
Copyright does not exist to guarantee a revenue stream for giant faceless corporations.
And this is where you lose me. Generalizing all media providers as "giant faceless corporations" is a poor argument. There are thousands of creators distributing content on their own, with no backing from any third parties, corporate or otherwise. They have to deal with "piracy" also, and a couple of them are regularly slammed on Slashdot for having the gall to either complain about it, or asking people to play nice (see Cliff "Positech" Harris' attempt at engaging "pirates" in dialogue: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/10/1553224&art_pos=2).
Well, that was fruitful debate. "I can do it, and there's no peer pressure to stop me, so nyah".
And then we're back to using the law to enforce the rights granted to authors of creative works. "Don't want to meet me halfway? Fine, here's the DMCA".
I try not to buy DRM-laden content. But fuck if I can't understand why content providers go nuts with it.
But, have it your own way. It seems to me that the "pirates" are still busily copying music and film, despite the efforts of the entertainment industry, the legal system, or the appeals to morality of those few incorruptible folks such as yourself. Ha ha ha.
Notwithstanding the fact that I'm far from incorruptible, what is so laughable about the idea of "appeals to morality"?
I don't argue that current copyright law grants much longer terms than were originally intended. I also believe this is something that must be corrected, in addition to "fair use" terms and the treatment of orphaned or out-of-print works.
But none of those situations stand up as justification for the average case of copyright infringement: Zero-day releases, screener rips, and current album uploads. They're not "correcting the outrageous abuse of the system that keeps 'Steamboat Willie' still under copyright omfgbfffs!!!11!!!", they're just watching film workprints before the author has even released them. And that's bullshit. They don't want Free culture, they want free shit.
And when the public don't uphold their end of the bargain (respecting the time-limited monopoly the author receives), why should they expect artists to uphold theirs? Hence, crippling DRM, and misguided-and-nigh-impossible-to-enforce laws that will nonetheless cause massive headaches to all involved.
Of course, "pirates" could turn it all around and help build a truly Free culture by contributing some new works of their own, but... Nah, it's easier to spend time on a really wankerific ASCII masterpiece to announce your latest release.
Forgot to address this: Yes, I can set the desktop to work "the old way". I can tweak the default settings till I end up with a fairly familiar environment...Which doesn't in any way make the overloaded, inconsistent initial experience any more justified.
KDE has been my DE of choice since I first got into Linux full-time, three years ago. But never before (not even in Windows...) had I felt so much like I was fighting the DE, as I have with KDE4.
Lock the widgets. They only popup when everything is unlocked. While locked, they cannot be moved, added, or removed.
So... I give up functionality in order not to have my icons constantly (and distractingly) remind me that I can rotate and resize them. Yep, that's the Nu KDE spirit: Why merely break something, when you can penalize users for fixing it?
Set your desktop to 'folder view' and point it to your Desktop folder, and you have the old style. The 'disconnect' actually allows more flexibility. The only difference is the mapping is now user editable rather than hard coded. I also don't know what this bit about Seigo is from. Nobody is forcing you to use that feature.
If the visual-element-heretofore-known-as-Desktop were renamed, the scheme would make sense. As it stands, though, I have a desktop. On which I cannot see the contents of the desktop folder without a folder view. And if I put something on that desktop, it doesn't go into the desktop folder, and vice-versa. That's not revolutionary, it's just poor design.
The network manager widget is broken, requiring a workaround right from the start.
Icons still have that retarded mini-sidebar pop up when I hover over them.
I still have a "Desktop" folder that is not reflected by the on-screen desktop, all in the interest of satisfying Seigo's whims. (I don't mind the "folder view" concept, but disconnecting the on-screen desktop from the actual desktop folder is just poor design).
Copyright is a social construct and contract that society has with content creators and is very artificial. You can defend a hill with a pointy stick, but you can't defend a song.
All of human society is artificial. The very notion of property is an artificial construct. 5,000 years ago, I owned property because I was strong enough to scare you off it, and you decided it was best not to try to take it again. Today, I own property because most people agree that granting individuals control over a piece of territory is beneficial to the overall development of society. Same goes for copyright law.
If I can lobby the government to send many men with pointy sticks to arrest those who violate my rights (if you should forgive my continued use of the word), then I have "defended a song".
Some of us feel that copyright law in its current form is not beneficial to society, and so the construct should be changed.
According to your argument, the goal of changing copyright law would be to benefit society, presumably by fostering culture. I maintain that existing copyright law can be made to work to that very end.
But yeah, it wouldn't allow for the idea of grabbing "Lost" for free.
Smoking weed at home is something you do for personal gratification.
Hiding Jews from Nazis was simply "doing the right thing". Those doing it had no expectation of affecting the law, nor were they obtaining any sort of gratification.
Downloading media? Gratification. Not sticking it to the man. If anything, you're giving the man more mindshare, if not actual cash money.
Corporations are winning the war against our rights. What else are we suppose to do about unjust laws?
What rights? The sacrosanct right to wipe my ass with how an author asks that I handle his work? Or the right to bitch about how awful music/movies/games are today, all the while massively consuming whatever the RIAA/MPAA-children spit my way?
How about actually creating new works and sharing them with the community, how about supporting content creators in tune with your ideas regarding copyright, how about laying the foundations for a freer community by actually creating content people are free to take and share, with no strings attached?
Richard Stallman decided contractual and copyright-related restrictions were threatening his community. So he said (may not be an exact quote;)) "fuck all y'all, I'm writing my own OS". Most (yes, some do walk the walk, but most? Not at all) digital "rebels" of today would have settled for cracking and pirating, instead of creating, and we wouldn't have gotten the GNU-led FOSS community that not only serves as realistic alternative to commercial computing solutions, but also are an important counterweight that at the least, helps keep commercial vendors on their toes, and at the most, slowly makes the light dawn on them: You can profit without enslaving users! What a novel concept.
If instead of whining about the "right" to take (sorry, "share") that which the creator/rights owner has placed restrictions on, people actually created new content, the world would be a far richer place than if copyright were simply done away with. But it isn't going to happen. Because downloading "Wolverine" while feeling you're striking a blow for freedom beats actually doing so.
I love free culture. Sometimes for practical reasons (OpenOffice is better than MS Office, in my opinion), sometimes for financial reasons (I have no beef with MS operating systems, but Linux gives me a comparable experience for zero money), sometimes for political reasons (I try not to buy DRM-restricted content). But going from that stance to "everything is free because I decree it" is just infuriating. I like copyright. I like the notion that if I create something, I get to decide the terms for its distribution.
Contribute something to the cultural enrichment of the community. Modern copyright law just means that "they" can keep tight controls on the content "they" own. So let's stop favoring their offerings, if the terms are disagreeable. Let's make sure there's a sufficiently large and appealing body of free works so as to make them as obsolete as sympathizers of poohooping (trying really hard not to use the word "piracy", in order to avoid the mandatory "surely you mean 'copyright infringement', as 'piracy' means high-seas pillaging" retorts) say their business model is.
They're finally owning up to what we've known all along: SCO's business is litigation. Server software? Pffft.
I love the fact that they're willing to sell the very products they're supposedly protecting from unauthorized use of "their" code, just to keep the legal fight going.
Slashdot Mirror
Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world. If you blame the US' unilateral embargo for the failure of the "revolution", then I think it's you who are deluded.
Saying "They're not" to the GP discounts your own "probably" qualifier. You believe no one is sincere in approving of MS' measure.
When you are convinced that no one could possibly disagree with your pet cause and that anyone who claims to disagree is an astroturfer, you've lost the plot.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Yes, just words!
Dude, he was British. And he was born 30 years after the American Revolution.
Google seems to have simply removed the picture from Blogspot (no different from someone removing a picture from a website they own), which is where the top-ranked pic was hosted. It still shows up on other sites, just ranked way down. I wouldn't call this Google censoring their search results. The image was hosted on their servers, so all they had to do was take it down.
...And springs, and summers, and falls...
If Nintendo OR the GPL were less restrictive, the games wouldn't need to be discontinued. It's not just Nintendo who's deadlocking the situation here.
If copyright didn't exist, you'd likely see less open source, not more, as corporations would guard their sources more closely than they do now, and even restricted OS licenses, like Microsoft's "shared source" license would disappear. All code would, for all intents and purposes, become BSD-"licensed", and so software houses not already committed to free software would abstain from releasing any sources at all. Why? Because in a world with no copyright, where "piracy" doesn't infringe on anything, all the money would be in support, training, and customization services, and having your source code in the wild would create way too much competition.
A working network manager would be lovely.
A Christian, strictly speaking, is a follower of Christ. There's no requirement to believe that all scripture is to be read literally.
That said, I used to be a fan of the "God of the gaps", too. Then I realized I was just trying to make my old beliefs fit in with reality, as if they were a security blanket. Over time, I let go of those beliefs and accepted I am an atheist.
p51d007, you're an atheist (or at least strongly agnostic), you just don't realize it yet. Come out of the closet whenever you're ready.
Fair enough, thanks for the clarification. I do agree with most of your views.
True enough, and I agree.
Two members of the band, one of whom was responsible for half their hits, are still alive, and certainly receive album royalties.
And this is where you lose me. Generalizing all media providers as "giant faceless corporations" is a poor argument. There are thousands of creators distributing content on their own, with no backing from any third parties, corporate or otherwise. They have to deal with "piracy" also, and a couple of them are regularly slammed on Slashdot for having the gall to either complain about it, or asking people to play nice (see Cliff "Positech" Harris' attempt at engaging "pirates" in dialogue: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/10/1553224&art_pos=2).
Well, that was fruitful debate. "I can do it, and there's no peer pressure to stop me, so nyah".
And then we're back to using the law to enforce the rights granted to authors of creative works. "Don't want to meet me halfway? Fine, here's the DMCA".
I try not to buy DRM-laden content. But fuck if I can't understand why content providers go nuts with it.
Notwithstanding the fact that I'm far from incorruptible, what is so laughable about the idea of "appeals to morality"?
I don't argue that current copyright law grants much longer terms than were originally intended. I also believe this is something that must be corrected, in addition to "fair use" terms and the treatment of orphaned or out-of-print works.
But none of those situations stand up as justification for the average case of copyright infringement: Zero-day releases, screener rips, and current album uploads. They're not "correcting the outrageous abuse of the system that keeps 'Steamboat Willie' still under copyright omfgbfffs!!!11!!!", they're just watching film workprints before the author has even released them. And that's bullshit. They don't want Free culture, they want free shit.
And when the public don't uphold their end of the bargain (respecting the time-limited monopoly the author receives), why should they expect artists to uphold theirs? Hence, crippling DRM, and misguided-and-nigh-impossible-to-enforce laws that will nonetheless cause massive headaches to all involved.
Of course, "pirates" could turn it all around and help build a truly Free culture by contributing some new works of their own, but... Nah, it's easier to spend time on a really wankerific ASCII masterpiece to announce your latest release.
Forgot to address this: Yes, I can set the desktop to work "the old way". I can tweak the default settings till I end up with a fairly familiar environment...Which doesn't in any way make the overloaded, inconsistent initial experience any more justified.
KDE has been my DE of choice since I first got into Linux full-time, three years ago. But never before (not even in Windows...) had I felt so much like I was fighting the DE, as I have with KDE4.
So... I give up functionality in order not to have my icons constantly (and distractingly) remind me that I can rotate and resize them. Yep, that's the Nu KDE spirit: Why merely break something, when you can penalize users for fixing it?
If the visual-element-heretofore-known-as-Desktop were renamed, the scheme would make sense. As it stands, though, I have a desktop. On which I cannot see the contents of the desktop folder without a folder view. And if I put something on that desktop, it doesn't go into the desktop folder, and vice-versa. That's not revolutionary, it's just poor design.
I have, on Kubuntu 9.04. Flashier, suckier.
The network manager widget is broken, requiring a workaround right from the start.
Icons still have that retarded mini-sidebar pop up when I hover over them.
I still have a "Desktop" folder that is not reflected by the on-screen desktop, all in the interest of satisfying Seigo's whims. (I don't mind the "folder view" concept, but disconnecting the on-screen desktop from the actual desktop folder is just poor design).
Isn't "homophone" the word you're looking for?
All of human society is artificial. The very notion of property is an artificial construct. 5,000 years ago, I owned property because I was strong enough to scare you off it, and you decided it was best not to try to take it again. Today, I own property because most people agree that granting individuals control over a piece of territory is beneficial to the overall development of society. Same goes for copyright law.
If I can lobby the government to send many men with pointy sticks to arrest those who violate my rights (if you should forgive my continued use of the word), then I have "defended a song".
According to your argument, the goal of changing copyright law would be to benefit society, presumably by fostering culture. I maintain that existing copyright law can be made to work to that very end.
But yeah, it wouldn't allow for the idea of grabbing "Lost" for free.
Actually, no.
Smoking weed at home is something you do for personal gratification.
Hiding Jews from Nazis was simply "doing the right thing". Those doing it had no expectation of affecting the law, nor were they obtaining any sort of gratification.
Downloading media? Gratification. Not sticking it to the man. If anything, you're giving the man more mindshare, if not actual cash money.
What rights? The sacrosanct right to wipe my ass with how an author asks that I handle his work? Or the right to bitch about how awful music/movies/games are today, all the while massively consuming whatever the RIAA/MPAA-children spit my way?
;)) "fuck all y'all, I'm writing my own OS". Most (yes, some do walk the walk, but most? Not at all) digital "rebels" of today would have settled for cracking and pirating, instead of creating, and we wouldn't have gotten the GNU-led FOSS community that not only serves as realistic alternative to commercial computing solutions, but also are an important counterweight that at the least, helps keep commercial vendors on their toes, and at the most, slowly makes the light dawn on them: You can profit without enslaving users! What a novel concept.
How about actually creating new works and sharing them with the community, how about supporting content creators in tune with your ideas regarding copyright, how about laying the foundations for a freer community by actually creating content people are free to take and share, with no strings attached?
Richard Stallman decided contractual and copyright-related restrictions were threatening his community. So he said (may not be an exact quote
If instead of whining about the "right" to take (sorry, "share") that which the creator/rights owner has placed restrictions on, people actually created new content, the world would be a far richer place than if copyright were simply done away with. But it isn't going to happen. Because downloading "Wolverine" while feeling you're striking a blow for freedom beats actually doing so.
I love free culture. Sometimes for practical reasons (OpenOffice is better than MS Office, in my opinion), sometimes for financial reasons (I have no beef with MS operating systems, but Linux gives me a comparable experience for zero money), sometimes for political reasons (I try not to buy DRM-restricted content). But going from that stance to "everything is free because I decree it" is just infuriating. I like copyright. I like the notion that if I create something, I get to decide the terms for its distribution.
Contribute something to the cultural enrichment of the community. Modern copyright law just means that "they" can keep tight controls on the content "they" own. So let's stop favoring their offerings, if the terms are disagreeable. Let's make sure there's a sufficiently large and appealing body of free works so as to make them as obsolete as sympathizers of poohooping (trying really hard not to use the word "piracy", in order to avoid the mandatory "surely you mean 'copyright infringement', as 'piracy' means high-seas pillaging" retorts) say their business model is.
They're finally owning up to what we've known all along: SCO's business is litigation. Server software? Pffft.
I love the fact that they're willing to sell the very products they're supposedly protecting from unauthorized use of "their" code, just to keep the legal fight going.
Yeah, I hear they go great with Ramen.