While I'm not sure I would define resale as a basic freedom, I'll not argue the point.
I agree that copyright has some issues at the moment, however. I'm interested in seeing where it ends up - whether the US becomes a 'closed' country that everyone else works around, if the US wakes up and returns copyright to something resembling sense, or if the rest of the world will follow America's lead.
Bah. Nothing I can do about any of it, really (I don't live in the US, or even in a country which is likely to have much influence over the copyright debate).
I think most laws rely on the fact that there's some external force about that will notice you've committed a crime and report it. If you commit a crime, and no one knows, then yes. You will get away just fine. The Law will know nothing. With retaining an MP3 after you've resold it, the only evidence is on your machine - the person you've sold it to won't notice. Whereas with Pot, there are a number of things that will give you away. The smell is one, and there's evidence in your bloodstream I believe. With, say, Murder, there's a missing person and all sorts of other evidence.
All laws rely on trust, in that they trust you not to commit the crime they specify, but if you do break the law, the law relies on Police officers collecting evidence, on people telling you that they think a crime was committed. Many of these things don't exist with electronic 'crimes'. First up, the 'victim' won't even know that the crime has been committed. There's no way they can ever know that without someone telling them, at least with regard to the idea of retaining something after you've resold it. So without the victim reporting the crime, who's going to do it? The person you sold it to? I don't think they'll get very far saying "I bought an MP3 off this dude and I saw him delete it and he told me he had no backups but I don't know if he's telling the truth". And those are the only people involved. Anyone else hearing the MP3 play won't know it's illegal.
I'm not sure how you think resale can actually work, when it's so easy to retain what you've just sold. Sure, if you're stupid (i.e. repeatedly sell the same item) you'll get caught, but if you only sell any give item once then you're pretty safe. There's no other type of item where selling it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to give it up.
And yes, the only alternative would be that, basically. I don't want that, and as I've said I'd rather give up my right to resale than have DRM trying to dictate what I can and can't do.
Uh-huh. Sure. That relys solely on trust. And the law is currently quite effective at dealing with people who violate copyright, isn't it? I somehow don't see a trust-based system working at all. Oh, and how will the law know you've failed to delete a song? Or a movie, or a book? And even if you do delete it, it's still possible to get it back.
Though I would probably agree with the idea that copyright can't really work either.
The problem is that with a shovel, once you've sold it, you no longer have it. You have to give up having the shovel for in exchange for having money. But with any form of software, you don't. You could sell it to as many people as you wanted, and they'd all get a copy of the software, and you'd still have your own. Resale can't work without the stringent DRM that's being forced on consumers. I'd much, much rather give up my right to resale and enjoy all the benefits of DRM-free products. Dunno about you.
I don't really see a way you can have your cake and eat it too. It's the same with people complaining about not being able to resell ebooks. If that was legal, it'd be worse than legalizing filesharing - it'd be legalizing the profiting off illegal distribution of works. This isn't an argument about copyright - assuming you're ok with the idea of having a much smaller copyright time period, this argument still applies, though less so (you could resell it just fine after copyright has expired). If you're against copyright entirely, then we're probably at odds here.
On the other hand, if you have an idea for how to make this work, without intrusive DRM and without basically making it legal for those people in China selling DVDs on the street, then I'm all ears.
I've gotta agree. I may once have been interested in visiting, but with all these insane measures, I think I'll go to a country where the state is less restrictive of my freedoms. Like China. (No, seriously).
In the case of New Zealand, where I live, there's only two Cellphone Companies - Vodafone and Telecom. Telecom has a nice deal where prepay users can text up to 500 texts for NZ$10/month (this is damn, damn good by NZ standards), and that's for either Vodafone or Telecom numbers. It also has up to 2000 for the same price, provided you're only texting to Telecoms network.
Vodafone, on the other hand, does not like letting people text to Telecoms network, and as such many people will own both to take advantage of good deals that specifically target each network. And so that their friends who only own a cellphone on, say, Vodafones network, can text them cheaply.
A good example: Person A has Vodafone and Telecom so they can have Vodafones BestMate for their partner (who must also be on Vodafone), which allows unlimited calling, texting and video calling, and have Telecom for texting to all their friends.
I personally don't, but there are more cellphones in my house than people, so there we go.
There's other reasons as well. You may have a Vodafone for going overseas (Telecom is CDMA:(), and Telecom for local texts. I suspect that most people who own two mobile phones for personal use are on prepay, not on contracts, so calling is hideously expensive (NZ$0.89/minute).
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While I'm not sure I would define resale as a basic freedom, I'll not argue the point.
I agree that copyright has some issues at the moment, however. I'm interested in seeing where it ends up - whether the US becomes a 'closed' country that everyone else works around, if the US wakes up and returns copyright to something resembling sense, or if the rest of the world will follow America's lead.
Bah. Nothing I can do about any of it, really (I don't live in the US, or even in a country which is likely to have much influence over the copyright debate).
I think most laws rely on the fact that there's some external force about that will notice you've committed a crime and report it. If you commit a crime, and no one knows, then yes. You will get away just fine. The Law will know nothing. With retaining an MP3 after you've resold it, the only evidence is on your machine - the person you've sold it to won't notice. Whereas with Pot, there are a number of things that will give you away. The smell is one, and there's evidence in your bloodstream I believe. With, say, Murder, there's a missing person and all sorts of other evidence.
All laws rely on trust, in that they trust you not to commit the crime they specify, but if you do break the law, the law relies on Police officers collecting evidence, on people telling you that they think a crime was committed. Many of these things don't exist with electronic 'crimes'. First up, the 'victim' won't even know that the crime has been committed. There's no way they can ever know that without someone telling them, at least with regard to the idea of retaining something after you've resold it. So without the victim reporting the crime, who's going to do it? The person you sold it to? I don't think they'll get very far saying "I bought an MP3 off this dude and I saw him delete it and he told me he had no backups but I don't know if he's telling the truth". And those are the only people involved. Anyone else hearing the MP3 play won't know it's illegal.
I'm not sure how you think resale can actually work, when it's so easy to retain what you've just sold. Sure, if you're stupid (i.e. repeatedly sell the same item) you'll get caught, but if you only sell any give item once then you're pretty safe. There's no other type of item where selling it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to give it up.
And yes, the only alternative would be that, basically. I don't want that, and as I've said I'd rather give up my right to resale than have DRM trying to dictate what I can and can't do.
Uh-huh. Sure. That relys solely on trust. And the law is currently quite effective at dealing with people who violate copyright, isn't it? I somehow don't see a trust-based system working at all. Oh, and how will the law know you've failed to delete a song? Or a movie, or a book? And even if you do delete it, it's still possible to get it back.
Though I would probably agree with the idea that copyright can't really work either.
The problem is that with a shovel, once you've sold it, you no longer have it. You have to give up having the shovel for in exchange for having money. But with any form of software, you don't. You could sell it to as many people as you wanted, and they'd all get a copy of the software, and you'd still have your own. Resale can't work without the stringent DRM that's being forced on consumers. I'd much, much rather give up my right to resale and enjoy all the benefits of DRM-free products. Dunno about you.
I don't really see a way you can have your cake and eat it too. It's the same with people complaining about not being able to resell ebooks. If that was legal, it'd be worse than legalizing filesharing - it'd be legalizing the profiting off illegal distribution of works. This isn't an argument about copyright - assuming you're ok with the idea of having a much smaller copyright time period, this argument still applies, though less so (you could resell it just fine after copyright has expired). If you're against copyright entirely, then we're probably at odds here.
On the other hand, if you have an idea for how to make this work, without intrusive DRM and without basically making it legal for those people in China selling DVDs on the street, then I'm all ears.
I've gotta agree. I may once have been interested in visiting, but with all these insane measures, I think I'll go to a country where the state is less restrictive of my freedoms. Like China. (No, seriously).
In the case of New Zealand, where I live, there's only two Cellphone Companies - Vodafone and Telecom. Telecom has a nice deal where prepay users can text up to 500 texts for NZ$10/month (this is damn, damn good by NZ standards), and that's for either Vodafone or Telecom numbers. It also has up to 2000 for the same price, provided you're only texting to Telecoms network. Vodafone, on the other hand, does not like letting people text to Telecoms network, and as such many people will own both to take advantage of good deals that specifically target each network. And so that their friends who only own a cellphone on, say, Vodafones network, can text them cheaply. A good example: Person A has Vodafone and Telecom so they can have Vodafones BestMate for their partner (who must also be on Vodafone), which allows unlimited calling, texting and video calling, and have Telecom for texting to all their friends. I personally don't, but there are more cellphones in my house than people, so there we go. There's other reasons as well. You may have a Vodafone for going overseas (Telecom is CDMA :(), and Telecom for local texts. I suspect that most people who own two mobile phones for personal use are on prepay, not on contracts, so calling is hideously expensive (NZ$0.89/minute).