I agree there's no reason to trust them; but if they don't honor the promise to give you a decryptor, probably they just take your money and don't respond.
What you are suggesting (they give you a decryptor but it returns false data) would be terribly difficult. To profit by doing so -- I just can't see how.
You are still just repeating yourself without actually addressing my arguments.
"That's ridiculous! You can't say that the underlying land is non-rivalrous, because we can't possibly both build a house on exactly the same spot, nor do anything else."
I guess you didn't notice how when you mentioned something we can't both do, you started talking about rights to use the land, not the land itself.
"There's no real difference between an idea and using it, because ideas that are never communicated to others in some form are useless."
Of the many things wrong with that statement, I'm just gonna stick with "usefulness isn't identity". A song exists independent of any use (listening, distribution, etc.) thereof, just like land exists independent of any use thereof (even though unused land isn't terribly useful -- hence the term "unused").
"ALL uses of the land, actually, minus easements."
Both irrelevant and incorrect.
"Actually, it is like music to distribute. Very exactly. Mostly because we don't need distributors any more."
No, it isn't, as should be clear from my previous post. (Oh, that's right; you aren't actually responding to my arguments, just throwing out glib contradictions.) Air to breath is there without being created by someone. Music to distribute is not.
"I mean, it's not like that's the fundamental flaw of copyright today or anything. We DON'T NEED distributors, or we wouldn't have people infringing upon the distribution right of copyright at every turn."
Ah, so a right easily violated is no right at all. So for example, if your banker walks off with all your money, you won't complain. He doesn't physically need your permission, so your right to withold such permission is void.
The ease of distribution is not a fundamental flaw in copyright. It is a fundamental flaw in the viability of the current music-industry business model, but that's a separate issue.
What 'really is' property is anything inherently rivalrous
You keep coming back to this, as though there were such a thing as a thing being rivalrous.
And yet, take the example of land -- land being something you claim is an "inherently rivalrous". There exists land that is not property. So even if we accept your meaningless "distinction" between land and music, your definition of property is factually incorrect.
Now I'm done talking to a wall. Until you can provide an argument that meaningfully addresses that point, you can scream into the void all you want.
If you want to debate the effectiveness of patent law, or whether it should apply to one class of invention vs. another, that's a different discussion (and one I'm not getting pulled into at this time).
Your original contention was that patents existed either to be abused (in which case the patent in this story would make sense) or to cause trade secrets to be revealed (in which case it would not).
My point was that neither of those is the purpose of patent law. Whether you agree with the law or not, its purpose is ensuring the inventor gets the chance to benefit from his work. Given the law as written and it's purpose, the patent does make sense.
Getting companies to reveal what they otherwise might not is one element of how patents acheive their one of their goals -- to ensure the public gets something in exchange for the grant of protection. But that is secondary. It is not why the grant of protection was given.
Believe it or not, many patent-protected inventions took an up-front investment that no company would have tried to protect without patent law. Sometimes because the novel elements would be obvious to anyone buying/using the invention. Sometimes because the risk of protecting it as a trade secret just doesn't justify the investment.
The patent's purpose is to ensure the inventor -- be it an individual with limited resources for production, marketing, etc. or be it a large company that has deep pockets but that always has to look for a profit -- has the chance to profit from his/her/its work.
"You're ignoring the reasons WHY land is property."
I'm not ignoring anything. In fact, it's an ironic thing to charge, since you still haven't even tried addressing my argument.
"the point of all the examples you called "non sequiters" after misunderstanding them"
That they do not lead me to your conclusions, does not mean that I misunderstood them. I reached different conclusions because I find your reasoning to be incorrect.
"With IP, only the rights themselves are rivalrous. The actual underlying idea is not."
That is no more or less correct, than the statement "With land, only the rights themselves (to use or occupy the land) are rivalrous. The actual underlying land is not." The only thing different is how accustomed you are to the relationship between the land and the rights, as opposed to the relationship between the music (or other protected item) and the rights.
"You can take a copyright away from someone, but you can't take an idea away from them."
You misunderstand what copyright protects. It doesn't protect an idea. It protects certain uses of an idea, which very much can be taken away.
Likewise, land rights don't protect "the land". Land cannot be "taken"; use of the land can be taken, and we call that "taking the land". It's a shorthand that you're so used to you don't recognize it anymore. Land rights protect certain uses of the land, which can be taken away -- just like with copyright.
"So you can declare air to be "property" (indeed, they already do a more limited form of that in terms of 'airspace'), but you can't stop people from breathing and you shouldn't even try."
That is because air to breath is neither like land to live on nor like music to distribute.
Property rights were defined for land because it is scarce and valuable. The initial ownership was derived from possession and ability to enforce -- hardly a legitimate basis for a right, but there you have it.
Property rights were defined for music and other creative works, because they are the fruit of a person's labor. That's a pretty good basis for a claim of right, actually. It's arguably a stronger foundation than the foundation under land rights -- but generations of tradition and common practice back up land rights, whereas copyrights are relatively new on the scene, so we imagine out of habit that land rights are "more real".
Air (for the purpose of breathing) is neither scarce, nor the product of human effort.
"But I await your response telling me..."
Don't try to put words in my mouth.
Note how I don't say "I await your response actually addressing some element of my argument", because I suspect such response won't be forthcoming.
"The reason I'm tilting at the sacred cow of "property" is because it's used to shut down rational thought on the subject"
Funny, I would say the same about the phrase "imaginary property" -- it's a tagline meant to sway opinion without actual thought about the issues... issues like 'what really is property' and 'what does copyright actually protect', which you seem quite adept at avoiding.
I'm not seeing anything new in the math... which isn't surprising, as I don't have time to spend on it.
But I do wonder, if it's employee 252 (rather than 508)? Reasoning:
First section looks to be the "easiest" of the 3 to decode without context. It contains a message the meaning of which is of course in question -- but maybe its purposes are (1) to establish the rules of the code for the third section, so that (with a little notational tweak) it's reasonable to solve the third, and (2) to take a jab at Shoemaker, suggesting that he would dismiss the message itself as noise and make no effort to decode it.
Third section is straightforward, except for the S that shouldn't be there. Others have suggested this is a hint; could it simply mean that the S in the 3-symbol word is also noise and should be ignored?
This would leave FC at the end of the second section (252 in decimal).
There does, as others have noted, appear to be more information in the body of section 2, though...
Justice is not served by pretending the laws mean whatever you want them to mean in each given instance.
Certainly the laws can change; it is not like "dead code". However, you can't convict someone for an act they commit before you pass the law that makes it illegal. We have a specific rule for that in the Constitution.
Whether you understand this fact or not, what you are advocating is a form of mob rule that would be quickly corrupted by those in power into tyrrany.
I'm not the one who doesn't get it in this exchange.
I can guard and take things that aren't mine, too. That has nothing to do with their status as property.
You can "transfer" land? The only interpretation where that makes sense -- "transfer ownership" -- is circular, because "own" is a concept of property (which is to say, a concept of law). Laws make it property, and laws provide for how to transfer it. Property, ownership, and transfer are all concepts of law, nothing more.
(And, by the way, I can transfer copyrights as well; and they can be guarded, though we bitch at anyone who tries to do so. So by your logic, they would be inherantly property.)
You either missed, or chose not to address, my point, though: Land is not inherantly property, because land that is not property can (and does) exist. It becomes property when the law makes it so, and no sooner.
The same is true of all tangible goods. The only reason this is not obvious to you, is that you're immersed in a society with a highly-developed property system at the heart of its legal system, so that every example you see of a tangible thing in your daily life, is somebody's property.
But that doesn't change the fact that property is a construct of law, not a natural phenomenon.
And yet, we are a country of laws. That a child was harmed may be the motivation for applying this new theory of law, but neither the law nor the theory are bound to those "special" circumstances.
You can't apply laws differently to one person or one case because you don't like what happened. Either compliance with the TOS is a condition of whether your access was authorized, or it's not. "It is, but we would only ever enforce that fact if a child was hurt" doesn't fly.
The authorities are outraged, and rightfully so. Nobody can believe that we can't find a law that applies to what allegedly happened here. (Yes, allegedly.) But stretching a loosely-related law with an unheard-of interpretation so that you can punish the woman for X when really you want to get her for Y, and then denying that logically you would have to punish otehrs who did X (but who didn't do Y), is advocating tyrany.
I prefer a country of laws, even if I sometimes have to let a scumbag go. If this woman is as evil as she's being portrayed -- and she may well be -- then she'll find her own way to justice in due course.
Of course, the people most responsible for protecting this particular child are this particular child's parents.
This is a complicated situation, and it's easy to let yourself get led astray trying to break it down. There are two very different pictures of who did what, when, and why; if at least one of those stories indeed involves a crime, then it's up to a jury to decide what's true, so everything else we might say falls somewhere between hypothetical and speculative.
Based on what I've seen (and I've seen more than this article... around here this was big news when it happened), I'm pretty confident I wouldn't like this neighbor if I met her. She sounds like a vindictive, self-righteous woman who does things she knows to be wrong to "get" someone she doesn't like or trust, and hides behind her own parental responsibilities to excuse herself when the consequences get out of control.
But I also think that unless you're willing to apply this law in a similar case that doesn't lead to a child's death, you better think carefully about applying it now. Anyone who justifies it by saying "we can't let her get by with it", is out for revenge -- which is very different from justice.
Maybe the laws haven't kept up. Maybe there needs to be a class of offense specifically relating to misleading a child to create a false world in that child's mind, or something to that effect. Maybe (subject to a hopefully-rational legislative debate, accounting for all the consequences of such a law). But if you can't find one on the books, then you may just have to accept that justice isn't always served in our system (or any system). We choose to err on the side of liberty, which leads to concepts like the ex post facto rule, which mean that sometimes someone does get away with it.
You'd better believe local authorities tried to find a criminal charge they could apply. The truth might be -- good, bad, or indifferent -- that a civil suit is the only legitimate way to hold the woman responsible.
But you can get charged (probably with reckless something-or-other). Your liability is affected by others' actions, but your liability is not absolutely determined by others' actions (whcih is what I actually said; but don't let that get in the way of a clever reply).
Moreover, since the real crime (taking a risk with others' well-being that was not yours to take) is the same, I maintain that the difference in liability is largely an emotional reaction of our legal system, proving that to some people criminal punishment is about revenge more than anything else.
Well, don't expect the terminology to always be technically correct.
Basically we're looking at a rematch in the "making available" debate. The original verdict nailed the defendant to the wall for making tracks available for download. Now the judge is thinking that was based on incorrect instructions he gave the jury about how to understand the law.
For "upload to a p2p network", substitute "place on a shared drive readable/searchable/indexed by a p2p network".
I remain on the fence on this one. I don't believe that literally "just making available" should be illegal; I also don't believe that putting the track on a p2p share is "just making available" because of the implicit advertising of availability. I understand the argument that you can't have distributed if nobody downloaded, but I find it hard to believe that my liability should depend so absolutely on the actions of others.
That's because nobody is arguing that there should be no such this as intellectual property
Nobody is arguing it? Maybe it's not what you would argue, but before you talk about "nobody", you should have a look at russotto's argument on the matter. He (or she) certainly doesn't seem to think the concept should exist.
"Intellectual property" is not the body of rights defined in law. Intellectual property is the subject of that body of rights. Just as real estate is the land, not the deed.
Real estate is the land. The concept of real estate as "property" is a legal construct -- a body of rights defined in law. As is all property. That's what property is.
The land, the house, the various items of chattel in the house... these can all exist independent of any concept of property or ownership. That's not to say that they should, but they can. They are not inherantly property. The law makes them property.
It's hard to see how a right to prevent others from repeating that which you have written, or to prevent them from building that which you have invented (even if they do it independently), refers to something real.
It's just as real as the right to prevent others from using that which I possess, because the law makes it just as real.
I think you're finding that hard to see, because you don't think it's legitimate (which is very different from "not real"). I would suggest that you look at the early history of IP law, and the motivation behind it. It is then possible to have intelligent debates about whether those motivations are a legitimate function of government, or whether the law acheives its goals.
But debating whether the concept is "real" is just rhetorical nonsense.
Seriously, we all know imaginary property doesn't exist and the laws are seriously corrupt and fubar. But sensationlism and hyperbole doesn't really help our case.
Ah, the irony.
To say "we all know" is hyperbole. And the phrase "imaginary property" is sensationalism.
I've yet to see any credible argument that intellectual property (a body of rights defined in law with specific protections and penalties) is any more "imaginary" (or shall we say, any less real) than tangible property (a body of rights defined in law with specific protections and penalties).
IP is newer. Less people are comfortable saying they understand it. And the current laws are further from what they should be than the laws that define tangible property rights. There are plenty of things wrong with modern copyright, trademark, and patent law. But "imaginary"?
"Yes and no" because while courts have started rejecting the idea that "making available" is enough, it still isn't clear exactly where the line is. Perhaps you can point me to an official source that says "To violate copyright, there has to be an actual copy made by someone", but thus far I haven't seen one.
"Not relevant" because I said nothing about what should or shouldn't lead to a conviction; I was clarifying the method the RIAA is using, since those commenting on it clearly hadn't read the article and were under the wrong impression of what the method is.
Arguably, all the RIAA would have to do to satisfy the requirement of "someone making a copy", by the way, is to download it from the node where they find it. Not sure how the court would interpret that scenario, but I'd be interested to find out. (I don't think it would be entrapment, since the RIAA aren't law enforcement; their own beleifs in the matter notwithstanding...)
Yes, but if they do, then downloading the copy they distribute within their rights is not illegal. If I offer you something I own for free, then it is legal for you to take it.
Doesn't matter, though. That's not how they're using LimeWire (or other P2P clients), as the GP would've known if he'd RFTA.
They're not making the music available; they're using the client to search for others who are making the music available.
I assume you're talking about NPV. In this context, it's academic. Yes, it is assumed that each player in the market will account for cash flows current and future.
But I never said the market only accounts for what's near-term profitable. I said it reflects what's near-term profitable.
And if you close the econ book and take a look at the real world, you'll find that I'm right. The aggregate effect of the "discounting" you're on about is that the market reflects what is near-term profitable.
The market reflects what is near-term profitable. Don't conflate near-term profitability with importance.
Regardless, lets suppose we privatize space exploration, and a handful of entrepreneurs, with the gifts of great foresight and deep pockets, step forward. They make great strides. They drive the R&D for space-related tech, so they end up owning the spin-offs. They control the orbital research, so maybe they start amassing patents from that.
Now years down the road, space travel becomes really important, and they're poised to make a huge profit. Are we (as a society) prepared to let them profit for their decades of investment, or will we claim that this undeserving elite is trying to exploit our need from a position of unfair advantage?
Slashdot Mirror
I agree there's no reason to trust them; but if they don't honor the promise to give you a decryptor, probably they just take your money and don't respond.
What you are suggesting (they give you a decryptor but it returns false data) would be terribly difficult. To profit by doing so -- I just can't see how.
And that will give you the solution for one user, since the RC4 keys are generated randomly on a per-attack basis.
TFA itself quoted one of the scientists involved as saying that his favorite thing about the discovery, is that it contradicts creationists.
You are correct that it's inflamatory and hurts the discussion. You are incorrect to blame slashdot (in this particular instance).
Created a pizza?
Meh. I'll bet you merely assembled the parts.
Whoa... where is this 10' radius of which you speak located? I need to stay clear of it, so I don't accidentally get killed by the word blogosphere...
You are still just repeating yourself without actually addressing my arguments.
"That's ridiculous! You can't say that the underlying land is non-rivalrous, because we can't possibly both build a house on exactly the same spot, nor do anything else."
I guess you didn't notice how when you mentioned something we can't both do, you started talking about rights to use the land, not the land itself.
"There's no real difference between an idea and using it, because ideas that are never communicated to others in some form are useless."
Of the many things wrong with that statement, I'm just gonna stick with "usefulness isn't identity". A song exists independent of any use (listening, distribution, etc.) thereof, just like land exists independent of any use thereof (even though unused land isn't terribly useful -- hence the term "unused").
"ALL uses of the land, actually, minus easements."
Both irrelevant and incorrect.
"Actually, it is like music to distribute. Very exactly. Mostly because we don't need distributors any more."
No, it isn't, as should be clear from my previous post. (Oh, that's right; you aren't actually responding to my arguments, just throwing out glib contradictions.) Air to breath is there without being created by someone. Music to distribute is not.
"I mean, it's not like that's the fundamental flaw of copyright today or anything. We DON'T NEED distributors, or we wouldn't have people infringing upon the distribution right of copyright at every turn."
Ah, so a right easily violated is no right at all. So for example, if your banker walks off with all your money, you won't complain. He doesn't physically need your permission, so your right to withold such permission is void.
The ease of distribution is not a fundamental flaw in copyright. It is a fundamental flaw in the viability of the current music-industry business model, but that's a separate issue.
What 'really is' property is anything inherently rivalrous
You keep coming back to this, as though there were such a thing as a thing being rivalrous.
And yet, take the example of land -- land being something you claim is an "inherently rivalrous". There exists land that is not property. So even if we accept your meaningless "distinction" between land and music, your definition of property is factually incorrect.
Now I'm done talking to a wall. Until you can provide an argument that meaningfully addresses that point, you can scream into the void all you want.
Nice misdirection.
If you want to debate the effectiveness of patent law, or whether it should apply to one class of invention vs. another, that's a different discussion (and one I'm not getting pulled into at this time).
Your original contention was that patents existed either to be abused (in which case the patent in this story would make sense) or to cause trade secrets to be revealed (in which case it would not).
My point was that neither of those is the purpose of patent law. Whether you agree with the law or not, its purpose is ensuring the inventor gets the chance to benefit from his work. Given the law as written and it's purpose, the patent does make sense.
Getting companies to reveal what they otherwise might not is one element of how patents acheive their one of their goals -- to ensure the public gets something in exchange for the grant of protection. But that is secondary. It is not why the grant of protection was given.
Believe it or not, many patent-protected inventions took an up-front investment that no company would have tried to protect without patent law. Sometimes because the novel elements would be obvious to anyone buying/using the invention. Sometimes because the risk of protecting it as a trade secret just doesn't justify the investment.
The patent's purpose is to ensure the inventor -- be it an individual with limited resources for production, marketing, etc. or be it a large company that has deep pockets but that always has to look for a profit -- has the chance to profit from his/her/its work.
But by all means, go on "suspecting".
Aaaaand... for those of us who know that neither of those is the purpose of a patent?
"You're ignoring the reasons WHY land is property."
..."
I'm not ignoring anything. In fact, it's an ironic thing to charge, since you still haven't even tried addressing my argument.
"the point of all the examples you called "non sequiters" after misunderstanding them"
That they do not lead me to your conclusions, does not mean that I misunderstood them. I reached different conclusions because I find your reasoning to be incorrect.
"With IP, only the rights themselves are rivalrous. The actual underlying idea is not."
That is no more or less correct, than the statement "With land, only the rights themselves (to use or occupy the land) are rivalrous. The actual underlying land is not." The only thing different is how accustomed you are to the relationship between the land and the rights, as opposed to the relationship between the music (or other protected item) and the rights.
"You can take a copyright away from someone, but you can't take an idea away from them."
You misunderstand what copyright protects. It doesn't protect an idea. It protects certain uses of an idea, which very much can be taken away.
Likewise, land rights don't protect "the land". Land cannot be "taken"; use of the land can be taken, and we call that "taking the land". It's a shorthand that you're so used to you don't recognize it anymore. Land rights protect certain uses of the land, which can be taken away -- just like with copyright.
"So you can declare air to be "property" (indeed, they already do a more limited form of that in terms of 'airspace'), but you can't stop people from breathing and you shouldn't even try."
That is because air to breath is neither like land to live on nor like music to distribute.
Property rights were defined for land because it is scarce and valuable. The initial ownership was derived from possession and ability to enforce -- hardly a legitimate basis for a right, but there you have it.
Property rights were defined for music and other creative works, because they are the fruit of a person's labor. That's a pretty good basis for a claim of right, actually. It's arguably a stronger foundation than the foundation under land rights -- but generations of tradition and common practice back up land rights, whereas copyrights are relatively new on the scene, so we imagine out of habit that land rights are "more real".
Air (for the purpose of breathing) is neither scarce, nor the product of human effort.
"But I await your response telling me
Don't try to put words in my mouth.
Note how I don't say "I await your response actually addressing some element of my argument", because I suspect such response won't be forthcoming.
"The reason I'm tilting at the sacred cow of "property" is because it's used to shut down rational thought on the subject"
Funny, I would say the same about the phrase "imaginary property" -- it's a tagline meant to sway opinion without actual thought about the issues... issues like 'what really is property' and 'what does copyright actually protect', which you seem quite adept at avoiding.
I'm not seeing anything new in the math... which isn't surprising, as I don't have time to spend on it.
But I do wonder, if it's employee 252 (rather than 508)? Reasoning:
First section looks to be the "easiest" of the 3 to decode without context. It contains a message the meaning of which is of course in question -- but maybe its purposes are (1) to establish the rules of the code for the third section, so that (with a little notational tweak) it's reasonable to solve the third, and (2) to take a jab at Shoemaker, suggesting that he would dismiss the message itself as noise and make no effort to decode it.
Third section is straightforward, except for the S that shouldn't be there. Others have suggested this is a hint; could it simply mean that the S in the 3-symbol word is also noise and should be ignored?
This would leave FC at the end of the second section (252 in decimal).
There does, as others have noted, appear to be more information in the body of section 2, though...
Justice is not served by pretending the laws mean whatever you want them to mean in each given instance.
Certainly the laws can change; it is not like "dead code". However, you can't convict someone for an act they commit before you pass the law that makes it illegal. We have a specific rule for that in the Constitution.
Whether you understand this fact or not, what you are advocating is a form of mob rule that would be quickly corrupted by those in power into tyrrany.
I'm not the one who doesn't get it in this exchange.
A line of non-sequitars is not a proof.
I can guard and take things that aren't mine, too. That has nothing to do with their status as property.
You can "transfer" land? The only interpretation where that makes sense -- "transfer ownership" -- is circular, because "own" is a concept of property (which is to say, a concept of law). Laws make it property, and laws provide for how to transfer it. Property, ownership, and transfer are all concepts of law, nothing more.
(And, by the way, I can transfer copyrights as well; and they can be guarded, though we bitch at anyone who tries to do so. So by your logic, they would be inherantly property.)
You either missed, or chose not to address, my point, though: Land is not inherantly property, because land that is not property can (and does) exist. It becomes property when the law makes it so, and no sooner.
The same is true of all tangible goods. The only reason this is not obvious to you, is that you're immersed in a society with a highly-developed property system at the heart of its legal system, so that every example you see of a tangible thing in your daily life, is somebody's property.
But that doesn't change the fact that property is a construct of law, not a natural phenomenon.
And yet, we are a country of laws. That a child was harmed may be the motivation for applying this new theory of law, but neither the law nor the theory are bound to those "special" circumstances.
You can't apply laws differently to one person or one case because you don't like what happened. Either compliance with the TOS is a condition of whether your access was authorized, or it's not. "It is, but we would only ever enforce that fact if a child was hurt" doesn't fly.
The authorities are outraged, and rightfully so. Nobody can believe that we can't find a law that applies to what allegedly happened here. (Yes, allegedly.) But stretching a loosely-related law with an unheard-of interpretation so that you can punish the woman for X when really you want to get her for Y, and then denying that logically you would have to punish otehrs who did X (but who didn't do Y), is advocating tyrany.
I prefer a country of laws, even if I sometimes have to let a scumbag go. If this woman is as evil as she's being portrayed -- and she may well be -- then she'll find her own way to justice in due course.
Of course, the people most responsible for protecting this particular child are this particular child's parents.
This is a complicated situation, and it's easy to let yourself get led astray trying to break it down. There are two very different pictures of who did what, when, and why; if at least one of those stories indeed involves a crime, then it's up to a jury to decide what's true, so everything else we might say falls somewhere between hypothetical and speculative.
Based on what I've seen (and I've seen more than this article... around here this was big news when it happened), I'm pretty confident I wouldn't like this neighbor if I met her. She sounds like a vindictive, self-righteous woman who does things she knows to be wrong to "get" someone she doesn't like or trust, and hides behind her own parental responsibilities to excuse herself when the consequences get out of control.
But I also think that unless you're willing to apply this law in a similar case that doesn't lead to a child's death, you better think carefully about applying it now. Anyone who justifies it by saying "we can't let her get by with it", is out for revenge -- which is very different from justice.
Maybe the laws haven't kept up. Maybe there needs to be a class of offense specifically relating to misleading a child to create a false world in that child's mind, or something to that effect. Maybe (subject to a hopefully-rational legislative debate, accounting for all the consequences of such a law). But if you can't find one on the books, then you may just have to accept that justice isn't always served in our system (or any system). We choose to err on the side of liberty, which leads to concepts like the ex post facto rule, which mean that sometimes someone does get away with it.
You'd better believe local authorities tried to find a criminal charge they could apply. The truth might be -- good, bad, or indifferent -- that a civil suit is the only legitimate way to hold the woman responsible.
But you can get charged (probably with reckless something-or-other). Your liability is affected by others' actions, but your liability is not absolutely determined by others' actions (whcih is what I actually said; but don't let that get in the way of a clever reply).
Moreover, since the real crime (taking a risk with others' well-being that was not yours to take) is the same, I maintain that the difference in liability is largely an emotional reaction of our legal system, proving that to some people criminal punishment is about revenge more than anything else.
Well, don't expect the terminology to always be technically correct.
Basically we're looking at a rematch in the "making available" debate. The original verdict nailed the defendant to the wall for making tracks available for download. Now the judge is thinking that was based on incorrect instructions he gave the jury about how to understand the law.
For "upload to a p2p network", substitute "place on a shared drive readable/searchable/indexed by a p2p network".
I remain on the fence on this one. I don't believe that literally "just making available" should be illegal; I also don't believe that putting the track on a p2p share is "just making available" because of the implicit advertising of availability. I understand the argument that you can't have distributed if nobody downloaded, but I find it hard to believe that my liability should depend so absolutely on the actions of others.
That's because nobody is arguing that there should be no such this as intellectual property
Nobody is arguing it? Maybe it's not what you would argue, but before you talk about "nobody", you should have a look at russotto's argument on the matter. He (or she) certainly doesn't seem to think the concept should exist.
Meh. Fair enough.
"Intellectual property" is not the body of rights defined in law. Intellectual property is the subject of that body of rights. Just as real estate is the land, not the deed.
Real estate is the land. The concept of real estate as "property" is a legal construct -- a body of rights defined in law. As is all property. That's what property is.
The land, the house, the various items of chattel in the house... these can all exist independent of any concept of property or ownership. That's not to say that they should, but they can. They are not inherantly property. The law makes them property.
It's hard to see how a right to prevent others from repeating that which you have written, or to prevent them from building that which you have invented (even if they do it independently), refers to something real.
It's just as real as the right to prevent others from using that which I possess, because the law makes it just as real.
I think you're finding that hard to see, because you don't think it's legitimate (which is very different from "not real"). I would suggest that you look at the early history of IP law, and the motivation behind it. It is then possible to have intelligent debates about whether those motivations are a legitimate function of government, or whether the law acheives its goals.
But debating whether the concept is "real" is just rhetorical nonsense.
Seriously, we all know imaginary property doesn't exist and the laws are seriously corrupt and fubar. But sensationlism and hyperbole doesn't really help our case.
Ah, the irony.
To say "we all know" is hyperbole. And the phrase "imaginary property" is sensationalism.
I've yet to see any credible argument that intellectual property (a body of rights defined in law with specific protections and penalties) is any more "imaginary" (or shall we say, any less real) than tangible property (a body of rights defined in law with specific protections and penalties).
IP is newer. Less people are comfortable saying they understand it. And the current laws are further from what they should be than the laws that define tangible property rights. There are plenty of things wrong with modern copyright, trademark, and patent law. But "imaginary"?
Sensationalism and hyperbole indeed don't help.
Yes and no, but not relevant to the discussion.
"Yes and no" because while courts have started rejecting the idea that "making available" is enough, it still isn't clear exactly where the line is. Perhaps you can point me to an official source that says "To violate copyright, there has to be an actual copy made by someone", but thus far I haven't seen one.
"Not relevant" because I said nothing about what should or shouldn't lead to a conviction; I was clarifying the method the RIAA is using, since those commenting on it clearly hadn't read the article and were under the wrong impression of what the method is.
Arguably, all the RIAA would have to do to satisfy the requirement of "someone making a copy", by the way, is to download it from the node where they find it. Not sure how the court would interpret that scenario, but I'd be interested to find out. (I don't think it would be entrapment, since the RIAA aren't law enforcement; their own beleifs in the matter notwithstanding...)
Yes, but if they do, then downloading the copy they distribute within their rights is not illegal. If I offer you something I own for free, then it is legal for you to take it.
Doesn't matter, though. That's not how they're using LimeWire (or other P2P clients), as the GP would've known if he'd RFTA.
They're not making the music available; they're using the client to search for others who are making the music available.
I assume you're talking about NPV. In this context, it's academic. Yes, it is assumed that each player in the market will account for cash flows current and future.
But I never said the market only accounts for what's near-term profitable. I said it reflects what's near-term profitable.
And if you close the econ book and take a look at the real world, you'll find that I'm right. The aggregate effect of the "discounting" you're on about is that the market reflects what is near-term profitable.
The market reflects what is near-term profitable. Don't conflate near-term profitability with importance.
Regardless, lets suppose we privatize space exploration, and a handful of entrepreneurs, with the gifts of great foresight and deep pockets, step forward. They make great strides. They drive the R&D for space-related tech, so they end up owning the spin-offs. They control the orbital research, so maybe they start amassing patents from that.
Now years down the road, space travel becomes really important, and they're poised to make a huge profit. Are we (as a society) prepared to let them profit for their decades of investment, or will we claim that this undeserving elite is trying to exploit our need from a position of unfair advantage?