Especially when one considers the evergrowing warnings about google products and sites like facebook (which makes its money out of selling private information to advertisers without even making an attempt at disguising the fact) - we need, in this age of web-apps, to push for greater openness in their design.
It's no longer just about the source code, it's about every single aspect of our lives. Dr. Phill may get hits from doing shows about how people misrepresent themselves online - but the fact that his investigators are able to find out enough about a person to 'figure out the lies' just tell you how dangerous the system already is - and that is third parties, imagine the true power that applications like facebook or Yahoo! mail holds... it's scary.
On the other hand, most people could care so little about their privacy these days... one may go so far as to suggest that those who do not care, do not deserve it.
For the rest of us, why not contribute a bit to changing the picture - is there even one solid social networking tool out there that is built on open source ?
What you are saying is a half-truth. Stallman has stated on many occasions that the only reason for the GPL to exist is BECAUSE of copyright. Yes it uses copyright law, but it uses it in a subversive manner as a temporary solution until the day when copyright (on software at least) is abolish and all code is in the public domain, at which time, it will not be needed anymore.
Of course, a catch there is what happens if we abolish copyright: companies will still ship binaries without code (so of the four freedoms only distribution will exist), so to reach what Stallman would consider the ideal we would need an abolition of software copyright coupled with a consumer protection act that makes shipping binaries without code an offense.
I tend to agree with him. I also believe that one should follow the laws while they stand, even as you do activism to change them. That is what the GPL is - a form of legal activism, a way to prove that user-rights are more important than 'owner'-rights, and that thinking like that does not prevent the creation of useful software: on the contrary, it appears to accelerate it and more-over to do it better in most cases.
Now looking at my moderation history, just in the last 5 days I have had 6 comments modded +5 Insightful, when I do get moderator points I choose to mod up good posts and largely ignore the rest... but I reckon the implication is that I generally try to make a constructive comment on the conversation. Today I saw humour potential. The mod however made me afraid that some people may actually think I was serious, hence my reply to make it abundantly clear that I was PARODYING RMS's typically bombastic and uncompromising approach - he never actually said that.
As it turns out, I'm not sure the moderator was positive they way you hope (and what about the many who modded you funny ?!?!?!) it could be, and it is nice if it is, but at least one person did think I was serious... so serious that he demanded I cite a source for my 'quote' !
So maybe capitalism is bad ? I am NOT saying I want a controlled economy with a 'do what we need' approach to labor or anything... just a thought.
We've had markets since before we had money (the one was needed for the other to be invented), trade (and yes free trade) is ancient. There were a few deviations along the way like Feudal systems... The first corporation was the East India Company and that wasn't until the 1600's. I am seriously starting to think Capitalism isn't working.
It's turning into just another form of sharecropping. The power that it's given corporations bennifit only the corporations that are there - first to market counts for a lot more than quality or even cost in this system... and the entirety of society suffers (I will not now, nor ever, willingly refer to myself as a 'consumer' - I do not exist to use stuff up which other people make).
The reason we invented capitalism in the first place was not to create a system that would allow corporations to grow at the EXPENSE of society, it was meant to be a way for corporations to exist in order to benefit society. Maybe it even worked, somewhere for a little while. It definitely isn't working now.
Of course the moment you say 'benefit society' people cry 'socialist' and switch you off: pity because I'm not a socialist do I do think socialism raises some valid points and some more socialist countries have far more successful economies than the US (if you measure success by low levels of poverty and unemployment plus high levels of worker satisfaction and national health with the resultant benefits of low crime rates and so on rather than purely by 'total money made'). I suppose you could say that socialist countries actually have a much better rate of success with getting the money made by companies to actually trickle through the system to the all the economic players than trickle-down capitalism did... it ended up more like storage-tank socialism with everybody except a select-few being ever more impoverished.
So yeah, socialism makes some valid points, but it also isn't quite there -because socialism has a tendency to encourage laziness and reduce actual quality of work (the most successful socialist economies are those in nations with very long histories of strong excellence based cultures which can counteract this tendency). So socialism leads to reduced quality because of lack of motivation to excel. Capitalism is leading to impoverishment as well as ever reduced quality because of myopic focus on short-term profits. And it's not like it's entire point of existence (motivation) is surviving this trend, cost-cutting and 'headcount reduction' has led to a world where most workers in capitalist economies have worse morale than in socialist ones.
I think that it's high time we seriously reconsider how economies should work. Neither of those extremes have it right, and who knows - maybe this time we could correct it BEFORE it implodes if enough people realize that. I would start by removing all rights from corporations except the basic right to trade goods or services. There is no reason why companies should have human rights - they are not human. If companies don't have freedom of speech - then we can REQUIRE them to ONLY make ads that can verified with FACT. No psychological manipulation, nothing but simple statements of neutral facts allowed. "Buy our product because it costs X and does Y" and if any claim cannot be backed up by peer reviewable methods applicable to the specific field then you cannot say it. Just imagine if all those homeopathic remedies were NOT ALLOWED TO CLAIM IT DOES ANYTHING unless DOCTORS AND MEDICAL SCIENTISTS in general AGREE with the claim ! Or how about, if BMW was NOT allowed to make an ad that strongly implied that if you drive the new FOO series you will get laid easier ? If the only things that they could say were the provable facts about it. Price, economy, performance etc. ? How about this one. Even though lobbying or campaign contributions ar
You know... I just realized something. Voorwerp = Object, This is not on the earth... which could be stretched to 'flying'. Thus far, we have no idea what it is... eg. it is unidentified.
Does Hanny know she officially named something to be an Unidentified Flying Object... is this some kind of in-joke ? An astronomer just named her discovery a UFO !!!!
I'm not sure how close they are here but any bilingual Afrikaans native we would most likely translate 'voorwerp' as OBJECT. Definitely not subject, thing is valid in meaning but not in context and would be better translated as 'ding' anyway. There is a definite is slight difference in meaning between an 'object' and a 'thing' and the same difference exist in Afrikaans (and almost certainly Dutch) between a 'voorwerp' and a 'ding'.
So my feel is that the best translation of her intent (and I have in fact been a professional news translator so I have a pretty good feel for such things) would not be 'subject' OR 'thing' but 'object'.
RMS has decried the GPL'ing of Java as being a major assault on free software advocacy. "For years we have warned people to steer clear of writing free software in languages that require non-free VM's or other components to work by calling this the 'Java trap'. Using this well known example with a VM that is slow and bloated and used for software that doesn't fit into any OS anywhere and which nobody actually liked, quickly got the point made and we could then more easily make the point about things that some people actually enjoyed like educational games written in flash... now SUN has GPL'd Java they have made removed our greatest example of the evils of the erm flash trap ! This may still have been a win for free software if only anything usable had ever been written in Java - but seeing as nothing has, it was only ever good as an example. Universities used the language as an example of good object orientation, we used the license as an example of the s/java/flash/g trap" the FSF founder said in a press release.
Despite his hardcore geek nature the release will more likely be remembered for his attempts at a verbal sed script than for it's actual point.
>Next stop for the MPAA/RIAA lawsuit express - Your local library. I am kind of hoping that no Judge in the world will be stupid enough to let them do THAT. After all, libraries have a rich tradition of uplifting societies that go back thousands of years, copyright wasn't even invented until about 500 years ago.
I would think that any (unbribed) judge who could be made to see filesharing as similar to operating a library would protect it just make sure the RIAA/MPAA do not EVER get it in their minds that attacking libraries should be allowed.
Mind you - I do suggest reading 'right to read'... we haven't prevented that future yet.
Wait, you actually think that not cleaning the music from my memory stick before using it to transfer a completely legal file to a friend is the same as selling drugs ? For starters, I'm not *selling* anything, whether the drug dealer made a sale or not, he was charging money to do something illegal. In my second example, I wasn't even aware that anything illegal was being done.
If somebody visiting me takes the knife out of my kitchen drawer and kills his wife, am I now guilty of murder for not preventing this person access to something (the knife) which could potentially be used to break the law with ? If I see him trying to stab her and do not try to defend her, that is (and rightly so) a crime on my part - but that is something very different. Even if it's a gun, that he takes out of a display cabinet - how can I be accountable for that ? It is this kind of logic that is turning the world into a nanny state- which is exactly like a police state except with nicer wallpaper.
How is this different from the second memory stick example ? The crime happens out my site, my property being used to commit it is beyond my knowledge and certainly beyond any intent or gain for me !
Do you seriously suggest that people should delete any music/movie/ebook files they have on memory sticks before using them to share data files with colleagues ? Well that is the RIAA's logic, making a person legally liable for the actions of another - not for having assisted in the actions, merely for not preventing access to something (in the loosest meaning of the world) which was used to perform those actions.
Ooooh, I like that. @NewYorkCountyLawyer... can this work !?!?!? (I don't actually mean to ask for real legal advice, but you are our resident anti-RIAA lawyer and you ARE handling these cases... maybe/. actually has a useful contribution for you here ? With a little help from me:p )
I mean, when you think about it, it is in practise MUCH more like an unlicensed radio broadcast than like any other form of copyright infringement (you're not selling an illegally made DVD copy on the streetcorner after all)- so shouldn't the penalties and laws be the same ?
This could end the regime for good, if it requires fileshares to get licenses to broadcast music, that's a flat rate thing, and it leaves the only potential criminality existing in users who keep the copies. We already have systems in place for legal internet radio streaming, which is handled very much like radio broadcast... is having files in your share-folder really different from an on-demand webradio stream ? The software to save streams permanently are easily available and at least this will put the legal question back where it belongs: with the downloaders.
Oh, and for the record, I am not American so I have no democrat bias. Even if I did, Lincoln was the founder of the republican party. I think he would spin in his grave if he knew that his party would one day NOMINATE G.W. Bush for president, let alone elect him... TWICE*.
*And I am using 'elect' in what is probably the loosest sense since Robert Mugabe's version.
>>Lincoln had more support during the CIVIL WAR than Bush has today !
>>Does that include people from the states that tried to secede? I'd be real convenient for your argument if they were no longer counted as U.S. citizens in those opinion polls...
Actually, yes it does. Have you noticed just HOW low Bush's most recent ratings are ? The seceding states did not even make up a full 50% of the US population, within those states pretty much EVER person who wasn't Caucasian would almost certainly have been supporting Lincoln and he had the support of the greater majority of the Northern states.
I would say a worst case scenario would have put Lincoln at, what, 50% support ? Lets be seriously pessimistic and say 30% ! That still beats Bush on the latest polls by a huge margin. Some polls have put Bush's approval ratings at UNDER 10% ! That, has NEVER happened before. EVER.
Actually the only difference is that there is no copying involved, but let's add it. Say I rip a bunch of my CD's into a digital format, mp3 for argument's sake then I put all these on a memory stick to plug into my car's mp3 player (the point of all this). There is nothing hypothetical so far, I have done that, and I listen to music I legally own every time I drive this way.
Now imagine I forget a window open, somebody reaches in and grabs the memory stick. This person now has copies of the music, which were legal when I made them (fair use) but are not legal for him to have (he doesn't own the originals) - am I guilty of 'making the infringing material available' ?
Okay so in this case there is clear theft of property, let's take it a step closer to the filesharing example. Say I also have on the same memory stick a spreadsheet for work. A colleague needs the data I have been working on and in the interest of expediency I just hand him the stick to copy this file (which I legally own the copyright on) with my permission and the intention that he should give me the memory stick back when he is done. As he browses to copy the spreadsheet, he notices that I have the latest 36 Crazy Fists album on the memory stick and, without my knowledge or intent, copies it. Sure I gave him access to the stick, the copies on it are legal, but I did not give him permission to copy the music (which he has no legal right to - I would argue he has a moral right but that's an issue for activism and lobbying, under current law it's not allowed) - but I also did not delete all the music or copy the file myself to actively prevent him from getting at the music... is this 'making available' ? How is this different from filesharing ? And in this case, the files were actually copied. These guys now want me to be liable for copyright infringement just for HAVING the songs on the stick which I let my colleague borrow. Even if he never copies them !
This is just spiraling ever deeper into the absurd.
That may have been true if he had done so AT THE TIME. Hawking SILENTLY rejected the knighthood many years ago, but OTHER people have been calling for him to be knighted every year. These constant requests from the public ultimately led to Hawking choosing to end the suspense by just saying that it was HIS OWN decision not to be knighted many years ago and that they can stop pestering the UK government about it.
What ? I dare you to walk into any library and say 'please show me the license you have for each book you lend out'. They won't have a single sheet like that. Libraries do not have any kind of certificate either that says "This is a public library certified to lend books under agreement with the book publishers association of $COUNTRY"
There is nothing like that. Libraries are NOT Licensed to lend out media - because nobody NEEDS a license to lend out MEDIA. Copyright does NOT prohibit lending to another party ! It prohibits copying and DISTRIBUTION OF COPIES. Lending out an original is not copyright infringement or even MENTIONED in the copyright ACT of ANY country !
But lets get a fairer example then. Almost all libraries have more than books, you can usually also take out DVD's and music CD's - the selection is more limited than a music store but then again they tend to have a BETTER selection of the true artistic greats (even if they are less commercially successful). These are almost always available for lending, and always easy to copy. If I loan a DVD from the library and copy it has the library 'made it available for piracy' ? I am deliberately NOT comparing with a video store which rents it out commercially because they ARE licensed (or at least SHOULD be) and pay a licensing fee for the right to do so. Libraries are not and never should be because they are not renting out (which copyright covers) they are LENDING out (which it doesn't).
And even if in your country libraries need to have a license to lend media (does this apply to the small library of childrens books at the local creche ? my home library if a friend wants to borrow one of my discworld books ?) then it would surely not be a license to allow people to copy what they lend - the library has no control over what you do with the media you borrow once you walk out the door, if you copy it, it is your infringement and regardless of any license-to-lend or lack of it, them making it available to you is NOT an infringement.
Sorry I think the library analogy to their 'making available' argument is perfectly valid. In fact, I would have been MORE (but not much) sympathetic if they were trying to claim that making available in a fileshare is unauthorised broadcast (this is not handled identically in all copyright systems - in South Africa for example they had to amend the creative commons licenses to include broadcast because redistribution right doesn't include broadcast here but it does in America) - after all if you play a song on the radio without a license it's still broadcast regardless of whether anybody is listening. I do think though that they are well aware that any judge will decide it ISN'T a form of broadcast which is why they haven't tried it. But to say that making available = distribution even if nobody downloaded is outright ludicrous.
Since when does that mean he was right ? In fact, since what he is famous for was trying to conquer the world (and nearly succeeding) through war of conquest I would say that he is probably the last person whose opinions on defense I would trust. Napoleon never thought a defensive war in his entire life. Wars of conquest are by definition offensive. So he certainly couldn't have been describing the kind of defense that worked for him. Maybe he meant the kind of defense that worked AGAINST him ? But that doesn't rhyme either... he was defeated ultimately at Waterloo - in Britain, who was fighting a defensive war. They didn't attack him in France to defend against him. That counts as the only time he was ever defeated because the defeat was so total that he ended up imprisoned on Elba with his French empire in tatters by the end of it.
So basically, how the hell would he know ? The only example he ever saw of a successful defense was NOT a case of a good offense ! Did it ever occur to anybody that when a man is busy conquering the world you really should take any advice he has on how to defend yourself with a pacific-ocean load of salt ? After all he had everything to lose by teaching the world how to defend themselves well... but on the other hand he he had everything to gain by teaching the world how to defend themselves poorly.
Like I said... authority won't impress me, I asked if anybody could PROVE it. In fact, if you think about it, it's probably an unprovable claim because you cannot rerun history with different parameters to compare the results.
You know, your analogy is very much better than my attempts below to explain the idiocy. This is so true. Libraries let anybody borrow a book, usually free of charge, and most even have photocopiers inside the building where you could copy as much as you want for a nominal per-page charge. They'll warn you that more than a few pages is infringement but how many varies from country to country (in South Africa it's 1/3) and of course there are purposes for which even 100% would be legal (education for example) so they won't really check up. Nobody would agree with suing librarians for a fortune because of this - how is file sharing any different ? Merely putting the files in a share is no different to letting people borrow books from a library. If somebody now makes a copy the library is not infringing. Even the 'download is itself a copy' argument fails because many books in a library are NOT allowed to be taken home but you are always welcome to copy pages of interest for further study from those and that makes pretty much an exact same scenario,
I am basically posting my agreement with you very clearly because I think you hit the nail on the head and I could see room to expand a little. If I had modpoints though - you would get all of them as this is by far the best analogy I have ever seen on this topic.
One thing worth remembering of course is that the RIAA is not alone, it has little clones all over the world that follow in the footsteps of it's master (not least because they want to be able to buy resell rights for RIAA member companies' products). Here in South Africa for example we have ASAMI - which as gone so far as to say in public that 'recording a TV-show on your VCR is technically copyright infringement but we don't intend to prosecute that one simply because it would be impractical in cost compared to the damage done". Actually, South Africa has a subset of copyright law known as Fair Dealing which is pretty much identical in wording to the US Fair Use law and recoridng a TV show to VCR is entirely legal. So is showing a DVD of a documentary to a class of schoolchildren.
Of course they have happily confused plagiarism with copyright whenever it suited them and love to call it 'theft' - despite the fact that copyright infringement isn't theft - it's a civil infringement not a criminal one - and stories of large scale seizures of 'pirate DVD manufacturing warehouses' are common on the news.
So the impact that these kinds of idiocies in the US legal system has is global because the RIAA's minions will attempt to subvert any laws in any countries to suit.
Let's just see what we have in this post (a fairly representative sample I think): -Merely making it available is the same actually giving somebody a copy... by that thinking if I forget to lock my door and somebody steals my fridge... I'm as guilty of theft as he is ? I would go so far as saying that sharing music isn't copyright infringement at all, downloading it may well be, but making it available (Especially as it frequently happens without the person's knowledge) is not. It could even be argued that there is significant legal uses for sharing music - for example to save a friend who also owns the same album the massive effort involved in a format shift you already made. If others now download the music from you as WELL - without your intent... are you still guilty ? This is a side-effect of the technology and has nothing to do with what you did - sharing with somebody who had the RIGHT to get a copy of the music (he already PAID for it). There is no such thing as 'attempted' infringements in civil cases, especially not copyright. -Oh we shouldn't need to actually PROOF our claims. Not only is it enough to say you 'made it available', heck they think they don't even need to back that up ! -When they THEMSELVES download the music which this entire thing is about them claiming to own in order to proof it's available from you... that download BY THEM can be counted for damages ? How the hell are they damaged if they download their OWN music ? Before I pointed out one example of a P2P usage to share with a valid, authorized downloader - who could be MORE valid and authorized than the copyright owner ? They could try to make a case against a CD-owner having the right to DOWNLOAD rather than RIP digital copies -- but surely not that the OWNER of the copyright isn't an authorized downloader ! What is worse, if they are damaging their own copyright by downloading it... wouldn't that make this a case of evidence obtained illegally (through the breach of the very law in fact they are trying to proof you breached ?). It's not just legally unsound, it's logically unsound (to put it politely).
And that's not even thinking of things like copy protection mechanisms which are outright attempts to make it impossible to excercise our fair user rights. It seems clear to me they only care about that side of copyright law they can abuse to make money. They cannot get rid of fair use law outright, so they try to technologically strong-arm it away from us. Frankly, I believe that a judge should say that no person or corporation can claim protection under a law they repeatedly and continuously fail to respect. If you do not respect fair use (which implies no effort made to prevent people from making backup copies), how can you claim protection under the rest of the copyright act ?
How much longer are we going to put up with this ?
Well if your spelling, grammar and generally well articulated views are indicative of the quality of your education and critical thinking skills then your views must be well thought-out and considered. I am not trying for an ad-hominem attack actually. That would be the case if I said that being stupid also automatically makes you wrong. What is true though is that if you pay the same amount of attention to the world around you as you do to expressing yourself clearly then quite frankly it is physically impossible for your opinions to not be ill-informed.
Bush's popularity rating is at a record-low for any president EVER. Lincoln had more support during the CIVIL WAR than Bush has today ! Even the many people who fell for his propaganda when the war was launched has since realized they were duped... you apparently have not... maybe it's wrong but when I read your writing style I see a case of either extreme stupidity or (worse) extreme laziness... neither makes me inclined to take your opinions very seriously.
Everyone makes the occasional typo but your post reads more like badly transcribed pseudo phonetics than English spelling ! I say badly because 'our' and 'are' doesn't even sound the same - yet you confused them consistently several times. If they sound the same in some regional dialect you speak, I highly recommend learning a little about the world beyond a three-block radius of your house.
Oh and for the record: Islamafacists is not a word - if it was a word it would be prejudicial. What's worse, it's not only prejudicial but stupid as it seems to imply that facism is somehow caused or encouraged by Islam. Odd because the philosophies of Al Queda are not inline with mainstream Islam and mind you is very different from Mussolini's philosophies... so the people you are were referring to are neither Islamic nor Fascists.
>But don't forget, especially in war, the best defense is often a strong offense. Aaah yes, that old one. Everybody knows that the best defense is a good offense... since when ? When did we ever actually prove this ? This reminds me of another quote:"We must retaliate before they have the chance to strike !"
Just because people have believed something for thousands of years does not make it true. Hell most of the people here tend to dismiss all religion out of hand as stupidity simply because they don't hold with the idea of believing something based on authority alone. Yet many of those same people will perpetuate the very ideas that are the reason we (as in, the entire human race) seem to be in a permanent state of war now. I actually think that some wars, some of the time are in fact needed. War is usually the only way to free slaves, overthrow tyrants or reverse severely exploitive social structures (point to ponder - the quality of life of the poor in modern first world countries are probably slightly worse than that of the average peasant before the French revolution, and that of the rich is massively higher so the discrepancy is far greater - if our new class system leads to a global revolution by the poor we really have only ourselves to blame and it's not so far fetched, watching the news it's clear that the first scuffles have already started)
I suppose we cannot live without military just yet - but it really should be purely for defensive purposes... if the US (and every other country) only ever struck out against those who attacked them - just enough to prevent further attacks we would see the end of all wars within a decade. But the 'lets destroy the country that attacked us' mentality just leads to more and more people who are motivated to now attack you(us) in return.
So no, the best defense in war is probably never a good offense. The best defense is to make an attack impossible (for 'terrorism' you do that with better law enforcement, not with soldiers, for armies, you do it just by having soldiers - there is no need for those soldiers to be deployed otherwise - they just need to exist so that if an army invades they can chase them back out of the country again). Where you cannot prevent attacks how about we let the soldiers do what the police have always done ? Same rules. That means that the military as a whole is restricted to minimum necessary force. If we were truly focussed on defense only, the US could use a military 1/10 of what the US has. South Africa would never have been able to get that arms deal passed no matter how many ministers were bribed because we simply didn't need all those big gunships. Anybody who invades us is almost certainly going to be from the north and that will be over land. We already had the strongest military on land in the region years ago.
The problem is, we don't focus on defense. The US in particular does not. In fact, they don't even pretend to anymore. The US has never in the last 50 years for one day not had soldiers deployed somewhere in a foreign nation fighting somebody. In the greater majority of cases you were deposing democratically elected leaders and replacing them with military dictators because you didn't like the policies of politicians who thought they should act in the interests of their citizens rather than your politicians! Nicaragua and Brazil weren't even the worst of it.
Of course, those people whom you condemned to decades of oppression and suffering don't really like you very much today - and believe me they know who is to blame. They know who destroyed their freedom. Sorry, I don't buy the idea that you can defend your freedom by taking freedom away from the citizens of other nations. All you've done is created thousands of countries where everybody knows you as the oppressors, or the people who put the oppressors in place as your puppets... I'll bet that kind of global ill feeling makes it so much easier for your enemies to hide and recruit new members.
Disclaimer: yes I am the person responsible for that crime against humanity but those strips were done a long time ago - they just fitted the occasion frighteningly well..
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Especially when one considers the evergrowing warnings about google products and sites like facebook (which makes its money out of selling private information to advertisers without even making an attempt at disguising the fact) - we need, in this age of web-apps, to push for greater openness in their design.
It's no longer just about the source code, it's about every single aspect of our lives. Dr. Phill may get hits from doing shows about how people misrepresent themselves online - but the fact that his investigators are able to find out enough about a person to 'figure out the lies' just tell you how dangerous the system already is - and that is third parties, imagine the true power that applications like facebook or Yahoo! mail holds... it's scary.
On the other hand, most people could care so little about their privacy these days... one may go so far as to suggest that those who do not care, do not deserve it.
For the rest of us, why not contribute a bit to changing the picture - is there even one solid social networking tool out there that is built on open source ?
What you are saying is a half-truth.
Stallman has stated on many occasions that the only reason for the GPL to exist is BECAUSE of copyright. Yes it uses copyright law, but it uses it in a subversive manner as a temporary solution until the day when copyright (on software at least) is abolish and all code is in the public domain, at which time, it will not be needed anymore.
Of course, a catch there is what happens if we abolish copyright: companies will still ship binaries without code (so of the four freedoms only distribution will exist), so to reach what Stallman would consider the ideal we would need an abolition of software copyright coupled with a consumer protection act that makes shipping binaries without code an offense.
I tend to agree with him. I also believe that one should follow the laws while they stand, even as you do activism to change them. That is what the GPL is - a form of legal activism, a way to prove that user-rights are more important than 'owner'-rights, and that thinking like that does not prevent the creation of useful software: on the contrary, it appears to accelerate it and more-over to do it better in most cases.
Now looking at my moderation history, just in the last 5 days I have had 6 comments modded +5 Insightful, when I do get moderator points I choose to mod up good posts and largely ignore the rest... but I reckon the implication is that I generally try to make a constructive comment on the conversation. Today I saw humour potential. The mod however made me afraid that some people may actually think I was serious, hence my reply to make it abundantly clear that I was PARODYING RMS's typically bombastic and uncompromising approach - he never actually said that.
As it turns out, I'm not sure the moderator was positive they way you hope (and what about the many who modded you funny ?!?!?!) it could be, and it is nice if it is, but at least one person did think I was serious... so serious that he demanded I cite a source for my 'quote' !
So maybe capitalism is bad ?
I am NOT saying I want a controlled economy with a 'do what we need' approach to labor or anything... just a thought.
We've had markets since before we had money (the one was needed for the other to be invented), trade (and yes free trade) is ancient. There were a few deviations along the way like Feudal systems...
The first corporation was the East India Company and that wasn't until the 1600's.
I am seriously starting to think Capitalism isn't working.
It's turning into just another form of sharecropping. The power that it's given corporations bennifit only the corporations that are there - first to market counts for a lot more than quality or even cost in this system... and the entirety of society suffers (I will not now, nor ever, willingly refer to myself as a 'consumer' - I do not exist to use stuff up which other people make).
The reason we invented capitalism in the first place was not to create a system that would allow corporations to grow at the EXPENSE of society, it was meant to be a way for corporations to exist in order to benefit society.
Maybe it even worked, somewhere for a little while. It definitely isn't working now.
Of course the moment you say 'benefit society' people cry 'socialist' and switch you off: pity because I'm not a socialist do I do think socialism raises some valid points and some more socialist countries have far more successful economies than the US (if you measure success by low levels of poverty and unemployment plus high levels of worker satisfaction and national health with the resultant benefits of low crime rates and so on rather than purely by 'total money made'). I suppose you could say that socialist countries actually have a much better rate of success with getting the money made by companies to actually trickle through the system to the all the economic players than trickle-down capitalism did... it ended up more like storage-tank socialism with everybody except a select-few being ever more impoverished.
So yeah, socialism makes some valid points, but it also isn't quite there -because socialism has a tendency to encourage laziness and reduce actual quality of work (the most successful socialist economies are those in nations with very long histories of strong excellence based cultures which can counteract this tendency).
So socialism leads to reduced quality because of lack of motivation to excel.
Capitalism is leading to impoverishment as well as ever reduced quality because of myopic focus on short-term profits.
And it's not like it's entire point of existence (motivation) is surviving this trend, cost-cutting and 'headcount reduction' has led to a world where most workers in capitalist economies have worse morale than in socialist ones.
I think that it's high time we seriously reconsider how economies should work. Neither of those extremes have it right, and who knows - maybe this time we could correct it BEFORE it implodes if enough people realize that.
I would start by removing all rights from corporations except the basic right to trade goods or services. There is no reason why companies should have human rights - they are not human. If companies don't have freedom of speech - then we can REQUIRE them to ONLY make ads that can verified with FACT. No psychological manipulation, nothing but simple statements of neutral facts allowed.
"Buy our product because it costs X and does Y" and if any claim cannot be backed up by peer reviewable methods applicable to the specific field then you cannot say it.
Just imagine if all those homeopathic remedies were NOT ALLOWED TO CLAIM IT DOES ANYTHING unless DOCTORS AND MEDICAL SCIENTISTS in general AGREE with the claim !
Or how about, if BMW was NOT allowed to make an ad that strongly implied that if you drive the new FOO series you will get laid easier ? If the only things that they could say were the provable facts about it. Price, economy, performance etc. ?
How about this one. Even though lobbying or campaign contributions ar
You know... I just realized something.
Voorwerp = Object,
This is not on the earth... which could be stretched to 'flying'.
Thus far, we have no idea what it is... eg. it is unidentified.
Does Hanny know she officially named something to be an Unidentified Flying Object... is this some kind of in-joke ?
An astronomer just named her discovery a UFO !!!!
I'm not sure how close they are here but any bilingual Afrikaans native we would most likely translate 'voorwerp' as OBJECT. Definitely not subject, thing is valid in meaning but not in context and would be better translated as 'ding' anyway. There is a definite is slight difference in meaning between an 'object' and a 'thing' and the same difference exist in Afrikaans (and almost certainly Dutch) between a 'voorwerp' and a 'ding'.
So my feel is that the best translation of her intent (and I have in fact been a professional news translator so I have a pretty good feel for such things) would not be 'subject' OR 'thing' but 'object'.
Heh, now that is funny.
The mod however is STILL on crack because even if !funny == !joke that is a far cry from !funny=interesting.
WTF !?!?!?
What kind of crack made a mod rate me INTERESTING there ? Was the satire/joke not obvious enough ?!
RMS has decried the GPL'ing of Java as being a major assault on free software advocacy.
"For years we have warned people to steer clear of writing free software in languages that require non-free VM's or other components to work by calling this the 'Java trap'. Using this well known example with a VM that is slow and bloated and used for software that doesn't fit into any OS anywhere and which nobody actually liked, quickly got the point made and we could then more easily make the point about things that some people actually enjoyed like educational games written in flash... now SUN has GPL'd Java they have made removed our greatest example of the evils of the erm flash trap ! This may still have been a win for free software if only anything usable had ever been written in Java - but seeing as nothing has, it was only ever good as an example. Universities used the language as an example of good object orientation, we used the license as an example of the s/java/flash/g trap" the FSF founder said in a press release.
Despite his hardcore geek nature the release will more likely be remembered for his attempts at a verbal sed script than for it's actual point.
>Next stop for the MPAA/RIAA lawsuit express - Your local library.
I am kind of hoping that no Judge in the world will be stupid enough to let them do THAT. After all, libraries have a rich tradition of uplifting societies that go back thousands of years, copyright wasn't even invented until about 500 years ago.
I would think that any (unbribed) judge who could be made to see filesharing as similar to operating a library would protect it just make sure the RIAA/MPAA do not EVER get it in their minds that attacking libraries should be allowed.
Mind you - I do suggest reading 'right to read'... we haven't prevented that future yet.
Wait, you actually think that not cleaning the music from my memory stick before using it to transfer a completely legal file to a friend is the same as selling drugs ?
For starters, I'm not *selling* anything, whether the drug dealer made a sale or not, he was charging money to do something illegal. In my second example, I wasn't even aware that anything illegal was being done.
If somebody visiting me takes the knife out of my kitchen drawer and kills his wife, am I now guilty of murder for not preventing this person access to something (the knife) which could potentially be used to break the law with ? If I see him trying to stab her and do not try to defend her, that is (and rightly so) a crime on my part - but that is something very different.
Even if it's a gun, that he takes out of a display cabinet - how can I be accountable for that ? It is this kind of logic that is turning the world into a nanny state- which is exactly like a police state except with nicer wallpaper.
How is this different from the second memory stick example ? The crime happens out my site, my property being used to commit it is beyond my knowledge and certainly beyond any intent or gain for me !
Do you seriously suggest that people should delete any music/movie/ebook files they have on memory sticks before using them to share data files with colleagues ?
Well that is the RIAA's logic, making a person legally liable for the actions of another - not for having assisted in the actions, merely for not preventing access to something (in the loosest meaning of the world) which was used to perform those actions.
Ooooh, I like that. /. actually has a useful contribution for you here ? With a little help from me :p )
@NewYorkCountyLawyer... can this work !?!?!? (I don't actually mean to ask for real legal advice, but you are our resident anti-RIAA lawyer and you ARE handling these cases... maybe
I mean, when you think about it, it is in practise MUCH more like an unlicensed radio broadcast than like any other form of copyright infringement (you're not selling an illegally made DVD copy on the streetcorner after all)- so shouldn't the penalties and laws be the same ?
This could end the regime for good, if it requires fileshares to get licenses to broadcast music, that's a flat rate thing, and it leaves the only potential criminality existing in users who keep the copies.
We already have systems in place for legal internet radio streaming, which is handled very much like radio broadcast... is having files in your share-folder really different from an on-demand webradio stream ? The software to save streams permanently are easily available and at least this will put the legal question back where it belongs: with the downloaders.
Oh, and for the record, I am not American so I have no democrat bias. Even if I did, Lincoln was the founder of the republican party. I think he would spin in his grave if he knew that his party would one day NOMINATE G.W. Bush for president, let alone elect him... TWICE*.
*And I am using 'elect' in what is probably the loosest sense since Robert Mugabe's version.
>>Lincoln had more support during the CIVIL WAR than Bush has today !
>>Does that include people from the states that tried to secede? I'd be real convenient for your argument if they were no longer counted as U.S. citizens in those opinion polls...
Actually, yes it does. Have you noticed just HOW low Bush's most recent ratings are ? The seceding states did not even make up a full 50% of the US population, within those states pretty much EVER person who wasn't Caucasian would almost certainly have been supporting Lincoln and he had the support of the greater majority of the Northern states.
I would say a worst case scenario would have put Lincoln at, what, 50% support ? Lets be seriously pessimistic and say 30% ! That still beats Bush on the latest polls by a huge margin. Some polls have put Bush's approval ratings at UNDER 10% ! That, has NEVER happened before. EVER.
Actually the only difference is that there is no copying involved, but let's add it.
Say I rip a bunch of my CD's into a digital format, mp3 for argument's sake then I put all these on a memory stick to plug into my car's mp3 player (the point of all this).
There is nothing hypothetical so far, I have done that, and I listen to music I legally own every time I drive this way.
Now imagine I forget a window open, somebody reaches in and grabs the memory stick. This person now has copies of the music, which were legal when I made them (fair use) but are not legal for him to have (he doesn't own the originals) - am I guilty of 'making the infringing material available' ?
Okay so in this case there is clear theft of property, let's take it a step closer to the filesharing example. Say I also have on the same memory stick a spreadsheet for work. A colleague needs the data I have been working on and in the interest of expediency I just hand him the stick to copy this file (which I legally own the copyright on) with my permission and the intention that he should give me the memory stick back when he is done.
As he browses to copy the spreadsheet, he notices that I have the latest 36 Crazy Fists album on the memory stick and, without my knowledge or intent, copies it. Sure I gave him access to the stick, the copies on it are legal, but I did not give him permission to copy the music (which he has no legal right to - I would argue he has a moral right but that's an issue for activism and lobbying, under current law it's not allowed) - but I also did not delete all the music or copy the file myself to actively prevent him from getting at the music... is this 'making available' ?
How is this different from filesharing ? And in this case, the files were actually copied.
These guys now want me to be liable for copyright infringement just for HAVING the songs on the stick which I let my colleague borrow. Even if he never copies them !
This is just spiraling ever deeper into the absurd.
That may have been true if he had done so AT THE TIME. Hawking SILENTLY rejected the knighthood many years ago, but OTHER people have been calling for him to be knighted every year. These constant requests from the public ultimately led to Hawking choosing to end the suspense by just saying that it was HIS OWN decision not to be knighted many years ago and that they can stop pestering the UK government about it.
What ?
I dare you to walk into any library and say 'please show me the license you have for each book you lend out'. They won't have a single sheet like that. Libraries do not have any kind of certificate either that says
"This is a public library certified to lend books under agreement with the book publishers association of $COUNTRY"
There is nothing like that. Libraries are NOT Licensed to lend out media - because nobody NEEDS a license to lend out MEDIA. Copyright does NOT prohibit lending to another party ! It prohibits copying and DISTRIBUTION OF COPIES.
Lending out an original is not copyright infringement or even MENTIONED in the copyright ACT of ANY country !
But lets get a fairer example then. Almost all libraries have more than books, you can usually also take out DVD's and music CD's - the selection is more limited than a music store but then again they tend to have a BETTER selection of the true artistic greats (even if they are less commercially successful).
These are almost always available for lending, and always easy to copy. If I loan a DVD from the library and copy it has the library 'made it available for piracy' ? I am deliberately NOT comparing with a video store which rents it out commercially because they ARE licensed (or at least SHOULD be) and pay a licensing fee for the right to do so.
Libraries are not and never should be because they are not renting out (which copyright covers) they are LENDING out (which it doesn't).
And even if in your country libraries need to have a license to lend media (does this apply to the small library of childrens books at the local creche ? my home library if a friend wants to borrow one of my discworld books ?) then it would surely not be a license to allow people to copy what they lend - the library has no control over what you do with the media you borrow once you walk out the door, if you copy it, it is your infringement and regardless of any license-to-lend or lack of it, them making it available to you is NOT an infringement.
Sorry I think the library analogy to their 'making available' argument is perfectly valid. In fact, I would have been MORE (but not much) sympathetic if they were trying to claim that making available in a fileshare is unauthorised broadcast (this is not handled identically in all copyright systems - in South Africa for example they had to amend the creative commons licenses to include broadcast because redistribution right doesn't include broadcast here but it does in America) - after all if you play a song on the radio without a license it's still broadcast regardless of whether anybody is listening. I do think though that they are well aware that any judge will decide it ISN'T a form of broadcast which is why they haven't tried it. But to say that making available = distribution even if nobody downloaded is outright ludicrous.
>Who was a famous general and dictator.
Since when does that mean he was right ? In fact, since what he is famous for was trying to conquer the world (and nearly succeeding) through war of conquest I would say that he is probably the last person whose opinions on defense I would trust. Napoleon never thought a defensive war in his entire life. Wars of conquest are by definition offensive.
So he certainly couldn't have been describing the kind of defense that worked for him.
Maybe he meant the kind of defense that worked AGAINST him ? But that doesn't rhyme either... he was defeated ultimately at Waterloo - in Britain, who was fighting a defensive war. They didn't attack him in France to defend against him. That counts as the only time he was ever defeated because the defeat was so total that he ended up imprisoned on Elba with his French empire in tatters by the end of it.
So basically, how the hell would he know ? The only example he ever saw of a successful defense was NOT a case of a good offense ! Did it ever occur to anybody that when a man is busy conquering the world you really should take any advice he has on how to defend yourself with a pacific-ocean load of salt ? After all he had everything to lose by teaching the world how to defend themselves well... but on the other hand he he had everything to gain by teaching the world how to defend themselves poorly.
Like I said... authority won't impress me, I asked if anybody could PROVE it. In fact, if you think about it, it's probably an unprovable claim because you cannot rerun history with different parameters to compare the results.
You know, your analogy is very much better than my attempts below to explain the idiocy. This is so true. Libraries let anybody borrow a book, usually free of charge, and most even have photocopiers inside the building where you could copy as much as you want for a nominal per-page charge. They'll warn you that more than a few pages is infringement but how many varies from country to country (in South Africa it's 1/3) and of course there are purposes for which even 100% would be legal (education for example) so they won't really check up.
Nobody would agree with suing librarians for a fortune because of this - how is file sharing any different ? Merely putting the files in a share is no different to letting people borrow books from a library. If somebody now makes a copy the library is not infringing. Even the 'download is itself a copy' argument fails because many books in a library are NOT allowed to be taken home but you are always welcome to copy pages of interest for further study from those and that makes pretty much an exact same scenario,
I am basically posting my agreement with you very clearly because I think you hit the nail on the head and I could see room to expand a little. If I had modpoints though - you would get all of them as this is by far the best analogy I have ever seen on this topic.
One thing worth remembering of course is that the RIAA is not alone, it has little clones all over the world that follow in the footsteps of it's master (not least because they want to be able to buy resell rights for RIAA member companies' products). Here in South Africa for example we have ASAMI - which as gone so far as to say in public that 'recording a TV-show on your VCR is technically copyright infringement but we don't intend to prosecute that one simply because it would be impractical in cost compared to the damage done".
Actually, South Africa has a subset of copyright law known as Fair Dealing which is pretty much identical in wording to the US Fair Use law and recoridng a TV show to VCR is entirely legal. So is showing a DVD of a documentary to a class of schoolchildren.
Of course they have happily confused plagiarism with copyright whenever it suited them and love to call it 'theft' - despite the fact that copyright infringement isn't theft - it's a civil infringement not a criminal one - and stories of large scale seizures of 'pirate DVD manufacturing warehouses' are common on the news.
So the impact that these kinds of idiocies in the US legal system has is global because the RIAA's minions will attempt to subvert any laws in any countries to suit.
Let's just see what we have in this post (a fairly representative sample I think):
-Merely making it available is the same actually giving somebody a copy... by that thinking if I forget to lock my door and somebody steals my fridge... I'm as guilty of theft as he is ? I would go so far as saying that sharing music isn't copyright infringement at all, downloading it may well be, but making it available (Especially as it frequently happens without the person's knowledge) is not. It could even be argued that there is significant legal uses for sharing music - for example to save a friend who also owns the same album the massive effort involved in a format shift you already made. If others now download the music from you as WELL - without your intent... are you still guilty ? This is a side-effect of the technology and has nothing to do with what you did - sharing with somebody who had the RIGHT to get a copy of the music (he already PAID for it). There is no such thing as 'attempted' infringements in civil cases, especially not copyright.
-Oh we shouldn't need to actually PROOF our claims. Not only is it enough to say you 'made it available', heck they think they don't even need to back that up !
-When they THEMSELVES download the music which this entire thing is about them claiming to own in order to proof it's available from you... that download BY THEM can be counted for damages ? How the hell are they damaged if they download their OWN music ? Before I pointed out one example of a P2P usage to share with a valid, authorized downloader - who could be MORE valid and authorized than the copyright owner ? They could try to make a case against a CD-owner having the right to DOWNLOAD rather than RIP digital copies -- but surely not that the OWNER of the copyright isn't an authorized downloader ! What is worse, if they are damaging their own copyright by downloading it... wouldn't that make this a case of evidence obtained illegally (through the breach of the very law in fact they are trying to proof you breached ?). It's not just legally unsound, it's logically unsound (to put it politely).
And that's not even thinking of things like copy protection mechanisms which are outright attempts to make it impossible to excercise our fair user rights. It seems clear to me they only care about that side of copyright law they can abuse to make money. They cannot get rid of fair use law outright, so they try to technologically strong-arm it away from us.
Frankly, I believe that a judge should say that no person or corporation can claim protection under a law they repeatedly and continuously fail to respect. If you do not respect fair use (which implies no effort made to prevent people from making backup copies), how can you claim protection under the rest of the copyright act ?
How much longer are we going to put up with this ?
Well if your spelling, grammar and generally well articulated views are indicative of the quality of your education and critical thinking skills then your views must be well thought-out and considered.
I am not trying for an ad-hominem attack actually. That would be the case if I said that being stupid also automatically makes you wrong. What is true though is that if you pay the same amount of attention to the world around you as you do to expressing yourself clearly then quite frankly it is physically impossible for your opinions to not be ill-informed.
Bush's popularity rating is at a record-low for any president EVER. Lincoln had more support during the CIVIL WAR than Bush has today ! Even the many people who fell for his propaganda when the war was launched has since realized they were duped... you apparently have not... maybe it's wrong but when I read your writing style I see a case of either extreme stupidity or (worse) extreme laziness... neither makes me inclined to take your opinions very seriously.
Everyone makes the occasional typo but your post reads more like badly transcribed pseudo phonetics than English spelling ! I say badly because 'our' and 'are' doesn't even sound the same - yet you confused them consistently several times. If they sound the same in some regional dialect you speak, I highly recommend learning a little about the world beyond a three-block radius of your house.
Oh and for the record: Islamafacists is not a word - if it was a word it would be prejudicial. What's worse, it's not only prejudicial but stupid as it seems to imply that facism is somehow caused or encouraged by Islam. Odd because the philosophies of Al Queda are not inline with mainstream Islam and mind you is very different from Mussolini's philosophies... so the people you are were referring to are neither Islamic nor Fascists.
>But don't forget, especially in war, the best defense is often a strong offense.
Aaah yes, that old one. Everybody knows that the best defense is a good offense... since when ? When did we ever actually prove this ?
This reminds me of another quote:"We must retaliate before they have the chance to strike !"
Just because people have believed something for thousands of years does not make it true. Hell most of the people here tend to dismiss all religion out of hand as stupidity simply because they don't hold with the idea of believing something based on authority alone.
Yet many of those same people will perpetuate the very ideas that are the reason we (as in, the entire human race) seem to be in a permanent state of war now.
I actually think that some wars, some of the time are in fact needed. War is usually the only way to free slaves, overthrow tyrants or reverse severely exploitive social structures (point to ponder - the quality of life of the poor in modern first world countries are probably slightly worse than that of the average peasant before the French revolution, and that of the rich is massively higher so the discrepancy is far greater - if our new class system leads to a global revolution by the poor we really have only ourselves to blame and it's not so far fetched, watching the news it's clear that the first scuffles have already started)
I suppose we cannot live without military just yet - but it really should be purely for defensive purposes... if the US (and every other country) only ever struck out against those who attacked them - just enough to prevent further attacks we would see the end of all wars within a decade. But the 'lets destroy the country that attacked us' mentality just leads to more and more people who are motivated to now attack you(us) in return.
So no, the best defense in war is probably never a good offense. The best defense is to make an attack impossible (for 'terrorism' you do that with better law enforcement, not with soldiers, for armies, you do it just by having soldiers - there is no need for those soldiers to be deployed otherwise - they just need to exist so that if an army invades they can chase them back out of the country again).
Where you cannot prevent attacks how about we let the soldiers do what the police have always done ? Same rules. That means that the military as a whole is restricted to minimum necessary force.
If we were truly focussed on defense only, the US could use a military 1/10 of what the US has. South Africa would never have been able to get that arms deal passed no matter how many ministers were bribed because we simply didn't need all those big gunships. Anybody who invades us is almost certainly going to be from the north and that will be over land. We already had the strongest military on land in the region years ago.
The problem is, we don't focus on defense. The US in particular does not. In fact, they don't even pretend to anymore. The US has never in the last 50 years for one day not had soldiers deployed somewhere in a foreign nation fighting somebody. In the greater majority of cases you were deposing democratically elected leaders and replacing them with military dictators because you didn't like the policies of politicians who thought they should act in the interests of their citizens rather than your politicians! Nicaragua and Brazil weren't even the worst of it.
Of course, those people whom you condemned to decades of oppression and suffering don't really like you very much today - and believe me they know who is to blame. They know who destroyed their freedom.
Sorry, I don't buy the idea that you can defend your freedom by taking freedom away from the citizens of other nations. All you've done is created thousands of countries where everybody knows you as the oppressors, or the people who put the oppressors in place as your puppets... I'll bet that kind of global ill feeling makes it so much easier for your enemies to hide and recruit new members.
So while I agree that a de
Discussing your sex life on /. is such an effective proof of virginity the Silver Ring club now uses it to evaluate membership applications !
Heh, your post reminded me of this and this .
Disclaimer: yes I am the person responsible for that crime against humanity but those strips were done a long time ago - they just fitted the occasion frighteningly well..
>Sort of. I would not suggest studying the effects of sticking your hand in a blender, .... oh wait, blender.... never mind.
Bite my shiny metal