For example, MTV used the footage of the moon landing in their early advertising because it was available to them freely.
The footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing, like all works of the United States government, entered the public domain upon creation (17 USC 105). "A 'work of the United States Government' is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties" (101).
the author has been dead for decades, and his/her body has already decomposed many times over. They don't care either way at that point
Part of the common-law concept of private property includes the right to exert control of your property even after you have died, through a "last will and testament." And yes, estates are generally greedier than living authors. (Not that I'm claiming copyrights are property or anything.)
More about GOSH's perpetual copyright on Peter Pan
on
What Is Public Domain?
·
· Score: 2
Shouldn't Peter Pan have become public domain? I think it's been long enough. Instead every production of Peter Pan pays royalties to an English Children's hospital.
Here's some more information on the perpetual copyright on J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. This copyright is subject to compulsory licensing; royalties go to Great Ormond Street Hospital. Disney will get a dose of its own medicine when it tries to release Return to Never Land on DVD in Region 2.
This applies only in the United Kingdom. Such a literal perpetual copyright cannot happen in the United States because of the "limited times" clause in the Constitution, Article I, section 8, clause 8. However, this does not stop Congress from declaring: "Resolved, That it is the policy of the Congress of the United States to enact a twenty (20)-year copyright term extension every twenty (20) years," unless Eldred convinces the Supremes otherwise.
It's rare you see a completely original idea (... The Matrix)
The Matrix was not entirely original. What it didn't borrow from Ghost in the Shell it borrowed from the Christian Bible and East Asian wire-fu movies (CTHD's predecessors).
Mickey Mouse has fallen into PD despite Bono Act
on
What Is Public Domain?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
If not, maybe some of the movie copyrights can be invalidated -- don't you love irony?
Therefore, because there is a public domain DVD encrypted with CSS, and because the DMCA's circumvention ban (17 USC 1201) affects only "works protected under this title" (i.e. copyrighted works), DeCSS is now legal if marketed only to decrypt public domain content on DVDs (1201(a)(2); 1201(b)(1)). Good news for Charlie Chaplin DVD collectors.
It costs money to pay people to manufacture and lay the fiber. It costs money to pay people to make the routers. It costs money to pay people to give users technical support. And the cost of people isn't going down.
For these changes to happen, DSL, Cable, and all other internet providers will have to do this metering system
Or just have DSL not available at all because you don't live within 3 km of the switch, and it costs $200,000 to move. Satellite? 1000 millisecond ping? Give me a break!
NOFX, NiN, Nirvana, and Eminem are considered OBSCURE? Geez, I'd hate to hear whatever you would call mainstream.
Some Eminem releases are obscure. Some NIN releases (everything but PHM, Broken, Fixed, TDS, FDTS, and The Fragile) are obscure. They're much easier to find on WinMX than on CDNow.
192 or VBR encoded with maximum quality with the latest Lame encoder
that is, LAME 3.92, lame --preset r3mix
rivals the professional hardware based mpeg2 layer 3 encoder we have here at work.
No schmidt. "MPEG-2 layer 3" often means MP3 at 22 kHz, which would cut out all frequencies above 10.5 kHz (Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem plus the transition band of a real filter).
(Background for mods: Some people claim to use P2P to discover music not approved by Clear Channel, the Microsoft of radio broadcasting. Many have suggested independent FM radio as an alternative.)
as anyone can get a LPFM license
Not anymore. The FCC has effectively closed the low-power FM license program to new applicants: "Applications for construction permits for new LPFM stations or major changes to LPFM permittees or licensees cannot be filed until the next application filing window period. We cannot advise as to when the next application filing window might be." No filing windows have been opened in the past year.
with such a common word as a name, it's extremely unlikely that they could trademark it for anything other than a newsreader
with such a common word as a name, it's extremely unlikely that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak could trademark "Apple" for anything other than a home microcomputer
It used to be that companies would rarely ship a game if it was not bug free.
This is still the case with software for game consoles. If the quality of the boxed product is important to you, then PC gaming may not be for you. Buy a Sony PS2 console and buy games for that.
If you owned a copy of the game, would it be illegal for you to port it for yourself, and never release the port? Without distributing it, you shouldn't run afoul of copyright, should you?
First of all, 17 USC 106 prohibits merely preparing derivative works. Not distribute, prepare.
Second, it would be 100% wasted effort, as you would have no way to advance yourself in the world through something you keep entirely secret.
By slapping a $100,000 fine on you for breaking the DMCA. Looking at the notes on 17 USC 1201, I find that this (preventing freeloaders from eavesdropping on subscription content) is actually what the DMCA's circumvention ban was designed for, not for preventing people from playing what they have already bought.
Replace nested tables with nested divs
on
Return of the WaSP
·
· Score: 1
how would you generate a page that looks like Slashdot without using nested tables?
Put the left side bar into a div and float:left it. Then put a wide left margin on the left side of the main content div, wide enough to skip the left side bar.
Then use nested divs to indent the various comments with a wide left margin.
the Semantic Web is all about supporting software agents.
Software agents do not have purchasing patterns that can be influenced by advertising. Therefore, in order to recoup the costs of hosting a Semantic Web site, almost all commercial Semantic Web sites will have to be subscription sites.
Now I realize that I didn't really mean "forge the hashes". What I meant was how will users know that a given hash corresponds to a file that actually contains the correct sound? A limewire-like rating system can be exploited easily if the RIAA writes a bot to vote for its own broken files.
if the protocol is not hacked
It will be cracked, if only by the NSA, who passes the information on to the FBI (a unit of the Department of Justice) so that the FBI can investigate criminal copyright infringement. Security through obscurity doesn't work.
and the program is closed source
Any program compiled into a binary can be disassembled to a machine's assembly language and translated (by hand) into C++.
So if say eminem released his album online beforehand (or some singles) and put this type of watermark in it, with perhaps a message in it like : "Preorder the cd now and recieve $5 off, or a free hat". I feel that would be alot more productive than this crap.
Any application based on the uniqueness of Internet Protocol addresses will fail on the real network. At least with Verizon Online dial-up service, all you have to do to get a different IP address is hang up then dial up.
[trying to get a movie in theatrical release and getting a different movie entirely]
This is actually a bug in the AVI format. If I remember correctly, AVI stores quite a bit of meta-data about codecs and the like at the end of the bitstream, making it impossible to watch any part of the movie until the whole movie has finished downloading. This is why we should switch to more streamable bitstream formats such as Ogg or QuickTime. If a pirate were to use a streaming-friendly format, her clients would be able to look for the mode-7 intro titles after about twenty minutes of downloading.
[With a system involving hashes of the contents of the compressed audio data,] we don't have to deal with garbage like this, and also have a guaranteed, legit (so to speak), quality copy (at least at the said bitrate) to download.
If the hashes aren't signed, the labels can forge the hashes. If, on the other hand, the hashes are signed, the labels can send takedown notices to the sites hosting the trusted rippers' public keys.
signing the.bz2 or.gz archive with the authors GPG/PGP key
So how do I verify that the public key against which the archive's hash was signed actually belongs to the developer and that there is no malicious (wo)man-in-the-middle sending me forged keys? How do I extend an OpenPGP web of trust beyond the boundaries of my home town? I've looked at the GPG manual, but it just dismisses the face-to-face key signing problem as a "social problem, not a technological problem, therefore Not Our Problem".
Slashdot Mirror
For example, MTV used the footage of the moon landing in their early advertising because it was available to them freely.
The footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing, like all works of the United States government, entered the public domain upon creation (17 USC 105). "A 'work of the United States Government' is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties" (101).
It's MY statement, not theirs. They can go write something of their own if they have something to say.
What if most of the 30,000 possible "statements" have been used up?
the author has been dead for decades, and his/her body has already decomposed many times over. They don't care either way at that point
Part of the common-law concept of private property includes the right to exert control of your property even after you have died, through a "last will and testament." And yes, estates are generally greedier than living authors. (Not that I'm claiming copyrights are property or anything.)
Shouldn't Peter Pan have become public domain? I think it's been long enough. Instead every production of Peter Pan pays royalties to an English Children's hospital.
Here's some more information on the perpetual copyright on J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. This copyright is subject to compulsory licensing; royalties go to Great Ormond Street Hospital. Disney will get a dose of its own medicine when it tries to release Return to Never Land on DVD in Region 2.
This applies only in the United Kingdom. Such a literal perpetual copyright cannot happen in the United States because of the "limited times" clause in the Constitution, Article I, section 8, clause 8. However, this does not stop Congress from declaring: "Resolved, That it is the policy of the Congress of the United States to enact a twenty (20)-year copyright term extension every twenty (20) years," unless Eldred convinces the Supremes otherwise.
It's rare you see a completely original idea (... The Matrix)
The Matrix was not entirely original. What it didn't borrow from Ghost in the Shell it borrowed from the Christian Bible and East Asian wire-fu movies (CTHD's predecessors).
If not, maybe some of the movie copyrights can be invalidated -- don't you love irony?
Lauren Vanpelt has done the math and found that Mickey Mouse has already fallen into the public domain due to a faulty copyright notice. (Back then, "© 1929" wasn't enough; it had to be "© 1929 Walt Disney".)
Therefore, because there is a public domain DVD encrypted with CSS, and because the DMCA's circumvention ban (17 USC 1201) affects only "works protected under this title" (i.e. copyrighted works), DeCSS is now legal if marketed only to decrypt public domain content on DVDs (1201(a)(2); 1201(b)(1)). Good news for Charlie Chaplin DVD collectors.
Sonny Bono hit that tree, the concept of a vibrant public domain died.
Hate to break it to you my friend, but your average Flash navigation is small potatoes.
Grandparent was probably talking about the 500 KB site splash screens, not to mention Newgrounds.com (the home of Flash entertainment on the Web).
Bandwidth is free (to the ISP).
It costs money to pay people to manufacture and lay the fiber. It costs money to pay people to make the routers. It costs money to pay people to give users technical support. And the cost of people isn't going down.
For these changes to happen, DSL, Cable, and all other internet providers will have to do this metering system
Or just have DSL not available at all because you don't live within 3 km of the switch, and it costs $200,000 to move. Satellite? 1000 millisecond ping? Give me a break!
NOFX, NiN, Nirvana, and Eminem are considered OBSCURE? Geez, I'd hate to hear whatever you would call mainstream.
Some Eminem releases are obscure. Some NIN releases (everything but PHM, Broken, Fixed, TDS, FDTS, and The Fragile) are obscure. They're much easier to find on WinMX than on CDNow.
192 or VBR encoded with maximum quality with the latest Lame encoder
that is, LAME 3.92, lame --preset r3mix
rivals the professional hardware based mpeg2 layer 3 encoder we have here at work.
No schmidt. "MPEG-2 layer 3" often means MP3 at 22 kHz, which would cut out all frequencies above 10.5 kHz (Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem plus the transition band of a real filter).
(Background for mods: Some people claim to use P2P to discover music not approved by Clear Channel, the Microsoft of radio broadcasting. Many have suggested independent FM radio as an alternative.)
as anyone can get a LPFM license
Not anymore. The FCC has effectively closed the low-power FM license program to new applicants: "Applications for construction permits for new LPFM stations or major changes to LPFM permittees or licensees cannot be filed until the next application filing window period. We cannot advise as to when the next application filing window might be." No filing windows have been opened in the past year.
with such a common word as a name, it's extremely unlikely that they could trademark it for anything other than a newsreader
with such a common word as a name, it's extremely unlikely that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak could trademark "Apple" for anything other than a home microcomputer
It used to be that companies would rarely ship a game if it was not bug free.
This is still the case with software for game consoles. If the quality of the boxed product is important to you, then PC gaming may not be for you. Buy a Sony PS2 console and buy games for that.
If you owned a copy of the game, would it be illegal for you to port it for yourself, and never release the port? Without distributing it, you shouldn't run afoul of copyright, should you?
First of all, 17 USC 106 prohibits merely preparing derivative works. Not distribute, prepare.
Second, it would be 100% wasted effort, as you would have no way to advance yourself in the world through something you keep entirely secret.
how do they stop you from using the system?
By slapping a $100,000 fine on you for breaking the DMCA. Looking at the notes on 17 USC 1201, I find that this (preventing freeloaders from eavesdropping on subscription content) is actually what the DMCA's circumvention ban was designed for, not for preventing people from playing what they have already bought.
how would you generate a page that looks like Slashdot without using nested tables?
Put the left side bar into a div and float:left it. Then put a wide left margin on the left side of the main content div, wide enough to skip the left side bar.
Then use nested divs to indent the various comments with a wide left margin.
the Semantic Web is all about supporting software agents.
Software agents do not have purchasing patterns that can be influenced by advertising. Therefore, in order to recoup the costs of hosting a Semantic Web site, almost all commercial Semantic Web sites will have to be subscription sites.
They can't forge the hashes
Now I realize that I didn't really mean "forge the hashes". What I meant was how will users know that a given hash corresponds to a file that actually contains the correct sound? A limewire-like rating system can be exploited easily if the RIAA writes a bot to vote for its own broken files.
if the protocol is not hacked
It will be cracked, if only by the NSA, who passes the information on to the FBI (a unit of the Department of Justice) so that the FBI can investigate criminal copyright infringement. Security through obscurity doesn't work.
and the program is closed source
Any program compiled into a binary can be disassembled to a machine's assembly language and translated (by hand) into C++.
So if say eminem released his album online beforehand (or some singles) and put this type of watermark in it, with perhaps a message in it like : "Preorder the cd now and recieve $5 off, or a free hat". I feel that would be alot more productive than this crap.
It's possible to hide a watermark in an MP3. For instance, Aphex Twin hid a picture of his face in a song, and I've written a program to hide text.
IPs below a certain score don't get shown
Any application based on the uniqueness of Internet Protocol addresses will fail on the real network. At least with Verizon Online dial-up service, all you have to do to get a different IP address is hang up then dial up.
Some people (myself included) actually rename the files after they download them
This does not make it unique. KaZaA and WinMX find multi-source downloads solely on the basis of the MD5 hash of the file contents.
[trying to get a movie in theatrical release and getting a different movie entirely]
This is actually a bug in the AVI format. If I remember correctly, AVI stores quite a bit of meta-data about codecs and the like at the end of the bitstream, making it impossible to watch any part of the movie until the whole movie has finished downloading. This is why we should switch to more streamable bitstream formats such as Ogg or QuickTime. If a pirate were to use a streaming-friendly format, her clients would be able to look for the mode-7 intro titles after about twenty minutes of downloading.
[With a system involving hashes of the contents of the compressed audio data,] we don't have to deal with garbage like this, and also have a guaranteed, legit (so to speak), quality copy (at least at the said bitrate) to download.
If the hashes aren't signed, the labels can forge the hashes. If, on the other hand, the hashes are signed, the labels can send takedown notices to the sites hosting the trusted rippers' public keys.
signing the .bz2 or .gz archive with the authors GPG/PGP key
So how do I verify that the public key against which the archive's hash was signed actually belongs to the developer and that there is no malicious (wo)man-in-the-middle sending me forged keys? How do I extend an OpenPGP web of trust beyond the boundaries of my home town? I've looked at the GPG manual, but it just dismisses the face-to-face key signing problem as a "social problem, not a technological problem, therefore Not Our Problem".
tetris
Ever tried Tetanus On Drugs for Game Boy Advance? It's like playing Tetris on LSD, except without having to run from the DEA.