"The the term "owner" is used aptly and correctly - it is not convoluted. The "people" do not own Brtiney Spears' songs - she does (or her music label, however her contract is made).
Even public domain songs are not, generally, owned by the people - it is made free for people to use within certain guidelines (i.e. you do not make an assertion that you created the music)."
Are you sure you are not a RIAA shill? You say the darndest things, without having actual recourse to facts to back them up.
If you would take a peek at the US Constitution, you will see that Section 8, Clause 8 reads "[The Congress shall have Power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
In other words: the default, according to the founding fathers, is that authors and inventors do not have an exclusive right to their writings and discoveries. Ownership, if anything, is such an exclusive right. Without an exclusive right, there is no ownership. Although there are exclusive rights imaginable that would not amount to ownership (not every animal is a dog), ownership always requires an exclusive right (a dog is an animal).
The public domain, unlike what you are suggesting, is not some kind of reservation where works and inventions end their lives by the grace of congress. It is the whole area of works not or no longer covered by law. Just like the possession of daylight is generally not covered by the law, and thus can be considered "of the people", so is the possession of public domain works not covered by the law: they are of the people, to do with as you like.
In other words: I can make any assertion I want that I wrote the music. I would likely be exposed as a liar, but lying is not against the law. The law has better things to do than to concern itself with plagiarists.
If you want some examples: the Disney corporation is well-known for appropriating (and "copyrighting") public stories. Although I haven't studied these works closely, I seriously doubt that anywhere on a Pocahontas or Little Mermaid print you will find a statement that Disney, in fact, has not written these stories. Which is perfectly fine.
"Protection of the music (or any copyright material) does not require it to be hidden under lock and key so people can't enjoy it. Protection means that if you want to posses the music in some format you will go out and pay for it (assuming the artist charges). Protection means that you can't lay claim to the work (unless you created it)."
Thank you for explaining the English language to me, and redefining it at the same time to serve your purpose.
Protection of a work means none of these things you mention. If you don't want to engage in discussion, or are only interested in sabotaging it, then shut up or go play somewhere else.
"So if I all the sudden start selling software to others for pennies then tell people that if they just register with me I will give them a small cut it is their fault they are not getting paid?"
This is how radio works in your country. Either deal with it or change the law.
" Sorry, it is kind of hard to find Royalty who will pay you to simply sit around and compose for them.
Music subsidies don't work today like then did then. Also not everyone with a family can just pick up and tour."
Isn't it odd, then, that both in the US and Europe musicians earn their keep (and pay off their huge debts to the recording companies) through performing and teaching?
Producer Steve Albini: "The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month."
Professor of Information Jurisprudence Martin Kretschmer: "Only a small minority of artists reaches ordinary living standards from copyright income. [...] Earnings from non-copyright, and even non-artistic activities, are an important source of income for most creators."
"I should think that any reasonable person will tell you that downloading it is illegal.
Well, at least in the USA and probably almost anywhere else that has adopted the Berne convention"
I would be very much surprised if Germany, The Netherlands and Canada had not signed the Berne Convention, yet in these countries (and probably more) making copies for personal use is legal.
(The exceptions in the Netherlands to this rule are software, buildings and a third thing I forget.)
"The spirit of the law intended to protect this music"
In that case it is serving its purpose well. Music is best protected when disseminated as widely as possible.
Perhaps you meant some other word than "protect"? Perhaps. I am afraid I know too little about Russian law to be of help there.
Funny, though; when the law works against the RIAA shills trolling these forums, the law suddenly contains "loopholes". I never hear about the pretty big "loopholes" that the US copyright law has with regards to the intention of the founding fathers.
"Unlike music formats like MP3, AAC and Ogg Vorbis, lossless encoding results in no loss of quality - the music file sounds exactly like the original."
Unless you encode at ridiculously low quality, for 99% of the people and for 99% of the tracks, MP3, AAC and Ogg Vorbis files sound exactly like the original too. They were designed to do that.
FLAC is useful if you expect to do things with your tracks down the road.
"Thanks steve!!"
Did your mother not teach you never to speak with your mouth full?
"Ron Avitzur got laid off from his job as a software consultant at Apple in 1993. But he refused to give up on his project, so he just kept coming in and working on it. Eventually he got the software (Apple's Graphing Calculator) QA'd, translated into 20 languages, and bundled into shipping Macs, all without actually being on the Apple payroll."
What isn't mentioned here is that Avitzur kept coming back without Apple knowing about it. If an ex-employee can walk onto a secured Apple campus and work on Mac OS software there, I think it is a bit of a stretch to assume that everyone who could have known about new developments at Apple has signed an NDA.
"Just FYI, the parliament did make significant amendments to the directive, effectively keeping the status quo and keeping software patents invalid, back in September 2003, but in the process made some parts of the directive contradict itself."
"Keeping it invalid" suggests that software patents were already invalid, but from what I understand several EU member states have validated software patents, basing their rulings and laws on the EPOs near-criminal interpretation of the European Patent Convention.
The government of the European Union always tries to position the EU to outsiders as a market, rather than a political system. As such, the EU feels it is important that laws are streamlined, "harmonized" as they call it. In such a free market, they claim, having different interpretations of the EPC makes it harder for a citizen or company of one member state to enter the market of another member state.
Whether this is true or not does not really matter much; enough people believe it to be true.
The reason some directive that actively outlaws software patents is better than no directive at all, is that it provides (or should provide) clarity about whether patents are legal or not.
# Help you capitalize on your idea # Give you a lead over others so that you are the only one who can legally use it for a while"
I think that if you invent something, it means you already have a headstart. No need for patents in that area.
"# Put the idea for all others to see and extend on"
Others are not allowed to extend on the idea until the patent term has run out.
"Blame the patent office for granting those patents, but not the idea behind patents in general."
Why not?
There is much that is wrong behind "the idea of patents". First of all, it forbids a citizen to do something, which should never happen until it has been proven that damage will arise from not forbidding the citizen that thing.
Also, patents are monopolies. Monopolies stagnate markets, and stagnating markets are bad at funding research.
This, perhaps (very perhaps!), would not have been so bad if governments had no other instruments to stimulate innovation, whatsoever. As it turns out, governments have plenty of instruments to stimulate innovation, and know about them too. Admittedly, these instruments may be no better than patents, but at least there is a choice.
Patents are bad. We barely tolerate them, because we expect they create some good (although no-one has been able to show me one scrap of research that actually proves patents are beneficial). Our efforts should be continuously focussed on discarding or weakening patents in favour of other, better instruments. Instead, our governments give in to the richest lobbies and strengthen patents. It's pathetic.
"Yes, and Free Software/Software Libre has no ideological agenda whatsoever, right, troll?"
To the contrary, the FSF's agenda is purely ideological.
"OSI defines the term now, and Shared Source doesn't misses the Open Source Definition by a country mile."
Corporations do not define the meaning of words. If you ask Joe Average what Open Source means, he is most likely not going to come up with anything remotely resembling the OSI definition.
"troll"
Ah, well, I must concede this round to you then, you use words that are much more mature than mine.
"Open Source means you can modify and redistribute in most cases. You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?"
To the contrary. Open Source is a propaganda term thought up by Eric Raymond. Being a propaganda term, it means whatever its users want it to mean. However, I am not an Open Source flunky, so I interpret the term Open Source as what Eric Raymond originally wanted it to mean.
Raymond wanted to point out that if programmers could look at the code, they could suggest improvements. He thought that these suggestions could help improve the code: "A thousand eyes make all bugs shallow".
In order for Open Source to function, programmers should be able to see the code and be allowed to comment on it. Ideally they should be able to run it and to modify it themselves, but I do not see how that is necessary. Shared Source is Open Source.
They have set up mailing lists for your questions. Perhaps not very professional, but I doubt they have the resources to help out every passing fool. Or did you actually pay them for their services?
"Even if you agree with this guy's politics, applying his logic to other causes would endanger a lot of people. What other property is justified to destroy with fire? If he set fire to an empty apartment block to protest suburban sprawl or urban blight, would that justify the sentence?"
According to your reasoning, somebody barbecueing should get a life sentence.
Punishment should fit the crime. If there was no immediate danger to other people, it is moronic to sentence somebody under a law that was set up to punish endangerment. And although I don't know if there was danger to other people, I sincerely doubt setting fire to three cars poses three times the threat.
"In all seriousiness, how does comparing a nuclear reactor indictant relate to the FCC? The two agencies, as pointed out by the parent are two different agencies, and the scope of inpact is significantly different."
It's about government regulated behaviour, and the comparitive weights we apply to them.
Somebody thought they were very comparable: the government. The government decided that two vastly different types of behaviour, i.e. obscenities and careless treatment of nuclear energy, could both be regulated by fining undesirable behaviour. The government has countless ways of regulation at its disposal, but for these two vastly different things it chose the exact same instrument.
It could be argued that "what do you think is worse, X or Y?" is an unfair question, or one that cannot be reasonably answered, but that would be merely your opinion. I am willing to bet that you will find millions in the USA who are not only willing to answer such a question, but will do so without hesitation, and without thinking the question odd.
As for the scope of the impact of these fines, sure, it would be hard to compare them. How would you go about it? Or would you refuse to evaluate the government's fining policy simply because you think it cannot be done?
From what I understand, the decency thing has to do with what any given community deems indecent? If enough Slashdotters band together to claim indecency everytime somebody says "Baby Jesus"...
"In other words, you're asking for something like 100 times the content (in bits), for the same price. I think that counts as an example of not getting it."
Slashdot Mirror
"The the term "owner" is used aptly and correctly - it is not convoluted. The "people" do not own Brtiney Spears' songs - she does (or her music label, however her contract is made).
Even public domain songs are not, generally, owned by the people - it is made free for people to use within certain guidelines (i.e. you do not make an assertion that you created the music)."
Are you sure you are not a RIAA shill? You say the darndest things, without having actual recourse to facts to back them up.
If you would take a peek at the US Constitution, you will see that Section 8, Clause 8 reads "[The Congress shall have Power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
In other words: the default, according to the founding fathers, is that authors and inventors do not have an exclusive right to their writings and discoveries. Ownership, if anything, is such an exclusive right. Without an exclusive right, there is no ownership. Although there are exclusive rights imaginable that would not amount to ownership (not every animal is a dog), ownership always requires an exclusive right (a dog is an animal).
The public domain, unlike what you are suggesting, is not some kind of reservation where works and inventions end their lives by the grace of congress. It is the whole area of works not or no longer covered by law. Just like the possession of daylight is generally not covered by the law, and thus can be considered "of the people", so is the possession of public domain works not covered by the law: they are of the people, to do with as you like.
In other words: I can make any assertion I want that I wrote the music. I would likely be exposed as a liar, but lying is not against the law. The law has better things to do than to concern itself with plagiarists.
If you want some examples: the Disney corporation is well-known for appropriating (and "copyrighting") public stories. Although I haven't studied these works closely, I seriously doubt that anywhere on a Pocahontas or Little Mermaid print you will find a statement that Disney, in fact, has not written these stories. Which is perfectly fine.
"Protection of the music (or any copyright material) does not require it to be hidden under lock and key so people can't enjoy it. Protection means that if you want to posses the music in some format you will go out and pay for it (assuming the artist charges). Protection means that you can't lay claim to the work (unless you created it)."
Thank you for explaining the English language to me, and redefining it at the same time to serve your purpose.
Protection of a work means none of these things you mention. If you don't want to engage in discussion, or are only interested in sabotaging it, then shut up or go play somewhere else.
"So if I all the sudden start selling software to others for pennies then tell people that if they just register with me I will give them a small cut it is their fault they are not getting paid?"
This is how radio works in your country. Either deal with it or change the law.
" Sorry, it is kind of hard to find Royalty who will pay you to simply sit around and compose for them.
Music subsidies don't work today like then did then. Also not everyone with a family can just pick up and tour."
Isn't it odd, then, that both in the US and Europe musicians earn their keep (and pay off their huge debts to the recording companies) through performing and teaching?
Producer Steve Albini: "The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month."
Professor of Information Jurisprudence Martin Kretschmer: "Only a small minority of artists reaches ordinary living standards from copyright income. [...] Earnings from non-copyright, and even non-artistic activities, are an important source of income for most creators."
"The Russian site is not paying the musicians."
Do you have any proof for this? I seriously doubt that "the Russian site" can operate without a license from a levy collection organisation.
"last I heard, allofmp3.com is not a copyright owner"
I seriously doubt allofmp3.com is not a copyright owner.
(I use the word "owner" in the convoluted American sense here; strictly speaking, the people are the owners.)
"I should think that any reasonable person will tell you that downloading it is illegal.
Well, at least in the USA and probably almost anywhere else that has adopted the Berne convention"
I would be very much surprised if Germany, The Netherlands and Canada had not signed the Berne Convention, yet in these countries (and probably more) making copies for personal use is legal.
(The exceptions in the Netherlands to this rule are software, buildings and a third thing I forget.)
"The spirit of the law intended to protect this music"
In that case it is serving its purpose well. Music is best protected when disseminated as widely as possible.
Perhaps you meant some other word than "protect"? Perhaps. I am afraid I know too little about Russian law to be of help there.
Funny, though; when the law works against the RIAA shills trolling these forums, the law suddenly contains "loopholes". I never hear about the pretty big "loopholes" that the US copyright law has with regards to the intention of the founding fathers.
"Piece of advice for ya skippy, how about you head over to Google and see what comes up when you put in "EasyTree"."
Why on earth would your run-of-the-mill RIAA shill want to do that? After all, he has already trolled his response from you.
"Unlike music formats like MP3, AAC and Ogg Vorbis, lossless encoding results in no loss of quality - the music file sounds exactly like the original."
Unless you encode at ridiculously low quality, for 99% of the people and for 99% of the tracks, MP3, AAC and Ogg Vorbis files sound exactly like the original too. They were designed to do that.
FLAC is useful if you expect to do things with your tracks down the road.
"Thanks steve!!"
Did your mother not teach you never to speak with your mouth full?
"I would be *shocked* if Apple didn't have everyone sign NDAs the first day they started work (or even prior, probably comes with the offer letter)."
From The Tweeney Report:
"Ron Avitzur got laid off from his job as a software consultant at Apple in 1993. But he refused to give up on his project, so he just kept coming in and working on it. Eventually he got the software (Apple's Graphing Calculator) QA'd, translated into 20 languages, and bundled into shipping Macs, all without actually being on the Apple payroll."
What isn't mentioned here is that Avitzur kept coming back without Apple knowing about it. If an ex-employee can walk onto a secured Apple campus and work on Mac OS software there, I think it is a bit of a stretch to assume that everyone who could have known about new developments at Apple has signed an NDA.
"Just FYI, the parliament did make significant amendments to the directive, effectively keeping the status quo and keeping software patents invalid, back in September 2003, but in the process made some parts of the directive contradict itself."
"Keeping it invalid" suggests that software patents were already invalid, but from what I understand several EU member states have validated software patents, basing their rulings and laws on the EPOs near-criminal interpretation of the European Patent Convention.
The government of the European Union always tries to position the EU to outsiders as a market, rather than a political system. As such, the EU feels it is important that laws are streamlined, "harmonized" as they call it. In such a free market, they claim, having different interpretations of the EPC makes it harder for a citizen or company of one member state to enter the market of another member state.
Whether this is true or not does not really matter much; enough people believe it to be true.
The reason some directive that actively outlaws software patents is better than no directive at all, is that it provides (or should provide) clarity about whether patents are legal or not.
"The idea behind patents is
# Help you capitalize on your idea
# Give you a lead over others so that you are the only one who can legally use it for a while"
I think that if you invent something, it means you already have a headstart. No need for patents in that area.
"# Put the idea for all others to see and extend on"
Others are not allowed to extend on the idea until the patent term has run out.
"Blame the patent office for granting those patents, but not the idea behind patents in general."
Why not?
There is much that is wrong behind "the idea of patents". First of all, it forbids a citizen to do something, which should never happen until it has been proven that damage will arise from not forbidding the citizen that thing.
Also, patents are monopolies. Monopolies stagnate markets, and stagnating markets are bad at funding research.
This, perhaps (very perhaps!), would not have been so bad if governments had no other instruments to stimulate innovation, whatsoever. As it turns out, governments have plenty of instruments to stimulate innovation, and know about them too. Admittedly, these instruments may be no better than patents, but at least there is a choice.
Patents are bad. We barely tolerate them, because we expect they create some good (although no-one has been able to show me one scrap of research that actually proves patents are beneficial). Our efforts should be continuously focussed on discarding or weakening patents in favour of other, better instruments. Instead, our governments give in to the richest lobbies and strengthen patents. It's pathetic.
"The money trail will probably end up deciding the winner."
It's not a competition. It is a non-zero-sum game. With forks, everybody gets to be the winner, because everybody gets to use what they like best.
The idea that GNU/Linux somehow needs IBM is what SCO's entire lawsuit hinges on, btw.
Now there's someone who hasn't lost his flower yet.
(Although he may have misplaced it.)
"Yes, and Free Software/Software Libre has no ideological agenda whatsoever, right, troll?"
To the contrary, the FSF's agenda is purely ideological.
"OSI defines the term now, and Shared Source doesn't misses the Open Source Definition by a country mile."
Corporations do not define the meaning of words. If you ask Joe Average what Open Source means, he is most likely not going to come up with anything remotely resembling the OSI definition.
"troll"
Ah, well, I must concede this round to you then, you use words that are much more mature than mine.
"Open Source means you can modify and redistribute in most cases. You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?"
To the contrary. Open Source is a propaganda term thought up by Eric Raymond. Being a propaganda term, it means whatever its users want it to mean. However, I am not an Open Source flunky, so I interpret the term Open Source as what Eric Raymond originally wanted it to mean.
Raymond wanted to point out that if programmers could look at the code, they could suggest improvements. He thought that these suggestions could help improve the code: "A thousand eyes make all bugs shallow".
In order for Open Source to function, programmers should be able to see the code and be allowed to comment on it. Ideally they should be able to run it and to modify it themselves, but I do not see how that is necessary. Shared Source is Open Source.
They have set up mailing lists for your questions. Perhaps not very professional, but I doubt they have the resources to help out every passing fool. Or did you actually pay them for their services?
That's not proof, but merely an indication.
"Indeed.. there is a huge difference between shared source and open source."
Er, no there isn't? Both are about being able to look at the source code. You have no other freedoms.
If you want to be truly free, use Free Software, not Open/Shared Source.
"Even if you agree with this guy's politics, applying his logic to other causes would endanger a lot of people. What other property is justified to destroy with fire? If he set fire to an empty apartment block to protest suburban sprawl or urban blight, would that justify the sentence?"
According to your reasoning, somebody barbecueing should get a life sentence.
Punishment should fit the crime. If there was no immediate danger to other people, it is moronic to sentence somebody under a law that was set up to punish endangerment. And although I don't know if there was danger to other people, I sincerely doubt setting fire to three cars poses three times the threat.
"In all seriousiness, how does comparing a nuclear reactor indictant relate to the FCC? The two agencies, as pointed out by the parent are two different agencies, and the scope of inpact is significantly different."
It's about government regulated behaviour, and the comparitive weights we apply to them.
Somebody thought they were very comparable: the government. The government decided that two vastly different types of behaviour, i.e. obscenities and careless treatment of nuclear energy, could both be regulated by fining undesirable behaviour. The government has countless ways of regulation at its disposal, but for these two vastly different things it chose the exact same instrument.
It could be argued that "what do you think is worse, X or Y?" is an unfair question, or one that cannot be reasonably answered, but that would be merely your opinion. I am willing to bet that you will find millions in the USA who are not only willing to answer such a question, but will do so without hesitation, and without thinking the question odd.
As for the scope of the impact of these fines, sure, it would be hard to compare them. How would you go about it? Or would you refuse to evaluate the government's fining policy simply because you think it cannot be done?
"Where can you download DVDs for $1?"
I have no idea. Why is this relevant? You were comparing 1$ song downloads with the pricing of DVDs, not 1$ CD downloads.
From what I understand, the decency thing has to do with what any given community deems indecent? If enough Slashdotters band together to claim indecency everytime somebody says "Baby Jesus"...
"In other words, you're asking for something like 100 times the content (in bits), for the same price. I think that counts as an example of not getting it."
Somebody forgot to notify the producers of DVDs.