The last mile is going to be a monopoly, whether it be water, sewer, cable, electricity, phone, or fiber.
It is? Why?
Look at data. Most people living in urban areas in the US have a choice of two "last mile" data providers: the phone company and the cable company. The fact that they use two different technologies is completely irrelevant in this day and age. You can get phone service from the cable company and internet service from the phone company. Now the phone company is laying fiber in many places which offers as much performance as cable, and they're certainly not restricting this to areas where the cable company doesn't have service!
You don't need people running cable to your house in case you might want it. You need people running cable to your house on demand, when you order the service. This clearly works, since it has been done. If you refute the idea, ensure that your refutation is compatible with the reality of the telephone/cable duopoly found in virtually every US city.
I'll certainly admit that Nokia sells a hell of a lot of phones, and that the smartphone market is pretty small compared to the entire thing. However the fact remains that three orders of magnitude simply isn't true. Furthermore, "well behind the 8 ball" is completely nonsensical. They're doing extremely well in the smartphone market. Yes, they're not selling nearly as many units as Nokia, but considering that their phone costs $600 this should not be a surprise. Obviously at that price they are not even trying to compete at that level.
More phones every 3 days than iPhones in existence? Really?
Let's actually inject some numbers into the discussion, shall we?
As of October 21, 2008, there were 13 million iPhones sold. Let's be as charitable as possible toward your position and assume that not a single iPhone has been sold since then.
You state more Nokia phones sold in 3 days than 13 million. That works out to at least 1.58 billion Nokia phones sold per year.
According to Wikipedia, Nokia's sales in 2007 were about 440 million. So they would have had to increase by over a factor of 3 in 2008 for your numbers to be correct.
Furthermore, Wikipedia claims that this 440 million was 40% of global phone sales in 2007, meaning that global phone sales in 2007 were around 1.1 billion. So for your claim to be correct, Nokia would have had to sell about 50% more phones just from Nokia in 2008 than everybody in the entire industry combined sold in 2007.
Is that really the case?
Now, let's take that 1.1 billion figure, assume it's gone up a bit, and call it 1.5 billion phones sold per year at present. Three orders of magnitude give you 15 million smartphones sold per year in the entire world. That barely accounts for the iPhone, let alone Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm....
So again, three orders of magnitude? Don't think so.
Several orders of magnitude? Several means at least 3, so you're saying that simple phones outsell smartphones by at least a thousand to one. Are you sure?
I see nothing remotely sinister about it. What definition of sinister are you using? "Sinister" usually means to threaten something evil. Nothing evil was being threatened by the destruction of the CDs, perhaps just "we won't buy your music anymore," which is hardly evil.
My dictionary says, "giving the impression that something harmful or evil is happening or will happen". This act indicates evil in our society.
It's also a right to go around insulting black people, but if it were to be carried out widely it would be a very bad thing.
I don't see insulting black people as a bad thing, I see having the kind of beliefs that would cause you to want to insult black people as a bad thing. And if you have those beliefs, probably better that you express them so we know, no?
Which is why it would be a bad thing for it to be carried out widely. I don't want that opinion to be widespread. If people do it a lot, it means it is widespread. Therefore people doing it a lot is a bad thing.
Well, who am I supposed to feel sorry for? If someone calls you an asshole for no reason, and you respond in kind, you are the victim here, not the original jerk. So yeah, it's better if you don't respond in kind, but it's not like you caused any harm to anyone who didn't fully deserve it.
Why are you supposed to feel sorry for anyone? It's an indication of the destruction of our country, not a "who's the biggest asshole" contest.
Of course there's a difference, but it doesn't mean it's right.
I am not saying it is right, I am saying it is a Right, and that it is good that it is a Right, and further, that expression of this Right implies nothing more sinister, anymore than expression of criticism of Bush implies anything more sinister.
But I think it is sinister. It's also a right to go around insulting black people, but if it were to be carried out widely it would be a very bad thing.
Healthy political discourse requires respect for your opponents.
Perhaps, but the left -- in my experience -- is far more guilty of this lack of respect than the right is.
Snort! I consider myself to be a moderate, which is to say that I am equally hateful and disdainful of both sides. (And furthermore consider the fact that I can say "both sides" to be shameful.) From my point of view they are both equally guilty.
The whole country is being divided into "us" and "them", with "them" considered to be idiots, shysters, or traitors.
Yes, which is why I don't have a big problem with the response of the CD-burners: they were responding to just that sort of divisive and hateful statements by the Dixie Chicks. Most of these fans of the Dixie Chicks knew that the Chicks were liberal already. They didn't care, they liked the music. Until they decided to be hateful toward Bush (and in the way they said it, by extension, supporters of Bush).
Granted, it would be nice if they could have turned the other cheek. But human nature being as it is...
it's also a provocative symptom of the destruction of political discourse in this country.
No moreso than the comments that precipitated the destruction of the CDs.
So this behavior is fine, because it's simply responding to (and thereby perpetuating) disastrous behavior which preceded it. Can't say I'll ever agree with that attitude.
Of course there's a difference, but it doesn't mean it's right.
Healthy political discourse requires respect for your opponents. The English term of "the loyal opposition" comes to mind. We may not agree with each other but we should at least be able to converse civilly and respect our disagreements.
The problem is that this respect, what remains of it, is being systematically destroyed. The whole country is being divided into "us" and "them", with "them" considered to be idiots, shysters, or traitors.
So while it may be perfectly legal to publicly destroy works of artists who disagree with you, and it may well be perfectly morally acceptable, it's also a provocative symptom of the destruction of political discourse in this country.
Not everything is black and white. These people had every right to do what they did, but it's still very bad.
In other words, when his principles could actually matter, he caved, but now that he's secure and it makes no real difference, he can do whatever he feels like.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and conveniences, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." As such I think it is far more telling to see what he did when the race was still in question.
Except it doesn't. While the specifics vary, the general principle remains that people are attracted to characteristics which indicate health, success, and otherwise "good genes". Roughly nobody is attracted to measles scars or polio disabilities or extreme poverty. Sure there are exceptions, but the fact is that the vast majority of humanity is attracted to characteristics which either indicate good health or would have indicated it before the rise of civilization, whether it's nicely shaped boobs or an scandalously exposed lock of hair.
So it may or may not be their fault, but rather contractual obligation.
Contracts don't just spring spontaneously out of the freshly-plowed Earth. If the contract obliges them to do something, then it's because they agreed to said contract with said obligations in place, and it is still therefore their fault.
What you say is correct, but all it tells you is that we are built to find power, wealth, and conformity attractive. These all have real survival advantages and indicate fitter genes just as much as a symmetrical face does.
Well you say, "What confirmed ideas or reactors would there be today if not for that one unique man? Zip." So apparently you think that filling Einstein's shoes would take at least one hundred years, which is difficult to tell apart from not filling them at all.
In any case my point still stands: you can claim this but you cannot prove it any more than the other side can prove their claims.
People just don't understand evolution, that's all.
Attractiveness isn't some magical universal quality. What people find attractive is determined by evolution. We find people attractive in ways that our ancestors found them attractive. People who were wired this way survived and prospered. People who found other things attractive died out.
The only trouble is that these ancient hardwired ideals of attractiveness don't necessarily apply well in the modern world. A lot of it is tied up in health. To a very high degree, somebody who's attractive is also healthy. That pretty face or those curvy boobs held the evidence of fewer childhood diseases, of less likely or less dangerous genetic disabilities, of good nutrition, and of good ability to survive. It makes good sense to mate with somebody like that! However in the modern world it has become very easy to avoid childhood diseases and obtain good nutrition, so attractiveness and fitness have somewhat separated.
Still, even though it may not match up with what's best for us as well as it once did, it surely is far from being purely superficial.
You assert that Einstein was unique and nobody else could have filled his shoes. I can assert that Einstein was just a product of his world, and that if he hadn't come up with it, somebody else (or perhaps several somebodies) would have. I can't prove this, but then again neither can you prove yours.
No. You acquire rights to a material object via transfer of ownership. You acquire rights to the work via transfer of license. You have no ownership in the work itself or the copyright.
But I have no rights beyond what simple possession allows.
Again, the two are not exclusive of one another. Paying for a license does not imply a replacement copy. You are accepting the premise of the question and arguing that it is not a license because you don't get a replacement and there is no text document. Neither of these evince a license or a lack thereof.
That's not really correct. Yes, I'm arguing that there's no document. But I never said that there is no license because you don't get a replacement. Obviously it would be trivial to have a license which does not allow for replacement.
Anyway, my point is that your position and mine appear to be equivalent. I hold that there is no license, you hold that there's some kind of "default" license implied in the law. Same end result, and whether this ephemeral license actually exists doesn't seem very important.
The same is true of format shifting and timeshifting too. Just because it's not codified in the law doesn't mean it's not there. The law provides for fair use, the courts have decided that this is what fair use means, and here we are.
A software EULA is something that's on top of the standard transaction. It is possible, and 100% legal, to buy software without any kind of EULA. Microsoft, Blizzard, and others include an EULA because they wish to restrict your rights further than what the law provides for. They don't have to do it to make the transaction legal, as should be clear from the lack of an EULA in every music CD and movie DVD.
Illustrated another way, there are two ways to acquire rights in something you do not currently possess: (1) transfer of ownership and (2) transfer of license. There is no other way.
And? You acquire rights to a copy of a particular piece of media via transfer of ownership. You own that copy and can use it within the limits of the law. You don't own the copyright which means that you face various restrictions, but you still own that copy.
A non sequitur.
It is not a non sequitur. The post I originally responded to asked, "Do I pay for a license for the movie/album/etc. meaning I can get a replacement copy for just the production costs of the disc if it breaks or a new format is introduced ?"
There was an implicit contract in place for these musicians too. They knew, or at least should have known, that their work would only be protected for 50 years when they made it. Now we're suddenly giving them a freebie, and why? No good reason that I can see.
In the wider picture, the purpose of copyright is to encourage creation. The theory is that people will be more willing to create works if the state helps protect their ability to profit from it. Under this theory, retroactive copyright extensions are utterly nonsensical. It would potentially make sense to extend copyright for future works, but you can't very well encourage the creation of works in the past!
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The last mile is going to be a monopoly, whether it be water, sewer, cable, electricity, phone, or fiber.
It is? Why?
Look at data. Most people living in urban areas in the US have a choice of two "last mile" data providers: the phone company and the cable company. The fact that they use two different technologies is completely irrelevant in this day and age. You can get phone service from the cable company and internet service from the phone company. Now the phone company is laying fiber in many places which offers as much performance as cable, and they're certainly not restricting this to areas where the cable company doesn't have service!
You don't need people running cable to your house in case you might want it. You need people running cable to your house on demand, when you order the service. This clearly works, since it has been done. If you refute the idea, ensure that your refutation is compatible with the reality of the telephone/cable duopoly found in virtually every US city.
A whole week? You poor thing. Ever been falsely convicted of a felony? How long do you think it takes to get over that?
Extenuating circumstances? Seriously? "Her daddy said it was ok" does not qualify as extenuating circumstances!
I'll certainly admit that Nokia sells a hell of a lot of phones, and that the smartphone market is pretty small compared to the entire thing. However the fact remains that three orders of magnitude simply isn't true. Furthermore, "well behind the 8 ball" is completely nonsensical. They're doing extremely well in the smartphone market. Yes, they're not selling nearly as many units as Nokia, but considering that their phone costs $600 this should not be a surprise. Obviously at that price they are not even trying to compete at that level.
More phones every 3 days than iPhones in existence? Really?
Let's actually inject some numbers into the discussion, shall we?
As of October 21, 2008, there were 13 million iPhones sold. Let's be as charitable as possible toward your position and assume that not a single iPhone has been sold since then.
You state more Nokia phones sold in 3 days than 13 million. That works out to at least 1.58 billion Nokia phones sold per year.
According to Wikipedia, Nokia's sales in 2007 were about 440 million. So they would have had to increase by over a factor of 3 in 2008 for your numbers to be correct.
Furthermore, Wikipedia claims that this 440 million was 40% of global phone sales in 2007, meaning that global phone sales in 2007 were around 1.1 billion. So for your claim to be correct, Nokia would have had to sell about 50% more phones just from Nokia in 2008 than everybody in the entire industry combined sold in 2007.
Is that really the case?
Now, let's take that 1.1 billion figure, assume it's gone up a bit, and call it 1.5 billion phones sold per year at present. Three orders of magnitude give you 15 million smartphones sold per year in the entire world. That barely accounts for the iPhone, let alone Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm....
So again, three orders of magnitude? Don't think so.
Several orders of magnitude? Several means at least 3, so you're saying that simple phones outsell smartphones by at least a thousand to one. Are you sure?
But I think it is sinister.
I see nothing remotely sinister about it. What definition of sinister are you using? "Sinister" usually means to threaten something evil. Nothing evil was being threatened by the destruction of the CDs, perhaps just "we won't buy your music anymore," which is hardly evil.
My dictionary says, "giving the impression that something harmful or evil is happening or will happen". This act indicates evil in our society.
It's also a right to go around insulting black people, but if it were to be carried out widely it would be a very bad thing.
I don't see insulting black people as a bad thing, I see having the kind of beliefs that would cause you to want to insult black people as a bad thing. And if you have those beliefs, probably better that you express them so we know, no?
Which is why it would be a bad thing for it to be carried out widely. I don't want that opinion to be widespread. If people do it a lot, it means it is widespread. Therefore people doing it a lot is a bad thing.
Well, who am I supposed to feel sorry for? If someone calls you an asshole for no reason, and you respond in kind, you are the victim here, not the original jerk. So yeah, it's better if you don't respond in kind, but it's not like you caused any harm to anyone who didn't fully deserve it.
Why are you supposed to feel sorry for anyone? It's an indication of the destruction of our country, not a "who's the biggest asshole" contest.
Of course there's a difference, but it doesn't mean it's right.
I am not saying it is right, I am saying it is a Right, and that it is good that it is a Right, and further, that expression of this Right implies nothing more sinister, anymore than expression of criticism of Bush implies anything more sinister.
But I think it is sinister. It's also a right to go around insulting black people, but if it were to be carried out widely it would be a very bad thing.
Healthy political discourse requires respect for your opponents.
Perhaps, but the left -- in my experience -- is far more guilty of this lack of respect than the right is.
Snort! I consider myself to be a moderate, which is to say that I am equally hateful and disdainful of both sides. (And furthermore consider the fact that I can say "both sides" to be shameful.) From my point of view they are both equally guilty.
The whole country is being divided into "us" and "them", with "them" considered to be idiots, shysters, or traitors.
Yes, which is why I don't have a big problem with the response of the CD-burners: they were responding to just that sort of divisive and hateful statements by the Dixie Chicks. Most of these fans of the Dixie Chicks knew that the Chicks were liberal already. They didn't care, they liked the music. Until they decided to be hateful toward Bush (and in the way they said it, by extension, supporters of Bush).
Granted, it would be nice if they could have turned the other cheek. But human nature being as it is ...
it's also a provocative symptom of the destruction of political discourse in this country.
No moreso than the comments that precipitated the destruction of the CDs.
So this behavior is fine, because it's simply responding to (and thereby perpetuating) disastrous behavior which preceded it. Can't say I'll ever agree with that attitude.
I agree, but nevertheless it is the "analog hole".
Of course there's a difference, but it doesn't mean it's right.
Healthy political discourse requires respect for your opponents. The English term of "the loyal opposition" comes to mind. We may not agree with each other but we should at least be able to converse civilly and respect our disagreements.
The problem is that this respect, what remains of it, is being systematically destroyed. The whole country is being divided into "us" and "them", with "them" considered to be idiots, shysters, or traitors.
So while it may be perfectly legal to publicly destroy works of artists who disagree with you, and it may well be perfectly morally acceptable, it's also a provocative symptom of the destruction of political discourse in this country.
Not everything is black and white. These people had every right to do what they did, but it's still very bad.
In other words, when his principles could actually matter, he caved, but now that he's secure and it makes no real difference, he can do whatever he feels like.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and conveniences, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." As such I think it is far more telling to see what he did when the race was still in question.
Why does it have to stay in the air long enough? Do you just mean for the day or so it would take to disperse, or do you mean much longer than that?
Except it doesn't. While the specifics vary, the general principle remains that people are attracted to characteristics which indicate health, success, and otherwise "good genes". Roughly nobody is attracted to measles scars or polio disabilities or extreme poverty. Sure there are exceptions, but the fact is that the vast majority of humanity is attracted to characteristics which either indicate good health or would have indicated it before the rise of civilization, whether it's nicely shaped boobs or an scandalously exposed lock of hair.
So it may or may not be their fault, but rather contractual obligation.
Contracts don't just spring spontaneously out of the freshly-plowed Earth. If the contract obliges them to do something, then it's because they agreed to said contract with said obligations in place, and it is still therefore their fault.
What you say is correct, but all it tells you is that we are built to find power, wealth, and conformity attractive. These all have real survival advantages and indicate fitter genes just as much as a symmetrical face does.
Well you say, "What confirmed ideas or reactors would there be today if not for that one unique man? Zip." So apparently you think that filling Einstein's shoes would take at least one hundred years, which is difficult to tell apart from not filling them at all.
In any case my point still stands: you can claim this but you cannot prove it any more than the other side can prove their claims.
People just don't understand evolution, that's all.
Attractiveness isn't some magical universal quality. What people find attractive is determined by evolution. We find people attractive in ways that our ancestors found them attractive. People who were wired this way survived and prospered. People who found other things attractive died out.
The only trouble is that these ancient hardwired ideals of attractiveness don't necessarily apply well in the modern world. A lot of it is tied up in health. To a very high degree, somebody who's attractive is also healthy. That pretty face or those curvy boobs held the evidence of fewer childhood diseases, of less likely or less dangerous genetic disabilities, of good nutrition, and of good ability to survive. It makes good sense to mate with somebody like that! However in the modern world it has become very easy to avoid childhood diseases and obtain good nutrition, so attractiveness and fitness have somewhat separated.
Still, even though it may not match up with what's best for us as well as it once did, it surely is far from being purely superficial.
You assert that Einstein was unique and nobody else could have filled his shoes. I can assert that Einstein was just a product of his world, and that if he hadn't come up with it, somebody else (or perhaps several somebodies) would have. I can't prove this, but then again neither can you prove yours.
Don't worry about it, the guy you're replying to is clearly just an asshole who feels vastly inferior to you and is trying to make up for it somehow.
No. You acquire rights to a material object via transfer of ownership. You acquire rights to the work via transfer of license. You have no ownership in the work itself or the copyright.
But I have no rights beyond what simple possession allows.
Again, the two are not exclusive of one another. Paying for a license does not imply a replacement copy. You are accepting the premise of the question and arguing that it is not a license because you don't get a replacement and there is no text document. Neither of these evince a license or a lack thereof.
That's not really correct. Yes, I'm arguing that there's no document. But I never said that there is no license because you don't get a replacement. Obviously it would be trivial to have a license which does not allow for replacement.
Anyway, my point is that your position and mine appear to be equivalent. I hold that there is no license, you hold that there's some kind of "default" license implied in the law. Same end result, and whether this ephemeral license actually exists doesn't seem very important.
The same is true of format shifting and timeshifting too. Just because it's not codified in the law doesn't mean it's not there. The law provides for fair use, the courts have decided that this is what fair use means, and here we are.
A software EULA is something that's on top of the standard transaction. It is possible, and 100% legal, to buy software without any kind of EULA. Microsoft, Blizzard, and others include an EULA because they wish to restrict your rights further than what the law provides for. They don't have to do it to make the transaction legal, as should be clear from the lack of an EULA in every music CD and movie DVD.
You're right, but that only applies to work with DRM. For non-DRM work the standard stuff still applies even with the DMCA.
Illustrated another way, there are two ways to acquire rights in something you do not currently possess: (1) transfer of ownership and (2) transfer of license. There is no other way.
And? You acquire rights to a copy of a particular piece of media via transfer of ownership. You own that copy and can use it within the limits of the law. You don't own the copyright which means that you face various restrictions, but you still own that copy.
A non sequitur.
It is not a non sequitur. The post I originally responded to asked, "Do I pay for a license for the movie/album/etc. meaning I can get a replacement copy for just the production costs of the disc if it breaks or a new format is introduced ?"
There was an implicit contract in place for these musicians too. They knew, or at least should have known, that their work would only be protected for 50 years when they made it. Now we're suddenly giving them a freebie, and why? No good reason that I can see.
In the wider picture, the purpose of copyright is to encourage creation. The theory is that people will be more willing to create works if the state helps protect their ability to profit from it. Under this theory, retroactive copyright extensions are utterly nonsensical. It would potentially make sense to extend copyright for future works, but you can't very well encourage the creation of works in the past!