But why the dichotomy between BSD and GPL? Are there no other licenses? Or even Public Domain?
DARPA wanted TCP/IP to become the standard, and that's why they contracted with three organizations to develop implementions (including BBN's which eventually became BSD's). Why would they chose GPL even if the BSD license didn't exist?
None of that contradicts my point. Did you read my previous post? tomhudson was claming the Internet wouldn't exist without BSD. My point is that while BSD did make an excellent contribution - improving BBN's stack under a free license - that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have the Internet otherwise.
Just like the fact that FreeBSD benefited from having gcc for years doesn't mean it would have disappeared without it.
Your point 2 is exactly what the guy in the article said, quoted by GP. Except he said it more succintly.
Let me re-quote: "And then the limitations of whether or not I can deliver something great will be on my own talent and the talent of the people that are part of the studio."
In my University, there was rampant "piracy" of paper textbooks already, so I fail to see how this will improve that side of the issue. Can't students over there operate a photocopy machine?
Re:How is it different from a play?
on
A Copyright Nightmare
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
As far as I know, there's no "logic", they're simply defined by law.
Effort alone is not enough to create a copyrightable work; these are usually poems, theses, plays, other literary works, movies, dances, musical compositions, audio recordings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, software, radio and television broadcasts, and industrial designs.
MLK has copyright over the speech, not over himself. If John Q. Public shows e.g. a painting he made on that photograph, he has copyright over that too.
No, think back to my original argument, before we went off on this tangent about harm. Harm is only sufficient to make an action immoral if there is no entitlement behind it. With lending and second sale, we are entitled to these actions (to varying degrees given the laws and customs of the society you live in), so much so that it outweighs the harm. If we made only truly harmless actions morally good, you basically get Santa from Futurama. That aside, lending and second sale does indeed harm artists, as does simply choosing not to buy from them. It's an unfortunate, but unavoidable truth.
But wait. As far as I know, most people don't consider entitlements to be a moral excuse. So what you're saying is that we're all terrible people because we don't buy every work we can possible afford.
I think that's absurd. One must remember those who decided to go into debt with their money and time was the band, not us, and nobody promised them anything.
We're not morally responsible than you are because I gave away my house expecting you to buy me a new one.
Well, there is a definite act of copying. Copying causes people to demand what they copied less, which results in the artist being starved of money.
It can lead to that. But, again, we're not responsible for the artists' need for sales - he chose that path, not us. We can't be held accountable for other people's poor decisions. Was bailing out the banks a morally imperative too?
That aside, it is a very shallow and narrow-minded definition of causality when you exclude inaction. For example, can I morally be excused for running over a blind kid (with a puppy) because I cannot be held responsible for my decision not to brake? Or could my favourite restaurant be excused for deciding not to clean their crockery? Perhaps my failure to stop my finger moving was responsible for the aforementioned brains on the aforementioned whitewash? You can see, with such a vague distinction, the definition can easily be co-opted to justify many clearly immoral acts.
Read it again. It's not the absense of action (file sharing isn't absense). It's the potential for such absense that results from my action.
You still haven't found a real analogy.
It's a fine point, but clearly not one that I share. Like I said, I require more than simply the causing of harm in order to justify making something illegal. There's also the point that piracy is, in one sense, the most harmful, since it is the one that people are most likely to choose over buying. Don't get me wrong, if second sale was as harmful as piracy, I would judge the harm of second sale to outweigh the entitlement of people to have the right to it. But, as it turns out, in order to have a successful second sale market, there needs to be plenty of first sales, and plenty of people want a first hand copy more than a second hand copy, so there is more justice in having it legal than illegal. For this reason, I am fine with banning piracy but not second sale.
I shall dedicate my life to produce CDs and sending them to you. I hope you see the harm you're causing me by not sending me $1000 for each.
In the longer term, the financial value of their work has been sapped. Every person who has the probability of their buying the work even slightly diminished by their decision to pirate instead has harmed the artist at least by the opportunity cost, i.e. the difference in probability multiplied to the price of the item.
Replace "pirate" with "second hand sale" or "lend".
We have now determined that lending is hamful (what are we teaching to children?!) and should be made illegal.
Or we can agree that "potential harm" is not the same as actual harm.
However, when we take a look at the bigger picture, suddenly we see this immensely popular and talented band, of which many hundreds of millions of copies had been copied, and of whose music many hundreds of millions of people had enjoyed, are left with $20 instead of millions of dollars, for thousands of dollars outlay. Already, the cumulative choice of all their fans to take the "harmless" route of copying has resulted in them in debt for thousands and millions (in fact, billions, given the numbers) less than they could have been had the fans chosen to buy instead. One choice ends with a far more negative scenario, while the other choice ends with a far, far more positive scenario. Therefore, the cumulative choice of the former is harmful, in that it makes the person's life worse than it could have been.
Now suppose that instead of pirating, they decided to use those $20 to buy icecream. That band you were talking about is now in the same situation (debt and all).
Therefore we can conclude that buying icecream with money on could use to buy CDs is harmful and we must illegalize icecream sellers.
Now, from experience, people have some trouble with this definition of harm, so I'll push the point a little further (even if it isn't necessary). At this point, people tend to object to the uncertain projection into the future to define harm. I think that it's well enough defined to be functional. Let's say I launched, 3 seconds ago, a bunch of ICBMs at the US, aimed at the commercial centres of several of the largest cities. So far there have been no casualties, no panic (as I have alerted no-one), no money spent trying to rectify the crisis, nothing. However, I think a reasonable person would have no trouble inferring here that I have already caused harm to the US, simply because there is no other action or time which causally links me to the immanent deaths. Sure, there is the point where the bombs go off, but I didn't explicitly make them go off there, rather I programmed them and launched them so they would go off there. It was my initial action that caused the harm to happen. As another quick (and disturbingly similar) example, we say the person harms another with a gun when the trigger is pulled, not when the brains splatter on the whitewash. Either way, projection into the future is often necessary to satisfactorily define harm, which is why I have no objection to it.
Yes, but it's still not sufficient. Your analogies are flawed, because the harm is caused by the actual action, and not by the "potential absense of an action" that can be caused by the one being discussed.
In any case, we have at least established that the cumulative choices of fans can harm the people they idolise. I see no objection to distributing a portion of the responsibility of that harm to each of them, thus proving that piracy at least can be harmful. Whether it is in practice or not is another matter, but given the uncertainty on this issue, I would tend to award the artists their legally guaranteed right to decide for themselves, and honour their decision (while persuading them to change their minds).
My point is that piracy can not harm any more than other legally and socially accepted actions can, like buying used, borrowing or even abstaining from obtaining the work.
Therefore, either all are to be criminalized, or none of them.
If you don't want to turn off then setup the access point to NOT broadcast the SSID (network name). Then you don't then have to power off the access point / router and people won't be able to see the network name. Only people that know the network name, username and password can login.
What's the purpose of that? Either they're regular users and they already know the SSID (so they can connect to the hidden network) or they aren't and then the password is enough to deter them.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe they clicked on your nickname and saw your email. As far as I know, there are few females called "eric".
But why the dichotomy between BSD and GPL? Are there no other licenses? Or even Public Domain?
DARPA wanted TCP/IP to become the standard, and that's why they contracted with three organizations to develop implementions (including BBN's which eventually became BSD's). Why would they chose GPL even if the BSD license didn't exist?
None of that contradicts my point. Did you read my previous post? tomhudson was claming the Internet wouldn't exist without BSD. My point is that while BSD did make an excellent contribution - improving BBN's stack under a free license - that doesn't mean that we wouldn't have the Internet otherwise.
Just like the fact that FreeBSD benefited from having gcc for years doesn't mean it would have disappeared without it.
You don't even need actual actors, just voice actors, which charge a lot less, at least around here.
Of if you use something like Kickstarter to get some money upfront.
Your point 2 is exactly what the guy in the article said, quoted by GP. Except he said it more succintly.
Let me re-quote: "And then the limitations of whether or not I can deliver something great will be on my own talent and the talent of the people that are part of the studio."
Except he didn't plan the form, look or workings of the organism, which means he didn't actually design.
How do scientists funded by climate deniers fit with your point 3?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/a-skeptical-physicist-ends-up-confirming-climate-data/2011/10/20/gIQA6viC1L_blog.html
Not works, types of works.
In my University, there was rampant "piracy" of paper textbooks already, so I fail to see how this will improve that side of the issue. Can't students over there operate a photocopy machine?
As far as I know, there's no "logic", they're simply defined by law.
And are you sure the publishers of said books didn't pay royalties to MLK's estate?
Officially, because that wouldn't advance the progress of Science and Arts.
Effort alone is not enough to create a copyrightable work; these are usually poems, theses, plays, other literary works, movies, dances, musical compositions, audio recordings, paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs, software, radio and television broadcasts, and industrial designs.
Quoting a speech would probably be fair use even if they were under copyright.
The work is copyrighted, not the "soundwaves". That they were recording as sound instead of in text is irrelevant.
MLK has copyright over the speech, not over himself. If John Q. Public shows e.g. a painting he made on that photograph, he has copyright over that too.
So all we need to do is eliminate the laws that make promises we have no intention to deliver.
I can live with that.
Didn't Google mention they would do the same ?
No.
No, think back to my original argument, before we went off on this tangent about harm. Harm is only sufficient to make an action immoral if there is no entitlement behind it. With lending and second sale, we are entitled to these actions (to varying degrees given the laws and customs of the society you live in), so much so that it outweighs the harm. If we made only truly harmless actions morally good, you basically get Santa from Futurama. That aside, lending and second sale does indeed harm artists, as does simply choosing not to buy from them. It's an unfortunate, but unavoidable truth.
But wait. As far as I know, most people don't consider entitlements to be a moral excuse. So what you're saying is that we're all terrible people because we don't buy every work we can possible afford.
I think that's absurd. One must remember those who decided to go into debt with their money and time was the band, not us, and nobody promised them anything.
We're not morally responsible than you are because I gave away my house expecting you to buy me a new one.
Well, there is a definite act of copying. Copying causes people to demand what they copied less, which results in the artist being starved of money.
Does it really?
It can lead to that. But, again, we're not responsible for the artists' need for sales - he chose that path, not us. We can't be held accountable for other people's poor decisions. Was bailing out the banks a morally imperative too?
That aside, it is a very shallow and narrow-minded definition of causality when you exclude inaction. For example, can I morally be excused for running over a blind kid (with a puppy) because I cannot be held responsible for my decision not to brake? Or could my favourite restaurant be excused for deciding not to clean their crockery? Perhaps my failure to stop my finger moving was responsible for the aforementioned brains on the aforementioned whitewash? You can see, with such a vague distinction, the definition can easily be co-opted to justify many clearly immoral acts.
Read it again. It's not the absense of action (file sharing isn't absense). It's the potential for such absense that results from my action.
You still haven't found a real analogy.
It's a fine point, but clearly not one that I share. Like I said, I require more than simply the causing of harm in order to justify making something illegal. There's also the point that piracy is, in one sense, the most harmful, since it is the one that people are most likely to choose over buying. Don't get me wrong, if second sale was as harmful as piracy, I would judge the harm of second sale to outweigh the entitlement of people to have the right to it. But, as it turns out, in order to have a successful second sale market, there needs to be plenty of first sales, and plenty of people want a first hand copy more than a second hand copy, so there is more justice in having it legal than illegal. For this reason, I am fine with banning piracy but not second sale.
I shall dedicate my life to produce CDs and sending them to you. I hope you see the harm you're causing me by not sending me $1000 for each.
In the longer term, the financial value of their work has been sapped. Every person who has the probability of their buying the work even slightly diminished by their decision to pirate instead has harmed the artist at least by the opportunity cost, i.e. the difference in probability multiplied to the price of the item.
Replace "pirate" with "second hand sale" or "lend".
We have now determined that lending is hamful (what are we teaching to children?!) and should be made illegal.
Or we can agree that "potential harm" is not the same as actual harm.
However, when we take a look at the bigger picture, suddenly we see this immensely popular and talented band, of which many hundreds of millions of copies had been copied, and of whose music many hundreds of millions of people had enjoyed, are left with $20 instead of millions of dollars, for thousands of dollars outlay. Already, the cumulative choice of all their fans to take the "harmless" route of copying has resulted in them in debt for thousands and millions (in fact, billions, given the numbers) less than they could have been had the fans chosen to buy instead. One choice ends with a far more negative scenario, while the other choice ends with a far, far more positive scenario. Therefore, the cumulative choice of the former is harmful, in that it makes the person's life worse than it could have been.
Now suppose that instead of pirating, they decided to use those $20 to buy icecream. That band you were talking about is now in the same situation (debt and all).
Therefore we can conclude that buying icecream with money on could use to buy CDs is harmful and we must illegalize icecream sellers.
Now, from experience, people have some trouble with this definition of harm, so I'll push the point a little further (even if it isn't necessary). At this point, people tend to object to the uncertain projection into the future to define harm. I think that it's well enough defined to be functional. Let's say I launched, 3 seconds ago, a bunch of ICBMs at the US, aimed at the commercial centres of several of the largest cities. So far there have been no casualties, no panic (as I have alerted no-one), no money spent trying to rectify the crisis, nothing. However, I think a reasonable person would have no trouble inferring here that I have already caused harm to the US, simply because there is no other action or time which causally links me to the immanent deaths. Sure, there is the point where the bombs go off, but I didn't explicitly make them go off there, rather I programmed them and launched them so they would go off there. It was my initial action that caused the harm to happen. As another quick (and disturbingly similar) example, we say the person harms another with a gun when the trigger is pulled, not when the brains splatter on the whitewash. Either way, projection into the future is often necessary to satisfactorily define harm, which is why I have no objection to it.
Yes, but it's still not sufficient. Your analogies are flawed, because the harm is caused by the actual action, and not by the "potential absense of an action" that can be caused by the one being discussed.
In any case, we have at least established that the cumulative choices of fans can harm the people they idolise. I see no objection to distributing a portion of the responsibility of that harm to each of them, thus proving that piracy at least can be harmful. Whether it is in practice or not is another matter, but given the uncertainty on this issue, I would tend to award the artists their legally guaranteed right to decide for themselves, and honour their decision (while persuading them to change their minds).
My point is that piracy can not harm any more than other legally and socially accepted actions can, like buying used, borrowing or even abstaining from obtaining the work.
Therefore, either all are to be criminalized, or none of them.
Pretty sure Nome, Alaska is a city and has motor vehicles.
There are plenty of places close to nature (you can't even see a man made construction) without the risks, though.
How is the behaviour harmful? The content creator's life is exactly the same before and after the sharing occurs.
If you don't want to turn off then setup the access point to NOT broadcast the SSID (network name). Then you don't then have to power off the access point / router and people won't be able to see the network name. Only people that know the network name, username and password can login.
What's the purpose of that? Either they're regular users and they already know the SSID (so they can connect to the hidden network) or they aren't and then the password is enough to deter them.