I considered not linking, but I did it as a public service announcement to everyone under the age of 30 (who have no idea this movie exists). The More You Know, right? And Knowing Is Half The Battle!
I mean, hell...the ONLY reason I work, is to earn enough $$$$ to support my lifestyle. If I didn't have to earn the money, I'd certainly not be working...and I"d have a blast till I died.
Generally speaking, once you have enough money so you don't have to work, many of the pressures of work go away (you're not worried about getting fired, etc.). If you're actually independently wealthy, you typically start your own business doing some type of work that you really find fulfilling. You generally won't work for someone else unless you really want to work for them (i.e. getting your "dream job", or working with someone you idolize).
The reason you will still work with ridiculously wealthy is because if you don't work you'll soon get bored, or start to feel like a worthless leech only taking from society, but not giving anything back. It's the same reason why so many retirees go out and get jobs they don't really need.
There's a problem here. The most likely first response is the cost of a place to live going up over $250/month. Those who have the power to set prices are likely to see that as just an opportunity to increase prices.
The problem with this logic is twofold.
First, you can't simply increase rent because people are making more money; people remember for years what they think the cost of things should be, and are reluctant to pay more than that, and will shop around for a better deal. So, while company A decides to raise prices, Company B decides not to do so, and gets more business because of this and still results in an increase in profits (due to a sale rate closer to capacity).
Secondly, an increase in price in one area of an industry, especially the budget options, causes a ripple effect increasing the prices of everything in an industry. While this may cause a short-term price increase, factors will return it to a lower equilibrium. If you do a 20-50% increase in rent for budget apartments (which could only happen with a cartel controlling almost all apartments in a city), it will start to increase everything else in the housing market. If budget apartments suddenly cost as much as midrange, then why would you rent budget? This leads to an increase in midrange rental, increasing prices there, so more people go expensive or buy a house/condo. This causes people to leave the rental market, so suddenly you have empty budget apartments all over the place. To rent those out again, the prices will have to start to come down.
Except that NO other companies do this. And if people actually abandon Xerox, and HP, Epson, etc. see Xerox losing customers, they will not adopt the same policies, and Xerox is likely to reverse their decision to adopt regional encoding.
There is no need for government regulation here. The market will fix this.
History has proven your assumptions wrong. People will gripe, grumble, and complain, but the companies won't care. Not enough people will leave Xerox over this to make a noticeable difference. Once HP / etc.start coming out with their next generations of printers, you can bet they'll be including this same region-locking tech in them. This is the same thing that happened when manufacturers started using microchips to decide you were out of ink based on the number of pages printed instead of actual ink levels; it pissed all the consumers off, but every manufacturer adopted it, so WTF are you supposed to do about it?
However, lies to strangers and casual acquaintances are a different thing than lies to someone who is supposed to be able to have implicit trust in you. I'm not talking about small lies like "I'm on my way right now" when you'd totally forgotten something, but the big important ones like "I'm swear not fucking the babysitter." It's a sheer betrayal on a personal level - it causes emotional pain and suffering, and is of the type that such relationships almost never recover from.
No, those don't work if you're being targeted. You can play with the color levels on the recording and 'see' behind the IR whiteout
Sure, and you can say "enhance" at a computer to turn a grainy photo into a HD quality one. No amount of computer magic can overcome the limitations of the recording device itself, and superbright IR/UV LEDs completely saturate the pixels on a camera. You can't "play with the color levels" if they all think they're at 100% - you need to have a different camera instead.
Besides, if you're being targeted, they'll have actual eyes on you anyway, or already know who you are. The only use the glasses / LEDs have are to stop passive persistent facial recognition. If anyone actually watches that video, they can and will have no problem tracking your movements. The point is they can't just drop a frame of you into a search and find out who you are and everywhere you've been.
TFA mentions this, and mentions the fact that LEDs require power...so you'll need some type of attached battery pack too. You could probably rig up some LR44's to run a couple LEDs, since those are at least rechargeable. But still need batteries.
LEDs can run off of watch batteries. You can easily fit the entirety of such in a DIY hat, and professionally made glasses could be made to fit the batteries in the frames.
You could always just stick a couple of bright IR LEDs on normal glasses or a hat and achieve the same or better effect. They have the added bonus of having their existence be invisible to the naked eye, so nobody in person knows you're even messing with the CCTVs. Even more importantly, you don't have to wear some bizarre oversize glasses that would look out of place anywhere except a scifi convention.
Extending it won't encourage the dead author to produce more work, but it can (theoretically) encourage people who are alive now to create works they wouldn't otherwise have done because they'll be able to better provide for their descendants.
Actually, the long copyrights actually discourage the creation of new works, as those who are living today cannot use these characters or stories as building blocks for new stories. Also, the long copyrights don't realistically provide for their descendants - you've got a better chance of winning the lottery than having a work give real value after 30 years.
The truly ironic part of this is that Walt Disney became famous and made his empire by building upon stories that were in the public domain - Snow White, Cinderella, etc, etc. If it hadn't been for these previous works being available for reuse and reinterpretation he never would have gotten to the point of creating Mickey Mouse in the first place. Disney's empire, today built upon perpetual copyrights, was originally built upon expired ones.
This perfectly demonstrates the true evil behind perpetual copyrights. A truly innovative genius like Walt Disney only was able to do what he did because the short copyright of the time actually allowed such innovation - Disney didn't need to work for a corporate conglomerate and sign over everything he made to them specifically because nobody could copyright things forever. With the current laws, we've got ever more of our culture locked up by corporations whose only motivation is to make money, not to create or innovate. They wield copyright as a club to stifle and prevent innovation by anyone else who wants to build upon what they "own".
Can you explain how innovation is stifled if copyright duration is infinite? Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn't quit their company after making their first billion. A billion dollars is a lot for one person and his family. So why did they continue to work?
However, did you notice that they stayed with that company instead of going to a new one? The company owned the work, and the inventor would never be allowed to expand upon that invention if they'd left. An inventor creates, but a company simply collects - In the case of Steve Jobs, he was forced out of Apple for many years, and worked on other projects and in other industries. Apple, on the other hand, stagnated without Jobs's influence and spurred no real innovation while it sat on the copyrights it held from years before, and used them to stifle innovation from potential competitors. It wasn't until Jobs (the inventor) returned that Apple (the company) started to do anything innovative again.
However, if you want some specific real examples of how infinite copyright would stifle innovation, you need only look at characters that are public domain that barely avoided being locked up in the perpetual copyright we have now. One perfect example is the modern concept of Santa Claus - this jolly figure in the red and white outfit comes from an artist named Thomas Nast, who copyrighted the image. If copyright didn't expire, Santa Claus would be under some corporate conglomerate's thumb, and they could stop anyone else from ever using the character. All those cartoons and movies from your childhood (and your parents' and grandparents' for that matter) that use the character would have never existed. This shared cultural icon wouldn't even be a shared cultural icon, and we'd be poorer as a society for it. Don't believe me? Name for me a single true cultural icon that's come into existence in the last 80 years.
You do realize this is the UK? We don't use dollars here.
Yup, I realize, but typed what I was thinking without slowing down to convert units. Regardless, this is the internet and I'm pretty sure everyone knows what is meant. If someone from Europe commenting on a US issue talks about the waste of pounds or euros most people here understand that, too.
You need to meet the terms that BMI puts forth if you play their material. Their website deals with this issue and they CLEARLY tell you that it is the owner of the venue, not the DJ who is liable.
Yeah, and those boxes that pop up on computers CLEARLY tell you that the IRS is going arrest you if you don't call this number and give them your credit card. That doesn't make it true.
Or, for an example a little more on point with how BMI operates, police will often say something like "I'm going to need to come inside and look around". The implication is that they are legally allowed to enter simply by saying so, when this is completely untrue - they actually cannot come in at that point unless you signal your acceptance for them to enter. What happens is that 99% of people will step back and hold their door open for the officer after he says that, thus legally extending the officer an invitation to enter (even if the invitation was caused by an implied lie).
Sure the DJ may have claimed to have the licenses required, but the business owner is the one who is required to obtain the licenses.
BMI can state that the venue is responsible all they want, but if you read between the lines on what they actually say on their website, you can have DJs (or whoever) be responsible for the licensing, it's just that you may be liable if the DJ isn't properly licensed. If the terms of a contract with a DJ requires the DJ to be responsible for the music, then there's a good chance that's exactly how it will work - either by direct assignment of responsibility, or by being responsible for any damages the business incurs due to their negligence.
Simply put, BMI words their statement like this because they want to double-dip into the licensing revenue stream. Even if the DJ already has all the proper licenses to play it in whatever venue they want, BMI will use vague language about who needs the license and use scare tactics to try make venue owners pay again for licenses that have already been paid.
It's not like the license is all that expensive or hard to obtain or that services to pipe in music don't exist. I don't feel bad for this guy, likely all he needed to do is stop playing copyrighted stuff when he was made aware of the violation and then obtain a license as required if he needed to continue.... Or, BUY a music service for his business from somebody and let them keep up with the licenses.
If you would RTFA, or even the summary, you'd notice that he already did that. He hired a DJ, who had already paid licensing fees to play the music.
At issue here is that the licenses were already paid through the DJ, and BMI was demanding that they get paid again because... well, that's the question, really... why should he pay the licensing fees again when the music is already licensed?
No, he was impersonating a military serviceman (equivalent of either army or national guard) - the Stormtroopers in Star Wars never operated like police. They operated as ground troops in an occupation.
That's my point - that trying to force those who become immortal to never have kids will never work unless a vicious totalitarian government enforces it. There's too many potential problems with any implementation to have it work otherwise. A soft limit on number of kids could work, as most people in first-world countries stop after one or two anyway.
And as it has been said before: "The world has enough food only for 3 000 000 000 people."
Only with current practices/technology/sources. There are many, many things that can be done to increase that amount even with current technologies. For example, insects can give much higher food rates than mammals and poultry - we just don't typically knowingly eat bugs. Hydroponics, urban gardening (rooftops, etc.), are extant now but underutilized. Advancing technology will provide even better options in the coming century as well, via both improvements in underlying technologies to make gardening/farming more efficient, and biologically engineered foods. There's also the vast untapped possibilities of the oceans.
Also, how about this: the drug/whatever that cures you of aging also makes you sterile. Or it could be a legal requirement - want to not die of old age? The price is X dollars and your ability to reproduce
That's fine. I've already had children, so I'll sign up for that immortality, now. Or am I unable to get the immortality serum if I've already had children? What if I lie about it and get the serum - do you make an anti-anti-aging serum for the circumstance? Or do you kill me because I acted for self-preservation? What if all my children die, then am I eligible again? What if I have no children, get the anti-aging serum, but am not affected by the sterility? What if I have no children I know about, but it's later discovered that I had a child from a one-night-stand? Does it matter if I didn't know when I get the serum, and how do you prove if I knew or not? Women can't claim they didn't know about pregnancy from a one-night-stand, so do we punish them for it with the no-serum-for-you death sentence, or do they get a pass? Or do we force them to get abortions to maintain immortal status? How does adoption fit in - if I adopt do I lose immortality? If I give my only child up for adoption do I regain immortality status? How do surrogate mothers count - is it the woman who gives birth, or the couple who contracted the birth who lose immortality status? Or both?
Now let's look at this again - are those laws going to be consistent across every single country? If not, you run into the situations where people move from place to place in order to match the laws to their immortality requirements... and then what happens when someone later moves?
Simply put, anything like this is an absolute minefield of horrible choices, horrible consequences, and a horrible government forcing it upon the people.
Eldred v. Ashcroft ruled that you couldn't declare a particular term extension unconstitutional.
No. It just established that the arguments put forth in that case weren't enough to overturn the 1998 extension. It also sets a precedent that will weaken any similar challenges. It does not mean that another case against term extensions couldn't succeed in the future.
If copyright governs interfaces, that part of the law will keep the government from stealing IP away from its rightful owners after twenty years.
You mean stop government from returning it to the rightful owners. The public (and public domain) are the rightful owners of all information and works - copyright/patents just give exclusive use for a time.
Slashdot Mirror
I considered not linking, but I did it as a public service announcement to everyone under the age of 30 (who have no idea this movie exists).
The More You Know, right? And Knowing Is Half The Battle!
We are losing 15 billion trees a year to toilet paper
Looks like it's time to institute the Three Seashells.
I mean, hell...the ONLY reason I work, is to earn enough $$$$ to support my lifestyle. If I didn't have to earn the money, I'd certainly not be working...and I"d have a blast till I died.
Generally speaking, once you have enough money so you don't have to work, many of the pressures of work go away (you're not worried about getting fired, etc.). If you're actually independently wealthy, you typically start your own business doing some type of work that you really find fulfilling. You generally won't work for someone else unless you really want to work for them (i.e. getting your "dream job", or working with someone you idolize).
The reason you will still work with ridiculously wealthy is because if you don't work you'll soon get bored, or start to feel like a worthless leech only taking from society, but not giving anything back. It's the same reason why so many retirees go out and get jobs they don't really need.
There's a problem here. The most likely first response is the cost of a place to live going up over $250/month. Those who have the power to set prices are likely to see that as just an opportunity to increase prices.
The problem with this logic is twofold.
First, you can't simply increase rent because people are making more money; people remember for years what they think the cost of things should be, and are reluctant to pay more than that, and will shop around for a better deal. So, while company A decides to raise prices, Company B decides not to do so, and gets more business because of this and still results in an increase in profits (due to a sale rate closer to capacity).
Secondly, an increase in price in one area of an industry, especially the budget options, causes a ripple effect increasing the prices of everything in an industry. While this may cause a short-term price increase, factors will return it to a lower equilibrium. If you do a 20-50% increase in rent for budget apartments (which could only happen with a cartel controlling almost all apartments in a city), it will start to increase everything else in the housing market. If budget apartments suddenly cost as much as midrange, then why would you rent budget? This leads to an increase in midrange rental, increasing prices there, so more people go expensive or buy a house/condo. This causes people to leave the rental market, so suddenly you have empty budget apartments all over the place. To rent those out again, the prices will have to start to come down.
Obligatory XKCD link.
Except that NO other companies do this. And if people actually abandon Xerox, and HP, Epson, etc. see Xerox losing customers, they will not adopt the same policies, and Xerox is likely to reverse their decision to adopt regional encoding.
There is no need for government regulation here. The market will fix this.
History has proven your assumptions wrong. People will gripe, grumble, and complain, but the companies won't care. Not enough people will leave Xerox over this to make a noticeable difference. Once HP / etc.start coming out with their next generations of printers, you can bet they'll be including this same region-locking tech in them. This is the same thing that happened when manufacturers started using microchips to decide you were out of ink based on the number of pages printed instead of actual ink levels; it pissed all the consumers off, but every manufacturer adopted it, so WTF are you supposed to do about it?
However, lies to strangers and casual acquaintances are a different thing than lies to someone who is supposed to be able to have implicit trust in you. I'm not talking about small lies like "I'm on my way right now" when you'd totally forgotten something, but the big important ones like "I'm swear not fucking the babysitter." It's a sheer betrayal on a personal level - it causes emotional pain and suffering, and is of the type that such relationships almost never recover from.
"LEDs can run off of watch batteries"
But not for very long.
However, they can run for days on one. Make that a rechargeable battery and it's not an issue.
No, those don't work if you're being targeted. You can play with the color levels on the recording and 'see' behind the IR whiteout
Sure, and you can say "enhance" at a computer to turn a grainy photo into a HD quality one. No amount of computer magic can overcome the limitations of the recording device itself, and superbright IR/UV LEDs completely saturate the pixels on a camera. You can't "play with the color levels" if they all think they're at 100% - you need to have a different camera instead.
Besides, if you're being targeted, they'll have actual eyes on you anyway, or already know who you are. The only use the glasses / LEDs have are to stop passive persistent facial recognition. If anyone actually watches that video, they can and will have no problem tracking your movements. The point is they can't just drop a frame of you into a search and find out who you are and everywhere you've been.
TFA mentions this, and mentions the fact that LEDs require power...so you'll need some type of attached battery pack too. You could probably rig up some LR44's to run a couple LEDs, since those are at least rechargeable. But still need batteries.
LEDs can run off of watch batteries. You can easily fit the entirety of such in a DIY hat, and professionally made glasses could be made to fit the batteries in the frames.
You could always just stick a couple of bright IR LEDs on normal glasses or a hat and achieve the same or better effect. They have the added bonus of having their existence be invisible to the naked eye, so nobody in person knows you're even messing with the CCTVs. Even more importantly, you don't have to wear some bizarre oversize glasses that would look out of place anywhere except a scifi convention.
Extending it won't encourage the dead author to produce more work, but it can (theoretically) encourage people who are alive now to create works they wouldn't otherwise have done because they'll be able to better provide for their descendants.
Actually, the long copyrights actually discourage the creation of new works, as those who are living today cannot use these characters or stories as building blocks for new stories. Also, the long copyrights don't realistically provide for their descendants - you've got a better chance of winning the lottery than having a work give real value after 30 years.
The truly ironic part of this is that Walt Disney became famous and made his empire by building upon stories that were in the public domain - Snow White, Cinderella, etc, etc. If it hadn't been for these previous works being available for reuse and reinterpretation he never would have gotten to the point of creating Mickey Mouse in the first place. Disney's empire, today built upon perpetual copyrights, was originally built upon expired ones.
This perfectly demonstrates the true evil behind perpetual copyrights. A truly innovative genius like Walt Disney only was able to do what he did because the short copyright of the time actually allowed such innovation - Disney didn't need to work for a corporate conglomerate and sign over everything he made to them specifically because nobody could copyright things forever. With the current laws, we've got ever more of our culture locked up by corporations whose only motivation is to make money, not to create or innovate. They wield copyright as a club to stifle and prevent innovation by anyone else who wants to build upon what they "own".
Can you explain how innovation is stifled if copyright duration is infinite? Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn't quit their company after making their first billion. A billion dollars is a lot for one person and his family. So why did they continue to work?
However, did you notice that they stayed with that company instead of going to a new one? The company owned the work, and the inventor would never be allowed to expand upon that invention if they'd left. An inventor creates, but a company simply collects - In the case of Steve Jobs, he was forced out of Apple for many years, and worked on other projects and in other industries. Apple, on the other hand, stagnated without Jobs's influence and spurred no real innovation while it sat on the copyrights it held from years before, and used them to stifle innovation from potential competitors. It wasn't until Jobs (the inventor) returned that Apple (the company) started to do anything innovative again.
However, if you want some specific real examples of how infinite copyright would stifle innovation, you need only look at characters that are public domain that barely avoided being locked up in the perpetual copyright we have now. One perfect example is the modern concept of Santa Claus - this jolly figure in the red and white outfit comes from an artist named Thomas Nast, who copyrighted the image. If copyright didn't expire, Santa Claus would be under some corporate conglomerate's thumb, and they could stop anyone else from ever using the character. All those cartoons and movies from your childhood (and your parents' and grandparents' for that matter) that use the character would have never existed. This shared cultural icon wouldn't even be a shared cultural icon, and we'd be poorer as a society for it. Don't believe me? Name for me a single true cultural icon that's come into existence in the last 80 years.
i launched a DOS attack on 127.0.0.1, i'm not sure how effective it will be though for some reason my computer has suddenly gotten really really slow.
A DOS attack? Dude, it's 2015 - you gotta upgrade that shit to a Windows attack.
You do realize this is the UK? We don't use dollars here.
Yup, I realize, but typed what I was thinking without slowing down to convert units. Regardless, this is the internet and I'm pretty sure everyone knows what is meant. If someone from Europe commenting on a US issue talks about the waste of pounds or euros most people here understand that, too.
Yup. Let's spend thousands of dollars worth of man-hours and paperwork and court time over 10 cents worth of electricity.
You need to meet the terms that BMI puts forth if you play their material. Their website deals with this issue and they CLEARLY tell you that it is the owner of the venue, not the DJ who is liable.
Yeah, and those boxes that pop up on computers CLEARLY tell you that the IRS is going arrest you if you don't call this number and give them your credit card. That doesn't make it true.
Or, for an example a little more on point with how BMI operates, police will often say something like "I'm going to need to come inside and look around". The implication is that they are legally allowed to enter simply by saying so, when this is completely untrue - they actually cannot come in at that point unless you signal your acceptance for them to enter. What happens is that 99% of people will step back and hold their door open for the officer after he says that, thus legally extending the officer an invitation to enter (even if the invitation was caused by an implied lie).
Sure the DJ may have claimed to have the licenses required, but the business owner is the one who is required to obtain the licenses.
BMI can state that the venue is responsible all they want, but if you read between the lines on what they actually say on their website, you can have DJs (or whoever) be responsible for the licensing, it's just that you may be liable if the DJ isn't properly licensed. If the terms of a contract with a DJ requires the DJ to be responsible for the music, then there's a good chance that's exactly how it will work - either by direct assignment of responsibility, or by being responsible for any damages the business incurs due to their negligence.
Simply put, BMI words their statement like this because they want to double-dip into the licensing revenue stream. Even if the DJ already has all the proper licenses to play it in whatever venue they want, BMI will use vague language about who needs the license and use scare tactics to try make venue owners pay again for licenses that have already been paid.
It's not like the license is all that expensive or hard to obtain or that services to pipe in music don't exist. I don't feel bad for this guy, likely all he needed to do is stop playing copyrighted stuff when he was made aware of the violation and then obtain a license as required if he needed to continue.... Or, BUY a music service for his business from somebody and let them keep up with the licenses.
If you would RTFA, or even the summary, you'd notice that he already did that. He hired a DJ, who had already paid licensing fees to play the music.
At issue here is that the licenses were already paid through the DJ, and BMI was demanding that they get paid again because ... well, that's the question, really ... why should he pay the licensing fees again when the music is already licensed?
No, he was impersonating a military serviceman (equivalent of either army or national guard) - the Stormtroopers in Star Wars never operated like police. They operated as ground troops in an occupation.
When it is done for the express purpose of facilitating a criminal act, with no realistic non-criminal applications, yes it is.
That's my point - that trying to force those who become immortal to never have kids will never work unless a vicious totalitarian government enforces it. There's too many potential problems with any implementation to have it work otherwise. A soft limit on number of kids could work, as most people in first-world countries stop after one or two anyway.
And as it has been said before: "The world has enough food only for 3 000 000 000 people."
Only with current practices/technology/sources. There are many, many things that can be done to increase that amount even with current technologies. For example, insects can give much higher food rates than mammals and poultry - we just don't typically knowingly eat bugs. Hydroponics, urban gardening (rooftops, etc.), are extant now but underutilized. Advancing technology will provide even better options in the coming century as well, via both improvements in underlying technologies to make gardening/farming more efficient, and biologically engineered foods. There's also the vast untapped possibilities of the oceans.
Also, how about this: the drug/whatever that cures you of aging also makes you sterile. Or it could be a legal requirement - want to not die of old age? The price is X dollars and your ability to reproduce
That's fine. I've already had children, so I'll sign up for that immortality, now. Or am I unable to get the immortality serum if I've already had children? What if I lie about it and get the serum - do you make an anti-anti-aging serum for the circumstance? Or do you kill me because I acted for self-preservation? What if all my children die, then am I eligible again? What if I have no children, get the anti-aging serum, but am not affected by the sterility? What if I have no children I know about, but it's later discovered that I had a child from a one-night-stand? Does it matter if I didn't know when I get the serum, and how do you prove if I knew or not? Women can't claim they didn't know about pregnancy from a one-night-stand, so do we punish them for it with the no-serum-for-you death sentence, or do they get a pass? Or do we force them to get abortions to maintain immortal status? How does adoption fit in - if I adopt do I lose immortality? If I give my only child up for adoption do I regain immortality status? How do surrogate mothers count - is it the woman who gives birth, or the couple who contracted the birth who lose immortality status? Or both?
Now let's look at this again - are those laws going to be consistent across every single country? If not, you run into the situations where people move from place to place in order to match the laws to their immortality requirements ... and then what happens when someone later moves?
Simply put, anything like this is an absolute minefield of horrible choices, horrible consequences, and a horrible government forcing it upon the people.
Eldred v. Ashcroft ruled that you couldn't declare a particular term extension unconstitutional.
No. It just established that the arguments put forth in that case weren't enough to overturn the 1998 extension. It also sets a precedent that will weaken any similar challenges. It does not mean that another case against term extensions couldn't succeed in the future.
If copyright governs interfaces, that part of the law will keep the government from stealing IP away from its rightful owners after twenty years.
You mean stop government from returning it to the rightful owners. The public (and public domain) are the rightful owners of all information and works - copyright/patents just give exclusive use for a time.