It should be. Does a proprietary model of software and business make things that have an entertainment value more important than things that have a pratical value?
I was going off of certain theories about how the human brain works (of which I am not an expert either) - but the theories proposed that its higher intelligence functions involve some type of quantum-mechanical process that by it's very nature can't be pre-determined.
Just because something is non deterministic does not mean that it happened without reason. And assuming the premise that existence is deterministic is just as much taken on faith as assuming that it's non deterministic.
In fact, at a philosophy level - you half to assume things, even if it is just to assume the premise that existence is rational.
... is that there is alot of reason to believe that it is impossible to have the intelligence to be ethical without also having what is best described as free will. (or non deterministic intelligence)
Well if you ask me, MS is more than culturally offensive in the US. How about treating the information age like it demands the unrestricted flow of information rather than as a leverage tool for beating their licenses over peoples heads. And how about competing by free markets and merit rather than by artifical antique government granted monopolies called copyrights.
When people were arguing if a government should controll all the information, the the question of wether anyone should controll any of it could never even be discueesd.
FYI, the digital divide isn't between the information haves and the information have nots, it is between the peoples who have no controll over the content on their systems and those that do.
Re:Yeah but scientific method requires faith
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The Unknown Newton
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· Score: 1
Well, it seems like you've given these things alot of thought too. But about the experience of God existing... at the time of Abraham the belief in God was more a statement about the nature of the universe then it was about philosophy without experience.
During that time they believed in a god of the moon, a god of the stars, the sun and the rain, etc.... which all manifested themselves in incoherent random unconnected events that came along from time to time and kicked peoples butts without rhyme or reason. A belief in one God was a more then just another random belief, but a declaration that everything was connected in a coherent and planned out existence like a fatehr who managed everything in the household - it was a major philosophical milestone.
When you believe that, then it makes sense to try and search for patterns, attempt to apply mathematics to reality and such things that would have been considered insane before hand. So in that sense, the history of God is a history of experience and of science.
Yeah but scientific method requires faith
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The Unknown Newton
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· Score: 1
In all fairness, scientific method takes it on faith that existence is rational. You can't prove existence is rational, so at some point sooner or later you half just half to assume it on faith. I personally think it's a great thing to have faith in, but lets make no bones about it - faith is faith. And if you happen to believe that existence is limitless, and rational, then that is a fiath in the nature of the existence of an infinite God. Maybe it's not the God that everyone envisions, but lets make no bones about that either. Limitless existence implies God and God implies limitless existence.
Of course, many people make the mistake of assuming that just because existence is rational that it also must be pre-determined. That Logic works pretty well, but does not work with a limitless universe for the same reasons that infinity minus infinity does not necissairly equal zero.
Add Faith in a loving God (not benevolent thank you) on top of that with a bunch of convuloted, misrepresented doctrine and mixed in with some irrational supernatural supplements and historical traditional baggage, and wala - you have what most people call Christianity and the Holy Trinity. God the Father being the rational nature per se, God the Holy Spirit being the non-dterministic free will nature per se, and God the Son being the loving nature per se.
Well, I was reading along, and a single paragraph pretty much summed up why this is crap....
In order to provide return on investment, reusable components must be reused enough to more than recover the cost of their development, either directly through cost reductions, or indirectly, through risk reductions, time-to-market reductions, or quality improvements. Reusable components are financial assets from an investment perspective. Since the cost of making a component reusable is generally quite high, profitable levels of reuse are unlikely to be reached by chance. A systematic approach to reuse is therefore required. This generally involves identifying a domain in which multiple systems will be developed, identifying recurring problems in that domain, developing sets of integrated production assets that solve those problems, and then applying them as systems are developed in that domain.
Just as many in the inustrial revolution believed that it's entire purpose was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit, there are many people in the information age that believe that it's entire purpose is leverage their copyright holdings for unlimited groth and profit.
They are both wrong, the information age demands the unrestricted flow of information and the fall of copyrights just like the industrial revolution demanded the unrestricted flow of labor and the death of the slavery system.
When you hear phrases like "Reusable components are financial assets from an investment perspective" - Then it almost guarantees that they are trying to treat the uncontrolled flow of information more like a threat then an advantage, and they intend to treat each part like components that you need to pay for to use.
You don't need a constitutional amendment, if the courts can affirm congresses power to extend copyrights to infinity, then there is no reason why they wouldn't have the power to set copyrights back to zero too. In addition, it is sorta of irrelavent, because it is very likely that society can secure the right to copy whatever information comes their way without the government's help.
BTW, the US constitution was written at a time when you couldn't zap the entire library of congress to the other side of the planet in a matter of seconds, and the mere fact that that copyrights had an expiration date is proof that they didn't see it as an inaliable right like free speech.
When push comes to shove, it's going to come down to a choice between copyrights and free speech, and it is copyrights that must loose.
I'm not asserting anything about how I think society ought to behave. I am asserting my right to copy and distribute any information that happens my way, even if you think the information derived from your orgin. Sue me if you wish but I still have that right, and am more than happy and able to secure that right. With or without your help or even the governments. I don't know of one right that isn't asserted - proove freedom of speech! The difference is that the real rights stand up to real world scrutiny.
Object/entity, you know what I'm talking about. Reguarding almost anything, there exists a set of tangable rights and a set of information rights. Typically the tangable rights are called property rights, and the information rights are typically called privacy rights (maybe trademarks, but thats really more about fraud). I know of no other off hand, but if you want to add copyrights to the list, I have yet to hear a compelling argument of how you will make your view work in the modern world, excpet for that you'll sue me. Speaking of opinions of how society ought to behave?
As a physics major for several years (before going into CS) I herd alot of elloquent theories about how the universe should work from alot of smart people, but if they couldn't or wouldn't make them match with what takes place in the real world - then they were not worth serious investigation. The free flow of information is not just "another issue", if you cant demonstrate how you will be able to secure your allegid rights without beating the tar out of every other right, including privacy, due process, free speech, and unreasonable search and seisure - then it is bullshit, plain and simple.
Only a baboon would be blind as to whats going on with the RIAA and all the collateral damage relating to copyright enfrocement on other freedoms. However this isn't the only problem with copyrights. In the real world, almost the entire renassance and it's best works happened without copyrights. In the real world, copyrights derived from kings who were trying to get publishers not to say bad things about the monarchy, not from some glorious protection of freedom. In the real world, things that copyrights lead to like "Hollywoods culture" are drastic social failures. In the real world, copyrights put a higher value on tabloid revenue than math book revenue. In the real world, Linux, the internet, and p2p have been drastically successfull and beneficial to society inspite of being copyrights worst nightmare.
I'm willing to put my belief system thru real world scrutiny, what about you?
You accuse me of playing word games? You are making no distinction between posession of a physical object and an intangable one. That is intellectually dishonest at mininum, and intentionally fradulent at worst.
Nothing in the act of copying deprives you as the originator of doing whatever the heck you want with your creation, or creates a contract. Actually if there ever was an implied contract - it would be just the opposite eg "we have let you use these abc's freely, so in turn let anything you make with them also be used freely"
And for your information, thefts are not defined by what others posess, but by what people loose. If something of your orgin is coppied after the cat's out of the bag, you have lost nothing, except perhaps ego and some market share - none of which are an inherent right, a property, or a posession. Civil law has no place there any more than it has a place if my donut shop "stole" some of your customers. Try better marketing, or getting your customers to sign long term contracts - it is not my problem.
Your asserrtions about rights above government are true, and that rights that exist can't be argued away or voided are also true, and those both work against you in the real world because it is not I that gave physical property one form of properties and the information associated with it another. That is anything but utopian, it is realistic and why the rights I claim are the way they are.
Copyright does not codify any rights at all. It is a government backed monopoly on distribution - that is all. Everything else you are reading into it is bullshit.
The issue has never been about posession. The right to restrict downstream copying is not an inherent right, ownership right, or even an implied one, and has nothing to do with posession. If you want to secure that as a right then enter into a two way binding agreement/contract with all the downstream participants and quit spewing out all this crap that copyrights are some kind of quasi replacement for this. They are not, especially in the matter of binding unrelated third parties to agreements never made, and rights never implied.
I repeat: You do not only want to protect your interests and posessions. In fact, you are trying to make the government and society pay the price of creating contracts and due dilligance that for whatever reason you don't want to do yourself.
That is not a right, it is crap, and a burdon that might have been bearable when the only threat to downstream copying was xerox machines. But today it is not, and is not an acceptable way of doing things, must and will die.
1. First you say your rights to restrict what other people copy exist independently of the government, now you say if you were able to copyright or patent it - which is solely at the governments discression. So which is it? Government opinions don't change reality either.
2. Correct me if I misunderstood, but the whole thrust of what you're sujesting is to sue people who are using or distributing information already freely at their disposal because you claim you wrote it but somehow "the cat got out of the bag", well that is "controlling what other people do in the ocean".
3. Again, it is not about physical posession, it's about controlling the flow of information in the information age. In that context, once it's out there, it's out there and who had original posession is irrelavent, how it got ther is irrelavent. We now have a right to copy it and distribute it as much as we want however we want.
4. You are free to benefit from the sales of your book, but if a xerox of it comes my way I'm free to sell it too. Maybe that will drive down your margin, but that's life - physical property ownership is a right, but restricting the free flow of information and market share isn't.
I don't believe in any such construct as "the commons". There is not some mythical commune in which everything belongs to everyone. The fact and reality of ownership do not change merely because the owned object is visible to others. It is, in fact, an absurd notion. My house is visible to you, as is my car. Does that mean I (and my bank) no longer own them? Of course not. When I browse through a bookstore, do I acquire ownership or the right to duplicate any book I look at? Of course not. Like so many other posters on/., you are asserting your desires for what you wish is true as if it actually was true.
Well, I would never claim to own your house for loking at - but if I looked at it and built a copy with my own materials on my own land - that is simply not your right to stop me, and the copy I built would be mine to use as I please. It is absurd to think that the rights of copying are inseperable from the rights of physical posession. Of course looking at something doesn't transfer physical posession, but it sure does the right to copy it - that is not absurd at all.
And maybe you don't believe in the commons, or you call it something else. That is just semantics, the point is that that precious cup of water may be yours, and maybe someone even stole it from you and dumped it in the ocean against your will - but none the less that act gives you absolutely no right to controll how other people use the ocean. It would be absurd to think you did. In a similar way, knowledge, information, ideas, whatever leaked to the public are no longer your right to controll - even if you were violated in them being leaked. It is a ocean of information out there, it is outside your domain. If you were violatd in the process, I'm sorry. If you were just stupid about it, I'm even more sorry. But it's not my problem, once it's out, it is outside your domain - try suing if you like. But I think as time goes on, your success will be more and more limited and societies support for it will be too.
That's sorta the whole point. In the information age, information is completely seperated from physical posession. Trying to treat them as the same when they're not only too difficult, it is unworkable and any systms that attempt to do that must fail.
I don't need to hide something to enforce my legal rights to it. If you copy that chair without my permission then you are in violation of my rights and I will enforce the law against you.
That's the point though, youre not holding your rights to it. When you take a cup of water from the ocean it is yours, when you pour it back it is the commons. Your action releases it to the commons. So is with the action of putting your chair in a place where everyone can see - you may still hold the physical rights, but any claim over reproduction is gone.
You may believe this is wrong, but your beliefs do not change the law or shield you from its enforcement.
When something starts to become impossible to effectively enforce without drastically crutailing other freedoms, that should be a hint to you that it is not a natural law right. Todal all information is easy to digitalize and put on the internet. On the internet there is no technical difference between free speech information, copyrighted information, or any other type of information, it is a "sea" of information. If you let a person or institution judge controll over any of it, you must let that institution controll all of it. The fact that this situation exists at all should be a big hint.
The government did not grant me a monopoly on the reproduction of the chair. The government protects a monopoly that is mine by natural right: As the creator of the chair, I own it and I have exclusive rights to its use, reproduction and distribution. Anyone who acquires that chair without my permission is engaging in theft; anyone who copies it without my permission is in violation of my rights.
If you wish to refute that, you will need to demonstrate that the creator of a unique object or work, in the absence of any rights transfer, does not own that object. I assert you cannot do that.
I don't need to refute anything because simple facts are on my side. I have that book you wrote right here, I've digitalized it, I'm distributing it to all my friends, who are in turn distributing it to theirs. What are you going to do about it, how are you going to demonstrate that I'm violating you. How are you going to secure your percieved right without violating millions of innocents? Good luck, you'll need it.
Or maybe you see it like this... a bum buys your book from the book store, digitalizes it and puts it on the internet and millions share and copy it. Well, fine the bum is liable for 100 billion dollars to you - good luck on collecting.
You have every right to make a chair. If I take legal steps to protect my interests in my chair, you have no right to make a duplicate of my chair until I transfer that right to you.
I saw your chair sitting in a public window, by putting it there for everyone to see you willingly forfiet your right to controll who makes duplicates. Maybe you think you didn't, but that's not my problem - I made no agreement with you. Maybe you think I owe you a say in it's duplication, but that's not my problem either any more than if you thought I should tapdance for you too. Maybe the government made you a promise that it would grant you a monopoly on it's duplication too. Well, that's between you and the government, and not my problem either.
Consider my copying the chair as your punishment for believing that society owes you something that they don't, as your punishment for believing that you haven't transfered any rights when you have.:)
A piece of paper printed with symbols understood to read "2 + 2 = 4" is not an idea. It is a symbolic representation of an idea created at a specific point in time. The person who created it owns it and retains absolute rights to it (a monopoly, if you will) until that person decides to transfer some of those rights. Copyright is the legal framework that protects that right in balance with the larger needs of the oublic.
An argument that attempts to make the case that the creator of a work does not own it has to make that case for all works, not just things that can be copywritten.
In truth, most anti-copyright rants here are simply windowdressing used by unprincipled people who want free stuff.
People who impose copyrights aren't trying to hold controll over their original rights. If that was so, they're free to keep it to themselves and I could come up with the same "2+2=4" indepentently and spread it all over the planet without consequence. No instead, they want to spew it all over the planet, and then use the force of government to microregulate how people use it after the cat's out of the bag. The concept of copyright ownership has nothing to do with a person controlling the information they create, rather it has to do with controlling every other person on the planet who happens across that information.
When every piece of information was attached to a physical piece of paper, the burden of carrying out this scheme might have been workable. But now in the information age where all information is digital, microregulating every piece of information everywhere for the sake of a poorly thought out construct will simply rip society apart.
My story and the history of the information age
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IT, Be Free!
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I remember in 95,there were allot of people who considered me absolutely foolish for wanting to drop promising career opportunities in Oracle,Microsoft,and SCO Enterprise Unix for Linux.Back then I remember hearing million dollar speakers who couldn't get the future right 18 mo's out,but none the less I hit the nail on the head 10 years out into the future.I wanted to share my thinking,because I think it will benefit other people too.
History teaches that during the 1800's there were many people who believed that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit.Ironically just the opposite was true,the industrial revolution actually demanded a mobile and skilled workforce.
It didn't matter that the plantation system was vastly powerful,it didn't matter that the plantation system had many of the most wealthy,educated,resourceful,and well connected people on the planet.More importantly it didn't matter that slavery existed for 1000s of years,that they paid allot of money for those slaves,and it was upheld by the full force of law at every level of government,and was considered a property right.What mattered was was that society needed to move into the industrial age,but simply couldn't until employers could hire labor at will and on demand without fear or concern over who "owned" them.(not to mention that slavery was just plain evil)
Today many in media circles believe that the entire meaning and purpose of the information age is to use inventions like the internet to leverage their copyright holdings to the far reaches of the earth for unlimited growth and profit.Ironically,just the opposite is true,the information age demands the unrestricted flow of information.
It doesn't matter that the media system is vastly powerful, it doesn't matter that the media system has many of the most wealthy,educated,resourceful,and well connected people on the planet.More importantly it doesn't matter that copyrights have existed for 100s of years,that they paid allot of money for them,and they are upheld by the full force of law at every level of government,and are called a property right.What matters is that society needs to move into the information age,but simply can't until companies and people can use information at their disposal at will without fear or liability in regards to who "owns" every little piece of it.
History shows that just because an institution calls something a property right, doesn't mean that it is. Just because an institution calls something an incentive doesn't mean that it is. Just because an institution looks successful on the surface, doesn't mean it is. That the future is formed by facts, and not the common beliefs of the day. Most importantly that the surest way to become irrelavent is to sit the fense, attempt to appease both sides, or to aviod taking sides at all.
It is no accident that Microsoft is under siege by Linux, Hollywood is under siege by p2p networks, and publishers are under siege by from alternate sources of content on the internet. All these forces have in common that they are forcing society to move away from the control of media, content, and information. Likewise, I also think it is in my best interest, and others best interest to do so too and hold our success accountable to it.
By pushing to rely on software like Linux and other open source software and having a bias against proprietary software, information, and content when possible (even when a little inconvenient). It will create opportunities, like it did for me, as time goes on rather than disasters every time an improvement in information technology happens along. It will lead to technology solutions that are more reliable, secure, and interoperable, while at the same time being less costly. It will create a migration of technology that tends to change for improvement make rather than the sake of obsoleting unprofitable versions. It will lead to solution
Truner wanting to break up big media is simply a distraction from the real issue. That society can't survive the information age with copyrights in tact. Get rid of copyrights, and the other problems will solve themselves. But it is precicely that he wants to keep his cozy copyright monopolies that he is trying to force a breakup of the media conglomerates - the copyright system corrupts the industry so bad that he can't spawn innovation from within, so he's trying to get the government to force it from the outside instead.
Slashdot Mirror
It should be. Does a proprietary model of software and business make things that have an entertainment value more important than things that have a pratical value?
I was going off of certain theories about how the human brain works (of which I am not an expert either) - but the theories proposed that its higher intelligence functions involve some type of quantum-mechanical process that by it's very nature can't be pre-determined.
Just because something is non deterministic does not mean that it happened without reason. And assuming the premise that existence is deterministic is just as much taken on faith as assuming that it's non deterministic.
In fact, at a philosophy level - you half to assume things, even if it is just to assume the premise that existence is rational.
... is that there is alot of reason to believe that it is impossible to have the intelligence to be ethical without also having what is best described as free will. (or non deterministic intelligence)
Like RedHat?
Do you get it?
Well if you ask me, MS is more than culturally offensive in the US. How about treating the information age like it demands the unrestricted flow of information rather than as a leverage tool for beating their licenses over peoples heads. And how about competing by free markets and merit rather than by artifical antique government granted monopolies called copyrights.
When people were arguing if a government should controll all the information, the the question of wether anyone should controll any of it could never even be discueesd.
Now it's the issue under discussion.
This isn't funny, some managers in the corporate world will read this and be convinced that everyone needs to switch back to Microsoft Windows!
Chances are that you are not being directly hacked, but automatically probed by a system already infected with a root-kit installed.
There are alot of people out there who have no idea that their computer is infected with a root-kit and many would be greatfull to be told so.
FYI, the digital divide isn't between the information haves and the information have nots, it is between the peoples who have no controll over the content on their systems and those that do.
Well, it seems like you've given these things alot of thought too. But about the experience of God existing ... at the time of Abraham the belief in God was more a statement about the nature of the universe then it was about philosophy without experience.
.... which all manifested themselves in incoherent random unconnected events that came along from time to time and kicked peoples butts without rhyme or reason. A belief in one God was a more then just another random belief, but a declaration that everything was connected in a coherent and planned out existence like a fatehr who managed everything in the household - it was a major philosophical milestone.
During that time they believed in a god of the moon, a god of the stars, the sun and the rain, etc
When you believe that, then it makes sense to try and search for patterns, attempt to apply mathematics to reality and such things that would have been considered insane before hand. So in that sense, the history of God is a history of experience and of science.
In all fairness, scientific method takes it on faith that existence is rational. You can't prove existence is rational, so at some point sooner or later you half just half to assume it on faith. I personally think it's a great thing to have faith in, but lets make no bones about it - faith is faith. And if you happen to believe that existence is limitless, and rational, then that is a fiath in the nature of the existence of an infinite God. Maybe it's not the God that everyone envisions, but lets make no bones about that either. Limitless existence implies God and God implies limitless existence.
Of course, many people make the mistake of assuming that just because existence is rational that it also must be pre-determined. That Logic works pretty well, but does not work with a limitless universe for the same reasons that infinity minus infinity does not necissairly equal zero.
Add Faith in a loving God (not benevolent thank you) on top of that with a bunch of convuloted, misrepresented doctrine and mixed in with some irrational supernatural supplements and historical traditional baggage, and wala - you have what most people call Christianity and the Holy Trinity. God the Father being the rational nature per se, God the Holy Spirit being the non-dterministic free will nature per se, and God the Son being the loving nature per se.
Well, I was reading along, and a single paragraph pretty much summed up why this is crap....
In order to provide return on investment, reusable components must be reused enough to more than recover the cost of their development, either directly through cost reductions, or indirectly, through risk reductions, time-to-market reductions, or quality improvements. Reusable components are financial assets from an investment perspective. Since the cost of making a component reusable is generally quite high, profitable levels of reuse are unlikely to be reached by chance. A systematic approach to reuse is therefore required. This generally involves identifying a domain in which multiple systems will be developed, identifying recurring problems in that domain, developing sets of integrated production assets that solve those problems, and then applying them as systems are developed in that domain.
Just as many in the inustrial revolution believed that it's entire purpose was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit, there are many people in the information age that believe that it's entire purpose is leverage their copyright holdings for unlimited groth and profit.
They are both wrong, the information age demands the unrestricted flow of information and the fall of copyrights just like the industrial revolution demanded the unrestricted flow of labor and the death of the slavery system.
When you hear phrases like "Reusable components are financial assets from an investment perspective" - Then it almost guarantees that they are trying to treat the uncontrolled flow of information more like a threat then an advantage, and they intend to treat each part like components that you need to pay for to use.
It is crap, they just won't get it.
Seriously, I really do hope they succeed. Yes, so much so that they will want to get out of the copyright, media, and DRM business.
You don't need a constitutional amendment, if the courts can affirm congresses power to extend copyrights to infinity, then there is no reason why they wouldn't have the power to set copyrights back to zero too. In addition, it is sorta of irrelavent, because it is very likely that society can secure the right to copy whatever information comes their way without the government's help.
BTW, the US constitution was written at a time when you couldn't zap the entire library of congress to the other side of the planet in a matter of seconds, and the mere fact that that copyrights had an expiration date is proof that they didn't see it as an inaliable right like free speech.
When push comes to shove, it's going to come down to a choice between copyrights and free speech, and it is copyrights that must loose.
I'm not asserting anything about how I think society ought to behave. I am asserting my right to copy and distribute any information that happens my way, even if you think the information derived from your orgin. Sue me if you wish but I still have that right, and am more than happy and able to secure that right. With or without your help or even the governments. I don't know of one right that isn't asserted - proove freedom of speech! The difference is that the real rights stand up to real world scrutiny.
Object/entity, you know what I'm talking about. Reguarding almost anything, there exists a set of tangable rights and a set of information rights. Typically the tangable rights are called property rights, and the information rights are typically called privacy rights (maybe trademarks, but thats really more about fraud). I know of no other off hand, but if you want to add copyrights to the list, I have yet to hear a compelling argument of how you will make your view work in the modern world, excpet for that you'll sue me. Speaking of opinions of how society ought to behave?
As a physics major for several years (before going into CS) I herd alot of elloquent theories about how the universe should work from alot of smart people, but if they couldn't or wouldn't make them match with what takes place in the real world - then they were not worth serious investigation. The free flow of information is not just "another issue", if you cant demonstrate how you will be able to secure your allegid rights without beating the tar out of every other right, including privacy, due process, free speech, and unreasonable search and seisure - then it is bullshit, plain and simple.
Only a baboon would be blind as to whats going on with the RIAA and all the collateral damage relating to copyright enfrocement on other freedoms. However this isn't the only problem with copyrights. In the real world, almost the entire renassance and it's best works happened without copyrights. In the real world, copyrights derived from kings who were trying to get publishers not to say bad things about the monarchy, not from some glorious protection of freedom. In the real world, things that copyrights lead to like "Hollywoods culture" are drastic social failures. In the real world, copyrights put a higher value on tabloid revenue than math book revenue. In the real world, Linux, the internet, and p2p have been drastically successfull and beneficial to society inspite of being copyrights worst nightmare.
I'm willing to put my belief system thru real world scrutiny, what about you?
You accuse me of playing word games? You are making no distinction between posession of a physical object and an intangable one. That is intellectually dishonest at mininum, and intentionally fradulent at worst.
Nothing in the act of copying deprives you as the originator of doing whatever the heck you want with your creation, or creates a contract. Actually if there ever was an implied contract - it would be just the opposite eg "we have let you use these abc's freely, so in turn let anything you make with them also be used freely"
And for your information, thefts are not defined by what others posess, but by what people loose. If something of your orgin is coppied after the cat's out of the bag, you have lost nothing, except perhaps ego and some market share - none of which are an inherent right, a property, or a posession. Civil law has no place there any more than it has a place if my donut shop "stole" some of your customers. Try better marketing, or getting your customers to sign long term contracts - it is not my problem.
Your asserrtions about rights above government are true, and that rights that exist can't be argued away or voided are also true, and those both work against you in the real world because it is not I that gave physical property one form of properties and the information associated with it another. That is anything but utopian, it is realistic and why the rights I claim are the way they are.
Copyright does not codify any rights at all. It is a government backed monopoly on distribution - that is all. Everything else you are reading into it is bullshit.
The issue has never been about posession. The right to restrict downstream copying is not an inherent right, ownership right, or even an implied one, and has nothing to do with posession. If you want to secure that as a right then enter into a two way binding agreement/contract with all the downstream participants and quit spewing out all this crap that copyrights are some kind of quasi replacement for this. They are not, especially in the matter of binding unrelated third parties to agreements never made, and rights never implied.
I repeat: You do not only want to protect your interests and posessions. In fact, you are trying to make the government and society pay the price of creating contracts and due dilligance that for whatever reason you don't want to do yourself.
That is not a right, it is crap, and a burdon that might have been bearable when the only threat to downstream copying was xerox machines. But today it is not, and is not an acceptable way of doing things, must and will die.
1. First you say your rights to restrict what other people copy exist independently of the government, now you say if you were able to copyright or patent it - which is solely at the governments discression. So which is it? Government opinions don't change reality either.
2. Correct me if I misunderstood, but the whole thrust of what you're sujesting is to sue people who are using or distributing information already freely at their disposal because you claim you wrote it but somehow "the cat got out of the bag", well that is "controlling what other people do in the ocean".
3. Again, it is not about physical posession, it's about controlling the flow of information in the information age. In that context, once it's out there, it's out there and who had original posession is irrelavent, how it got ther is irrelavent. We now have a right to copy it and distribute it as much as we want however we want.
4. You are free to benefit from the sales of your book, but if a xerox of it comes my way I'm free to sell it too. Maybe that will drive down your margin, but that's life - physical property ownership is a right, but restricting the free flow of information and market share isn't.
I don't believe in any such construct as "the commons". There is not some mythical commune in which everything belongs to everyone. The fact and reality of ownership do not change merely because the owned object is visible to others. It is, in fact, an absurd notion. My house is visible to you, as is my car. Does that mean I (and my bank) no longer own them? Of course not. When I browse through a bookstore, do I acquire ownership or the right to duplicate any book I look at? Of course not. Like so many other posters on /., you are asserting your desires for what you wish is true as if it actually was true.
Well, I would never claim to own your house for loking at - but if I looked at it and built a copy with my own materials on my own land - that is simply not your right to stop me, and the copy I built would be mine to use as I please. It is absurd to think that the rights of copying are inseperable from the rights of physical posession. Of course looking at something doesn't transfer physical posession, but it sure does the right to copy it - that is not absurd at all.
And maybe you don't believe in the commons, or you call it something else. That is just semantics, the point is that that precious cup of water may be yours, and maybe someone even stole it from you and dumped it in the ocean against your will - but none the less that act gives you absolutely no right to controll how other people use the ocean. It would be absurd to think you did. In a similar way, knowledge, information, ideas, whatever leaked to the public are no longer your right to controll - even if you were violated in them being leaked. It is a ocean of information out there, it is outside your domain. If you were violatd in the process, I'm sorry. If you were just stupid about it, I'm even more sorry. But it's not my problem, once it's out, it is outside your domain - try suing if you like. But I think as time goes on, your success will be more and more limited and societies support for it will be too.
That's sorta the whole point. In the information age, information is completely seperated from physical posession. Trying to treat them as the same when they're not only too difficult, it is unworkable and any systms that attempt to do that must fail.
I don't need to hide something to enforce my legal rights to it. If you copy that chair without my permission then you are in violation of my rights and I will enforce the law against you.
... a bum buys your book from the book store, digitalizes it and puts it on the internet and millions share and copy it. Well, fine the bum is liable for 100 billion dollars to you - good luck on collecting.
That's the point though, youre not holding your rights to it. When you take a cup of water from the ocean it is yours, when you pour it back it is the commons. Your action releases it to the commons. So is with the action of putting your chair in a place where everyone can see - you may still hold the physical rights, but any claim over reproduction is gone.
You may believe this is wrong, but your beliefs do not change the law or shield you from its enforcement.
When something starts to become impossible to effectively enforce without drastically crutailing other freedoms, that should be a hint to you that it is not a natural law right. Todal all information is easy to digitalize and put on the internet. On the internet there is no technical difference between free speech information, copyrighted information, or any other type of information, it is a "sea" of information. If you let a person or institution judge controll over any of it, you must let that institution controll all of it. The fact that this situation exists at all should be a big hint.
The government did not grant me a monopoly on the reproduction of the chair. The government protects a monopoly that is mine by natural right: As the creator of the chair, I own it and I have exclusive rights to its use, reproduction and distribution. Anyone who acquires that chair without my permission is engaging in theft; anyone who copies it without my permission is in violation of my rights.
If you wish to refute that, you will need to demonstrate that the creator of a unique object or work, in the absence of any rights transfer, does not own that object. I assert you cannot do that.
I don't need to refute anything because simple facts are on my side. I have that book you wrote right here, I've digitalized it, I'm distributing it to all my friends, who are in turn distributing it to theirs. What are you going to do about it, how are you going to demonstrate that I'm violating you. How are you going to secure your percieved right without violating millions of innocents? Good luck, you'll need it.
Or maybe you see it like this
You have every right to make a chair. If I take legal steps to protect my interests in my chair, you have no right to make a duplicate of my chair until I transfer that right to you.
I saw your chair sitting in a public window, by putting it there for everyone to see you willingly forfiet your right to controll who makes duplicates. Maybe you think you didn't, but that's not my problem - I made no agreement with you. Maybe you think I owe you a say in it's duplication, but that's not my problem either any more than if you thought I should tapdance for you too. Maybe the government made you a promise that it would grant you a monopoly on it's duplication too. Well, that's between you and the government, and not my problem either.
Consider my copying the chair as your punishment for believing that society owes you something that they don't, as your punishment for believing that you haven't transfered any rights when you have. :)
A piece of paper printed with symbols understood to read "2 + 2 = 4" is not an idea. It is a symbolic representation of an idea created at a specific point in time. The person who created it owns it and retains absolute rights to it (a monopoly, if you will) until that person decides to transfer some of those rights. Copyright is the legal framework that protects that right in balance with the larger needs of the oublic.
An argument that attempts to make the case that the creator of a work does not own it has to make that case for all works, not just things that can be copywritten.
In truth, most anti-copyright rants here are simply windowdressing used by unprincipled people who want free stuff.
People who impose copyrights aren't trying to hold controll over their original rights. If that was so, they're free to keep it to themselves and I could come up with the same "2+2=4" indepentently and spread it all over the planet without consequence. No instead, they want to spew it all over the planet, and then use the force of government to microregulate how people use it after the cat's out of the bag. The concept of copyright ownership has nothing to do with a person controlling the information they create, rather it has to do with controlling every other person on the planet who happens across that information.
When every piece of information was attached to a physical piece of paper, the burden of carrying out this scheme might have been workable. But now in the information age where all information is digital, microregulating every piece of information everywhere for the sake of a poorly thought out construct will simply rip society apart.
I remember in 95,there were allot of people who considered me absolutely foolish for wanting to drop promising career opportunities in Oracle,Microsoft,and SCO Enterprise Unix for Linux.Back then I remember hearing million dollar speakers who couldn't get the future right 18 mo's out,but none the less I hit the nail on the head 10 years out into the future.I wanted to share my thinking,because I think it will benefit other people too.
History teaches that during the 1800's there were many people who believed that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit.Ironically just the opposite was true,the industrial revolution actually demanded a mobile and skilled workforce.
It didn't matter that the plantation system was vastly powerful,it didn't matter that the plantation system had many of the most wealthy,educated,resourceful,and well connected people on the planet.More importantly it didn't matter that slavery existed for 1000s of years,that they paid allot of money for those slaves,and it was upheld by the full force of law at every level of government,and was considered a property right.What mattered was was that society needed to move into the industrial age,but simply couldn't until employers could hire labor at will and on demand without fear or concern over who "owned" them.(not to mention that slavery was just plain evil)
Today many in media circles believe that the entire meaning and purpose of the information age is to use inventions like the internet to leverage their copyright holdings to the far reaches of the earth for unlimited growth and profit.Ironically,just the opposite is true,the information age demands the unrestricted flow of information.
It doesn't matter that the media system is vastly powerful, it doesn't matter that the media system has many of the most wealthy,educated,resourceful,and well connected people on the planet.More importantly it doesn't matter that copyrights have existed for 100s of years,that they paid allot of money for them,and they are upheld by the full force of law at every level of government,and are called a property right.What matters is that society needs to move into the information age,but simply can't until companies and people can use information at their disposal at will without fear or liability in regards to who "owns" every little piece of it.
History shows that just because an institution calls something a property right, doesn't mean that it is. Just because an institution calls something an incentive doesn't mean that it is. Just because an institution looks successful on the surface, doesn't mean it is. That the future is formed by facts, and not the common beliefs of the day. Most importantly that the surest way to become irrelavent is to sit the fense, attempt to appease both sides, or to aviod taking sides at all.
It is no accident that Microsoft is under siege by Linux, Hollywood is under siege by p2p networks, and publishers are under siege by from alternate sources of content on the internet. All these forces have in common that they are forcing society to move away from the control of media, content, and information. Likewise, I also think it is in my best interest, and others best interest to do so too and hold our success accountable to it.
By pushing to rely on software like Linux and other open source software and having a bias against proprietary software, information, and content when possible (even when a little inconvenient). It will create opportunities, like it did for me, as time goes on rather than disasters every time an improvement in information technology happens along. It will lead to technology solutions that are more reliable, secure, and interoperable, while at the same time being less costly. It will create a migration of technology that tends to change for improvement make rather than the sake of obsoleting unprofitable versions. It will lead to solution
Truner wanting to break up big media is simply a distraction from the real issue. That society can't survive the information age with copyrights in tact. Get rid of copyrights, and the other problems will solve themselves. But it is precicely that he wants to keep his cozy copyright monopolies that he is trying to force a breakup of the media conglomerates - the copyright system corrupts the industry so bad that he can't spawn innovation from within, so he's trying to get the government to force it from the outside instead.