The artist was deprived of the money Bob would have otherwise spent. It does matter how you look at it.
What a crock. No matter how you look at it, you have no inherent right to restrict what other people copy. But that argument is for someone who us thinking honestly, so let me rephrase: you have no inherent right to money you could have had if noone else was in the way. Tough luck.
....When I see that pattern repeated enough times, I have no sympathy for what I (as a 'non-tangible' content creator) see as thieves.
Then you will get what comming to you, because the simple fact is that copyrights were morally worthless to begin with, but now are unenforceable and that fact will crush you like a semi running over a cockroach.
No Please. The point is that the entire justification of copyrights is to "encourage" works to be released in the public domain. In the information age we need that "encouragement" less than ever, but copyright laws are harsher than they ever have been. INMO it is because they are overcompensating for the fact that copyrights are a fraud. People don't really create for a monopoly, they create because their works have an inherent value that is it's own reward.
It seems to me that the argument for a property right in "Intellectual Property" stands on firmer logical ground than some other forms of conventional "property". Take land, for instance. People all over, both individuals and nations, claim ownership of land, that is, surface area of the earth that existed long before the human race. Sure, we have contracts and other legal mechanisms for recognizing ownership of land, but if you follow the succession far back enough, you find that someone either stumbled on it and dropped his stuff there, or he stole it from someone else and kicked that someone out. Intellectual property, on the other hand, is entirely one's own creation. As such, the ownership rights traditionally afforded to tangible property seem much more strongly deserved by intellectual property.
Well thats sorta the point though. Property rights don't revolve arround incentive any more than the "right" to own slaves on the plantation revolved arround the need to grow cotton. Property is a way of dealing with the fact that not everybody can use a limited resource at the same time, in a way that is non violent and non coercive. It derives from the fact that property has physical limits. Copyrights derive from kings who rewarded publishers for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. It is not about how to best deal with limited resources, it is about controll.
I'm a full-time writer, and I've been living off savings for the past eighteen months writing a new book. Thanks to copyright, I can reasonably expect to earn enough money once my book is published to stay afloat financially, and to tackle additional projects.
Look, I really see where youre comming from, but copyrights are about more than creaters getting a little for their work - they are about microregulating how billions of people across the planet use and apply information in their daily lives. In an age where free speech content is no different than copyright content in the eyes of technology - we just cant have it anymore. There are lots of good causes, and even more good people, but if we start restricting the freedoms of others for the sake of a buck, it will only lead to our long and painfull demise.
Copyrights are a good way to encourage innovation if people are unwilling to do so without financial gain. Until Open Source came along, software innovation needed such encouragement.
NO, sorry, but the entire renissance happened without copyrights, and now most the linux kernel happened inspite of it. That's just not true. Copyrights are a burdon and now they're an unbearable one.
Isn't that the point! In the information age there is no dofference between regulating copying and regulating speech. In the eyes of technology they are both just content. The RIAA, SCO, MPAA understand very well it is an all or nothing game. Sadly, to many of us dont.
What the hell is so bad about copyrights? Okay, I create a work. It's not a physical creation, but rather an intellectual work. A book, a piece of music, a new recipe. It's a product of my own effort, and it's uniquely my own. Now, what the heck is wrong with me having the rights to that work, at least for a limited amount of time? Am I not allowed to control my work? Or do you think that, because what I've created isn't "physical", I'm not allowed to "own" it?
What you're saying is wrong, copyrights are not about the rights to your work, but rather the right to controll what 5 billion people arround the world do with it after it's been released for the world to see.
If you want to have rights over it, then don't share it. I'm shure other people will share things just as valuable and society will move on. That's why the linux kernel is successfull inspite of those who don't want to share.
Look, free societies are not about markets, but about freedoms. Copyrights are the antithesis of freedom, shall we believe they (originally) put an expiration date on them for good luck? Does free speech have an expiration date? No they did it because they realized that the right to restrict what other people copy is not a right, but a forn of controll. In the information age it is an unbearable form of controll.
Just because a bunch of high level people call somthing a property right, does not mean that it is, and with copyrights and intellectual property - it's gotten way out of hand.
The GPL is good not because it upholds copyrights or intellectual property but moreso because it fights fire with fire. It undoes much of the damage caused by copyrights, which might have been bearable 25 years ago when the biggest issues were cassete tapes and xerox machines, but in the information age will just not work.
Well look, I can really see where you're comming from with copyrights and linux. Perhaps the burdon of copyrights might have been bearable 25 years ago when the biggest issues were xerox and tape casettes. But now we are in the information age, and they are not going to be able to enforce them without microregulation every aspect of the internet and information communication. That I assure you will cost alot more then $250 a month.
As for linux I'm not sure if you get it. It's not about features, or cost, it's about controll. That gives you options in the long term that you just don't otherwise have. Ironicaly, even the movie industry understands that - which is why they are going out of their way to puch linux as a standard on the graphics annimation industry. Notice how linux did not mean the end of software developers, but it did mean that the industry had to shift to be service orientated instead of licensence orientated. Well the same is true with other industries too. In this shift some people will win, others will loose. Sorry if it hurt their feelings, they need to deal with it.
College students should be held responsible for their actions. If you break a law, you should be punished. My biggest beef is the "Weasel out of it" and lack of personal integerity and stepping up for personal responsiblity in the world. I travel a lot to other countries on business and pleasure and sometimes I come home and get really mad when I see people blaming everyone else. If what your doing is illgeal and you know it, SOL.
Finally, I half to be really critical about your attitude on illegal activity. There is, and never will be, any thing inherently wrong about copying things. Maybe it's illegal to sit at the front of the bus too, I really don't care. Are you going to say that noone had a right to outcry the arrest of Rosa Parks also? Law is a means to justice, not an end in itself. Securing individual liberty is an end in itself, not the system. In in the USA, it even says so right in the preamble to the constitution. How could you make it any more clear than that?
First off, what you're claiming about getting the credit is false if not an intentional lie. For example, just because I might coppy a Madonna CD, does not mean that I will ever come close to claiming to be the author of "like a virgin" or whatnot. I don't want the credit, thank you. Infact, copyrights are more likely to encourage that, for example I doubt Madonna is the original author of any song she's written in the last 20 years.
Second, all the time I hear about someone who had a great idea, or work, and after that - all they wanted to do is sit on their ass and get paid royalities for it. They think it's sich a great and glorious right that they insist that it's worth restricting the copying behavior of 5 billion people across the globe for things that likely would have been done or similar replacements found anyhow for everyone to use.
You would think that such would at least put the burdon of proof on those who want to impose copying restrictions on other people, but instead all they offer is cheezy statements like "steeling food out of the mouth of writers". Well excuse me, but that's a crock and I for one am getting sick of it.
Third, I have been in the real world thank you. The real world where college students can get worse punishment for copying CDs than robbing a bank. The real world, where companies like Mocrosoft leveraged "intellectual property" to put countless thousands out of work in other companies. The real world, where free to coppy opperating systems are more secure and reliable than closed ones, and more financially productive.
I am so sick and tired of people screeming bloody murder that they have a right to make a living, while what they really want is the right to screw over, controll, and nickel and dime everyone else to their benefit. It is bad enough that they screwed over everyone else with their worthless shallow attitude, but that they are also locking themselves out of the future is just plain sick.
The funny thing is that there were no institutions or specific places of business named in that article. You would think that mentioning them would be in the publics best interest.
Another funny thing is that there are a lot of banks outside the US that are less regulated and have proven themselves over the long term to be just as safe and provide a higher return on investment, and better service.
Banks here are never made to be responsible for their actions "as long as the're just following regulations"
Every time somthing like this happens, there is a cry to regulate by the masses, and then the Bank officials promplty fund the campaigns of the political powers that be to make sure that they are nice regulations.
I would not be supprised at all if this were intentional fear mongering designed to get particular policitians elected. What we really need is an attitude of - buyer beware and to let the market teach them a lession if they become too lax about financial security.
The simple truth is that copyrights create a system of rewards for people who push hype over substance. It is no longer about what has the most social value or service value, but rather which gets the most heads to turn. You can also see this effect in things like text books. The information in some books has changed little in over 100 years, but you wouldn't know from the racket they run at the college book stores - there's a new revised version every semester.
I think all to often, people think this media mob like behavior is just what happens in a free society, but IMHO it is not. It happens only when you start to restrict what people can copy.
I knew i was gonna take alot of heat for that, but I don't think we should shy away from attacking a poor belief system just because the powers that be paint such as radical. I don't care what they think, the facts exist independent of them and are going to force the issue independent of them.
In the case of patnets especially, people literally needlessly die from their imposition. I think, for once, somebody needs to be in their face about it.
This one is far more harsh, but I think makes my point just as well.
COPYRIGHTS AND PATENTS ARE THE SLAVERY OF THE INFORMATIOn AGE(Part II)
There seems to be this attitude that the suffering of slaves prior to 1850 was something that only happened back then. That it has nothing to do with now, that we are more civilized, more modern, more mature, and more sophisticated. With it comes the arrogance that what happened then, means nothing now, that what happened there has no value here, that the great torment and suffering back then can safely be ignored now as we blow off history and all the values that go with it in terms of understanding, freedom, markets, property rights, and the information age.
Surely anyone who claimed that there is no incentive go grow cotton without "niggers" on the plantation would be considered a barbaric. But if someone claims that there is no incentive to create intellectual and knowledge works without copyrights and patents, then society calls them enlightened. If someone had said that the great wealth of America rested on slavery as a property right and the plantation system, they were a foolish idiot. But if someone says that the great wealth of societies in the information age rests on "Intellectual Property", then they are called wise. Anyone who says that slavery was about property rights and not control, is a liar. However, if they say that copyrights and patents are not about control, but "Intellectual Property" then they are considered trustworthy. How about - if you don't like slavery - don't own slaves, and if you don't like copyrights no one forces you to buy those creations. How about - if you don't believe in slavery, you must be an anarchist, if you don't believe in copyrights and patents you must be communist. How about - you are a thief if you free slaves from the plantation, you are a thief when you copy someones "Intellectual Property".
So why are we spoon-feed these poor logical explanations over and over again? Because, like the rapist who drugs his victim and gently penetrates her, rather than beat her and tear into her where all the scars, blood, and bruises can be seen. Like the assassin who befriends and mis-places his victims heart medications, rather than pull out a rifle and pop a bullet in the head. Copyrights and patents are the pinnacle of quiet violence. So seemingly innocent, so seemingly civilized and friendly, so hard to see and identify any direct evil, any direct consequence. After all, what could be less harmless then providing an incentive to artists and inventors, right? But do they really promote art - or just promote works that have the most hype rather than the most meaning and educational value? Do they really help inventors, or do they hinder collaboration and sharing in a way that would put a police state to shame?
Perhaps the old lady has none to blame when her patented diabetes medication is too expensive to afford anymore. Who can the workers blame when the proprietary technology they bet their career on becomes obsolete and it becomes ever harder to relearn from scratch as they get older. Who can a child in Africa blame when they are dying of AIDS, and there are no generics to treat it! Who do we blame when researchers seeking a cure for cancer encounter massive obstacles to sharing there individual research for fear that their peers will get one up on them, get a key patent, and lock them out! Who do our nations students blame when tabloids are pennies on the dollar, but textbooks dollars on the page! Who do we blame for Hollywood culture being such a failure, and so strongly influencing society in their own failed image.
As people die because patented medicines are too costly and alternatives too sparse, and the needy go without, not because of genuine shortage, but because artificial human made restrictions. Our government who is the enemy of overt violence, has become the friend of quiet violence. Our government who has organized world wars to protect our freedoms, now promotes a world orde
This was posted several months ago, but I think it still stands now. Copyrights are wrong, and anti free market, and immoral, and too many people are being spoonfeed poor beliefs.
BITTER PROTEST AGAINST COPYRIGHTS
If I said I didn't have an incentive to grow oranges unless I could plant a tree in your yard, or if I said I didn't have an incentive to grow cotton unless I could own slaves on the plantation, most people would see this is these as the worthless shallow arguments that they are. But if I said I didn't have an incentive to to make beneficial or creative works without a copyright monopoly, then all of a sudden people just take it on faith, they don't even question it, they just assume that society would fall apart without them. In my humble opinion, this is intellectually dishonest, especially considering that the entire Renaissance happened without copyrights.
The simple fact is, there is no equivalency relationship between copyrights and property rights - incentive does not a right make. The moral and historical foundation of property derives from the fact that property has physical limits, while the foundation of copyrights dervives from kings who granted publishers monopolies in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. The history of copyrights is not one of rights, but control of sharing and restricting the open use of knowledge.
That is why people who copy are not criminals, thieves, or akin to pirates who board ships and murder people. No, infact they are really victims of a cruel deception. A deception that copyrights somehow financially benefit artists and creators. The simple fact is, that for every artist that makes it "big" there are literally thousands who copyrights haven't helped a bit, even hindered, or destroyed.
However, this is not the only failure of copyrights - it is just one in many issues related to copyrights that are just blown off ignored, or glossed over. Like the failures of Hollywood culture, the failures of big media to provide quality material, the failures to provide reasonably priced books to college students while tabloids are dirt cheap, and massive anti-trust behavior in the software industry to name a few.
While the problems associated with copyrights might have been bearable 20 years ago when the biggest issue was Xerox machines, today we are entering into the information age where information is so easy to copy and manipulate that there can be no middle ground. Our society will either have to control all of it or none of it. Our communications will either have to be monitored or free, our privacy to be either contunuiously probed or protected.
In that sense, copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off our freedoms until we cut it off at the root. The DMCA, infinite extensions, billion dollar lawsiuts, are all just symptoms of a poor belief system - not the cause. So the efforts to find a "middle ground" on copyrights are a failure because they do not address the core issue. That contrary to copyrights, the right to copy and distribute creative works and knowledge is a right!
Like freedom of religion, and freedom of the press, the right to copy things is a right that exists above government. It is a moral right, it is an inherent right, it defines the very nature of the human condition. It is beyond politics and the petition of leaders.
In fact, the entire foundation of politics rests on the notion that it's better to fight wars with words than wars with bloodshed. But to copy things does not require coercion or viloence at all, the rules are not the same. We will not change the copyright situation by petitioning our leaders, or voting to change the system. No it can only be changed by defiance.
Defiance by holding the belief that people have rights, even if those rights appear contrary to the popular mob or to the system. Defiance, by shedding off the guilt and shame that those who try to impose copyrights impose on us and understanding that they are
will have to become far more important if people are to hold onto any profit margin, surely. If I can "read out" the program to create "the crown jewels", or download it from the net, and replicate it down to the atomic level - what's the difference...
That's the whole problem. Just like when the Lord/Surf system became irrelavent during the industrial revolution - instead of giving it up, people tried to force it. It was a major force behind the civil war in the US and two world wars.
In the US one would have thought that mechanized machines would reduce the need for slavery... ofer a way out. But instead they did just the opposite, expanded their plantations to be 100 times larger because their slaves could do 100 times more with machines like the cottongin. That was their idea of the industrial revolution.
We have a similar problem with copyrights today. Heck, the burden required by them might have been bearable 20 years ago when the biggest issues were cassette tapes and xerox machines, but now they want to choke off half the economey and all the internet in the name of copyrights. Like the plantation masters during the industrial revolution, their idea of the information age is warped. Copyrights are gonna half to go.
In the nano age, patents are just gonna half to go too. The only question is will they go the hard way or the easy way. God help us.
Open source will win over Microsoft in the marketplace for the same reasons that capitalisim won out over communisim. Because economies are not about markets, or social orginisation, but about freedom. When you have freedom then the markets tend to take care of themselves as people tend to use those freedoms to look out for their own best interest.
If you look at copyrights more like a government regulation on how people use and distribute information, and less like a free market property right - then the reason why GNU/Linux is taking off becomes obvious as well as the reason why it will win over Microsoft and other closed software inspite of their half-trillion market cap.
The "right to a decent living", is what is communist (which I prefer to call Marxisim, because there is nothing community related about it). It always leaves off at the end "at someone elses expense", which I already talked about.
Another typical behavior of Marxists is to tout phony rights like the famous saying "from each according to their own, to each according to their needs". Smart people know that just because an institution calls somthing a right doesn't mean that it is. This is especially true with copyrights.
Rights are based off of facts, not my opinion. Eg. Copying does not deprive the creater of their original. or - property is a way of dealing with the fact that not everybody can use somthing at the same time. I didn't create those facts, just observed them.
PS: how dare you free those slaves without compensating the owners, don't cotton farmers have a right to make a decent living?
Individual copyrights "works for hire" and corporate copyrights are the same thing, but a different form. When anyone has the right to restrict what other people freely copy then problems like this are going to come up again and again in one way or another.
What if I said, well corporations shouldn't own slaves, but individuals can. and... well how would you feel if you spent all this money to import a slave from africa... and then... he ran away... or who'se gonna grow cotton without slaves? Note how these totally ignore the other side of who'se being violated, and the same is true with copyrights. For every one individual who benefits from a copyright - he must claim the right to lock out billions and controll how they copy things. that is unjust. Copyrights are the root of the problem.
While the restrictive nature of copyrights was bearable 20 years ago when the biggest issues were cassate tapes and xerox machines, today you cant effectively enforce/have them without microregulating every aspect of every individuals lives, and invading individual privacy in drastic ways.
Nobody would say, well i have the right to make money and a reasonable living... so therefore I have a right to rob a bank, but when it comes to copyright people use a similar logic all the time. The entire renassace happened without copyrights, people will continue to create and innovate long after copyrights are gone, and continue to figure out ways about how to make money too.
Copyrights (or more accurately, the alleged right to restrict what other people duplicate) are really the root of the problem, when we deal with this one - then all the other ones will go away by themselves.
For some parts of the war on drugs and for the massive incarceration rate it leads to - I see where they're comming from. But when it comes to other things, especially economic freedom issues like taxes and regulations, forget it. I'm talking about all forms of freedom, not just their narrow definition of human rights.
A few years ago I did alot of research about countries all over the world - and came to the conclusion that the US is still the best when it comes to freedoms other than maybe Switzerland and Finland. As much as I hate the taxes, regulations, war of privacy^H^H^H^H^H^H oops I mean terror and other restrictions here... believe it or not in most other places it is actually worse.
While many countries have strengths in a few areas, overall the US is still the strongest. For example, Hong Kong has some of the best free markets anywhere, but being part of China it is not a good option. Other countries have great tax opportunities, like Belize, but the US came down hard on them with it's mighty economic and political strength - and that was that. Believe it or not, if you're NOT a US citizen, the USA can even be a massive tax haven.
Anyhow, after lots of study I came to some conclusions. All the great frontieers, xcept for perhaps the ocean and antartica, (space... other planets...) are taken. The US is really the last frontier of freedom, and the next frontieer is most likely not to be a political landscape, but rather a technological one. For example, use encryption, freenet, and p2p technologies on the internet to secure your right to copy until the enemies pitter out. (which they will, because things that thrive by taking away freedom are never long term tenable)
By doing it this way, especially in the US, you can take advantage of the fact that political/economic forces already in place will make it impossible for them to shut down the internet, but will also make it just as impossible to enforce copying restrictions. Some countries like China might go so desperate as to pop a bullet in the head of anybody who views unauthorized data without trial, but once again political realities in the US more or less make that impossible. In a way, we have the government check-mated.
In my experience, anonimity increases security. When people can have anonimity - we don't make lazy assumptions in the way we design our software. It avoids the "well we dont need to make a tight design because we can always trace it back to whoever...." attitude and forces security to be put in a proper context from the beginning.
Anonimity also encourages "unextorted" behavior. Voteing is a good example - on an individual scale blackmaling someone to vote for a candidate is very difficult. The same applys to social behaviors on the internet. If you can trace people back to the source, but they're anonymously extorted - then you have not givven yourself better security, just an illusion.
Also, historically look at the way the germans took away the guns from all the registered gun owners in 1940. And then look at how the jews were forced to wear a star of david on their shirts. In these cases anonimity did nothing to increase security, but did a lot to promote tyrrany. My fear with the internet exactly.
Slashdot Mirror
The artist was deprived of the money Bob would have otherwise spent. It does matter how you look at it.
What a crock. No matter how you look at it, you have no inherent right to restrict what other people copy. But that argument is for someone who us thinking honestly, so let me rephrase: you have no inherent right to money you could have had if noone else was in the way. Tough luck.
Then you will get what comming to you, because the simple fact is that copyrights were morally worthless to begin with, but now are unenforceable and that fact will crush you like a semi running over a cockroach.
No Please. The point is that the entire justification of copyrights is to "encourage" works to be released in the public domain. In the information age we need that "encouragement" less than ever, but copyright laws are harsher than they ever have been. INMO it is because they are overcompensating for the fact that copyrights are a fraud. People don't really create for a monopoly, they create because their works have an inherent value that is it's own reward.
It seems to me that the argument for a property right in "Intellectual Property" stands on firmer logical ground than some other forms of conventional "property". Take land, for instance. People all over, both individuals and nations, claim ownership of land, that is, surface area of the earth that existed long before the human race. Sure, we have contracts and other legal mechanisms for recognizing ownership of land, but if you follow the succession far back enough, you find that someone either stumbled on it and dropped his stuff there, or he stole it from someone else and kicked that someone out. Intellectual property, on the other hand, is entirely one's own creation. As such, the ownership rights traditionally afforded to tangible property seem much more strongly deserved by intellectual property.
Well thats sorta the point though. Property rights don't revolve arround incentive any more than the "right" to own slaves on the plantation revolved arround the need to grow cotton. Property is a way of dealing with the fact that not everybody can use a limited resource at the same time, in a way that is non violent and non coercive. It derives from the fact that property has physical limits. Copyrights derive from kings who rewarded publishers for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. It is not about how to best deal with limited resources, it is about controll.
I'm a full-time writer, and I've been living off savings for the past eighteen months writing a new book. Thanks to copyright, I can reasonably expect to earn enough money once my book is published to stay afloat financially, and to tackle additional projects.
Look, I really see where youre comming from, but copyrights are about more than creaters getting a little for their work - they are about microregulating how billions of people across the planet use and apply information in their daily lives. In an age where free speech content is no different than copyright content in the eyes of technology - we just cant have it anymore. There are lots of good causes, and even more good people, but if we start restricting the freedoms of others for the sake of a buck, it will only lead to our long and painfull demise.
Copyrights are a good way to encourage innovation if people are unwilling to do so without financial gain. Until Open Source came along, software innovation needed such encouragement.
NO, sorry, but the entire renissance happened without copyrights, and now most the linux kernel happened inspite of it. That's just not true. Copyrights are a burdon and now they're an unbearable one.
Isn't that the point! In the information age there is no dofference between regulating copying and regulating speech. In the eyes of technology they are both just content. The RIAA, SCO, MPAA understand very well it is an all or nothing game. Sadly, to many of us dont.
What the hell is so bad about copyrights? Okay, I create a work. It's not a physical creation, but rather an intellectual work. A book, a piece of music, a new recipe. It's a product of my own effort, and it's uniquely my own. Now, what the heck is wrong with me having the rights to that work, at least for a limited amount of time? Am I not allowed to control my work? Or do you think that, because what I've created isn't "physical", I'm not allowed to "own" it?
What you're saying is wrong, copyrights are not about the rights to your work, but rather the right to controll what 5 billion people arround the world do with it after it's been released for the world to see.
If you want to have rights over it, then don't share it. I'm shure other people will share things just as valuable and society will move on. That's why the linux kernel is successfull inspite of those who don't want to share.
Communist? What!!!!
Look, free societies are not about markets, but about freedoms. Copyrights are the antithesis of freedom, shall we believe they (originally) put an expiration date on them for good luck? Does free speech have an expiration date? No they did it because they realized that the right to restrict what other people copy is not a right, but a forn of controll. In the information age it is an unbearable form of controll.
Just because a bunch of high level people call somthing a property right, does not mean that it is, and with copyrights and intellectual property - it's gotten way out of hand.
The GPL is good not because it upholds copyrights or intellectual property but moreso because it fights fire with fire. It undoes much of the damage caused by copyrights, which might have been bearable 25 years ago when the biggest issues were cassete tapes and xerox machines, but in the information age will just not work.
Well look, I can really see where you're comming from with copyrights and linux. Perhaps the burdon of copyrights might have been bearable 25 years ago when the biggest issues were xerox and tape casettes. But now we are in the information age, and they are not going to be able to enforce them without microregulation every aspect of the internet and information communication. That I assure you will cost alot more then $250 a month.
As for linux I'm not sure if you get it. It's not about features, or cost, it's about controll. That gives you options in the long term that you just don't otherwise have. Ironicaly, even the movie industry understands that - which is why they are going out of their way to puch linux as a standard on the graphics annimation industry. Notice how linux did not mean the end of software developers, but it did mean that the industry had to shift to be service orientated instead of licensence orientated. Well the same is true with other industries too. In this shift some people will win, others will loose. Sorry if it hurt their feelings, they need to deal with it.
College students should be held responsible for their actions. If you break a law, you should be punished. My biggest beef is the "Weasel out of it" and lack of personal integerity and stepping up for personal responsiblity in the world. I travel a lot to other countries on business and pleasure and sometimes I come home and get really mad when I see people blaming everyone else. If what your doing is illgeal and you know it, SOL.
Finally, I half to be really critical about your attitude on illegal activity. There is, and never will be, any thing inherently wrong about copying things. Maybe it's illegal to sit at the front of the bus too, I really don't care. Are you going to say that noone had a right to outcry the arrest of Rosa Parks also? Law is a means to justice, not an end in itself. Securing individual liberty is an end in itself, not the system. In in the USA, it even says so right in the preamble to the constitution. How could you make it any more clear than that?
First off, what you're claiming about getting the credit is false if not an intentional lie. For example, just because I might coppy a Madonna CD, does not mean that I will ever come close to claiming to be the author of "like a virgin" or whatnot. I don't want the credit, thank you. Infact, copyrights are more likely to encourage that, for example I doubt Madonna is the original author of any song she's written in the last 20 years.
Second, all the time I hear about someone who had a great idea, or work, and after that - all they wanted to do is sit on their ass and get paid royalities for it. They think it's sich a great and glorious right that they insist that it's worth restricting the copying behavior of 5 billion people across the globe for things that likely would have been done or similar replacements found anyhow for everyone to use.
You would think that such would at least put the burdon of proof on those who want to impose copying restrictions on other people, but instead all they offer is cheezy statements like "steeling food out of the mouth of writers". Well excuse me, but that's a crock and I for one am getting sick of it.
Third, I have been in the real world thank you. The real world where college students can get worse punishment for copying CDs than robbing a bank. The real world, where companies like Mocrosoft leveraged "intellectual property" to put countless thousands out of work in other companies. The real world, where free to coppy opperating systems are more secure and reliable than closed ones, and more financially productive.
I am so sick and tired of people screeming bloody murder that they have a right to make a living, while what they really want is the right to screw over, controll, and nickel and dime everyone else to their benefit. It is bad enough that they screwed over everyone else with their worthless shallow attitude, but that they are also locking themselves out of the future is just plain sick.
The funny thing is that there were no institutions or specific places of business named in that article. You would think that mentioning them would be in the publics best interest.
Another funny thing is that there are a lot of banks outside the US that are less regulated and have proven themselves over the long term to be just as safe and provide a higher return on investment, and better service.
Banks here are never made to be responsible for their actions "as long as the're just following regulations"
Every time somthing like this happens, there is a cry to regulate by the masses, and then the Bank officials promplty fund the campaigns of the political powers that be to make sure that they are nice regulations.
I would not be supprised at all if this were intentional fear mongering designed to get particular policitians elected. What we really need is an attitude of - buyer beware and to let the market teach them a lession if they become too lax about financial security.
The simple truth is that copyrights create a system of rewards for people who push hype over substance. It is no longer about what has the most social value or service value, but rather which gets the most heads to turn. You can also see this effect in things like text books. The information in some books has changed little in over 100 years, but you wouldn't know from the racket they run at the college book stores - there's a new revised version every semester.
I think all to often, people think this media mob like behavior is just what happens in a free society, but IMHO it is not. It happens only when you start to restrict what people can copy.
I knew i was gonna take alot of heat for that, but I don't think we should shy away from attacking a poor belief system just because the powers that be paint such as radical. I don't care what they think, the facts exist independent of them and are going to force the issue independent of them.
In the case of patnets especially, people literally needlessly die from their imposition. I think, for once, somebody needs to be in their face about it.
This one is far more harsh, but I think makes my point just as well.
COPYRIGHTS AND PATENTS ARE THE SLAVERY OF THE INFORMATIOn AGE(Part II)
There seems to be this attitude that the suffering of slaves prior to 1850 was something that only happened back then. That it has nothing to do with now, that we are more civilized, more modern, more mature, and more sophisticated. With it comes the arrogance that what happened then, means nothing now, that what happened there has no value here, that the great torment and suffering back then can safely be ignored now as we blow off history and all the values that go with it in terms of understanding, freedom, markets, property rights, and the information age.
Surely anyone who claimed that there is no incentive go grow cotton without "niggers" on the plantation would be considered a barbaric. But if someone claims that there is no incentive to create intellectual and knowledge works without copyrights and patents, then society calls them enlightened. If someone had said that the great wealth of America rested on slavery as a property right and the plantation system, they were a foolish idiot. But if someone says that the great wealth of societies in the information age rests on "Intellectual Property", then they are called wise. Anyone who says that slavery was about property rights and not control, is a liar. However, if they say that copyrights and patents are not about control, but "Intellectual Property" then they are considered trustworthy. How about - if you don't like slavery - don't own slaves, and if you don't like copyrights no one forces you to buy those creations. How about - if you don't believe in slavery, you must be an anarchist, if you don't believe in copyrights and patents you must be communist. How about - you are a thief if you free slaves from the plantation, you are a thief when you copy someones "Intellectual Property".
So why are we spoon-feed these poor logical explanations over and over again? Because, like the rapist who drugs his victim and gently penetrates her, rather than beat her and tear into her where all the scars, blood, and bruises can be seen. Like the assassin who befriends and mis-places his victims heart medications, rather than pull out a rifle and pop a bullet in the head. Copyrights and patents are the pinnacle of quiet violence. So seemingly innocent, so seemingly civilized and friendly, so hard to see and identify any direct evil, any direct consequence. After all, what could be less harmless then providing an incentive to artists and inventors, right? But do they really promote art - or just promote works that have the most hype rather than the most meaning and educational value? Do they really help inventors, or do they hinder collaboration and sharing in a way that would put a police state to shame?
Perhaps the old lady has none to blame when her patented diabetes medication is too expensive to afford anymore. Who can the workers blame when the proprietary technology they bet their career on becomes obsolete and it becomes ever harder to relearn from scratch as they get older. Who can a child in Africa blame when they are dying of AIDS, and there are no generics to treat it! Who do we blame when researchers seeking a cure for cancer encounter massive obstacles to sharing there individual research for fear that their peers will get one up on them, get a key patent, and lock them out! Who do our nations students blame when tabloids are pennies on the dollar, but textbooks dollars on the page! Who do we blame for Hollywood culture being such a failure, and so strongly influencing society in their own failed image.
As people die because patented medicines are too costly and alternatives too sparse, and the needy go without, not because of genuine shortage, but because artificial human made restrictions. Our government who is the enemy of overt violence, has become the friend of quiet violence. Our government who has organized world wars to protect our freedoms, now promotes a world orde
This was posted several months ago, but I think it still stands now. Copyrights are wrong, and anti free market, and immoral, and too many people are being spoonfeed poor beliefs.
BITTER PROTEST AGAINST COPYRIGHTS
If I said I didn't have an incentive to grow oranges unless I could plant a tree in your yard, or if I said I didn't have an incentive to grow cotton unless I could own slaves on the plantation, most people would see this is these as the worthless shallow arguments that they are. But if I said I didn't have an incentive to to make beneficial or creative works without a copyright monopoly, then all of a sudden people just take it on faith, they don't even question it, they just assume that society would fall apart without them. In my humble opinion, this is intellectually dishonest, especially considering that the entire Renaissance happened without copyrights.
The simple fact is, there is no equivalency relationship between copyrights and property rights - incentive does not a right make. The moral and historical foundation of property derives from the fact that property has physical limits, while the foundation of copyrights dervives from kings who granted publishers monopolies in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. The history of copyrights is not one of rights, but control of sharing and restricting the open use of knowledge.
That is why people who copy are not criminals, thieves, or akin to pirates who board ships and murder people. No, infact they are really victims of a cruel deception. A deception that copyrights somehow financially benefit artists and creators. The simple fact is, that for every artist that makes it "big" there are literally thousands who copyrights haven't helped a bit, even hindered, or destroyed.
However, this is not the only failure of copyrights - it is just one in many issues related to copyrights that are just blown off ignored, or glossed over. Like the failures of Hollywood culture, the failures of big media to provide quality material, the failures to provide reasonably priced books to college students while tabloids are dirt cheap, and massive anti-trust behavior in the software industry to name a few.
While the problems associated with copyrights might have been bearable 20 years ago when the biggest issue was Xerox machines, today we are entering into the information age where information is so easy to copy and manipulate that there can be no middle ground. Our society will either have to control all of it or none of it. Our communications will either have to be monitored or free, our privacy to be either contunuiously probed or protected.
In that sense, copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off our freedoms until we cut it off at the root. The DMCA, infinite extensions, billion dollar lawsiuts, are all just symptoms of a poor belief system - not the cause. So the efforts to find a "middle ground" on copyrights are a failure because they do not address the core issue. That contrary to copyrights, the right to copy and distribute creative works and knowledge is a right!
Like freedom of religion, and freedom of the press, the right to copy things is a right that exists above government. It is a moral right, it is an inherent right, it defines the very nature of the human condition. It is beyond politics and the petition of leaders.
In fact, the entire foundation of politics rests on the notion that it's better to fight wars with words than wars with bloodshed. But to copy things does not require coercion or viloence at all, the rules are not the same. We will not change the copyright situation by petitioning our leaders, or voting to change the system. No it can only be changed by defiance.
Defiance by holding the belief that people have rights, even if those rights appear contrary to the popular mob or to the system. Defiance, by shedding off the guilt and shame that those who try to impose copyrights impose on us and understanding that they are
will have to become far more important if people are to hold onto any profit margin, surely. If I can "read out" the program to create "the crown jewels", or download it from the net, and replicate it down to the atomic level - what's the difference...
That's the whole problem. Just like when the Lord/Surf system became irrelavent during the industrial revolution - instead of giving it up, people tried to force it. It was a major force behind the civil war in the US and two world wars.
In the US one would have thought that mechanized machines would reduce the need for slavery ... ofer a way out. But instead they did just the opposite, expanded their plantations to be 100 times larger because their slaves could do 100 times more with machines like the cottongin. That was their idea of the industrial revolution.
We have a similar problem with copyrights today. Heck, the burden required by them might have been bearable 20 years ago when the biggest issues were cassette tapes and xerox machines, but now they want to choke off half the economey and all the internet in the name of copyrights. Like the plantation masters during the industrial revolution, their idea of the information age is warped. Copyrights are gonna half to go.
In the nano age, patents are just gonna half to go too. The only question is will they go the hard way or the easy way. God help us.
Open source will win over Microsoft in the marketplace for the same reasons that capitalisim won out over communisim. Because economies are not about markets, or social orginisation, but about freedom. When you have freedom then the markets tend to take care of themselves as people tend to use those freedoms to look out for their own best interest.
If you look at copyrights more like a government regulation on how people use and distribute information, and less like a free market property right - then the reason why GNU/Linux is taking off becomes obvious as well as the reason why it will win over Microsoft and other closed software inspite of their half-trillion market cap.
The "right to a decent living", is what is communist (which I prefer to call Marxisim, because there is nothing community related about it). It always leaves off at the end "at someone elses expense", which I already talked about.
Another typical behavior of Marxists is to tout phony rights like the famous saying "from each according to their own, to each according to their needs". Smart people know that just because an institution calls somthing a right doesn't mean that it is. This is especially true with copyrights.
Rights are based off of facts, not my opinion. Eg. Copying does not deprive the creater of their original. or - property is a way of dealing with the fact that not everybody can use somthing at the same time. I didn't create those facts, just observed them.
PS: how dare you free those slaves without compensating the owners, don't cotton farmers have a right to make a decent living?
Individual copyrights "works for hire" and corporate copyrights are the same thing, but a different form. When anyone has the right to restrict what other people freely copy then problems like this are going to come up again and again in one way or another.
... well how would you feel if you spent all this money to import a slave from africa ... and then ... he ran away. .. or who'se gonna grow cotton without slaves? Note how these totally ignore the other side of who'se being violated, and the same is true with copyrights. For every one individual who benefits from a copyright - he must claim the right to lock out billions and controll how they copy things. that is unjust. Copyrights are the root of the problem.
... so therefore I have a right to rob a bank, but when it comes to copyright people use a similar logic all the time.
What if I said, well corporations shouldn't own slaves, but individuals can. and
While the restrictive nature of copyrights was bearable 20 years ago when the biggest issues were cassate tapes and xerox machines, today you cant effectively enforce/have them without microregulating every aspect of every individuals lives, and invading individual privacy in drastic ways.
Nobody would say, well i have the right to make money and a reasonable living
The entire renassace happened without copyrights, people will continue to create and innovate long after copyrights are gone, and continue to figure out ways about how to make money too.
Copyrights (or more accurately, the alleged right to restrict what other people duplicate) are really the root of the problem, when we deal with this one - then all the other ones will go away by themselves.
For some parts of the war on drugs and for the massive incarceration rate it leads to - I see where they're comming from. But when it comes to other things, especially economic freedom issues like taxes and regulations, forget it. I'm talking about all forms of freedom, not just their narrow definition of human rights.
A few years ago I did alot of research about countries all over the world - and came to the conclusion that the US is still the best when it comes to freedoms other than maybe Switzerland and Finland. As much as I hate the taxes, regulations, war of privacy^H^H^H^H^H^H oops I mean terror and other restrictions here ... believe it or not in most other places it is actually worse.
While many countries have strengths in a few areas, overall the US is still the strongest. For example, Hong Kong has some of the best free markets anywhere, but being part of China it is not a good option. Other countries have great tax opportunities, like Belize, but the US came down hard on them with it's mighty economic and political strength - and that was that. Believe it or not, if you're NOT a US citizen, the USA can even be a massive tax haven.
Anyhow, after lots of study I came to some conclusions. All the great frontieers, xcept for perhaps the ocean and antartica, (space... other planets...) are taken. The US is really the last frontier of freedom, and the next frontieer is most likely not to be a political landscape, but rather a technological one. For example, use encryption, freenet, and p2p technologies on the internet to secure your right to copy until the enemies pitter out. (which they will, because things that thrive by taking away freedom are never long term tenable)
By doing it this way, especially in the US, you can take advantage of the fact that political/economic forces already in place will make it impossible for them to shut down the internet, but will also make it just as impossible to enforce copying restrictions. Some countries like China might go so desperate as to pop a bullet in the head of anybody who views unauthorized data without trial, but once again political realities in the US more or less make that impossible. In a way, we have the government check-mated.
In my experience, anonimity increases security. When people can have anonimity - we don't make lazy assumptions in the way we design our software. It avoids the "well we dont need to make a tight design because we can always trace it back to whoever...." attitude and forces security to be put in a proper context from the beginning.
Anonimity also encourages "unextorted" behavior. Voteing is a good example - on an individual scale blackmaling someone to vote for a candidate is very difficult. The same applys to social behaviors on the internet. If you can trace people back to the source, but they're anonymously extorted - then you have not givven yourself better security, just an illusion.
Also, historically look at the way the germans took away the guns from all the registered gun owners in 1940. And then look at how the jews were forced to wear a star of david on their shirts. In these cases anonimity did nothing to increase security, but did a lot to promote tyrrany. My fear with the internet exactly.