>>"How do you imagine a person has the right to control what another does with information that is in his memory no matter how it came to be there."
I don't imagine that. Information -- or ideas in someone's head -- is, as I've said several times, impossible to copy. So, the entire discussion centered on copying ideas is moot, because it is talking about something that cannot be done. Ideas are completely free, always.
I've been addressing something else: Who has rights to the physical property created when someone encodes a representation of ideas on something? Yes, ideas are tansferred (not copied) when someone reads such a work and creates similar ideas in his own head. But that is is phenomenon that is separate and distinct from transferring ownership of or rights in the object itself.
If, as you argue, the act of publishing makes a book available for the pubic to do with as it pleases, how, then, can an author sell only limited rights to his publisher? The publisher is part of the public. Why doesn't the publisher acquire all the rights that, if I read you correctly, everyone else does? If an author does have the ability to transfer limited rights to a publisher, why, then, does he not have a similar right to transfer limited rights to the buying public?
>>"You also fail to address how the world can possibly function if your view is correct. Like I say, I find it so over the top it amazes me."
It is how the world operates today. The notion that all rights to a created work pass to everyone who buys a copy of it is not commonly recognized in law.
I'm in fundamental disagreeement. I see no way for anyone else to acquire any rights to any created work unless those rights pass to them from the work's creator. If we could acquire rights in some other way, we'd need to identify another source of those rights. That doesn't exist. Individual members of society do not have some kind of a priori right to do as they wish with a work created by someone else simply because they have access to it or a copy. (It's specious to tak about the rights of "society" or "the public" since both are only convenient descriptions for any number of individuals acting independently.)
Such a work is not a special case. It is the same as anything else that someone makes: a table, a pair of shoes, a piece of jewelry. Other people do not acquire rights to a work just because it becomes visisble and available to them.
If the world operated without copyright law for most of its history, I'd just point out that the world existed without any law for most of its history. Offering that argument to support your position is logically inconsistent since you'd also need to argue that murder and all other crimes only became unacceptable once a law against them was enforced. In any case, previous, or current, human behavior is no indicator of rights we come by naturally.
If I make something and you copy it without my permission, that's wrong. Copyright has nothing to do with it.
Getting away from silly rock analogies, if I write a book, publish it, and you buy it, you have those rights I transferred to you via the publisher plus whatever rights copyright law says you have. No more. This is not hard to understand.
>>"Would most publishers accusing a less popular artist who made little or no profit on an infringing work be willing to settle the issue for significantly less than the statutory damages of $750 to $30,000 [copyright.gov]?"
Experienced or not, if you produce a record that copies someone else's melody, it seems to me that your only possible defense in a lawsuit is that you did not do so deliberately and that you were unware that the melody was duplicated. That might be easier for an inexperienced musician to argue. If I was on the other side, however, I'd argue that inexperience as a performing musician does not necessarily have any bearing on how much music someone has listened to. It only takes hearing a song once, so I'd go after an inventory of the music he owns, what songs were playing in his friends homes when he was there, what he might have heard on the radio just before he wrote the song at issue; I'd check into what kind of music his parents played when he was a kid, etc. I'd do what I needed to do to show that he could have consciously copied that melody. For example, he'd have a weaker case for arguing that he didn't recognize the duplicate melody if I could show that his parents played the other song several times a day, or if records from his ISP and/or browser history showed he downloaded the other song two days before he wrote his.
I'm not assuming he "accidentally" copied anything. Frankly, I've alway doubted that neither Harrison, nor anyone else involved with that recording, failed to recognize that it used another song's melody. These were professionals, steeped in the music of the 1950's and 1960's.
I'm not talking about " something as insubstantial as a story." As I've said, ideas cannot be possessed.
If Thag carves his story on a boulder, then Thag owns that physcial representation of his story. Not the story. If Grod starts making duplicate boulders without Thag's permission, Thag has the right to bop him on the head with a big stick. Thag doesn't need copyright law to understand that.
Harrison did more that stand up in a room and sing a song. He made, distributed and sold a record -- a physical thing -- that sounded pretty much like another song. If all Harrison did was recite song lyrics, I doubt he'd have been sued.
>>"In the absence of copyright law, if you publish your own work, the pubic has just these rights to copy it and make derivatives..."
1. No. I'm saying that copyright law has nothing to do with the creation of rights. All rights in a work emanate from the work's creator. Whatever rights anyone else has regarding that work must come from the work's creator. No other source exists. The rights do not exist until the work is created.
2. In other words, a monopoly -- posession of all rights inherent in a work -- comes into existence when the work is created and that monopoly of rights is possesed by the work's creator.
3. The act of publishing is the act of transferring limited rights in return for royalties. I stated early on that copyright law is part of the prior legal arrangement that applies, and also transfers certain limited rights . But, the rights transferred to the publisher do not transfer to the book's buyer unless the author says they do. That's why the act of publishing involves specific limited rights. All other rights remain with the work's creator. I.e., an author can sell rights to publish in Europe, and retain rights to publish in North America. As I understand it, your argument means that an author could not specify that because everyone has all rights to his work once it is published anywhere.
4. Re: Slashdot -- I mean an exact duplicate. Slashdot uses a license that gives me certain specified rights to their code. I don't have the right to use that code to stand up an exact, competing, clone of Slashdot unless they say so. Absent that grant, I presume their lawyers would contact me about copyright violations.
4. I'm not defending or attacking copyright law. I'm explaining how, and why, all rights to a work are originally sourced to the work's creator. I don't need copyright law to explain that. So, if someone recites an entire book, that's fine with me. If they start copying it, that isn't. If copyright law says the recitation is forbidden, then that's an area where I don't agree with copyright law.
5. If I publish in the absence of copyright law, then I am constrained only by the terms I impose on the publisher. Rather than the public acquiring more rights, they would acquire only those rights I specifiy. For example, absent copyright law, there would be no fair use unless I said so. (Importantly, if publishing meant giving up all rights to a work, then how can a member of the public be assured that the book they are buying is the actual, unaltered, work written by the author? )
6. >>"...Rights transfer when the author publishes. " Only those rights that the auther specifies ( or accepts via prior legal arrangement, i,e., copyight law). That is, you do not have the right to copy and distribute copies of my book unless I transfer that right to the publisher who in turns transfers it to you. If you want to convince me otherwise, you need to show me another source for those rights, other than the work's creator.
7. My point about money is simpy that we all need to support ourselves. Yes, people used to live without money. But, clearly, that's a lifestyle we've abandoned. (Remember, money is only a means of exchange. So is simple barter. Using money is barter, once removed.) Michelangelo had patrons who supported him. Potboiler authors get royalties. It's all the same thing. Michelangelo might have been a better artist than a typical potboiler writer, but he didn't work for free, either. The "creative impulse" may motivate some people, but even they need to be compensated.
8. >>"...people could still make an income from coding even where they could not obtain a copyright to the code they write.."
The fact that we might imagine a scenario in which a develoepr could draw income from his work if copyright law did not exist (maybe with a rich patron; see Ubuntu) does not change the reality of what's happening today.
>>"And since you gave him the right to publish..."
Nope. I sold him -- not you -- limited rights to publish and market the book. You don't acquire that right when you buy the book.
>>"It is not a grant of monoploy."
The law can't grant what already exists.
>>"It's a recognition of, and protection of, the existence of rights that occur naturally when we create something."
This is not so and most of human history bears this out."
I can't imagine how you could dispute my statement. How is it possible that if I create something that has never before existed that, at the moment it is created, someone other than me can own it? Do I have a right to the meal you cook this evening? I see nothing in human history to dispute that. Just the opposite, in fact.
>>"Any yet many people are now making careers writing Free Software under just such conditions. I think we are going to start seeing the same thing in other fields as time goes on. People are already writing the licenses in anticipation of this and some are writing the works and using the licenses."
If people can make a career from free sofrtware, it is because they have found a way to derive income from their code, something that is made possible by copyright law. No software license would be worth anything if it wasn't buttressed by copyright law. The rights RMS transfers in his license, for example, are broad but, still, limited. If copyright law did not protect RMS, licensing his code would be pointless and futile.
Re: Slashdot -- The point is not that I can get the code. The point is that their transfer to me of the right to acquire the code does not include the right to launch a duplicate of Slashdot unless Slashdot says it does.
Production of art: Of course, art predates copyright law. That does not invalidate the purpose of copyright law or its effectiveness. It seems obvious that if we relied on the creative muse, rather than financial gain, as the sole spur for creative work, we'd have very little popular culture at all. (You don't believe all those people singing on the radio do it because their muse inspires them, do you? People need money to live. Even artists.)
Fahrenheit 451: The recitiation of the work is one thing, but writing it down and passing it on is another. Recitation does not create a physical copy. Again, you don't get that right unless the author transfers it to you. Buying or reading a book isn't enough.
>>"We obviously disagree on this point big time."
Yes. What's mine is mine, until I or the law say otherwise.
Have you noticed that you've failed to demonstrate how rights to a work can be acquired by a means other than transfer from the work's creator?
>>" at every step in the chain, transfers were made with negotiated contracts.."
The transfer to a publisher is a matter of contract. The publisher cannot transfer to you any rights it did not acquire from the work's creator. That means a purchaser does not have the right, for example, to make and distribute multiple copies of a work unless the work's creator transferred those rights, via the publisher.
There is no place for anyone to acquire those rights other than by transfer from the work's creator.
>"Copyright law is the government stepping into the free market and granting monopolies to the authors. I think this is thought to make the market better as it takes away the need to have a contract with every person you sell a book to for instance."
The purpose of copyright law is to encourage the production of creative works by guaranteeing that a work's creator has a chance to derive financial benefit from his work, and to protect that work from alteration and distortion. It is not a grant of monoploy. It's a recognition of, and protection of, the existence of rights that occur naturally when we create something. Very few people could devote a career to, say, writing novels, if anyone could grab the first copy off the printing press, start copying it and compete with them for sales. Very few of us would devote a career to any kind of creative work if we had no way of keeping others from altering our work and marketing it under their name. E.g., if it wasn;t for copyright law, you could copy Picasso print, slap your name on them, and sell them as yours. Or, I could grab all off Slashdot's code, open a site called Slashdot, start selling ads, and the current proprietors could do nothing to stop me. In those circumstance, I doubt Picasso would have painted or that Slashdot would exist.
>>"...are jokes one of those things that we do not grant copyright monopolies on?"
Repeating or reciting something you've read is not copying the physical object on which language encoding that joke was originally placed. (I suppose a comedian could go after another comedian who stole his material, but I'd consider it an abuse of law if that same comedian came after people repeating his jokes in the office. Remember, abuse of the law does not mean the law is bad. It means the abuser is bad.)
Your reference to "public domain" presupposes the notion that, in the absence of law, anything that anyone makes would be owned by everyone else, not by the person who made the thing. If you'll think about that, you will understand how invalid that is. Being in the "public domain" is a status granted and regulated by the law of man, not of nature.
An idea is not a possession. But, a book is. Or, whatever. It's impossible to claim ownership of or rights to an idea -- it's literally impossible to own the unownable -- so all the arguments about copyright and ideas are off the point at best, and FUD at worst.
However, it's obvious we can claim ownership of books, or any other object that records language, whether that language is spoken, sung, mathematical, algorithmic, or musical. In every instance, someone will possess the very first, original, version of such a work. That person -- barring prior legal arrangements -- owns that work and possess all rights inherent in it. That means no one has the right to copy any portion of it without permission, and that permission comes from the work's creator. (Fair use, etc., are elements of the prior legal arrangement that the creator must accept by virture of living in a country with copyright laws.)
If the work's creator sells a publisher the right to make copies in return for royalties, then anyone who purchases a copy from the publisher only acquires those rights sold to him by the work's creator via the publisher.
None of this is to argue that a work's creator has any ownership of or rights to the ideas in his or her work. A work is specifically intended to create and manipulate the thoughts and emotions of others.
Nor is it an argument to support the current abuses of copyright. The effective way to deal with abuse of an equitable law is to constrain the abusers and eliminate the abuse, not to challenge them with another kind of abuse. (Two can always play at that game, so success today mght be replaced by defeat tomorrow.) If you don't think the copyright law is equitable (assuming you've read it) then it's fair game for change, too.
But, let's try to keep things grounded appropriately. Copyright law isn't there to keep you from stealing ideas. It's there to keep you from stealing and misusing actual physical things. And, no one would deny that all creative, academic, scientific, journalistic, etc., draws on the ideas and effortrs of others. That's called culture. But, copying chunks of something that you did not create and claiming them as your own is always that particular kind of theft called plagiarism.
Agreed. I use BofA. The instructions were very clear that the entire point of selecting (and remembering) the sitekey image is that you're supposed to avoid logging in if that image isn't visible.
In fact, I just checked, and on the actual login page, this language appears below the readily apparent sitekey image and the login element:
"If you don't recognize your personalized SiteKey,
don't enter your Passcode."
I don't see what more BofA can do short of reaching out from the screen and whacking people on the head.
Not at all. I did not say that open source developers should abandon their principles. I said that peope who don't share those principles -- most of the world -- find the constant chatter and exhortations to be a negative advertisement for open source. Jabbering on like so many newly converted religious enthusiasts about the wonders that open source brings to software developers, and arguing with each other about, say, the difference between one GPL version and another, is not the way to convince software users to try your software. It simply creates the appearance that the primary focus of open source is n-o-t creating better software, but, instead, enlarging the "community" and ensuring it adheres to the proper ideology. I.e., people are justifed to think the focus of open source is on those principles, not on the software.
No one said you should appease the non-believers. But, at least recognize when you're alienating them.
I don't think it can be denied that a major component of the open source "converstation" that's visible to the public has to do with licensing and related issues. That's not the case for Microsoft, and that's all to the good for MS.
Agreed. But, in addition, I'm arguing that the noise about the BSA and Microsoft's licenses represents only a very small fraction of what the public hears and sees about Microsoft. On the other hand, the public is exposed to a great deal of noise about open source licensing disputes and other issues that are important only to community members. That's really bad PR. Consider: If it's always a bad day for a company to be hounded by BSA people yapping about licensing, imagine what it's like when that's almost all you ever hear open source people talking about. Why, people might be led to believe the primary purpose of open source is to change the way software is licensed, not to produce innovative software that lets them do things closed software doesn't.
Because neither Microsoft's and the BSA's posturing nor open source's and the FSF's posturing is a valid reason to buy or not to buy and use either's software.
My point is that the constant chattering and debate about licensing, etc., bears a remarkable resemblance to medieval monks arguing about topics that mean absolutely nothing to anyone outside the monastery. E.g., MS is the devil, and any association with the devil is a sin. Novell has sinned, so banish Novell from the garden that is open source. That is not the way to attract anyone.
Rather than trying to explain "nature of Linux, the architecture of the community, and the role played by the dozens of companies that make a profit by supporting open source", you might try pondering why reasonably knowledgable people perceive the constant debate about licensing, etc., as irrelevant noise and a strong disincentive to associate with the community or its software. Your approach, which is common, seems to be aimed at getting people to understand the community rather than seeing the technical and financial benefits of open source software. It's a turnoff.
The only people who care about the "community" are the people in the "community". Your comment -- highlighting the social aspects of open source and characterizing it as primarily an anti-Microsoft lobby -- precisely captures what turns so many people off about open source. Lots of people will agree that Microsoft, and any number of other tech companies, are abusive and anti-market. But, that doesn't mean that they are going to buy into open source ideology. They'll buy from Microsoft, et al, because all they hear and read about open source is, frankly, cult infighting about licenses, copyright, and IP issues.
The issues that drive people to become open source developers and supporters are not the issues that motivate everyone else's software purchasing decisions.
Credible or not, stories like this represent one big reason why many organizations don't want to invest in Linux or a lot of other open source products. Who wants to risk going with a vendor who's at risk of being tied up by a bunch of lawyers they've never heard of?
Nor does the fact that when open source hits the non-techie media, the story is usually about geeks and lawyers fighting about byzantine licensing issues that only they care about. If open source delivers better technology, why isn't open source making sure people read about it? (To that, I'm sure, some will blame the Great Evil Mainstream Media Conspiracy. Nonsense, Play the media game as others play it, and the coverage wil be there. If you think that means abandoning your principles, sorry. Convincing all the other players to change the rules is the wrong way to win the game.)
Don't mistake an attempt to explain as an attempt to defend. I suspect the $4.99 fee is barely enough to cover costs. So, if the story is actually true (a big if), Apple's choice makes sense to me. I'm pretty sure they are not worried about annoying Slashdot's audience. Apple, and MS, are convinced there's no market among people who consider closed commercial software to be a high crime.
Slashdot Mirror
>>"How do you imagine a person has the right to control what another does with information that is in his memory no matter how it came to be there."
I don't imagine that. Information -- or ideas in someone's head -- is, as I've said several times, impossible to copy. So, the entire discussion centered on copying ideas is moot, because it is talking about something that cannot be done. Ideas are completely free, always.
I've been addressing something else: Who has rights to the physical property created when someone encodes a representation of ideas on something? Yes, ideas are tansferred (not copied) when someone reads such a work and creates similar ideas in his own head. But that is is phenomenon that is separate and distinct from transferring ownership of or rights in the object itself.
If, as you argue, the act of publishing makes a book available for the pubic to do with as it pleases, how, then, can an author sell only limited rights to his publisher? The publisher is part of the public. Why doesn't the publisher acquire all the rights that, if I read you correctly, everyone else does? If an author does have the ability to transfer limited rights to a publisher, why, then, does he not have a similar right to transfer limited rights to the buying public?
>>"You also fail to address how the world can possibly function if your view is correct. Like I say, I find it so over the top it amazes me."
It is how the world operates today. The notion that all rights to a created work pass to everyone who buys a copy of it is not commonly recognized in law.
I'm in fundamental disagreeement. I see no way for anyone else to acquire any rights to any created work unless those rights pass to them from the work's creator. If we could acquire rights in some other way, we'd need to identify another source of those rights. That doesn't exist. Individual members of society do not have some kind of a priori right to do as they wish with a work created by someone else simply because they have access to it or a copy. (It's specious to tak about the rights of "society" or "the public" since both are only convenient descriptions for any number of individuals acting independently.)
Such a work is not a special case. It is the same as anything else that someone makes: a table, a pair of shoes, a piece of jewelry. Other people do not acquire rights to a work just because it becomes visisble and available to them.
If the world operated without copyright law for most of its history, I'd just point out that the world existed without any law for most of its history. Offering that argument to support your position is logically inconsistent since you'd also need to argue that murder and all other crimes only became unacceptable once a law against them was enforced. In any case, previous, or current, human behavior is no indicator of rights we come by naturally.
Beats me. The plight of wannabe musicians doesn't interest me.
If I make something and you copy it without my permission, that's wrong. Copyright has nothing to do with it.
Getting away from silly rock analogies, if I write a book, publish it, and you buy it, you have those rights I transferred to you via the publisher plus whatever rights copyright law says you have. No more. This is not hard to understand.
>>"Would most publishers accusing a less popular artist who made little or no profit on an infringing work be willing to settle the issue for significantly less than the statutory damages of $750 to $30,000 [copyright.gov]?"
Who knows?
I've lost your point.
Get a lawyer.
Experienced or not, if you produce a record that copies someone else's melody, it seems to me that your only possible defense in a lawsuit is that you did not do so deliberately and that you were unware that the melody was duplicated. That might be easier for an inexperienced musician to argue. If I was on the other side, however, I'd argue that inexperience as a performing musician does not necessarily have any bearing on how much music someone has listened to. It only takes hearing a song once, so I'd go after an inventory of the music he owns, what songs were playing in his friends homes when he was there, what he might have heard on the radio just before he wrote the song at issue; I'd check into what kind of music his parents played when he was a kid, etc. I'd do what I needed to do to show that he could have consciously copied that melody. For example, he'd have a weaker case for arguing that he didn't recognize the duplicate melody if I could show that his parents played the other song several times a day, or if records from his ISP and/or browser history showed he downloaded the other song two days before he wrote his.
I'm not assuming he "accidentally" copied anything. Frankly, I've alway doubted that neither Harrison, nor anyone else involved with that recording, failed to recognize that it used another song's melody. These were professionals, steeped in the music of the 1950's and 1960's.
I'm not talking about " something as insubstantial as a story." As I've said, ideas cannot be possessed.
If Thag carves his story on a boulder, then Thag owns that physcial representation of his story. Not the story. If Grod starts making duplicate boulders without Thag's permission, Thag has the right to bop him on the head with a big stick. Thag doesn't need copyright law to understand that.
Harrison did more that stand up in a room and sing a song. He made, distributed and sold a record -- a physical thing -- that sounded pretty much like another song. If all Harrison did was recite song lyrics, I doubt he'd have been sued.
>>"In the absence of copyright law, if you publish your own work, the pubic has just these rights to copy it and make derivatives..."
1. No. I'm saying that copyright law has nothing to do with the creation of rights. All rights in a work emanate from the work's creator. Whatever rights anyone else has regarding that work must come from the work's creator. No other source exists. The rights do not exist until the work is created.
2. In other words, a monopoly -- posession of all rights inherent in a work -- comes into existence when the work is created and that monopoly of rights is possesed by the work's creator.
3. The act of publishing is the act of transferring limited rights in return for royalties. I stated early on that copyright law is part of the prior legal arrangement that applies, and also transfers certain limited rights . But, the rights transferred to the publisher do not transfer to the book's buyer unless the author says they do. That's why the act of publishing involves specific limited rights. All other rights remain with the work's creator. I.e., an author can sell rights to publish in Europe, and retain rights to publish in North America. As I understand it, your argument means that an author could not specify that because everyone has all rights to his work once it is published anywhere.
4. Re: Slashdot -- I mean an exact duplicate. Slashdot uses a license that gives me certain specified rights to their code. I don't have the right to use that code to stand up an exact, competing, clone of Slashdot unless they say so. Absent that grant, I presume their lawyers would contact me about copyright violations.
4. I'm not defending or attacking copyright law. I'm explaining how, and why, all rights to a work are originally sourced to the work's creator. I don't need copyright law to explain that. So, if someone recites an entire book, that's fine with me. If they start copying it, that isn't. If copyright law says the recitation is forbidden, then that's an area where I don't agree with copyright law.
5. If I publish in the absence of copyright law, then I am constrained only by the terms I impose on the publisher. Rather than the public acquiring more rights, they would acquire only those rights I specifiy. For example, absent copyright law, there would be no fair use unless I said so. (Importantly, if publishing meant giving up all rights to a work, then how can a member of the public be assured that the book they are buying is the actual, unaltered, work written by the author? )
6. >>"...Rights transfer when the author publishes. " Only those rights that the auther specifies ( or accepts via prior legal arrangement, i,e., copyight law). That is, you do not have the right to copy and distribute copies of my book unless I transfer that right to the publisher who in turns transfers it to you. If you want to convince me otherwise, you need to show me another source for those rights, other than the work's creator.
7. My point about money is simpy that we all need to support ourselves. Yes, people used to live without money. But, clearly, that's a lifestyle we've abandoned. (Remember, money is only a means of exchange. So is simple barter. Using money is barter, once removed.) Michelangelo had patrons who supported him. Potboiler authors get royalties. It's all the same thing. Michelangelo might have been a better artist than a typical potboiler writer, but he didn't work for free, either. The "creative impulse" may motivate some people, but even they need to be compensated.
8. >>"...people could still make an income from coding even where they could not obtain a copyright to the code they write.."
The fact that we might imagine a scenario in which a develoepr could draw income from his work if copyright law did not exist (maybe with a rich patron; see Ubuntu) does not change the reality of what's happening today.
>>"And since you gave him the right to publish..."
Nope. I sold him -- not you -- limited rights to publish and market the book. You don't acquire that right when you buy the book.
>>"It is not a grant of monoploy."
The law can't grant what already exists.
>>"It's a recognition of, and protection of, the existence of rights that occur naturally when we create something."
This is not so and most of human history bears this out."
I can't imagine how you could dispute my statement. How is it possible that if I create something that has never before existed that, at the moment it is created, someone other than me can own it? Do I have a right to the meal you cook this evening? I see nothing in human history to dispute that. Just the opposite, in fact.
>>"Any yet many people are now making careers writing Free Software under just such conditions. I think we are going to start seeing the same thing in other fields as time goes on. People are already writing the licenses in anticipation of this and some are writing the works and using the licenses."
If people can make a career from free sofrtware, it is because they have found a way to derive income from their code, something that is made possible by copyright law. No software license would be worth anything if it wasn't buttressed by copyright law. The rights RMS transfers in his license, for example, are broad but, still, limited. If copyright law did not protect RMS, licensing his code would be pointless and futile.
Re: Slashdot -- The point is not that I can get the code. The point is that their transfer to me of the right to acquire the code does not include the right to launch a duplicate of Slashdot unless Slashdot says it does.
Production of art: Of course, art predates copyright law. That does not invalidate the purpose of copyright law or its effectiveness. It seems obvious that if we relied on the creative muse, rather than financial gain, as the sole spur for creative work, we'd have very little popular culture at all. (You don't believe all those people singing on the radio do it because their muse inspires them, do you? People need money to live. Even artists.)
Fahrenheit 451: The recitiation of the work is one thing, but writing it down and passing it on is another. Recitation does not create a physical copy. Again, you don't get that right unless the author transfers it to you. Buying or reading a book isn't enough.
>>"We obviously disagree on this point big time."
Yes. What's mine is mine, until I or the law say otherwise.
Have you noticed that you've failed to demonstrate how rights to a work can be acquired by a means other than transfer from the work's creator?
>>" at every step in the chain, transfers were made with negotiated contracts.."
The transfer to a publisher is a matter of contract. The publisher cannot transfer to you any rights it did not acquire from the work's creator. That means a purchaser does not have the right, for example, to make and distribute multiple copies of a work unless the work's creator transferred those rights, via the publisher.
There is no place for anyone to acquire those rights other than by transfer from the work's creator.
>"Copyright law is the government stepping into the free market and granting monopolies to the authors. I think this is thought to make the market better as it takes away the need to have a contract with every person you sell a book to for instance."
The purpose of copyright law is to encourage the production of creative works by guaranteeing that a work's creator has a chance to derive financial benefit from his work, and to protect that work from alteration and distortion. It is not a grant of monoploy. It's a recognition of, and protection of, the existence of rights that occur naturally when we create something. Very few people could devote a career to, say, writing novels, if anyone could grab the first copy off the printing press, start copying it and compete with them for sales. Very few of us would devote a career to any kind of creative work if we had no way of keeping others from altering our work and marketing it under their name. E.g., if it wasn;t for copyright law, you could copy Picasso print, slap your name on them, and sell them as yours. Or, I could grab all off Slashdot's code, open a site called Slashdot, start selling ads, and the current proprietors could do nothing to stop me. In those circumstance, I doubt Picasso would have painted or that Slashdot would exist.
>>"...are jokes one of those things that we do not grant copyright monopolies on?"
Repeating or reciting something you've read is not copying the physical object on which language encoding that joke was originally placed. (I suppose a comedian could go after another comedian who stole his material, but I'd consider it an abuse of law if that same comedian came after people repeating his jokes in the office. Remember, abuse of the law does not mean the law is bad. It means the abuser is bad.)
Your reference to "public domain" presupposes the notion that, in the absence of law, anything that anyone makes would be owned by everyone else, not by the person who made the thing. If you'll think about that, you will understand how invalid that is. Being in the "public domain" is a status granted and regulated by the law of man, not of nature.
An idea is not a possession. But, a book is. Or, whatever. It's impossible to claim ownership of or rights to an idea -- it's literally impossible to own the unownable -- so all the arguments about copyright and ideas are off the point at best, and FUD at worst.
However, it's obvious we can claim ownership of books, or any other object that records language, whether that language is spoken, sung, mathematical, algorithmic, or musical. In every instance, someone will possess the very first, original, version of such a work. That person -- barring prior legal arrangements -- owns that work and possess all rights inherent in it. That means no one has the right to copy any portion of it without permission, and that permission comes from the work's creator. (Fair use, etc., are elements of the prior legal arrangement that the creator must accept by virture of living in a country with copyright laws.)
If the work's creator sells a publisher the right to make copies in return for royalties, then anyone who purchases a copy from the publisher only acquires those rights sold to him by the work's creator via the publisher.
None of this is to argue that a work's creator has any ownership of or rights to the ideas in his or her work. A work is specifically intended to create and manipulate the thoughts and emotions of others.
Nor is it an argument to support the current abuses of copyright. The effective way to deal with abuse of an equitable law is to constrain the abusers and eliminate the abuse, not to challenge them with another kind of abuse. (Two can always play at that game, so success today mght be replaced by defeat tomorrow.) If you don't think the copyright law is equitable (assuming you've read it) then it's fair game for change, too.
But, let's try to keep things grounded appropriately. Copyright law isn't there to keep you from stealing ideas. It's there to keep you from stealing and misusing actual physical things. And, no one would deny that all creative, academic, scientific, journalistic, etc., draws on the ideas and effortrs of others. That's called culture. But, copying chunks of something that you did not create and claiming them as your own is always that particular kind of theft called plagiarism.
Agreed. I use BofA. The instructions were very clear that the entire point of selecting (and remembering) the sitekey image is that you're supposed to avoid logging in if that image isn't visible.
In fact, I just checked, and on the actual login page, this language appears below the readily apparent sitekey image and the login element:
"If you don't recognize your personalized SiteKey,
don't enter your Passcode."
I don't see what more BofA can do short of reaching out from the screen and whacking people on the head.
Not at all. I did not say that open source developers should abandon their principles. I said that peope who don't share those principles -- most of the world -- find the constant chatter and exhortations to be a negative advertisement for open source. Jabbering on like so many newly converted religious enthusiasts about the wonders that open source brings to software developers, and arguing with each other about, say, the difference between one GPL version and another, is not the way to convince software users to try your software. It simply creates the appearance that the primary focus of open source is n-o-t creating better software, but, instead, enlarging the "community" and ensuring it adheres to the proper ideology. I.e., people are justifed to think the focus of open source is on those principles, not on the software.
No one said you should appease the non-believers. But, at least recognize when you're alienating them.
>>"...at the rate google (and yahoo) are swallowing up other sites there's going to be some major monopolising going on."
Big doesn't equal evil monopoly, unless Google buys every search site on the planet a-n-d acts to stop new competitors from entering the market.
I don't think it can be denied that a major component of the open source "converstation" that's visible to the public has to do with licensing and related issues. That's not the case for Microsoft, and that's all to the good for MS.
Agreed. But, in addition, I'm arguing that the noise about the BSA and Microsoft's licenses represents only a very small fraction of what the public hears and sees about Microsoft. On the other hand, the public is exposed to a great deal of noise about open source licensing disputes and other issues that are important only to community members. That's really bad PR. Consider: If it's always a bad day for a company to be hounded by BSA people yapping about licensing, imagine what it's like when that's almost all you ever hear open source people talking about. Why, people might be led to believe the primary purpose of open source is to change the way software is licensed, not to produce innovative software that lets them do things closed software doesn't.
Because neither Microsoft's and the BSA's posturing nor open source's and the FSF's posturing is a valid reason to buy or not to buy and use either's software.
My point is that the constant chattering and debate about licensing, etc., bears a remarkable resemblance to medieval monks arguing about topics that mean absolutely nothing to anyone outside the monastery. E.g., MS is the devil, and any association with the devil is a sin. Novell has sinned, so banish Novell from the garden that is open source. That is not the way to attract anyone.
Rather than trying to explain "nature of Linux, the architecture of the community, and the role played by the dozens of companies that make a profit by supporting open source", you might try pondering why reasonably knowledgable people perceive the constant debate about licensing, etc., as irrelevant noise and a strong disincentive to associate with the community or its software. Your approach, which is common, seems to be aimed at getting people to understand the community rather than seeing the technical and financial benefits of open source software. It's a turnoff.
The only people who care about the "community" are the people in the "community". Your comment -- highlighting the social aspects of open source and characterizing it as primarily an anti-Microsoft lobby -- precisely captures what turns so many people off about open source. Lots of people will agree that Microsoft, and any number of other tech companies, are abusive and anti-market. But, that doesn't mean that they are going to buy into open source ideology. They'll buy from Microsoft, et al, because all they hear and read about open source is, frankly, cult infighting about licenses, copyright, and IP issues.
The issues that drive people to become open source developers and supporters are not the issues that motivate everyone else's software purchasing decisions.
Credible or not, stories like this represent one big reason why many organizations don't want to invest in Linux or a lot of other open source products. Who wants to risk going with a vendor who's at risk of being tied up by a bunch of lawyers they've never heard of?
Nor does the fact that when open source hits the non-techie media, the story is usually about geeks and lawyers fighting about byzantine licensing issues that only they care about. If open source delivers better technology, why isn't open source making sure people read about it? (To that, I'm sure, some will blame the Great Evil Mainstream Media Conspiracy. Nonsense, Play the media game as others play it, and the coverage wil be there. If you think that means abandoning your principles, sorry. Convincing all the other players to change the rules is the wrong way to win the game.)
...not having an SO.
So has Apple.
Don't mistake an attempt to explain as an attempt to defend. I suspect the $4.99 fee is barely enough to cover costs. So, if the story is actually true (a big if), Apple's choice makes sense to me. I'm pretty sure they are not worried about annoying Slashdot's audience. Apple, and MS, are convinced there's no market among people who consider closed commercial software to be a high crime.
I'm sure Apple "Legal" is either on staff or on retainer. No billing here.
Apple's not making any money off this. If they did it for the money, they would've saved it for the next hardware cycle.