>> if you lived in ancient Egypt, would you have the right to free speech?
Of course.
If our rights do not come to us by virtue of our birth, how does "society" (really just a lot of individuals) or government give them to us? Where do they get them?
Governments and other people ("society") can try to keep you from exercising your rights, but they are not the source of your rights.
No one is born a slave. We are all born free, and always have been.
Well, if it is so bloody well understood, why haven't you bothered to spell it out here?
>> It's already understood that copyright is artificial...
So what? I am not talking about copyright. You are, and it is irrelevant to my argument.
>>...copies of your work that are not in your possesion are not yours...
Never said they were. But rights to my work are not transffered to the person who buys that copy unless I specifically say they are. Someone who buys my book owns that particualr copy, but does not own the right to make and distribute additional copies.
>> You are trying to extend property rights to something you don't possess.
I possess all rights inherent in the original manuscript or version of my work. No one has any possiblity of acquiring any one of those rights unless I transfer them. (Have you been paying attention?) That's what happens when I sell the book to a publisher. The only thing I am selling is the right to copy and market that manuscript, and I am selling it exclusively to that publisher. (That's why the publisher, not me, will sue you if you start distributing your own copies.) Anyone who buys a copy of that book from the publisher is explicitly not buying the right to make and market additional copies.
Or, are you asserting that you have the right to copy and market my original manuscript? If so, why are you claiming that right? If not, how do get that right when you buy a copy of the book?
You've consistently avoided answering those core questions. I have to assume that is because you can't. You've dredged up a lot of meaningless rhetoric about copyright, ignoring the fact that copyright is irrelevant to this discussion. But, it sure helps people who want things for free to obscure their real purpose.
It seems to have been a software glitch that shut down the core first-stage motor 8 seconds early. The second stage burned longer to compensate, but the dummy satellite was not placed in the correct orbit.
Of course. That's why it is called the copyright law.
>> Public domain always existed.
No. It is a legal status created by copyright law.
>>...those things are yours and in your possession...
As are all rights associated with the creation of an item and its ownership. Unless I authorize it, you have no more right to duplicate the copy of my book you buy at a bookshop than you do to sneak into my house and duplicate the original manuscript.
Thanks, but I'll pass. I don't really want to get sucked much deeper into this debate.
I'm not a particular fan of the RIAA or MPAA, but neither do I think their hamfisted actions portend the collapse of civilization.
For me, this issue has hardly any personal impact. But, I do think that people who assert that the internet has fundamentally altered the relationship of rights, created works, creators, and consumers need to make a more coherent argument than I've seen so far. Most of it seems to rest on antipathy toward copyright and intellectual property laws. A lot of kneejerk anger about "greedy" corporations is also tossed about. But, it seems to me that little effort has been made to provide a coherent basis for the kind of basic change that many think the Internet will deliver. In the end, most of their arguments seem to boil down to a belief that the current situation is "bad" and needs to be replaced. Maybe, maybe not. Disapproving of something, however, is not equivalent to explaining it away. Nor is that disapproval enough to convince those who don't agree with you that something new needs to be put in place.
People used to believe in the divine right of kings, too. They were wrong. So are people who believe that the state doles out rights. Anyone who believes that is no more "progressive" than Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao or any of their thuggish counterparts throughout history.
The public domain is a creation of copyright law. No law, no public domain.
Without copyright law, I suspect you would argue that every created work would pass immediately into public ownership. However, it is just as logical to say that, absent a law that creates the public domain, nothing would ever pass into public ownership. Without a law creating the public domain, we would treat books, etc., as we do other kinds of property. My house and my furniture do not pass into a public domain after a specified period of time. The only reason that books, etc., do is because a law exists that says they do.
You don't own the right to copy my book if I didn't sell it to you. That right, initially, belongs exclusively with me. When I sell the right to copy and market that manuscript to a publisher, only the publisher has acquired the right to make copies. The people who buy the book do not acquire that right.
AS I've repeated several times, copyright law has nothing to do with this. None of us need copyright law to establish the self-evident fact that we, and no one else, own anything we make.
I've read Lessig. Like you, he fails to explain how ownership and rights of an object are acquired by others without the consent of the person who created it. He beats on copyright, but, once again, I am not talking about copyright.
Seems to me that this is the type of question that doesn't require external proof, or, at least, is beyond our abiity to prove.
I'd rather focus on the other side of the question: Why should I acquiesce in the denial of my liberties?
The exercise of rights is not a recipe for anarchy. Rights are balanced with responsibilities. Hence, the existence of prisons, where we put people who have infringed the rights of others or evaded their social responsibilities.
Don't be confused. Your rights don't come from any government. Governments can use force or the threat of force to keep you from exercising your rights, but they are not the source of your rights.
A government that protects your rights is legitimate. A government that thwarts your rights is illegitimate.
Our rights are ours by virtue of our existence. They cannot be "won" from governments because governments do not possess any rights. What we win from governments is the ability to exercise our rights.
>> So if you don't place your book under copyright, it will never enter the public domain?
No.
>> If you sell a copy without placing it under copyright, because you might not agree to its terms, do you believe you have the authority over it forever?
I believe that in the U.S. all books are copyrighted automatically. I.e., you cannot withdraw a work from copyright. In any case, in your scenario, if, when I sold that copy I also sold the right to make and distribute further duplicates of that copy, then, no, I would not claim authority to prevent copying. If I had not sold the right to duplicate that single copy, then I would still claim the sole right to make additional copies.
>> P is another thing entirely.
Agree, but I am not talking about IP, or either IP or copyright law.
>> have a right to use that expressed intellect as I see fit.
Yes, but you don'e have the right to make a physical copy of my work unless I give you that right. You're again confusing the issue with inapplicable truisms about intellect and ideas.
>> The same applies if I acquire a physical manifestion of that intellect through purchase or gift. Again, only through a signed agreement could you maintain any control over it.
Wrong. This does not require a written contract. All that is necessary is for me to decide to sell the right to copy to only one purchaser, e.g.. a publisher. Subsequently, anyone who buys a copy sold ny that publisher is explicitly not buying the right to make additional copies.
Finally, you are still failing to specify another source for the right to copy. If you believe you have the right to copy my book even if I have specifically withheld that right from you, where do you acquire that right? What is its source?
Well, then it goes into the public domain, if the laws of that jurisdiction have created a public domain. (I don't believe the "public domain" exists naturally. It is a construction mandated by law.)
I'm arguing that all rights to and ownership of a created work originally belong to that work's creator. Therefore, if anyone subsequently acquires any of those rights, they must, logically, derive from the rights possessed by the work's creator. Anyone who copies the work absent a transfer of rights from its creator is making an unauthorized copy. In countries where copyright law recognizes and enforces this natural state of affairs, then copy without a transfer of rights is also illegal.
I'm deliberately not using the term "IP" because I am talking about physical property. My argument applies equally to books, music, furniture, kids making things out of clay, whatever.
I'm also categorically rejecting any notions that a creator's rights to his work come to him as a "temporary entitlement" from the government. The rights a creator holds in his original work -- in fact, every right each of us holds -- have nothing to do with government. Governments cannot create or bestow rights. They can only recogize and support the exercise of our rights, our repress our exercise of our rights.
The Chinese people have the same rights as Americans or anyone else. We all have the same rights. The Chinese government simply represses the rights of its citizens.
It is both wrong an very dangerous to think our rights come to us as gifts from our governments.
I'm using "vested" to mean "in original possession of". I don't believe it is possible for anyone to possess rights in an object prior to its creation. At the moment of an object's creation, ownership and all rights are possessed by the object's creator.
In your scenario, no one has copied anything. Each person owns the object he created along with all rights to it. The First Person might sell the right to market copies of his pot, while the Second Person can decide to donate his original pot to a museum while retaining all rights related to its duplication and marketing. Each is independent of the other.
I'm asserting that all rights regarding a created work are orignally vested in the work's creator. Someone else cannot possess any of those rights unless they are transferred from the creator. This, to me, is logical and natural situation that exists apart from copyright law.
In other words, I don't need copyright law to ensure that I own what I make.
So, the reason a second person lacks the right to copy a work is because he cannot possess it unless it is passed to him by the work's creator. No other source of that right exists.
Even the GPL depends on this, since it relies on the creator of software to transfer to others the right to make and distribute copies.
>> Premature shutdown of an engine is usually a polite way of saying it exploded.
You're both wrong and failing to be cute. Probably too damn much of a wannbe wiseass to know the difference.
This rocket did not explode. Something you would know if you had bothered to read any reporting on the flight. But, since you probably don't read anything more sophisiticated the Slashdot, you probably don't even realize that all this happened yesterday.
The flight's launch was, in fact, carried in a live video feed by Boeing. That's another reason I know it didn't explode. The video followed it through booster separation. No explosion.
>> I don't think this rig is ready for prime-time yet...
That's why it was a test flight. Geez. No one is claiming it is ready for "prime-time".
The only thing that went wrong, apparently, was the premature shutdown of one of the engines. Certainly a correctable problem and not a anything that is either a "shortcoming" or "quite serious". The same thing has happened before on manned operational flights.
The Shuttle is to be phased out over the next 6 years, to be replaced by expendable boosters, perhaps derivatives of the Delta that launched yesterday,
The first initial reason that the Shuttle is not phased out immediately is that no expendable boosters are currently man-rated. I.e., they're falure rate is not low enough to manned flight.
Two, Shuttle payloads are designed to fit the Shuttle cargo bay. Moving them to the Delta would require years of redesign and rebuilding, it it was possible at all.
To successfully phase out the Shuttle by the target date of 2010, man-rated derivatives of the Delta, or the Atlas, or some new vehicle, need to be developed and tested. NASA needs to select one as the vehicle it will use for manned flight. Post-2010 Shuttle payloads need to be redesigned.
The paradigm of strapping on "a fe more rockets" is a bit more complicated than you make it sound, and, in any case, isn't exactly new. It's been in use on various vehicles for more than 40 years.
Your post demonstrates both your inanity and your life as a poseur.
This was the initial test launch of a new Delta configuration. The "failure" was the apparent premature shutdown of one of the three first-stage engines. To compenstate, they ran the second-stage longer than planned. The dummy satellite entered orbit successfully, but at a lower orbit than planned.
The right to copy an object belongs to the person who made the object. The object does not exist until it is made. The right to copy an object cannot exist until the object is created.
Slashdot Mirror
>> if you lived in ancient Egypt, would you have the right to free speech?
Of course.
If our rights do not come to us by virtue of our birth, how does "society" (really just a lot of individuals) or government give them to us? Where do they get them?
Governments and other people ("society") can try to keep you from exercising your rights, but they are not the source of your rights.
No one is born a slave. We are all born free, and always have been.
Just noise and evasion. You've failed.
>> It's already understood
...copies of your work that are not in your possesion are not yours...
Well, if it is so bloody well understood, why haven't you bothered to spell it out here?
>> It's already understood that copyright is artificial...
So what? I am not talking about copyright. You are, and it is irrelevant to my argument.
>>
Never said they were. But rights to my work are not transffered to the person who buys that copy unless I specifically say they are. Someone who buys my book owns that particualr copy, but does not own the right to make and distribute additional copies.
>> You are trying to extend property rights to something you don't possess.
I possess all rights inherent in the original manuscript or version of my work. No one has any possiblity of acquiring any one of those rights unless I transfer them. (Have you been paying attention?) That's what happens when I sell the book to a publisher. The only thing I am selling is the right to copy and market that manuscript, and I am selling it exclusively to that publisher. (That's why the publisher, not me, will sue you if you start distributing your own copies.) Anyone who buys a copy of that book from the publisher is explicitly not buying the right to make and market additional copies.
Or, are you asserting that you have the right to copy and market my original manuscript? If so, why are you claiming that right? If not, how do get that right when you buy a copy of the book?
You've consistently avoided answering those core questions. I have to assume that is because you can't. You've dredged up a lot of meaningless rhetoric about copyright, ignoring the fact that copyright is irrelevant to this discussion. But, it sure helps people who want things for free to obscure their real purpose.
It seems to have been a software glitch that shut down the core first-stage motor 8 seconds early. The second stage burned longer to compensate, but the dummy satellite was not placed in the correct orbit.
>> The law created copyright.
...those things are yours and in your possession...
Of course. That's why it is called the copyright law.
>> Public domain always existed.
No. It is a legal status created by copyright law.
>>
As are all rights associated with the creation of an item and its ownership. Unless I authorize it, you have no more right to duplicate the copy of my book you buy at a bookshop than you do to sneak into my house and duplicate the original manuscript.
Thanks, but I'll pass. I don't really want to get sucked much deeper into this debate.
I'm not a particular fan of the RIAA or MPAA, but neither do I think their hamfisted actions portend the collapse of civilization.
For me, this issue has hardly any personal impact. But, I do think that people who assert that the internet has fundamentally altered the relationship of rights, created works, creators, and consumers need to make a more coherent argument than I've seen so far. Most of it seems to rest on antipathy toward copyright and intellectual property laws. A lot of kneejerk anger about "greedy" corporations is also tossed about. But, it seems to me that little effort has been made to provide a coherent basis for the kind of basic change that many think the Internet will deliver. In the end, most of their arguments seem to boil down to a belief that the current situation is "bad" and needs to be replaced. Maybe, maybe not. Disapproving of something, however, is not equivalent to explaining it away. Nor is that disapproval enough to convince those who don't agree with you that something new needs to be put in place.
Good luck with the web site.
People used to believe in the divine right of kings, too. They were wrong. So are people who believe that the state doles out rights. Anyone who believes that is no more "progressive" than Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao or any of their thuggish counterparts throughout history.
More rhetoric, no substance.
The public domain is a creation of copyright law. No law, no public domain.
Without copyright law, I suspect you would argue that every created work would pass immediately into public ownership. However, it is just as logical to say that, absent a law that creates the public domain, nothing would ever pass into public ownership. Without a law creating the public domain, we would treat books, etc., as we do other kinds of property. My house and my furniture do not pass into a public domain after a specified period of time. The only reason that books, etc., do is because a law exists that says they do.
You don't own the right to copy my book if I didn't sell it to you. That right, initially, belongs exclusively with me. When I sell the right to copy and market that manuscript to a publisher, only the publisher has acquired the right to make copies. The people who buy the book do not acquire that right.
AS I've repeated several times, copyright law has nothing to do with this. None of us need copyright law to establish the self-evident fact that we, and no one else, own anything we make.
I've read Lessig. Like you, he fails to explain how ownership and rights of an object are acquired by others without the consent of the person who created it. He beats on copyright, but, once again, I am not talking about copyright.
Seems to me that this is the type of question that doesn't require external proof, or, at least, is beyond our abiity to prove.
I'd rather focus on the other side of the question: Why should I acquiesce in the denial of my liberties?
The exercise of rights is not a recipe for anarchy. Rights are balanced with responsibilities. Hence, the existence of prisons, where we put people who have infringed the rights of others or evaded their social responsibilities.
Don't be confused. Your rights don't come from any government. Governments can use force or the threat of force to keep you from exercising your rights, but they are not the source of your rights.
A government that protects your rights is legitimate. A government that thwarts your rights is illegitimate.
Our rights are ours by virtue of our existence. They cannot be "won" from governments because governments do not possess any rights. What we win from governments is the ability to exercise our rights.
>> So if you don't place your book under copyright, it will never enter the public domain?
No.
>> If you sell a copy without placing it under copyright, because you might not agree to its terms, do you believe you have the authority over it forever?
I believe that in the U.S. all books are copyrighted automatically. I.e., you cannot withdraw a work from copyright. In any case, in your scenario, if, when I sold that copy I also sold the right to make and distribute further duplicates of that copy, then, no, I would not claim authority to prevent copying. If I had not sold the right to duplicate that single copy, then I would still claim the sole right to make additional copies.
>> P is another thing entirely.
Agree, but I am not talking about IP, or either IP or copyright law.
>> have a right to use that expressed intellect as I see fit.
Yes, but you don'e have the right to make a physical copy of my work unless I give you that right. You're again confusing the issue with inapplicable truisms about intellect and ideas.
>> The same applies if I acquire a physical manifestion of that intellect through purchase or gift. Again, only through a signed agreement could you maintain any control over it.
Wrong. This does not require a written contract. All that is necessary is for me to decide to sell the right to copy to only one purchaser, e.g.. a publisher. Subsequently, anyone who buys a copy sold ny that publisher is explicitly not buying the right to make additional copies.
Finally, you are still failing to specify another source for the right to copy. If you believe you have the right to copy my book even if I have specifically withheld that right from you, where do you acquire that right? What is its source?
I don't know where ideas come from. but I'm not talking about ideas.
Well, then it goes into the public domain, if the laws of that jurisdiction have created a public domain. (I don't believe the "public domain" exists naturally. It is a construction mandated by law.)
I'm arguing that all rights to and ownership of a created work originally belong to that work's creator. Therefore, if anyone subsequently acquires any of those rights, they must, logically, derive from the rights possessed by the work's creator. Anyone who copies the work absent a transfer of rights from its creator is making an unauthorized copy. In countries where copyright law recognizes and enforces this natural state of affairs, then copy without a transfer of rights is also illegal.
I'm deliberately not using the term "IP" because I am talking about physical property. My argument applies equally to books, music, furniture, kids making things out of clay, whatever.
I'm also categorically rejecting any notions that a creator's rights to his work come to him as a "temporary entitlement" from the government. The rights a creator holds in his original work -- in fact, every right each of us holds -- have nothing to do with government. Governments cannot create or bestow rights. They can only recogize and support the exercise of our rights, our repress our exercise of our rights.
The Chinese people have the same rights as Americans or anyone else. We all have the same rights. The Chinese government simply represses the rights of its citizens.
It is both wrong an very dangerous to think our rights come to us as gifts from our governments.
I'm using "vested" to mean "in original possession of". I don't believe it is possible for anyone to possess rights in an object prior to its creation. At the moment of an object's creation, ownership and all rights are possessed by the object's creator.
In your scenario, no one has copied anything. Each person owns the object he created along with all rights to it. The First Person might sell the right to market copies of his pot, while the Second Person can decide to donate his original pot to a museum while retaining all rights related to its duplication and marketing. Each is independent of the other.
I'm asserting that all rights regarding a created work are orignally vested in the work's creator. Someone else cannot possess any of those rights unless they are transferred from the creator. This, to me, is logical and natural situation that exists apart from copyright law.
In other words, I don't need copyright law to ensure that I own what I make.
So, the reason a second person lacks the right to copy a work is because he cannot possess it unless it is passed to him by the work's creator. No other source of that right exists.
Even the GPL depends on this, since it relies on the creator of software to transfer to others the right to make and distribute copies.
Depends, I suspect, on what the fault turns out to be. Some would merit another flight, others would not.
>> Premature shutdown of an engine is usually a polite way of saying it exploded.
You're both wrong and failing to be cute. Probably too damn much of a wannbe wiseass to know the difference.
This rocket did not explode. Something you would know if you had bothered to read any reporting on the flight. But, since you probably don't read anything more sophisiticated the Slashdot, you probably don't even realize that all this happened yesterday.
The flight's launch was, in fact, carried in a live video feed by Boeing. That's another reason I know it didn't explode. The video followed it through booster separation. No explosion.
>> I don't think this rig is ready for prime-time yet...
That's why it was a test flight. Geez. No one is claiming it is ready for "prime-time".
The only thing that went wrong, apparently, was the premature shutdown of one of the engines. Certainly a correctable problem and not a anything that is either a "shortcoming" or "quite serious". The same thing has happened before on manned operational flights.
Don't worry. These twits don't have a clue, anyway. They're just in such a "rush" to follow the lead of the radio demigods.
Read much lately?
The Shuttle is to be phased out over the next 6 years, to be replaced by expendable boosters, perhaps derivatives of the Delta that launched yesterday,
The first initial reason that the Shuttle is not phased out immediately is that no expendable boosters are currently man-rated. I.e., they're falure rate is not low enough to manned flight.
Two, Shuttle payloads are designed to fit the Shuttle cargo bay. Moving them to the Delta would require years of redesign and rebuilding, it it was possible at all.
To successfully phase out the Shuttle by the target date of 2010, man-rated derivatives of the Delta, or the Atlas, or some new vehicle, need to be developed and tested. NASA needs to select one as the vehicle it will use for manned flight. Post-2010 Shuttle payloads need to be redesigned.
The paradigm of strapping on "a fe more rockets" is a bit more complicated than you make it sound, and, in any case, isn't exactly new. It's been in use on various vehicles for more than 40 years.
Your post demonstrates both your inanity and your life as a poseur.
This was the initial test launch of a new Delta configuration. The "failure" was the apparent premature shutdown of one of the three first-stage engines. To compenstate, they ran the second-stage longer than planned. The dummy satellite entered orbit successfully, but at a lower orbit than planned.
The right to copy an object belongs to the person who made the object. The object does not exist until it is made. The right to copy an object cannot exist until the object is created.