No, you don't laways have the right to do with as you will with something you possess.
I posted this elsewhere, but it sums up my position:
"...when a author sells a book to a publisher, what, in fact, is being sold is the author's right to reproduce and distribute copies of his work. I.e., another transfer of rights. The contract between the author and the publisher will detail which rights the author retains and which rights are passed to the publisher. In other words, the publisher buys certain rights from the author.
"When you buy that book, you, too, buy certain rights from the author, transferred to you via the publisher. Unless the author has specifically transferred to you the right to copy and distribute that book, you have no such right. This is true regardless of the method used to copy it: Xerox or transcribing it from memory.
"The key point is the possession of the original, single, work by the author and that author's exclusive possession of all rights pertaining to the work. The only way anyone else can acquire any of those rights is if the author transfers them. To argue otherwise it is necessary to demonstrate how anonymous individuals can have rights in that orignal single copy without the author's transference of those rights to them."
In other words, we don't acquire the right to copy and distribute a book when we buy it unless the author specifically grants us that right.
To argue otherwise is to argue that an author gives you the right to copy when you buy the book. This is factually incorrect. You may believe that it ought to be correct, but your beliefs do not correspond to reality. The reality is that if you copy and distribute a book without the author's permission, he is likely to sue you. That's reality, and you beliefs will have no impact on the suit's outcome.
Despite the customary idiocy displayed in most of the posts, O'Keefe's departure is not that significant. Nor is the departure of several of Bush's cabinet members. Four years is a long time in that kind of environment, given the workload and the fact that we are't talking about people in their 20's or 30's.
Most important, typically, is the financial loss many suffer. These jobs pay better than our jobs, but the people in them are usually accustomed to making a lot more. O'Keefe seems to be a possible exception.
Don't forget, the major budget and policy decisions in any federal department are made in the White House. The President determines NASA'a course, not the NASA director.
Except that software is not nearly as popular or as marketed a product as popular entertainment. I don't know what margins either industry works on, but my guess is that the CD/DVD market works with lower margins than the mass, i.e.,non-enterprise, software market (which, as we know, is dominated by a very few players). The software industry can absorb declining profits longer than the CD/DVD industry.
Right. A story is not physical. But you can't read a story unless someone writes it down and publishes it. That's a very real physical object. At some point, there is only one copy: the author's. Without the author's permission -- a transfer of rights -- no one else has the right to reproduce that single copy.
Now, when a author sells a book to a publisher, what, in fact, is being sold is the author's right to reproduce and distribute copies of his work. I.e., another transfer of rights. The contract between the author and the publisher will detail which rights the author retains and which rights are passed to the publisher. In other words, the publisher buys certain rights from the author.
When you buy that book, you, too, buy certain rights from the author, transferred to you via the publisher. Unless the author has specifically transferred to you the right to copy and distribute that book, you have no such right. This is true regardless of the method used to copy it: Xerox or transcribing it from memory.
The key point is the possession of the original, single, work by the author and that author's exclusive possession of all rights pertaining to the work. The only way anyone else can acquire any of those rights is if the author transfers them. To argue otherwise it is necessary to demonstrate how anonymous individuals can have rights in that orignal single copy without the author's transference of those rights to them.
I did not say you "cannot copy your idea, because it's yours". Ideas are nonphysical. Therefore, it is impossible for ideas to be possessed, held, touched, or othrewise physically manipulated.
My story is not an idea, anymore that is a piece of furniture that I might make. Both are physical entities. If you read my story or see my furniture, you still have no right to make a copy unless I assign that right to you.
Let go of this airy-fairy stuff about ideas. It isn't relevant.
The Constitution grants no rights. It recognizes and protects rights. The U.S. is premised on the fact that people have rights by simple virtue of their existence.
The burden is on you to prove that someone other than the creator of an original work has rights to that work absent their explicit transfer by that creator.
As I've said, this has nothing to do with copyright. What I say applies to anything someone makes: a book, a cake, a piece of furniture, a computer program.
Please explain how you can acquire rights to an object that I create if I do not transfer those rights to you. That's a simple question. Either I own what I make, or someone else owns what I make. If you believe the latter, explain it.
You're still wrong and you're still evaiding my questions by raising extraneous issues.
This has nothing to do with copyright law. If I make something -- a book or a cake -- it is not copyright law that gives me exclusive ownership and control over that entity. The entity did not exist, I created it, it is impossible anyone else to own it, therefore I own it and have exclusive control of it.
As the possessor of all rights to that entity, I, and I alone, can determine who is allowed to copy that entity. I, and I alone, can determine if, and how, an authorized copier maay make additional copies. Someone who I allow to acquire a single copy, perhaps through a publisher or a furniture manufacturer, has no right to make additional copies unless I explicitly transfer those rights.
The notion that you raise of waiving rights is irrelevant because, in the scenario you describe, you have only the rights I assign to you. You cannot waive rights you do not possess.
Unless you can tell me how an entity's creator does not possess exclusive control of that entity, and tell me how all rights to it are not originally possessed by its creator, and how those rights can be acquired by someone else without their transfer from the creator -- which you have obviously avoided doing -- this discussion is pointless.
What does paper have to do with anything? Tell me how you can come to own a right to do something with my work if I have not transferred that right to you? How did you get it?
Don't tell me what you believe. Don't type utopian nonsense about what you think should be the case. That doesn't count, Tell me how you can acquire a right that is oringally mine if I do not give it to you.
I am making no natural property argument for copyright. I haven't mentioned copyright.
If I write a book, I may decide to sell to a publisher the exclusive right to make and market copies of that book. But, that's the only thing I sell. I still own the original copy the book and all other rights to it. Importantly, when you buy a copy of that book, you do not acquire the right to make and distribute additional copies. Why? because I sold that exclusive right to the publisher.
If you believe otherwise, demonstrate how the right to make a copy of something I own can pass to someone against my wishes?
The medium is the crucial element, whether the medium is a book made of paper or a digitized file.
One cannot own an idea. Ideas are not physical; it is impossible to own the nonphysical.
If I write a book, that book is nothing more or less than a collection of symbols placed on a medium. That is a physical entity. At first, there is only one copy: the original. I own it. How can anyone else claim to own it? How can anyone else claim to have the right to make copies unless I permit it?
The entire notion of sharing -- legally or illegally -- collapses unless it is premised on the fact that there is something physical to share. You cannot "share" the idea of a track from a CD. You must "share" an actual digitized file. If the creator of that track did not assign you the right to copy it, then you do not have the right to copy it.
You can talk about ideas all you want, but I am not.
If I make something, it is the original. There is no copy. I possess ownership of my work and all rights to it. You, and everyone else, have no rights to it. The only person who has a right to make one or a million copies of my work is me. I can, if I wish, transfer the right to make and distribute copies to someone else. You may, if you wish, acquire a copy from that person. But, note, I have not transferred to you any right for you to make and distribute additional copies. That right begins with me and extends only to the people I choose.
To refute this, you will demonstrate how ownership of a work I create can otherwise pass to someone else.
All talk of ideas is beside the point. The discussion is about copying physical entities.
You may think the ideas in my book are of interest, but I don't care. It is the value of the physical book that interests me.
In fact, the whole notion of copying anything depends on the fact that you can't copy something unless it exists as a physical entity. So the entire line of anti-IP propaganda built around the "can't own or copy ideas" is bogus.
Likewise, who cares whether you or "nobody" claims ownership of an idea. It is impossible to own an idea. It is impossible to make a copy of an idea.
Again, I'm not talking about ideas. I'm talking about a physical entity that I made. That entity may or may not be a symbolic representation of ideas, but that is not relevant to my argument. I'm arguing that I own the thing I made, and that the only legal way for someone else to acquire a copy is for me to allow them to do that.
And, if you do buy a copy of my book from the publisher to whom I assigned publication rights, you acquire only those rights that I have assigned to you. If I didn't give you the right to make and distribute your own copies of my book, you have no such right.
>> That's where they should be making their money.
What you or I believe other people should do has no bearing on what they actually do. Whether or not recorded music continues to be sold -- in any format, by any means -- depends solely on the desire of people to buy it. It doesn't depend on the wishes of corporations or musicians. In your insistence that musicians will only be paid to perform, you seem to forget the very reason recorded music is so popular in the first place.
IP is not a government subsidy. It is simple recognition that I own what I make, and you don't. If you want a copy of what I've made, you have two choices: You can legally acquire a copy from me or those to whom I've assigned rights to makes copies, or you can steal a copy.
The only people "victimized" by copyright are people that spout obvious nonsense in an effort to disguise their real objective: Get It Free.
I am, in fact, talking about physical property. A story, a song, etc., must be manifested in some physical form before it can used or copied. Arguments that I can't own an idea are true but irrelevant. If I write a book, I am not trying to protect or sell the ideas in the book. I am trying to protect and sell the right to copy and market the physical object represented by a file on my hard drive or by a stack of paper. In that regard, the cake example is a direct parallel, not an analogy.
Notions about not owning ideas area usual tactic of people who claim they own what other people make, but they aren't even talking about the issue at hand. It is just a smokescreen.
Most people today are "sharing" tracks obtained from commerical CD's.
If/when the current CD companies stop selling CD's, there may or may not be more music available. That's not the point. The issue is the distribution of recorded music, not the creation of music. I see no reason to expect that business distributing their products over the web will be any less interested in stopping illegal copying of their product that today's music companies. And that includes musicians who market their products directly to the public.
>> How the hell can you simply program a few interfaces for things like VPN take 10's of thousands of hours of someone elses work and charge the same as the Evil Empire?
Easy: You want to earn your living selling Linux.
>> Ubuntu is comparable...
Nope. Ubuntu is Gnome-centric. Xandros is KDE-centric. The Xandros install is simpler than the Ubuntu install. The retail version of Xandros includes a professional manual that explains how to use all of the major applications it includes. Ubuntu has no manual. Xandros looks more polished and professional out of the box.
I don't have to explain it. However, when everyone who has access to a CD store also has broadband access, and knows how to download and burn CD's (neither condition exists today), it is only logical to forecast that more people will opt to acquire free CD's via the web rather than buy them in stores. At some point, then, the profits of CD companies will shrink low enough that they will choose to leave the business for other alternatives.
Executives, rich or otherwise, typically don't own the companies they run. The owners expect a certain return on their investments. If the people who own a record company decide that profits have dropped too low, they will compel the company to switch to another product.
>> Why try to sell something people are just going to steal?
I said it. It didn't say corporations will try to sell CD's until the market disappears completely.
>> That's not what the RIAA said...
So? I'm not the RIAA.
>> People still want to own DVDs and Cds.
Not me. I own several hundred CD's but I haven't bought more than one or two reissues in the last few years. Nor have I downloaded any. Why? CD's and filesharing are both distribution methods. There's nothing being distributed that I want to listen to.
Monopolizing a market is not equivalent to theft, even if the popular press called Standard Oil and Carnegie robber barons.
Artists can't live on respect alone. They need to buy food and shelter, just like the rest of us. Whether you draw a commission, sign a contract with a corporation or accept donations, you are stilling being paid for your work.
It is also worth remembering that in your fantasized version of history, the works artists created for rich people were controlled by those rich people. You and I would never have seen or heard anyone of them.
>>... the record industry is such a cash cow at the moment it needs that kind of readjustment...
Why? Do you think that any business should be destroyed if their profits exceed some particular level? Why do you care how much money these people make? No one is forcing you to buy their products. No one needs to buy their products, either. That's why they call it "entertainment".
I didn't make a judgment about it. I don't care if enternainment ceases to be a big business. I'm just pointing out that most of the music that people are "sharing" won't be available to anyone.
Do you seriously believe that everyone and anyone who writes a book or a song does so with no thought to selling it? How do you think creative people survive? Either they sell their creations or they depend on other people to support them. Either way, they can't create anything unless someone gives them money.
No government service is involved in establishing my rights to something I make. If I bake a cake, that cake is mine. You have no right to eat the cake or acquire my recipe unless I say you do. Likewise, if I write a book, you have no right to read the book or reproduce the book unless I say you do. If I make something, I own it and I own every right associated with it. Because the "thing" has never existed before, it is impossible for you or anyone else to have any rights at all to do anything at all with my creation unless I grant you that right. I challenge you to prove I'm wrong.
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No, you don't laways have the right to do with as you will with something you possess.
I posted this elsewhere, but it sums up my position:
"...when a author sells a book to a publisher, what, in fact, is being sold is the author's right to reproduce and distribute copies of his work. I.e., another transfer of rights. The contract between the author and the publisher will detail which rights the author retains and which rights are passed to the publisher. In other words, the publisher buys certain rights from the author.
"When you buy that book, you, too, buy certain rights from the author, transferred to you via the publisher. Unless the author has specifically transferred to you the right to copy and distribute that book, you have no such right. This is true regardless of the method used to copy it: Xerox or transcribing it from memory.
"The key point is the possession of the original, single, work by the author and that author's exclusive possession of all rights pertaining to the work. The only way anyone else can acquire any of those rights is if the author transfers them. To argue otherwise it is necessary to demonstrate how anonymous individuals can have rights in that orignal single copy without the author's transference of those rights to them."
In other words, we don't acquire the right to copy and distribute a book when we buy it unless the author specifically grants us that right.
To argue otherwise is to argue that an author gives you the right to copy when you buy the book. This is factually incorrect. You may believe that it ought to be correct, but your beliefs do not correspond to reality. The reality is that if you copy and distribute a book without the author's permission, he is likely to sue you. That's reality, and you beliefs will have no impact on the suit's outcome.
Despite the customary idiocy displayed in most of the posts, O'Keefe's departure is not that significant. Nor is the departure of several of Bush's cabinet members. Four years is a long time in that kind of environment, given the workload and the fact that we are't talking about people in their 20's or 30's.
Most important, typically, is the financial loss many suffer. These jobs pay better than our jobs, but the people in them are usually accustomed to making a lot more. O'Keefe seems to be a possible exception.
Don't forget, the major budget and policy decisions in any federal department are made in the White House. The President determines NASA'a course, not the NASA director.
Except that software is not nearly as popular or as marketed a product as popular entertainment. I don't know what margins either industry works on, but my guess is that the CD/DVD market works with lower margins than the mass, i.e.,non-enterprise, software market (which, as we know, is dominated by a very few players). The software industry can absorb declining profits longer than the CD/DVD industry.
Just what we need. People driving around watching cellphone TV instead of the road in front of them.
Right. A story is not physical. But you can't read a story unless someone writes it down and publishes it. That's a very real physical object. At some point, there is only one copy: the author's. Without the author's permission -- a transfer of rights -- no one else has the right to reproduce that single copy.
Now, when a author sells a book to a publisher, what, in fact, is being sold is the author's right to reproduce and distribute copies of his work. I.e., another transfer of rights. The contract between the author and the publisher will detail which rights the author retains and which rights are passed to the publisher. In other words, the publisher buys certain rights from the author.
When you buy that book, you, too, buy certain rights from the author, transferred to you via the publisher. Unless the author has specifically transferred to you the right to copy and distribute that book, you have no such right. This is true regardless of the method used to copy it: Xerox or transcribing it from memory.
The key point is the possession of the original, single, work by the author and that author's exclusive possession of all rights pertaining to the work. The only way anyone else can acquire any of those rights is if the author transfers them. To argue otherwise it is necessary to demonstrate how anonymous individuals can have rights in that orignal single copy without the author's transference of those rights to them.
I did not say you "cannot copy your idea, because it's yours". Ideas are nonphysical. Therefore, it is impossible for ideas to be possessed, held, touched, or othrewise physically manipulated.
My story is not an idea, anymore that is a piece of furniture that I might make. Both are physical entities. If you read my story or see my furniture, you still have no right to make a copy unless I assign that right to you.
Let go of this airy-fairy stuff about ideas. It isn't relevant.
The Constitution grants no rights. It recognizes and protects rights. The U.S. is premised on the fact that people have rights by simple virtue of their existence.
The burden is on you to prove that someone other than the creator of an original work has rights to that work absent their explicit transfer by that creator.
As I've said, this has nothing to do with copyright. What I say applies to anything someone makes: a book, a cake, a piece of furniture, a computer program.
Please explain how you can acquire rights to an object that I create if I do not transfer those rights to you. That's a simple question. Either I own what I make, or someone else owns what I make. If you believe the latter, explain it.
You're still wrong and you're still evaiding my questions by raising extraneous issues.
This has nothing to do with copyright law. If I make something -- a book or a cake -- it is not copyright law that gives me exclusive ownership and control over that entity. The entity did not exist, I created it, it is impossible anyone else to own it, therefore I own it and have exclusive control of it.
As the possessor of all rights to that entity, I, and I alone, can determine who is allowed to copy that entity. I, and I alone, can determine if, and how, an authorized copier maay make additional copies. Someone who I allow to acquire a single copy, perhaps through a publisher or a furniture manufacturer, has no right to make additional copies unless I explicitly transfer those rights.
The notion that you raise of waiving rights is irrelevant because, in the scenario you describe, you have only the rights I assign to you. You cannot waive rights you do not possess.
Unless you can tell me how an entity's creator does not possess exclusive control of that entity, and tell me how all rights to it are not originally possessed by its creator, and how those rights can be acquired by someone else without their transfer from the creator -- which you have obviously avoided doing -- this discussion is pointless.
Nice try, if you're a high school debater.
What does paper have to do with anything? Tell me how you can come to own a right to do something with my work if I have not transferred that right to you? How did you get it?
Don't tell me what you believe. Don't type utopian nonsense about what you think should be the case. That doesn't count, Tell me how you can acquire a right that is oringally mine if I do not give it to you.
...which would be nice, seeing that he may believe more in free software than he does in a free society.
I am making no natural property argument for copyright. I haven't mentioned copyright.
If I write a book, I may decide to sell to a publisher the exclusive right to make and market copies of that book. But, that's the only thing I sell. I still own the original copy the book and all other rights to it. Importantly, when you buy a copy of that book, you do not acquire the right to make and distribute additional copies. Why? because I sold that exclusive right to the publisher.
If you believe otherwise, demonstrate how the right to make a copy of something I own can pass to someone against my wishes?
The medium is the crucial element, whether the medium is a book made of paper or a digitized file.
One cannot own an idea. Ideas are not physical; it is impossible to own the nonphysical.
If I write a book, that book is nothing more or less than a collection of symbols placed on a medium. That is a physical entity. At first, there is only one copy: the original. I own it. How can anyone else claim to own it? How can anyone else claim to have the right to make copies unless I permit it?
The entire notion of sharing -- legally or illegally -- collapses unless it is premised on the fact that there is something physical to share. You cannot "share" the idea of a track from a CD. You must "share" an actual digitized file. If the creator of that track did not assign you the right to copy it, then you do not have the right to copy it.
You can talk about ideas all you want, but I am not.
If I make something, it is the original. There is no copy. I possess ownership of my work and all rights to it. You, and everyone else, have no rights to it. The only person who has a right to make one or a million copies of my work is me. I can, if I wish, transfer the right to make and distribute copies to someone else. You may, if you wish, acquire a copy from that person. But, note, I have not transferred to you any right for you to make and distribute additional copies. That right begins with me and extends only to the people I choose.
To refute this, you will demonstrate how ownership of a work I create can otherwise pass to someone else.
All talk of ideas is beside the point. The discussion is about copying physical entities.
You may think the ideas in my book are of interest, but I don't care. It is the value of the physical book that interests me.
In fact, the whole notion of copying anything depends on the fact that you can't copy something unless it exists as a physical entity. So the entire line of anti-IP propaganda built around the "can't own or copy ideas" is bogus.
Likewise, who cares whether you or "nobody" claims ownership of an idea. It is impossible to own an idea. It is impossible to make a copy of an idea.
Again, I'm not talking about ideas. I'm talking about a physical entity that I made. That entity may or may not be a symbolic representation of ideas, but that is not relevant to my argument. I'm arguing that I own the thing I made, and that the only legal way for someone else to acquire a copy is for me to allow them to do that.
And, if you do buy a copy of my book from the publisher to whom I assigned publication rights, you acquire only those rights that I have assigned to you. If I didn't give you the right to make and distribute your own copies of my book, you have no such right.
>> That's where they should be making their money.
What you or I believe other people should do has no bearing on what they actually do. Whether or not recorded music continues to be sold -- in any format, by any means -- depends solely on the desire of people to buy it. It doesn't depend on the wishes of corporations or musicians. In your insistence that musicians will only be paid to perform, you seem to forget the very reason recorded music is so popular in the first place.
IP is not a government subsidy. It is simple recognition that I own what I make, and you don't. If you want a copy of what I've made, you have two choices: You can legally acquire a copy from me or those to whom I've assigned rights to makes copies, or you can steal a copy.
The only people "victimized" by copyright are people that spout obvious nonsense in an effort to disguise their real objective: Get It Free.
I am, in fact, talking about physical property. A story, a song, etc., must be manifested in some physical form before it can used or copied. Arguments that I can't own an idea are true but irrelevant. If I write a book, I am not trying to protect or sell the ideas in the book. I am trying to protect and sell the right to copy and market the physical object represented by a file on my hard drive or by a stack of paper. In that regard, the cake example is a direct parallel, not an analogy.
Notions about not owning ideas area usual tactic of people who claim they own what other people make, but they aren't even talking about the issue at hand. It is just a smokescreen.
Most people today are "sharing" tracks obtained from commerical CD's.
If/when the current CD companies stop selling CD's, there may or may not be more music available. That's not the point. The issue is the distribution of recorded music, not the creation of music. I see no reason to expect that business distributing their products over the web will be any less interested in stopping illegal copying of their product that today's music companies. And that includes musicians who market their products directly to the public.
>> How the hell can you simply program a few interfaces for things like VPN take 10's of thousands of hours of someone elses work and charge the same as the Evil Empire?
Easy: You want to earn your living selling Linux.
>> Ubuntu is comparable...
Nope. Ubuntu is Gnome-centric. Xandros is KDE-centric. The Xandros install is simpler than the Ubuntu install. The retail version of Xandros includes a professional manual that explains how to use all of the major applications it includes. Ubuntu has no manual. Xandros looks more polished and professional out of the box.
I don't have to explain it. However, when everyone who has access to a CD store also has broadband access, and knows how to download and burn CD's (neither condition exists today), it is only logical to forecast that more people will opt to acquire free CD's via the web rather than buy them in stores. At some point, then, the profits of CD companies will shrink low enough that they will choose to leave the business for other alternatives.
Executives, rich or otherwise, typically don't own the companies they run. The owners expect a certain return on their investments. If the people who own a record company decide that profits have dropped too low, they will compel the company to switch to another product.
>> Why try to sell something people are just going to steal?
I said it. It didn't say corporations will try to sell CD's until the market disappears completely.
>> That's not what the RIAA said...
So? I'm not the RIAA.
>> People still want to own DVDs and Cds.
Not me. I own several hundred CD's but I haven't bought more than one or two reissues in the last few years. Nor have I downloaded any. Why? CD's and filesharing are both distribution methods. There's nothing being distributed that I want to listen to.
Monopolizing a market is not equivalent to theft, even if the popular press called Standard Oil and Carnegie robber barons.
Artists can't live on respect alone. They need to buy food and shelter, just like the rest of us. Whether you draw a commission, sign a contract with a corporation or accept donations, you are stilling being paid for your work.
It is also worth remembering that in your fantasized version of history, the works artists created for rich people were controlled by those rich people. You and I would never have seen or heard anyone of them.
>> ... the record industry is such a cash cow at the moment it needs that kind of readjustment...
Why? Do you think that any business should be destroyed if their profits exceed some particular level? Why do you care how much money these people make? No one is forcing you to buy their products. No one needs to buy their products, either. That's why they call it "entertainment".
I didn't make a judgment about it. I don't care if enternainment ceases to be a big business. I'm just pointing out that most of the music that people are "sharing" won't be available to anyone.
You are fundamentally wrong.
Do you seriously believe that everyone and anyone who writes a book or a song does so with no thought to selling it? How do you think creative people survive? Either they sell their creations or they depend on other people to support them. Either way, they can't create anything unless someone gives them money.
No government service is involved in establishing my rights to something I make. If I bake a cake, that cake is mine. You have no right to eat the cake or acquire my recipe unless I say you do. Likewise, if I write a book, you have no right to read the book or reproduce the book unless I say you do. If I make something, I own it and I own every right associated with it. Because the "thing" has never existed before, it is impossible for you or anyone else to have any rights at all to do anything at all with my creation unless I grant you that right. I challenge you to prove I'm wrong.