1. An MS site giving preference to stories prepared by MSNBC is not paid placement.
2. Scooping every site is clearly unlikely and, probably, impossible. But, an aggregator does not create any news. I don't see any effective difference, in terms of fairness, between an algorithm, responding to inputs hidden from the user, floating a wire service pickup from the Podunk Press to the top versus a human being working in a company owned by MS and NBC giving preference to a story prepared by MSNBC over, for example, a similar story prepared by CNN. I certainly wouldn't expect to see the MSNBC story at the CNN site. The fact that the MSNBC site uses an aggregator is not important to me, as a consumer. What is important is the news that MSNBC publishes, however generated.
Slashdot does not generate original reporting. Slashdot does not engage in journalism. The discussions are, to be generous, barely on a par with transcribed talk radio comments.
I'm not defending MS. (What is it about Slashdot readers that they think any point of disagreement with the party line represents a defense of MS?) I've said that I am no more surprised that MS gives preference to its own stories on its own site than I am surprised that any other news source gives preference to its stories versus stories produced by its competitors. I do not assume that a site's use of aggregating software carries with it a moral commitment to place stories according to an allegedly random and perfectly fair algorithm. I think Google's site is evidence that such a random selection is less than useful, wastes the reader's time, and is fair only in the sense that no judgment at all is applied to distinguish between sources and their likely value, credibility, and usefulness.
Google, then, delivers a kind of bogus impartiality, akin to what would happen if someone blindy grabbed newspapers off of a news vendor's shelf. I suppose it could be seen as representing an odd sort of fairness and lack of bias. But, since do not expect news sources to avoid bias and point of view, that kind of fairness is useless to me.
I've stated that I gave up on Google's aggregator because it often buries reports from significant and relevant sources while floating worthless secondary and tertiary reports to the top. The human editor that I trust more than any other to decide what's important is me, not some algorithm. I not only want to know what's going on, I want to know how it is being reported in the world's media. For example, if Tony Blair shuffles his cabinet, the sources I want to read are the UK press. I know the political leanings of that press, and how they report a story is of as much interest to me as the actual factsthey report. I certainly wouldn't want to waste my time reading the story that Google floats to the top. That story is just as likely to be from Xinhua or El Pais or the El Segundo Gazette as it is from The Times,the Guardian, or the Telegraph.
I would disagree that the MS site " is supposed to be an (unbiased) news aggregate". From the MS point of view, I'm sure it is supposed to be a proft-making enterprise. In that, they have much company. Every commercial news provider I'm aware of must a profit; that reality influences the stories they cover and the product they put on the market. (The only noncommercial news providers I know about are funded and controlled by their governments.)
Since aggregators contain no original reporting, they can't scooped. Every story they point to has already been published, so, in a very real sense, aggregators are scooped on every story.
My problem with all aggregators is precisely the lack of human involvement in story selection. I've given up using Google because there's every chance that the primary link for a given story will be a pickup from a minor league source half a world away from the event. Google seems as likely to use a Slashdot story about an event as it is an original report in something like the International Herald Tribune.
Disagree that encouraging change is the purpose of news reporting, as you seem to suggest.
Neither the MSN or Google report ot create news. They simply point to news reported and created elsewhere. Their potential for bias is in story selection and placement. You can't run every story, so evety publication, even these, must decide which stories to select and which stories to ignore. Google and MSN do it via an algorithm, others do it via human judgment.
I think looking for absence of bias, or point of view, or perfect objectivity, is a waste of time. To me, the point of view, or the agenda, of the source reporting the news is often at least as important as the news itself.
As such, I don't make use of Google or MSN for news. They don't appear to distinguish between primary reporting in major news sources and simple wire service pickups in peripheral sources. E.g., if a carbomb explodes in Jerusalem, I want to see how it is reported in Israel and the Arabic press; I don't want to see an AP story in the "Topeka Gazette" float to the top of Google.
Of course, news is a product. Someone makes it, and someone sells it. No money, no news. It isn't sacred text, you know.
If you buy a copy of The Washington Post, you don't see it running reports from The Washington Times. Ditto for thousands of other examples. Seeing MSNBC reports on an MSNBC site should not be surprising.
It's not possible to create totally objective reports on the news. All reports are colored, in one degree or another, by the concerns and interests of the people who created those reports. Even Google's allegedly objective news site is biased by the choices the developers made, by the choices made about which sources are included and which are not, etc. Even if you participate in an event, rather than rely on news reporting about it, your own memories and impression are also influenced by your concerns and interests.
It's the job of professional reporters to make an effort to be as objective as possible. It's your job as a news consumer to understand that. Knowing who is spinning the news, and why, is just as important as understanding the bare facts that many naive people confuse with the news.
You're wrong. I'm looking at the beta site and it contains lots of links to other news sources.
But, what's the problem, anyway? It's a commerical enterprise. It's got a big freakin' MSNBC logo on it. Why wouldn't they give preference to their own stuff?
It's not like Google's system is perfect. I don't use their news aggregator because there is no human judgment used in its story selection. When you are looking for coverage of an event, it's just as likely to give preference to a useless tertiary wire service pickup carried in some backwater newspaper as it is to primary reporting from competent sources. That lack of bias is phony, and, worse, wastes my time.
Installing spyware on your boss's computer is tantamount to secretly videotaping what goes on in his office.
This guy's assertion that his job included looking for computer abuse doesn't cut it. Did his job description specifically give him the right o use software to monitor the computer activities of any employee or manager? If not, he's toast.
(And, yes, employers do it all the time, but most make it agreement to that a condition of employment.)
Maybe the Green Party rep, who is also a MySQL AB rep, knows something.
In any case, isn't there some confict of interest here? It's rather like a U.S. mayor asking for a big Microsoft buy when his press spokesman has a day job in Redland.
>>..."fixing this specific exploit does not solve the problem of a malicious person being able to visually recreate trusted ecommerce vendors' web-sites inside a phony browser window".
No, but if the Mozilla and Fireforx developers can prevent it, they ought to. The existence of malicious people doesn't justify exercising due diligence.
>>"4) I don't know if I believe that this exploit even really works..."
Well, I can attest it doesn't work in Firefox 0.8."
>> If it pisses you off that much, download the source tree and submit a fix."
Doesn't particularly piss me off. But I'm a user, not a developer. But, hey, I forget, open source is closed to users.
Of course, this is a vulnerability. So what if Windows has the same problem? You want me to smile and be happy about open source after sending my money to a thief? Some consolation.
Follow These Suggestions, Then See A Specialist
on
Sleeping Problems?
·
· Score: 1
If work a rotating shift schedule, get off and get stable working hours.
If you consume caffeine 8 hours or less before your bedtime, stop. Even if you used to get away with this, the body's metabolic rate changes as we grow older.
If you stuff a lot of sugar into your body, don't. The last thing you want when you're trying to fall asleep is a brain that's on a sugar buzz.
If these suggestions don't work, or don't apply, get your doctor to send you to a specialist. Sleep disorders are real and wicked problems that can be diagnosed and treated.
Finally, don't devalue sleep. We all get stupid if we don't sleep.
Nothing I've said detracts from the flow of information. That's why it is "another issue". Your right to read my book is in no way constrained by the enforcement of my rights to control how it is copied and distributed.
The crowd that wants to expand a software development model -- free software -- to the entire culture is deliberately conflating two different issues: information flow and an author's property rights. Their argument fails -- as your's has --, and will always fail, because they cannot demonstrate how anyone other than an author can have rights in a work that the author has just created. Cut through their idealistic hype and one cane see that their real response to that criticism is, in effect, that the wider society has the right to usurp ownership of the author's property. I disagree with that, fundamentally. If I make something, that "thing", and all rights to benefit from it, are mine and mine alone. There are only two ways for anyone else to acquire that work or any of the rights associated with it: By my transfer, or their theft.
There is no intangible object. A book, for example, is an organized collection of symbolic representation manifested on a physcial medium. The book has no existence as an intangible object.
Consider these two groups of people: An author, and everyone else. When the author creates a book, who owns it? Who has the right to control how the book is manipulated and exploited and who has the right to benefit from the manipulation and exploitation?
If you wish to assert that the ownership of the book and its associated rights belong to "everyone else" you need to demonstrate how possession and rights transfer from the author. Failing that, you need to demonstrate how the wider community has rights in and takes ownership of the book at the time it is created by the author. So far, you have not done this. Instead, you have asserted your beliefs.
Repeatedly asserting your opinions about how societies ought to behave does not bear on how societies do, in fact, behave. If I author and copyright a book that you subsequently copy and distribute without my permission, I will sue you. The courts and the law will stand by me and against you. You may stand up in court and tell it that the laws are wrong, but the court will not care. The court will remind you that your beliefs are irrelevant, that the belief of a criminal that his act should not be illegal is no defense.
Finally, I am not interested in "information" or its free flow. That is another issue.
If I own something and you acquire it without my permission, how can you be anything but a thief?
If I write a book, I own the original manuscript, in whatever form and on whatever medium it is recorded. I also own every right to use and exploit that original manuscript. Those include the right to copy and distribute the book, to assign certain of my rights to others. If I do not give you those rights, how can you possibly acquire them? Who else but me can transfer them to you?
I do not have those rights because government exists. Government does not create rights. If two people lived in an anarchic state and one of them wrote a book, the same conditions would apply.
It is a simple and fundamental reality that the person who creates an object owns that object and all rights associated with it. The law simply codifes that reality. Everyone resident in a lawful society gives their assent to be governed by those laws by virtue of their simple presence in that society. No individual contract between a work's creator and those you call "downstream participants" is required because they are already "under contract".
Or, would you require that civil law only apply in cases in which the victim had individually contracted with the criminal?
You continue to assert your belief in the kind of society that you want to exist. But, it doesn't. The fact of possession exists and cannot be argued away or avoided. The fact of an author's exclusive rights in a created work exist and cannot be arued away.
These works do not exist in a vacuum. Someone must own them and someone must have right to them. At the point of creation, a work is owned by its creator who has exclusive rights to it. Any argument that places some degree of ownership or some degree of rights in the hands of others without the author's permission must explain how that happens. You have not done that. I have never seen anyone offer anything other than a Utopian explanation of how that can be done.
I'm getting tired of repeating the same point only to have you play word games.
If I make something, I own it until I decide to transfer ownership to someone else. I also own every right that can be attributed to the thing I made No on else has any of tose rights unless I transfer them.
Anyone who acquires my original work without my permission is a thief. Anyone who makes a copy of my work without my permission steals my opportunity to benefit by exclusively copying and distributing my work.
Copyright is a law that codifies those fundamental realities. The law did not grant me ownership nor did the law create my rights in my creation.
If you steal my work or infringe on my rights, I will use the full force of the law to protect myself and regain my rights and opportunities.
It is all about physical possession of the work I create. I don't care if you want to talk about the "flow of information". I don't. You assertion that you have a right to steal or copy my work without my permission is only that: an assertion. I am not interested in whether or not you "copy" an idea. As I've said repeatedly, am idea cannot be owned, so why would I even bother to try to pretend to own something that cannot be owned? The same applies to "information". Information cannot be owned because, like an idea, it has no corporeal existence as a physical entity.
I repeat: I only want to protect my interests in my possessions. I have no way of protecting ideas or information and I do not care one way or the other about your claims. Protecting my rights to my possessions in no way restricts the free flow of information. The book is not an idea. The book is not information. If you want my own my book, buy it.
1. If I was able to copyright or patent my house, then you would be violating my rights if you made an unauthorized copy. You may think that would be unethical, but individual opinions do not change reality.
2. I'm not concerned with how people use the ocean. I'm concerned about my cup of water. If someone steals it, they've violated my rights and I will seek justice. What other people do or don't do with the ocean is irrelevant.
3. Again, ideas cannot be owned. This is not about ideas. This is about physical objects: books, CD's, files, etc. An idea cannot be stolen because it cannot be owned. A book, however, is owned by it's creator, and anyone who acquires that book without the owner's permission is a thief.
4. I'm not concerned with information or who has access to it. I'm concerned with protecting my rights to benefit from sales of my book, Or my song, or whatever. If you steal my work, I will sue you.
You're right, of course, but/. refuses to admit that their editors have any responsibility for the content that appears on the site. They're just pointing to what someone else says....
You are obviously a lizard with a walnut-sized brain, but here goes:
If "taxpayer paid streets" did not exist, you would only be able to drive from A to B if someone could make a profit charging you to do that. Even a lizard ought to see the problems that would entail.
Go read your history. America's railroads weren't exactly built without federal subsidy.
...why not disable in-dash DVD players or TV's when the vehicle is in motion? Bored front-seat passengers can console themselves with the thought that the driver is actually looking at the road ahead.
Now, if we could just deal with the other morons who think it's just fine to drive and read a newspaper, or put on makeup, or turn around and smack a kid in the backseat, or steer with one finger while holding a coffee cup as their left arms hangs out the window.
>>"When you take a cup of water from the ocean it is yours, when you pour it back it is the commons. Your action releases it to the commons. So is with the action of putting your chair in a place where everyone can see - you may still hold the physical rights, but any claim over reproduction is gone.
I don't believe in any such construct as "the commons". There is not some mythical commune in which everything belongs to everyone. The fact and reality of ownership do not change merely because the owned object is visible to others. It is, in fact, an absurd notion. My house is visible to you, as is my car. Does that mean I (and my bank) no longer own them? Of course not. When I browse through a bookstore, do I acquire ownership or the right to duplicate any book I look at? Of course not. Like so many other posters on/., you are asserting your desires for what you wish is true as if it actually was true.
>>" I have that book you wrote right here, I've digitalized it, I'm distributing it to all my friends, who are in turn distributing it to theirs. What are you going to do about it, how are you going to demonstrate that I'm violating you. How are you going to secure your percieved right without violating millions of innocents?"
Simple, I will sue you for copyright infringement and seek damages. The amount of those damages will begin by calculating the revenue lost to me as a result of your illegal action. That is the initial and obvious way you are violating my rights: You have illegally usurped my right to financially benefit from the marketing of my book. Anyone else who also makes illegal copies of the book, or who copies your digitized version, and offers them on the web is also guilty of the same infringements. I have no concerns about "millions of innocents" because anyone who makes an unauthorized copy of my book is not innocent.
Finally, your bum example is irrelevant. The ability of someone to pay damages doesn't bear on their culpability.
Copyright grants the teacher the right to make those fair use copies. It is the mechanism used by the work's creator to transfer those rights to the teacher. Note that copyight did not create those rights, it is simply enforces them.
The book's creator almost certainly did not give the teacher rights to make and distribute multiple copies, and copyright enforces that. However, if the creator of the book wanted to transfer those rights, copyright wold enforce them, too.
Since the students didn't copy anything, and the teacher acted appropriately, the qustion of their guilt is a red herring.
If the teacher had violated the intent of the book;s author, then that teacher would be in violation of copyright law. I consider that a form of theft. Others may choose a different word, but , however described, the act remains an illegal usurpation of the rights of the book's creator.
Again, all rights to any created work flow from its creator, who retains all rights and all elements of onwership until, and if, those rights and that ownership is transferred. This is not government imposing monopoly. This simply fact of ownership precedes government, would exist among humans even in an state of anarachy, and can be seen as existing even within the aninmal world.
Attempts tp assert that ownership exists only because government wants to impose monopoly is simple cant.
If you disagree with that, if you contend that the creator of a unique work does not own that work at the time it is created. please explain who does, and why.
I don't need to hide something to enforce my legal rights to it. If you copy that chair without my permission then you are in violation of my rights and I will enforce the law against you.
You may believe this is wrong, but your beliefs do not change the law or shield you from its enforcement.
The government did not grant me a monopoly on the reproduction of the chair. The government protects a monopoly that is mine by natural right: As the creator of the chair, I own it and I have exclusive rights to its use, reproduction and distribution. Anyone who acquires that chair without my permission is engaging in theft; anyone who copies it without my permission is in violation of my rights.
If you wish to refute that, you will need to demonstrate that the creator of a unique object or work, in the absence of any rights transfer, does not own that object. I assert you cannot do that.
Slashdot Mirror
1. An MS site giving preference to stories prepared by MSNBC is not paid placement.
2. Scooping every site is clearly unlikely and, probably, impossible. But, an aggregator does not create any news. I don't see any effective difference, in terms of fairness, between an algorithm, responding to inputs hidden from the user, floating a wire service pickup from the Podunk Press to the top versus a human being working in a company owned by MS and NBC giving preference to a story prepared by MSNBC over, for example, a similar story prepared by CNN. I certainly wouldn't expect to see the MSNBC story at the CNN site. The fact that the MSNBC site uses an aggregator is not important to me, as a consumer. What is important is the news that MSNBC publishes, however generated.
Slashdot does not generate original reporting. Slashdot does not engage in journalism. The discussions are, to be generous, barely on a par with transcribed talk radio comments.
I'm not defending MS. (What is it about Slashdot readers that they think any point of disagreement with the party line represents a defense of MS?) I've said that I am no more surprised that MS gives preference to its own stories on its own site than I am surprised that any other news source gives preference to its stories versus stories produced by its competitors. I do not assume that a site's use of aggregating software carries with it a moral commitment to place stories according to an allegedly random and perfectly fair algorithm. I think Google's site is evidence that such a random selection is less than useful, wastes the reader's time, and is fair only in the sense that no judgment at all is applied to distinguish between sources and their likely value, credibility, and usefulness.
Google, then, delivers a kind of bogus impartiality, akin to what would happen if someone blindy grabbed newspapers off of a news vendor's shelf. I suppose it could be seen as representing an odd sort of fairness and lack of bias. But, since do not expect news sources to avoid bias and point of view, that kind of fairness is useless to me.
I've stated that I gave up on Google's aggregator because it often buries reports from significant and relevant sources while floating worthless secondary and tertiary reports to the top. The human editor that I trust more than any other to decide what's important is me, not some algorithm. I not only want to know what's going on, I want to know how it is being reported in the world's media. For example, if Tony Blair shuffles his cabinet, the sources I want to read are the UK press. I know the political leanings of that press, and how they report a story is of as much interest to me as the actual factsthey report. I certainly wouldn't want to waste my time reading the story that Google floats to the top. That story is just as likely to be from Xinhua or El Pais or the El Segundo Gazette as it is from The Times,the Guardian, or the Telegraph.
I would disagree that the MS site " is supposed to be an (unbiased) news aggregate". From the MS point of view, I'm sure it is supposed to be a proft-making enterprise. In that, they have much company. Every commercial news provider I'm aware of must a profit; that reality influences the stories they cover and the product they put on the market. (The only noncommercial news providers I know about are funded and controlled by their governments.)
Since aggregators contain no original reporting, they can't scooped. Every story they point to has already been published, so, in a very real sense, aggregators are scooped on every story.
My problem with all aggregators is precisely the lack of human involvement in story selection. I've given up using Google because there's every chance that the primary link for a given story will be a pickup from a minor league source half a world away from the event. Google seems as likely to use a Slashdot story about an event as it is an original report in something like the International Herald Tribune.
Agree re: point of view and agendas.
Disagree that encouraging change is the purpose of news reporting, as you seem to suggest.
Neither the MSN or Google report ot create news. They simply point to news reported and created elsewhere. Their potential for bias is in story selection and placement. You can't run every story, so evety publication, even these, must decide which stories to select and which stories to ignore. Google and MSN do it via an algorithm, others do it via human judgment.
I think looking for absence of bias, or point of view, or perfect objectivity, is a waste of time. To me, the point of view, or the agenda, of the source reporting the news is often at least as important as the news itself.
As such, I don't make use of Google or MSN for news. They don't appear to distinguish between primary reporting in major news sources and simple wire service pickups in peripheral sources. E.g., if a carbomb explodes in Jerusalem, I want to see how it is reported in Israel and the Arabic press; I don't want to see an AP story in the "Topeka Gazette" float to the top of Google.
I used to live directly under the Concorde's flight path a little west of Heathrow. Yes, it was loud. But, I'd trade loud for cheap seats any time.
BTW, the loudest aircraft I've heard is a water-injected C-141 taking off about 3 miles away. Most have been painful for the crew.
Of course, news is a product. Someone makes it, and someone sells it. No money, no news. It isn't sacred text, you know.
If you buy a copy of The Washington Post, you don't see it running reports from The Washington Times. Ditto for thousands of other examples. Seeing MSNBC reports on an MSNBC site should not be surprising.
It's not possible to create totally objective reports on the news. All reports are colored, in one degree or another, by the concerns and interests of the people who created those reports. Even Google's allegedly objective news site is biased by the choices the developers made, by the choices made about which sources are included and which are not, etc. Even if you participate in an event, rather than rely on news reporting about it, your own memories and impression are also influenced by your concerns and interests.
It's the job of professional reporters to make an effort to be as objective as possible. It's your job as a news consumer to understand that. Knowing who is spinning the news, and why, is just as important as understanding the bare facts that many naive people confuse with the news.
You're wrong. I'm looking at the beta site and it contains lots of links to other news sources.
But, what's the problem, anyway? It's a commerical enterprise. It's got a big freakin' MSNBC logo on it. Why wouldn't they give preference to their own stuff?
It's not like Google's system is perfect. I don't use their news aggregator because there is no human judgment used in its story selection. When you are looking for coverage of an event, it's just as likely to give preference to a useless tertiary wire service pickup carried in some backwater newspaper as it is to primary reporting from competent sources. That lack of bias is phony, and, worse, wastes my time.
...Slashdot discovers businesses prefer to sell their own products, not their competitors.
Installing spyware on your boss's computer is tantamount to secretly videotaping what goes on in his office.
This guy's assertion that his job included looking for computer abuse doesn't cut it. Did his job description specifically give him the right o use software to monitor the computer activities of any employee or manager? If not, he's toast.
(And, yes, employers do it all the time, but most make it agreement to that a condition of employment.)
Maybe the Green Party rep, who is also a MySQL AB rep, knows something.
In any case, isn't there some confict of interest here? It's rather like a U.S. mayor asking for a big Microsoft buy when his press spokesman has a day job in Redland.
>>..."fixing this specific exploit does not solve the problem of a malicious person being able to visually recreate trusted ecommerce vendors' web-sites inside a phony browser window".
No, but if the Mozilla and Fireforx developers can prevent it, they ought to. The existence of malicious people doesn't justify exercising due diligence.
>>"4) I don't know if I believe that this exploit even really works..."
Well, I can attest it doesn't work in Firefox 0.8."
>> If it pisses you off that much, download the source tree and submit a fix."
Doesn't particularly piss me off. But I'm a user, not a developer. But, hey, I forget, open source is closed to users.
You think faking out users is a feature? Great.
Of course, this is a vulnerability. So what if Windows has the same problem? You want me to smile and be happy about open source after sending my money to a thief? Some consolation.
If work a rotating shift schedule, get off and get stable working hours.
If you consume caffeine 8 hours or less before your bedtime, stop. Even if you used to get away with this, the body's metabolic rate changes as we grow older.
If you stuff a lot of sugar into your body, don't. The last thing you want when you're trying to fall asleep is a brain that's on a sugar buzz.
If these suggestions don't work, or don't apply, get your doctor to send you to a specialist. Sleep disorders are real and wicked problems that can be diagnosed and treated.
Finally, don't devalue sleep. We all get stupid if we don't sleep.
Nothing I've said detracts from the flow of information. That's why it is "another issue". Your right to read my book is in no way constrained by the enforcement of my rights to control how it is copied and distributed.
The crowd that wants to expand a software development model -- free software -- to the entire culture is deliberately conflating two different issues: information flow and an author's property rights. Their argument fails -- as your's has --, and will always fail, because they cannot demonstrate how anyone other than an author can have rights in a work that the author has just created. Cut through their idealistic hype and one cane see that their real response to that criticism is, in effect, that the wider society has the right to usurp ownership of the author's property. I disagree with that, fundamentally. If I make something, that "thing", and all rights to benefit from it, are mine and mine alone. There are only two ways for anyone else to acquire that work or any of the rights associated with it: By my transfer, or their theft.
There is no intangible object. A book, for example, is an organized collection of symbolic representation manifested on a physcial medium. The book has no existence as an intangible object.
Consider these two groups of people: An author, and everyone else. When the author creates a book, who owns it? Who has the right to control how the book is manipulated and exploited and who has the right to benefit from the manipulation and exploitation?
If you wish to assert that the ownership of the book and its associated rights belong to "everyone else" you need to demonstrate how possession and rights transfer from the author. Failing that, you need to demonstrate how the wider community has rights in and takes ownership of the book at the time it is created by the author. So far, you have not done this. Instead, you have asserted your beliefs.
Repeatedly asserting your opinions about how societies ought to behave does not bear on how societies do, in fact, behave. If I author and copyright a book that you subsequently copy and distribute without my permission, I will sue you. The courts and the law will stand by me and against you. You may stand up in court and tell it that the laws are wrong, but the court will not care. The court will remind you that your beliefs are irrelevant, that the belief of a criminal that his act should not be illegal is no defense.
Finally, I am not interested in "information" or its free flow. That is another issue.
You are being deliberately sophistic.
If I own something and you acquire it without my permission, how can you be anything but a thief?
If I write a book, I own the original manuscript, in whatever form and on whatever medium it is recorded. I also own every right to use and exploit that original manuscript. Those include the right to copy and distribute the book, to assign certain of my rights to others. If I do not give you those rights, how can you possibly acquire them? Who else but me can transfer them to you?
I do not have those rights because government exists. Government does not create rights. If two people lived in an anarchic state and one of them wrote a book, the same conditions would apply.
It is a simple and fundamental reality that the person who creates an object owns that object and all rights associated with it. The law simply codifes that reality. Everyone resident in a lawful society gives their assent to be governed by those laws by virtue of their simple presence in that society. No individual contract between a work's creator and those you call "downstream participants" is required because they are already "under contract".
Or, would you require that civil law only apply in cases in which the victim had individually contracted with the criminal?
You continue to assert your belief in the kind of society that you want to exist. But, it doesn't. The fact of possession exists and cannot be argued away or avoided. The fact of an author's exclusive rights in a created work exist and cannot be arued away.
These works do not exist in a vacuum. Someone must own them and someone must have right to them. At the point of creation, a work is owned by its creator who has exclusive rights to it. Any argument that places some degree of ownership or some degree of rights in the hands of others without the author's permission must explain how that happens. You have not done that. I have never seen anyone offer anything other than a Utopian explanation of how that can be done.
I'm getting tired of repeating the same point only to have you play word games.
If I make something, I own it until I decide to transfer ownership to someone else. I also own every right that can be attributed to the thing I made No on else has any of tose rights unless I transfer them.
Anyone who acquires my original work without my permission is a thief. Anyone who makes a copy of my work without my permission steals my opportunity to benefit by exclusively copying and distributing my work.
Copyright is a law that codifies those fundamental realities. The law did not grant me ownership nor did the law create my rights in my creation.
If you steal my work or infringe on my rights, I will use the full force of the law to protect myself and regain my rights and opportunities.
It is all about physical possession of the work I create. I don't care if you want to talk about the "flow of information". I don't. You assertion that you have a right to steal or copy my work without my permission is only that: an assertion. I am not interested in whether or not you "copy" an idea. As I've said repeatedly, am idea cannot be owned, so why would I even bother to try to pretend to own something that cannot be owned? The same applies to "information". Information cannot be owned because, like an idea, it has no corporeal existence as a physical entity.
I repeat: I only want to protect my interests in my possessions. I have no way of protecting ideas or information and I do not care one way or the other about your claims. Protecting my rights to my possessions in no way restricts the free flow of information. The book is not an idea. The book is not information. If you want my own my book, buy it.
I knew it. A lizard.
Geez...
1. If I was able to copyright or patent my house, then you would be violating my rights if you made an unauthorized copy. You may think that would be unethical, but individual opinions do not change reality.
2. I'm not concerned with how people use the ocean. I'm concerned about my cup of water. If someone steals it, they've violated my rights and I will seek justice. What other people do or don't do with the ocean is irrelevant.
3. Again, ideas cannot be owned. This is not about ideas. This is about physical objects: books, CD's, files, etc. An idea cannot be stolen because it cannot be owned. A book, however, is owned by it's creator, and anyone who acquires that book without the owner's permission is a thief.
4. I'm not concerned with information or who has access to it. I'm concerned with protecting my rights to benefit from sales of my book, Or my song, or whatever. If you steal my work, I will sue you.
You're right, of course, but /. refuses to admit that their editors have any responsibility for the content that appears on the site. They're just pointing to what someone else says....
You are obviously a lizard with a walnut-sized brain, but here goes:
If "taxpayer paid streets" did not exist, you would only be able to drive from A to B if someone could make a profit charging you to do that. Even a lizard ought to see the problems that would entail.
Go read your history. America's railroads weren't exactly built without federal subsidy.
It's supposed to.
...why not disable in-dash DVD players or TV's when the vehicle is in motion? Bored front-seat passengers can console themselves with the thought that the driver is actually looking at the road ahead.
Now, if we could just deal with the other morons who think it's just fine to drive and read a newspaper, or put on makeup, or turn around and smack a kid in the backseat, or steer with one finger while holding a coffee cup as their left arms hangs out the window.
>>"When you take a cup of water from the ocean it is yours, when you pour it back it is the commons. Your action releases it to the commons. So is with the action of putting your chair in a place where everyone can see - you may still hold the physical rights, but any claim over reproduction is gone.
/., you are asserting your desires for what you wish is true as if it actually was true.
I don't believe in any such construct as "the commons". There is not some mythical commune in which everything belongs to everyone. The fact and reality of ownership do not change merely because the owned object is visible to others. It is, in fact, an absurd notion. My house is visible to you, as is my car. Does that mean I (and my bank) no longer own them? Of course not. When I browse through a bookstore, do I acquire ownership or the right to duplicate any book I look at? Of course not. Like so many other posters on
>>" I have that book you wrote right here, I've digitalized it, I'm distributing it to all my friends, who are in turn distributing it to theirs. What are you going to do about it, how are you going to demonstrate that I'm violating you. How are you going to secure your percieved right without violating millions of innocents?"
Simple, I will sue you for copyright infringement and seek damages. The amount of those damages will begin by calculating the revenue lost to me as a result of your illegal action. That is the initial and obvious way you are violating my rights: You have illegally usurped my right to financially benefit from the marketing of my book. Anyone else who also makes illegal copies of the book, or who copies your digitized version, and offers them on the web is also guilty of the same infringements. I have no concerns about "millions of innocents" because anyone who makes an unauthorized copy of my book is not innocent.
Finally, your bum example is irrelevant. The ability of someone to pay damages doesn't bear on their culpability.
More silliness.
Copyright grants the teacher the right to make those fair use copies. It is the mechanism used by the work's creator to transfer those rights to the teacher. Note that copyight did not create those rights, it is simply enforces them.
The book's creator almost certainly did not give the teacher rights to make and distribute multiple copies, and copyright enforces that. However, if the creator of the book wanted to transfer those rights, copyright wold enforce them, too.
Since the students didn't copy anything, and the teacher acted appropriately, the qustion of their guilt is a red herring.
If the teacher had violated the intent of the book;s author, then that teacher would be in violation of copyright law. I consider that a form of theft. Others may choose a different word, but , however described, the act remains an illegal usurpation of the rights of the book's creator.
Again, all rights to any created work flow from its creator, who retains all rights and all elements of onwership until, and if, those rights and that ownership is transferred. This is not government imposing monopoly. This simply fact of ownership precedes government, would exist among humans even in an state of anarachy, and can be seen as existing even within the aninmal world.
Attempts tp assert that ownership exists only because government wants to impose monopoly is simple cant.
If you disagree with that, if you contend that the creator of a unique work does not own that work at the time it is created. please explain who does, and why.
Sophomoric nonsense.
I don't need to hide something to enforce my legal rights to it. If you copy that chair without my permission then you are in violation of my rights and I will enforce the law against you.
You may believe this is wrong, but your beliefs do not change the law or shield you from its enforcement.
The government did not grant me a monopoly on the reproduction of the chair. The government protects a monopoly that is mine by natural right: As the creator of the chair, I own it and I have exclusive rights to its use, reproduction and distribution. Anyone who acquires that chair without my permission is engaging in theft; anyone who copies it without my permission is in violation of my rights.
If you wish to refute that, you will need to demonstrate that the creator of a unique object or work, in the absence of any rights transfer, does not own that object. I assert you cannot do that.