True... but their defense is somehow that kickstarter "promoted" it. I wasn't aware that kickstarter "promoted" anything... the people running the fundraisers do their own promotion. Kickstarter is just a service.
I would liken it to the notion of holding the government partially accountable for tax fraud because if people didn't have to pay taxes, then there wouldn't be tax fraud in the first place.
...I deprive you of that value and in return I gain that value
Whether the taker gains an equal value to what the person being taken from lost does not change whether or not it was still taken without permission. A child can steal money from their parents' purse because they like playing with paper. Completely different value systems are involved, yet there's no disputing that it was still stolen.
Of course, things like money in somebody's purse are tangible... and if you're going to argue that intangible things cannot be stolen, then I'm not really equipped to dispute that.
My point was only that if you define theft as the unauthorized deprivation of something from its owner, then copyright infringement does, indeed, amount to the theft of something. Suggesting that the copyright holder still has just as much exclusive control over who can copy their works when somebody else copies their works without permission as they did before blindly ignores the definition of "exclusive"... which is what makes copyright valuable in the first place.
You may as well be suggesting that if I were to somehow siphon some money from a person's bank account and redirect it elsewhere, because I have merely "lowered" their financial worth, I haven't stolen anything.
Of course it's BS... I stole whatever I took. Nothing less and nothing more.
I'm just saying if a third party's actions led to a reduction in that value, it's not "stealing".
If there's a reduction in value, then that value is lost to the person who once had it, and in the case of copyright infringement, that reduction is not merely caused by the infringement, but the actual act of infringing itself, since the act of infringing on copyright directly compromises exclusivity, which is the thing which is of value to the copyright holder.
Again... the disconnect happens because what is of value to the copyright holder is worthless to the person who is taking it... and is why it is so easy to discount the notion that anything was ever stolen in the first place. This is, however, only rationalizing, whose purpose serves probably little more than to make people who do such things feel less guilty about it.
What the heck would kickstarter have to do with it?
If it's a patent violation, then it's a patent violation by the person who infringed on the patent. All kickstarter did was provide a venue for raising and delivering the funds.
This is like holding the Mint to blame for a bank heist.
If value is reduced, then it stands to reason that it is *THAT* amount of value that has been stolen.... not all of it, obviously.
The disconnect comes from the fact that the "value" that is stolen is not actually of any value to anybody except the copyright holder.
Again... just because that is the case, does not mean it cannot be stolen.
Do not conflate the issues of value and financial worth. They are not the same thing. If they were, nobody would bother GPL'ing their software or putting under a BSD or MIT license, or any of the dozens of free source code licenses that exist. they would instead just put it into public domain. Clearly the copy control that copyright offers has some amount of worth to the person who holds that right which has absolutely squat to do with financial incentive.
It only reduces artificial value, because copyright is a mechanism for manufacturing artificial scarcity in support of rent-seeking behavior.
Fallacy.
If that were true, there would be no merit to copyrighting source code that a person decides to make freely available, whether under the GPL or BSD licenses.
If the only value from copyright came from monetary inducement, then for material that is supposed to be free, there is no advantage to it over public domain. Yet the majority of freely released works are not issued under public domain. They are copyrighted.
You have been deluded into thinking that money is the only measure of worth or value. It is not. It is merely a very objective one.
Copying something that is copyrighted without permission *does* deprive the copyright holder of some of the value behind their copyright.
Copyright literally is a "right to copy"... although it's a legally granted and not a natural right... but the value inherent in it comes from its exclusivity. The copyright holder has an exclusive right to control copies of their work, and everybody else is supposed to obtain permission first. "Exclusive", by definition, means that nobody else is doing it, so when somebody does copy it work without permission, that exclusivity is compromised, and the value of it lessened.
And after all... if the mere right to copy wasn't really of any value to creators, then why would people who bother to make freely distributable works bother to copyright it at all? Why not just put the work into public domain?
The point, therefore, is that copyright *DOES* have value... it's difficult to quantify, but when somebody does infringe on copyright, some measure of that value is actually lost to the copyright holder.
Just because what is lost to the copyright holder is of no value to the person who takes it, doesn't mean that it isn't stolen.
I've heard that to combat obesity, several states in the next year are going to impose strict upper caps on junk food and sugary soft drink sizes, under the premise that if the size is smaller, then people will not eat as much, but this study appears to confirm the opposite.
Running from the law makes you a slave to running away... because that's all you'll ever be able to do. You aren't free. Prison isn't a place that most any sane person would voluntarily choose for themselves, but it's preferable to slavery. For that matter, so is death.
I deeply cherish my freedom. But I'd rather be a prisoner for something I didnt do than live as a slave to anyone or anything because of mymown choices. Because all running away form the law does is make you a slave to running.
That's exactly my point. If society thinks you did,then you're going to go jail for it. Why do something that will only serve to *increase* that perception?
You appear to think that must have been implying that innocent people don't goto jail. That's not what I mean.
What I mean is that whether or not you go to jail is going to entirely depend on whether somebody believes you did it. Running away will only further that belief. If you go to jail for something you didn't do, that's unfortunate, but if the only thing you can do to avoid it is make it appear more likely that you did (and thus also more likely to face worse punishment), then taking your chances and hoping for a lack of evidence to convict you (since if you are innocent, there should not be any, unless you were framed) is a preferable option.
Is it foolish to realize that one cannot control what other people do?
I certainly wouldn't want to go to jail for something I didn't do... but if other people are thinking that I did, my running away is certainly *NOT* going to have a chance in hell of convincing them that they are wrong. Just knowing I didn't do it might seem like small consolation if I were spending time in prison for something I didn't actually do, but it's preferable to me than deliberately making choices of my own that are only going to increase the outside perception that I'm guilty, not to mention against the law, and I *could* reasonably be held accountable for.
Your tone suggests that you seriously doubt I would, so there's little point in my telling you that you are wrong. I'll chalk it up to the fact that you do not know me. I have no desire to die, but I'd rather take the high road and have a clear conscience than live knowing that I could deserve a lot worse than what I have.
I said "legitimate" for a reason. By legitimate, I meant that the test was performed in an environment where factors that are not intended to alter the results do not affect them. Both procedural error and contamination are examples of such outside factors.
Actually, no... the original intent was evidently to try to find somebody who might be related to the perpetrator. The only way they could do that is by actually testing the DNA they received, which might narrow their results down to people related to the best matching results.
They got 100% match though... which, coupled with multiple testings, is going to be pretty tough to dispute, unless you have an identical twin.
The suspect probably didn't expect there to be a 100% with him.
Hyperventilating can foil breathalyzer results. Air that is quickly expelled from your lungs after breathing it in will have less opportunity to absorb alcohol content, and reduce the amount of alcohol detected by a breathalyzer.
It doesn't change the level of alcohol actually in your system, however.
Slashdot Mirror
True... but their defense is somehow that kickstarter "promoted" it. I wasn't aware that kickstarter "promoted" anything... the people running the fundraisers do their own promotion. Kickstarter is just a service.
I would liken it to the notion of holding the government partially accountable for tax fraud because if people didn't have to pay taxes, then there wouldn't be tax fraud in the first place.
Whether the taker gains an equal value to what the person being taken from lost does not change whether or not it was still taken without permission. A child can steal money from their parents' purse because they like playing with paper. Completely different value systems are involved, yet there's no disputing that it was still stolen.
Of course, things like money in somebody's purse are tangible... and if you're going to argue that intangible things cannot be stolen, then I'm not really equipped to dispute that.
My point was only that if you define theft as the unauthorized deprivation of something from its owner, then copyright infringement does, indeed, amount to the theft of something. Suggesting that the copyright holder still has just as much exclusive control over who can copy their works when somebody else copies their works without permission as they did before blindly ignores the definition of "exclusive"... which is what makes copyright valuable in the first place.
You may as well be suggesting that if I were to somehow siphon some money from a person's bank account and redirect it elsewhere, because I have merely "lowered" their financial worth, I haven't stolen anything.
Of course it's BS... I stole whatever I took. Nothing less and nothing more.
If there's a reduction in value, then that value is lost to the person who once had it, and in the case of copyright infringement, that reduction is not merely caused by the infringement, but the actual act of infringing itself, since the act of infringing on copyright directly compromises exclusivity, which is the thing which is of value to the copyright holder.
Again... the disconnect happens because what is of value to the copyright holder is worthless to the person who is taking it... and is why it is so easy to discount the notion that anything was ever stolen in the first place. This is, however, only rationalizing, whose purpose serves probably little more than to make people who do such things feel less guilty about it.
What the heck would kickstarter have to do with it?
If it's a patent violation, then it's a patent violation by the person who infringed on the patent. All kickstarter did was provide a venue for raising and delivering the funds.
This is like holding the Mint to blame for a bank heist.
If value is reduced, then it stands to reason that it is *THAT* amount of value that has been stolen.... not all of it, obviously.
The disconnect comes from the fact that the "value" that is stolen is not actually of any value to anybody except the copyright holder.
Again... just because that is the case, does not mean it cannot be stolen.
Do not conflate the issues of value and financial worth. They are not the same thing. If they were, nobody would bother GPL'ing their software or putting under a BSD or MIT license, or any of the dozens of free source code licenses that exist. they would instead just put it into public domain. Clearly the copy control that copyright offers has some amount of worth to the person who holds that right which has absolutely squat to do with financial incentive.
Fallacy.
If that were true, there would be no merit to copyrighting source code that a person decides to make freely available, whether under the GPL or BSD licenses.
If the only value from copyright came from monetary inducement, then for material that is supposed to be free, there is no advantage to it over public domain. Yet the majority of freely released works are not issued under public domain. They are copyrighted.
You have been deluded into thinking that money is the only measure of worth or value. It is not. It is merely a very objective one.
Copying something that is copyrighted without permission *does* deprive the copyright holder of some of the value behind their copyright.
Copyright literally is a "right to copy"... although it's a legally granted and not a natural right... but the value inherent in it comes from its exclusivity. The copyright holder has an exclusive right to control copies of their work, and everybody else is supposed to obtain permission first. "Exclusive", by definition, means that nobody else is doing it, so when somebody does copy it work without permission, that exclusivity is compromised, and the value of it lessened.
And after all... if the mere right to copy wasn't really of any value to creators, then why would people who bother to make freely distributable works bother to copyright it at all? Why not just put the work into public domain?
The point, therefore, is that copyright *DOES* have value... it's difficult to quantify, but when somebody does infringe on copyright, some measure of that value is actually lost to the copyright holder.
Just because what is lost to the copyright holder is of no value to the person who takes it, doesn't mean that it isn't stolen.
I've heard that to combat obesity, several states in the next year are going to impose strict upper caps on junk food and sugary soft drink sizes, under the premise that if the size is smaller, then people will not eat as much, but this study appears to confirm the opposite.
There's been life on mars for quite a while. We put it there.
If the twin is undocumented, then the defense only works in fiction.
No. I'd rather die than be a slave.
Running away makes you a slave to trying to always running away.
The advantage of the high road is that you remain free.
Running from the law makes you a slave to running away... because that's all you'll ever be able to do. You aren't free. Prison isn't a place that most any sane person would voluntarily choose for themselves, but it's preferable to slavery. For that matter, so is death.
I deeply cherish my freedom. But I'd rather be a prisoner for something I didnt do than live as a slave to anyone or anything because of mymown choices. Because all running away form the law does is make you a slave to running.
That's exactly my point. If society thinks you did,then you're going to go jail for it. Why do something that will only serve to *increase* that perception?
What I mean is that whether or not you go to jail is going to entirely depend on whether somebody believes you did it. Running away will only further that belief. If you go to jail for something you didn't do, that's unfortunate, but if the only thing you can do to avoid it is make it appear more likely that you did (and thus also more likely to face worse punishment), then taking your chances and hoping for a lack of evidence to convict you (since if you are innocent, there should not be any, unless you were framed) is a preferable option.
Is it foolish to realize that one cannot control what other people do?
I certainly wouldn't want to go to jail for something I didn't do... but if other people are thinking that I did, my running away is certainly *NOT* going to have a chance in hell of convincing them that they are wrong. Just knowing I didn't do it might seem like small consolation if I were spending time in prison for something I didn't actually do, but it's preferable to me than deliberately making choices of my own that are only going to increase the outside perception that I'm guilty, not to mention against the law, and I *could* reasonably be held accountable for.
Your tone suggests that you seriously doubt I would, so there's little point in my telling you that you are wrong. I'll chalk it up to the fact that you do not know me. I have no desire to die, but I'd rather take the high road and have a clear conscience than live knowing that I could deserve a lot worse than what I have.
I said "legitimate" for a reason. By legitimate, I meant that the test was performed in an environment where factors that are not intended to alter the results do not affect them. Both procedural error and contamination are examples of such outside factors.
They got 100% match though... which, coupled with multiple testings, is going to be pretty tough to dispute, unless you have an identical twin.
The suspect probably didn't expect there to be a 100% with him.
Hyperventilating can foil breathalyzer results. Air that is quickly expelled from your lungs after breathing it in will have less opportunity to absorb alcohol content, and reduce the amount of alcohol detected by a breathalyzer.
It doesn't change the level of alcohol actually in your system, however.
That defense only has a chance of working *IF* one actually has a documented twin.
The *ONLY* way you can get a 100% match with a false positive with a legitimate DNA test is if the subject has an identical sibling.
Unless a person is being framed, an innocent person has no reason to flee law enforcement because they are suspected of a crime.
All running does is increase the perception that the person is guilty.