They would be busy at other jobs, and only writing in their spare time. I see nothing wrong with making AS MUCH MONEY AS YOU CAN by selling your ideas/poems/songs etc. And I also see nothing wrong with selling it under the best possible terms you can sell it under, and still have it maketable.
The issue isn't whether you can sell your information. You can. The question is, is the government obligated to enforce a monopoly on your product? To strong-arm others into paying you? To create value? People forget that copyright is a social contract -- protection of the right to control distribution of an idea in exchange for enrichment of the society.
Ideas have no intrinsic economic value. That is, once an idea has been transmitted -- even once -- there is no natural scarcity in that idea. With the Internet and the digital age, ideas can be copied and moved for essentially no cost. Thus, by all the high holy laws of capitalism, the price should be zero. Copyright is created, in effect, to force an artificial scarcity on the idea and thus to allow economic value to it.
Since the scarcity is artificial and is created by law, the people have a right to expect something in return. Current trends are to move toward longer-lasting and more viciously enforced copyright, reducing (rather than augmenting) the cultural sphere. As such copyright is broken (but quite possibly fixable).
Patents on drugs last for seven years. Other patents can last, I believe, up to twenty. (Doesn't Unisys' patent on LZW date back to 1984 or thereabouts?) It's not always true that patents expire in a timely fashion...
Also blockquoth the poster:
Secondly, I seriously doubt that even the dumbest patent clerk would grant someone a patent on anything as general as fire, perspective transforms, or painting, in some hypothetical world where the UPSTO predated those things.
Nah, that'd be as silly as granting a patent on single-click purchasing, or on affiliate Web site programs, or... oh, wait. The USPTO has allowed patents on broad topics despite manifold examples of prior art. I guess that argument doesn't hold.
And finally, blockquoth the poster:
To answer your first question, in such a world great artists would be forced to work at Taco Bell.
Yes, it's well known that Mozart flipped burgers for a living. And no one ever heard his music, more's the pity. Likewise that Homer guy, and Bill Shakespeare swept streets and never got around to writing those plays he was always talking about.
It's time to face facts: Human creativity dates back at least, oh, 10,000 years. Intellectual "property"(*) and its protection date back about, oh, two hundred years or so. It is absurd to argue that the latter is necessary for the former. And if IP works so well, why is it necessary to make those laws increasingly oppressive? If simple copyright and physical patents produces the Industrial and Information Ages, why the sudden and increasing pressure to "tighten" those laws?
===== (*) Intellectual "property" is to property as fool's gold is to gold.
Actually, no, I'd say they are two completely different things.
That's OK, you'd just be wrong. Copyright law makes no mention of the "perfection" of copying, just the fact of whether a copy has been made and whether the copyright holder(*) has given permission. But in the end that's not relevant for the point I'd been hoping to make, which is that permission need not be given solely in return for monetary compensation. There are other reasons to do things.
(*) I am currently still deciding whether I think that it makes sense to say copyrights can be "owned", so I avoid the phrase "copyright owner" (which is used in the media and in case law). Copyright is clearly transferable. Is it exclusive? When I "license" a work to someone, can I give them a partial or full right to copy at will and to extend that right to others, even without my consent?
I'll bet the average open minded/.er would agree that two consenting entities have a right to draw up almost any sort of contract between the two of them, right? The RIAA claims that it sells people music and conditions along with said music, and if you don't like said conditions, then don't buy said music. They have a point.
I don't concede that point. First of all, that's even worse than "click-through" licensing, since it implies my consent to a contract I am never shown nor given the opportunity to read. Second, the RIAA claiming full protection by the US justice system. To be afforded that protection, they must conform to the contract they have made with the people of the United States; to wit, to be bound by the case law of copyright. It hasn't been settled that Napster (for example) violates that; that's the point of the trial.
You don't get it both ways: If music CDs are to be protected by the US justice system via copyright law, then principles of Fair Use, First Sale, and personal archive apply -- and the courts have said it doesn't matter what medium you use for that archive. It is perfectly acceptable to make that "space-shifted" copy on a hard drive (see the Rio Diamond case) and so the RIAA is being blatantly misleading here.
Having ANY MP3 of music you didn't pay for is illegal, regardless of how long you keep it.
Technically, it's having any MP3 (or any copy of a work) without permission of the holder of copyright for that work. That is not quite the same as having to pay for it: Someone could put the work in public domain, or the copyright holder could grant you a copy of it, or, heck, you might have created the work yourself.
I'm not just being obnoxious. It's important to realize that (shocker) money isn't everything, and there are valid non-economic reasons for doing things. The rights and the harm here only tangentially depend on money... although the vigor with which this is pursued has everything to do with money.
Howard King, a lawyer representing anti-Napster artists Metallica and Dr. Dre, said, "We couldn't have written a better decision if we had been given the pen ourselves."
Recent legislative history suggests that they were given the pens...
She found, for example, that computers and hard drives are not audio home recording devices.
How the heck can you reason to that?? I mean, I take a CD and place it in my home computer. I use a program to decode the audio stream and record it on my hard drive. Yet the computer and the hard drive are somehow not home recording devices.
This betrays either a woeful lack of understanding, a blatant bias, or a harmfully-narrow reading of the statute.
This may be a breakthrough in bridging the very different requirements for transmitting infrared and radio frequencies" at opposite ends of the energy spectrum.
Um, usually, we consider IR and radio to be on the same side of the spectrum, i.e., longer wavelength than visible light. Unless the author sees in the microwave region of the spectrum?:)
No "emergency" is necessary for the president to be the commander-in-chief. Yes?
The President is command-in-chief via Article II of the Constitution of the United States:
Section 2. The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States
There were emergency powers vested in the President in the late 1940s, extending and augmenting the powers accrued by FDR in WWII. I believe, however, that almost of them were explicitly time-limited (except upon renewal by the Congress) and that they were all allowed to expire.
The CIA and the NSA are not handled by any democratically elected official, nor by anybody appointed by such an officail. There may be an appointed person who "oversees" these branches, but they sure don't run them.
The directors of the CIA and NSA are appointed by the President of the United States, and (at least for CIA) appointed only with the advice and consent of the US Senate. (NSA may not be, but I think is.) It is not easy to say whether the appointed directors "run" their agencies. Sometimes, the director is strong and exerts a clear hand. Other times, the "veterans" dominate and run things. I don't see how such can be avoided.
Re:Republic vs. Democracy
on
Inside Echelon
·
· Score: 2
Just to confuse the issue with the facts, here's what Merriam-Webster's has to say:
republic:
1 a (1) : a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government b (1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government c : a usually specified republican government of a political unit
Personally, I think meaning 1(a) is too broad -- would you really argue that Nazi Germany was a republic -- and that 1(b) hits the nail right on the head.
On the other hand,
democracy:
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections 2 : a political unit that has a democratic government
You can see tremendous overlap between "republic" and "democracy", perhaps explaining the term "direct democracy" for when people vote on all issues.
Deflector shields as used in any science fiction starship warp space-time in order to deflect. Therefore EM fields or plasmas have nothing to do with it. Deflectors are more connected to the warp drive. Actually they are the same.
Um, deflector shields as used in Star Trek, yeah. Believe it or not -- and I know this is heresy -- but there is science fiction other than Star Trek. An unconfirmed rumor even says that science fiction existed beforeStar Trek.
I really like what he said about the Internet spawning a generation of people who thought that you shouldn't have to pay for the fruits of others' creativity. It's true. And it's pretty sad.
Well, I don't presume to speak for the whole "internet generation" (whatever the heck that is), but I have no problem paying someone for the fruits of his/her creativity. I do resent being forced to pay someone for the fruits of someone else's creativity.
I don't think the Net is the death of creavity, or even of creativity-for-hire. But it does threaten the demise of the top-heavy, soul-crushing pyramid-scheme-like distribution networks that have heretofore dominated music, the movies, and books.
In fact, I brashly predict that the sudden freeing of the artist -- the ability for anyone with interest to form an effective distribution network -- will spark a great surge forward in creativity.
First of all, Arecibo is a town, not an observatory. This evidences clearly how the scientific mentality values tools more than people.
I don't usually say this, but... that objection is simply stupid (or deliberately obfuscatory, which is much the same). "Aricebo" is a convenient shorthand for the observatory, because that happens to be its location. People say "Mount Palomar" when they mean that observatory, too...
And to high school biology, while you're at it. How the *** [will] pointing a radiotelescope at the sky will tell us how life appeared on Earth?
Well, that depends on what sort of signal is found. If it's truly an attempt to communicate, then it will likely include details of the ET biology (much as the Voyager plate attempted to communicate our biology). So just by comparision, we see what sort of features are historical accidents and which might be necessary parts of life. If the ETs turned out to be bilateral bump-headed humanoids, it'd certainly say something.
Oh, and I thought starving people just wanted food.
And this might contribute to the persistence of the problem.
I think the poster is essentially missing the point. In the grand scheme of things, SETI@home is a very small project consuming an infinitesimal amount of resources. I personally think it's ironic that anyone using a Net connection can argue that others are ignoring the problem. Why not dedicate your money (for ISP or equipment) to the cause of fighting world hunger?
Problems like world hunger require attention, to be sure. But they do not require all our attention. Nor should they. Nor could they have it even if they do require it. Nor should they have it. Things like SETI@home lift the soul, force us to think outside ourselves, and add meaning to the world. They are examples of human dignity, and it saddens me that some say a struggle for human dignity requires snuffing out a different piece of it.
There are a lot larger, and better, targets for your venting spleen.
Archive three copies of anything you want to preserve. Periodically (depending on the particular system you're using), check the three copies against each other. If an error is found in one copy, use either of the others to produce three new copies and dispose of the one with an error. Now you have five good copies. Rinse, lather, and repeat.
Storage -- physical or electronic -- might force you not to augment the number of copies. Keep the three latest.
Sure, you might get the same bit errors on two copies, thereby "outvoting" the clean copy. Since bit errors are essentially random and uncorrelated, the odds of this are, I believe, truly negligible. You might also get some errors in one copy and different errors in another. That's OK -- as long as two copies agree on a bit, use them to reconstruct a "clean" copy.
I've thought about this off and on, and other than costs of storage, I don't see how this would fail. (If technology leaves behind your format, you're hosed, but that's really a different issue.)
I was going to be mercilessly sarcastic, but I'll be kind and assume you're just uninformed.
Although space junk is a real and growing problem, this will not contribute to it unless the tether breaks. While you can't rule out that probability, conventional satellite boosters contribute to space junk by their nature, as they spew out flakes of, say, aluminum. So I think we win here.
The SETI comment simply makes no sense. The wire might be long, but it's thin -- according to the article, 1.2 millimeter (=0.12 cm) in diameter. According to SETI@home, the search uses 1.64 GHz, or a wavelength around 20 cm. As elementary wave physics tells you, the wire is much too small to be "seen".
I suppose it might be possible that this could act as an antenna. In that case, it is small and high, and the signal almost certainly will be negligible... even if it happens to radiate around 20 cm, which requires a cosmic conspiracy to happen.
So would the space craft have to travel directly above the position on the earth where the wire is anchored?
The beauty is, the wire isn't anchored. Simply passing it through the Earth's magnetic field (as it orbits) generates emf and thus power. I believe the original experiment envisioned spraying ions off the Shuttle to (a) create a return path for the current and (b) avoid highly ionizing the Shuttle, which would mess with navigation, etc.
On the other hand, a "space tether" might be cool, too, but is currently well within the realm of sci fi. See Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars triology for an interesting take on how this might be constructed.
You can clearly see the orange triangle marking off the links as special.
but not as inserted by someone else. In fact, there is nothing in the deja inerface that notifies readers of this policy. It was just slipped in.
Then, the poster says:
They're not changing the content of any messages!
Except, of course, that they are inseting hyperlinks and making connections never intended by the author. But other than changing the messages, they're not changing the messages. Huh? Makes me want to ask
Or did you not actually stop and consider the facts before posting?
Blockasketh the poster: (like anyone's reading anymore anyway... *sigh*)
Why should inline advertising be any different from these other techniques?
Because those other methods (differential coloring, inserting hyperlinks) are context-driven, not content driven. The former are changing how you view something. The latter is changing what you view.
I have to admit, I'm surprised how many people think this is dandy.
It's easy to make people look paranoid, if you assume the system is intrinsically fair and works the way it is supposed to. But of course, historically, once the potential for abuse is created, abuse nearly inevitably occurs... perhaps not right away, but eventually.
If you think the FBI always wears the white hats, talk to civil rights demonstrators from the 1950s and 1960s, who were spied upon, blacklisted, and harassed -- because the government and the people gave the FBI the right to snoop on anyone simply due to their beliefs, because we the people in a fit of idiocy and blindness said, "Yes, wiretapping for political purposes is OK. Yes, paid informants are OK. Yes, the abandonment of an open justice system is OK. After all, people of different beliefs are dangerous."
Now we have a case where the FBI is asking for expanded powers coupled to reduced accountability. It is vital that we not yield fundamental rights and principles, especially "on margin". Abuses have occured, and they will recur unless we are vigilant.
seeing this story on the front page made me wonder what's next? we need some quality control here, people.
Unfair and unjustified. Whether you like it or not, a sizable enough slice of geekdom enjoys the show, and it is obviously intensely computer-related (in a Tron-like metaphorical sense, as well as the obvious CGI sense). Thus, it is pretty clearly "News for geeks".
Your enjoyment of a topic doesn't make it a "good" one, nor your lack make it a "bad" one.
*but* I have seen similar "cartoons" such as Beast Wars, what were far superior to Reboot (at least the 1st and 2nd seasons).
Ironically, of course, these two shows are produced by the same company, Mainframe Entertainment. In fact, a far more fair comparison is third-season ReBoot with early Beast Wars, since they are much more contemporaneous.
Oh, and the storyline picked up tremendously in Season 3, too.
And if you encrypt your data, you will have to supply the decryption keys on demand, or face up to two years in jail. If you even tell some-one their internet usage is being (or has been) intercepted, you can face jail too.
Any constitutional/internet law scholars out there? To what extent are we lucky Americans safeguarded from this by the Fifth Amendment? Is being force to turn over encryption keys the same as being "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against" oneself?
Slashdot Mirror
Ideas have no intrinsic economic value. That is, once an idea has been transmitted -- even once -- there is no natural scarcity in that idea. With the Internet and the digital age, ideas can be copied and moved for essentially no cost. Thus, by all the high holy laws of capitalism, the price should be zero. Copyright is created, in effect, to force an artificial scarcity on the idea and thus to allow economic value to it.
Since the scarcity is artificial and is created by law, the people have a right to expect something in return. Current trends are to move toward longer-lasting and more viciously enforced copyright, reducing (rather than augmenting) the cultural sphere. As such copyright is broken (but quite possibly fixable).
Also blockquoth the poster:
Nah, that'd be as silly as granting a patent on single-click purchasing, or on affiliate Web site programs, or... oh, wait. The USPTO has allowed patents on broad topics despite manifold examples of prior art. I guess that argument doesn't hold.And finally, blockquoth the poster:
Yes, it's well known that Mozart flipped burgers for a living. And no one ever heard his music, more's the pity. Likewise that Homer guy, and Bill Shakespeare swept streets and never got around to writing those plays he was always talking about.It's time to face facts: Human creativity dates back at least, oh, 10,000 years. Intellectual "property"(*) and its protection date back about, oh, two hundred years or so. It is absurd to argue that the latter is necessary for the former. And if IP works so well, why is it necessary to make those laws increasingly oppressive? If simple copyright and physical patents produces the Industrial and Information Ages, why the sudden and increasing pressure to "tighten" those laws?
===== (*) Intellectual "property" is to property as fool's gold is to gold.
(*) I am currently still deciding whether I think that it makes sense to say copyrights can be "owned", so I avoid the phrase "copyright owner" (which is used in the media and in case law). Copyright is clearly transferable. Is it exclusive? When I "license" a work to someone, can I give them a partial or full right to copy at will and to extend that right to others, even without my consent?
You don't get it both ways: If music CDs are to be protected by the US justice system via copyright law, then principles of Fair Use, First Sale, and personal archive apply -- and the courts have said it doesn't matter what medium you use for that archive. It is perfectly acceptable to make that "space-shifted" copy on a hard drive (see the Rio Diamond case) and so the RIAA is being blatantly misleading here.
I'm not just being obnoxious. It's important to realize that (shocker) money isn't everything, and there are valid non-economic reasons for doing things. The rights and the harm here only tangentially depend on money... although the vigor with which this is pursued has everything to do with money.
This betrays either a woeful lack of understanding, a blatant bias, or a harmfully-narrow reading of the statute.
On the other hand,
You can see tremendous overlap between "republic" and "democracy", perhaps explaining the term "direct democracy" for when people vote on all issues.I don't think the Net is the death of creavity, or even of creativity-for-hire. But it does threaten the demise of the top-heavy, soul-crushing pyramid-scheme-like distribution networks that have heretofore dominated music, the movies, and books.
In fact, I brashly predict that the sudden freeing of the artist -- the ability for anyone with interest to form an effective distribution network -- will spark a great surge forward in creativity.
I even wrote Darth Valenti to let him know. Sadly, he never responded. :)
I think the poster is essentially missing the point. In the grand scheme of things, SETI@home is a very small project consuming an infinitesimal amount of resources. I personally think it's ironic that anyone using a Net connection can argue that others are ignoring the problem. Why not dedicate your money (for ISP or equipment) to the cause of fighting world hunger?
Problems like world hunger require attention, to be sure. But they do not require all our attention. Nor should they. Nor could they have it even if they do require it. Nor should they have it. Things like SETI@home lift the soul, force us to think outside ourselves, and add meaning to the world. They are examples of human dignity, and it saddens me that some say a struggle for human dignity requires snuffing out a different piece of it.
There are a lot larger, and better, targets for your venting spleen.
Archive three copies of anything you want to preserve. Periodically (depending on the particular system you're using), check the three copies against each other. If an error is found in one copy, use either of the others to produce three new copies and dispose of the one with an error. Now you have five good copies. Rinse, lather, and repeat.
Storage -- physical or electronic -- might force you not to augment the number of copies. Keep the three latest.
Sure, you might get the same bit errors on two copies, thereby "outvoting" the clean copy. Since bit errors are essentially random and uncorrelated, the odds of this are, I believe, truly negligible. You might also get some errors in one copy and different errors in another. That's OK -- as long as two copies agree on a bit, use them to reconstruct a "clean" copy.
I've thought about this off and on, and other than costs of storage, I don't see how this would fail. (If technology leaves behind your format, you're hosed, but that's really a different issue.)
Although space junk is a real and growing problem, this will not contribute to it unless the tether breaks. While you can't rule out that probability, conventional satellite boosters contribute to space junk by their nature, as they spew out flakes of, say, aluminum. So I think we win here.
The SETI comment simply makes no sense. The wire might be long, but it's thin -- according to the article, 1.2 millimeter (=0.12 cm) in diameter. According to SETI@home, the search uses 1.64 GHz, or a wavelength around 20 cm. As elementary wave physics tells you, the wire is much too small to be "seen".
I suppose it might be possible that this could act as an antenna. In that case, it is small and high, and the signal almost certainly will be negligible ... even if it happens to radiate around 20 cm, which requires a cosmic conspiracy to happen.
On the other hand, a "space tether" might be cool, too, but is currently well within the realm of sci fi. See Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars triology for an interesting take on how this might be constructed.
The chance is zero unless you look.
Then, the poster says:
Except, of course, that they are inseting hyperlinks and making connections never intended by the author. But other than changing the messages, they're not changing the messages. Huh? Makes me want to ask Couldn't have said that part better myself.I have to admit, I'm surprised how many people think this is dandy.
If you think the FBI always wears the white hats, talk to civil rights demonstrators from the 1950s and 1960s, who were spied upon, blacklisted, and harassed -- because the government and the people gave the FBI the right to snoop on anyone simply due to their beliefs, because we the people in a fit of idiocy and blindness said, "Yes, wiretapping for political purposes is OK. Yes, paid informants are OK. Yes, the abandonment of an open justice system is OK. After all, people of different beliefs are dangerous."
Now we have a case where the FBI is asking for expanded powers coupled to reduced accountability. It is vital that we not yield fundamental rights and principles, especially "on margin". Abuses have occured, and they will recur unless we are vigilant.
Your enjoyment of a topic doesn't make it a "good" one, nor your lack make it a "bad" one.
Oh, and the storyline picked up tremendously in Season 3, too.