Even better, my day job offers a service to have emails turned into faxes. Costs the person a couple cents each fax, but still, just have it all sent to Fax.com's number.
And I took my definition from the dictionary. You posted ONE definition, I posted several that it listed. Yours makes mine look wrong, however, when you look at all three you can argue the rest of your statement.
Money is intangible except in bearer format. That is, unless you have bonds, stocks, cash, etc., money is a number for you. So if someone rings up charges on your credit card, it's not theft by your definition because he hasn't stolen anything physical. It's just math, after all. Your credit account and your bank balance are intangible numbers until they become something physical, thus, your argument that it's theft by your own definition is false.
However, when you state that the balance is property and by charging up your card is theft, how can copyright infringement not be theft? Someone has stolen your ability to determine distribution, and possibly given you money for a service, and yet it's not theft?
Weird way to argue, to say one thing meaning another.
Why is this insightful? Geez, it's saddening to keep seeing people on slashdot get karma from saying that copyright infringement and copyright violations are *NOT* theft.
Well, then, what is theft? Do you assume that theft can only be of physical items? Therefore, if someone steals your credit card and charges up a long list of sales, that it is not theft simply because he only shifted numbers in your account?
Or is it not theft because someone has taken your social security number to use it for himself. After all, he hasn't removed your ability to use your SS#, and he certainly never took it all for himself, you still have it. Therefore, by your definition, it's not theft, so it shouldn't be considered theft.
Copyright infringement and copyright violations *ARE* theft, because by definition they meet the criteria. Theft is the taking of personal property without permissions, or the possession and removal of said property, or otherwise larceny. See those ors? You don't have to meet all three to be constituted as theft.
And the first definition is met with the above examples, and certainly meets the first definition. Just because you still have your copyright, doesn't meant that it wasn't a theft.
It's the taking of personal property without permission, and copyright laws have specific definitions of what permission you automatically receive. If you take a DVD, rip it, encode it with DivX, then place it on a public FTP server, you've infringed on that copyright, obviously, and you've commited theft of copyright. The owner still has it, but you had no permission to put it on the FTP server from its owner.
So stop fooling yourself with these generalizations that infringement != theft, to somehow justify that infringement is just something copyright owners made up to make it seem more justifiable to prosecute. Just like your SS# or bank account, it's not something physical but it can be stolen just the same.
Most all of the people on/. know about Microsoft, Apple, Dell, etc., as well as other companies such as Sony, Nintendo, Lego, etc.
However, the general population does not follow these companies regularly. So how does the company let you know they have a new brand/product/line/service/etc? Advertising. You watch a movie with trailers to other movies and items. You watch a TV and before it ends the station sometimes gives you info on other shows they have. Buy a video game and in the box comes a tie-in showing other video games they have.
So even if you have the money to advertise, you still need to do so to keep the money coming in, unless all your products are well known and you don't need to change them or add to your brands and products.
So will vendors be able to ship new dual boots with Linux/BSD/AmigaOS/MacOSX/BloatWareOS/DownTheStreet BehindTheWarehouseOS and WinXP? Or is it that M$ eventually wants all dual boots killed?
Would be interesting to see how they take this and how consumers favour it.
Imagine you bought a TiVo, set it up, and started watching TV and recording shows.
One show you record has a special software which is installed when watching it to make an interactive show, thanks to the magic of TiVo. However, since most people never read through the EULAs, they simply click okay, have fun with the show, whatever, and then perhaps delete the show from their drives.
Well, that software not only included an interactive part of the show you saw, but also installed tracking software that TiVo was fully aware of, but also commercial replacement technology that they weren't.
This software is set that after any one commercial (by testing out its approximate length and change in normalization of sound), it will play one of the commercials it has downloaded and saved for you, over top of whatever commercial was playing. It would be so integrated that the viewer would never notice, and the station or franchise who is showing the channel receives no money or notice of this action.
The only people who make out are TiVo, who got the initial money to have the first part of the software's activity work, but also the software who got the money for these ads to be placed over other ads. This would be a better analogy for what Gator does.
Actually you just sparked something in my mind. Isn't our going after Bin Laden and Al Quaida an infringement on Muslims religios freedom? After all in their eyes we are the great satan, and all they are doing is trying to rid the world of evil. Who is to say what is evil and what is not? With a phrase like one nation under God as a basis for our nations foundation I think we have a very good ground to stand on for retaliating against them, but when you remove God completely from our culture you eliminate any ground we have to stand on.
Okay, this is really really absurd. We never started going after bin Laden (hell, we gave the Taliban guns to fight the Russians after all!), until he started attacking OUR citizens.
Religious freedom is allowed, but with that, the freedom is only alloted so long as it causes no public or social harm. You cannot claim religious freedom when you make a human sacrifice; it's still murder. You cannot claim religious freedom when torturing a pig for three days, then setting him on fire; it's still animal cruelty. And for that, you cannot blow up our embassies, our ships, and torture and kill our citizens, and you cannot hijack and fly our planes into our own buildings, and claim religious freedoms.
I don't like "In God We Trust" on our money, but it's only money. I do not feel that God should be forced as part of our Oaths, especially if the preson being sworn has no belief in God, or any monotheistic beliefs at all. I also don't believe that children should be forced to recite, or even be part of and in group with, any public school or government sanctioned religious context.
If you think that "one nation under God" is nothing, then perhaps we should be teaching Creationism in history class, and stop teaching evolution in biology? Where is the line really drawn, without just saying no religious impressions in public schools?
Only the Ninth Circuit Court (mostly western states) ruled it unConstitutional, and as such, there is a few months before it becomes effective, to allow room for the Supreme Court to hear an appeal by the States affected.
Except that income tax is mostly federal and sales tax is strictly state. Not everyone pays sales tax, depends on their state. And not everyone pays a state income tax.
If you want to be a professional musician and not spend your time in Ramadas or weddings, then you've got a choice... Try to break through the monopoly of the publishers, or just go with their flow.
Don't get upset at the copyrights, get upset at the contracts these corporations impose on the artists, and the monopolies they have with major distribution chains.
Try to find your local indie band at any national record chain, and chances are unless they're on MTV or Clear Channel, they'll not be found. This is because the national chains go through publishers or huge distributors, where only the top publishing houses can sell through.
You'd have to go to a local chain or a mom and pop store to find indie artists most of the time, or just to the artists themselves.
What we need is an overhaul of the music distribution chain. Sites like eMusic and MP3.com were set to do that until they were bought out by big publishers. They weren't bought out because they were failing, they were bought because they imposed a threat on the distribution network.
Hell, if you want to be rich, it's not making a religion, it's not winning the lottery, is threatening legally the bottom line of a multi-national conglomerate. Find a better, legal way to do what the publishers do, and they'll find a way to offer you money to go away.
Well, you may be a bit happier, knowing the next book is _Humans_, and the third book is _Hybrids_. The titles alone should tell you how the first book's characters end up.
In the novel, though, people who commited horrible crimes such as murder, had to have their genetic code cleansed from the gene pool. It may sound to be an easy fix for crime just there, but to ensure that any of the "bad genes" would not be around, *ANYONE* who shared at least 50% of their genes (brothers, sisters, children), were ALSO sterilized.
It makes it a little more involved to have your family ensure that you're an angel, knowing that their crimes can end your ability to have a family.
I'm talking about mainly on install, and to be able to change the norm on the machine itself.
Sure I can download any number of browsers or email clients for my machine, but Microsoft's will still be the "dominant", never going away ever. That's not exactly choice, but a struggle.
And I use WordPerfect for an office suite, since I refuse to put up with the annoyances of Office. However, there's no office suite which comes preinstalled on any Windows package that I'm aware.
These are the choices I'm talking about. Why can't there be a Windows for Offices with like WordPerfect, Office and another office suite all included? Etc.? Hard drives are large enough, bulk licensing could be cheap, and I'm certain people would jump at the chance of being installed on a normal Windows install on a disc.
But again, Microsoft probably has considered these and has not gone with them. It's disappointing, too.
Even though they may not consider it now, and they have considered it before, they should start embracing open source simply for choice.
I have a laptop which is a Sony Vaio, with WinXP Home, and it has one email client and one browser, among other one things.
I also have a dual-boot desktop (Win2K and Mandrake 8.2), and I enjoy working on the Mandrake side, because there's a choice of applications.
If I want to browse the web, I have Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx... I'm not tied to one browser EVER. Even when an url is highlighted, I can choose which browser to open it into.
With email, again, there are many choices for me. I also have many security choices easily found, like do not display HTML email, do not allow JavaScript or popups, etc.
I prefer choice packaged with my OS. Not that I choose which ONE I get when I install, but the ability to choose them after install, using the best software for the task at hand.
With Microsoft, I'd wish that they'd embrace this notion, packaging not only their products, but also open source alternatives, so people can choose. And they should also take the notions that many of the open source projects have taken, and allow people to decide on their own security, and install with max security and let them open themselves as they desire.
I just love how slashdot people seem to think that copyright should be lessened greatly.
If copyright lasted six months, then people would be abusing GPL software quite often. The license from GPL is for the COPYRIGHT use, that is, it's free to copy and distribute under the rules of the license. If there's no or little copyright, then people do not need to abide by the license agreements.
And as far as people sampling others' works, have you even thought that question out? Sometimes the artists' works are for the same production studio or conglomerate, or they actually ask permission or license the work.
Actually, what I find even stranger is the laws and the judiciary commitees who investigate payola and other such "buying" techniques in order to create monopolies and restrict fair trade in the open marketplace, but will fight tooth-and-nail to keep corporations paying them to help them stay re-elected.
Too bad we don't have a direct check for politicians like they do with other branches, and too bad we can't have free airspace during political drives and election months in order to point out these major rights-exploitation issues.
Don't forget that CDs never get from the production company to the retail store directly through magic.
Count in distributor, wholesaler, and chain, then the shipping/trucking costs between, and you'll see that the RIAA does not get what's left after packaging, CD cost and cut to artist.
That's funny, I bought CDs specifically for my work and to save desktop space, just ripped them to mp3 and have them on a disk for that computer. Somehow this is the same as distributing the mp3s?
Also, that same work has an mp3 streaming server, and yet, it's licensed. Again, this is illegal, even though there's proper licensing from the music companies?
Don't be so broad to assume that all mp3s are illegal, or doing them at work makes on a criminal. Some people play by the rules, after all.
Slashdot Mirror
Even better, my day job offers a service to have emails turned into faxes. Costs the person a couple cents each fax, but still, just have it all sent to Fax.com's number.
Both free-as-in-without-money and commercial Comic fonts here:
http://www.blambot.com/
Definitely much better than Comic Sans.
Then it must be Vulcan blood, because Lake Erie around Cleveland is green.
And I took my definition from the dictionary. You posted ONE definition, I posted several that it listed. Yours makes mine look wrong, however, when you look at all three you can argue the rest of your statement.
Money is intangible except in bearer format. That is, unless you have bonds, stocks, cash, etc., money is a number for you. So if someone rings up charges on your credit card, it's not theft by your definition because he hasn't stolen anything physical. It's just math, after all. Your credit account and your bank balance are intangible numbers until they become something physical, thus, your argument that it's theft by your own definition is false.
However, when you state that the balance is property and by charging up your card is theft, how can copyright infringement not be theft? Someone has stolen your ability to determine distribution, and possibly given you money for a service, and yet it's not theft?
Weird way to argue, to say one thing meaning another.
Why is this insightful? Geez, it's saddening to keep seeing people on slashdot get karma from saying that copyright infringement and copyright violations are *NOT* theft.
Well, then, what is theft? Do you assume that theft can only be of physical items? Therefore, if someone steals your credit card and charges up a long list of sales, that it is not theft simply because he only shifted numbers in your account?
Or is it not theft because someone has taken your social security number to use it for himself. After all, he hasn't removed your ability to use your SS#, and he certainly never took it all for himself, you still have it. Therefore, by your definition, it's not theft, so it shouldn't be considered theft.
Copyright infringement and copyright violations *ARE* theft, because by definition they meet the criteria. Theft is the taking of personal property without permissions, or the possession and removal of said property, or otherwise larceny. See those ors? You don't have to meet all three to be constituted as theft.
And the first definition is met with the above examples, and certainly meets the first definition. Just because you still have your copyright, doesn't meant that it wasn't a theft.
It's the taking of personal property without permission, and copyright laws have specific definitions of what permission you automatically receive. If you take a DVD, rip it, encode it with DivX, then place it on a public FTP server, you've infringed on that copyright, obviously, and you've commited theft of copyright. The owner still has it, but you had no permission to put it on the FTP server from its owner.
So stop fooling yourself with these generalizations that infringement != theft, to somehow justify that infringement is just something copyright owners made up to make it seem more justifiable to prosecute. Just like your SS# or bank account, it's not something physical but it can be stolen just the same.
with full compatibility with Office 200 and Word
Gotta watch closely those Chinese knockoffs with their names just *SLIGHTLY* off.
This is somewhat true and somewhat not.
/. know about Microsoft, Apple, Dell, etc., as well as other companies such as Sony, Nintendo, Lego, etc.
Most all of the people on
However, the general population does not follow these companies regularly. So how does the company let you know they have a new brand/product/line/service/etc? Advertising. You watch a movie with trailers to other movies and items. You watch a TV and before it ends the station sometimes gives you info on other shows they have. Buy a video game and in the box comes a tie-in showing other video games they have.
So even if you have the money to advertise, you still need to do so to keep the money coming in, unless all your products are well known and you don't need to change them or add to your brands and products.
So will vendors be able to ship new dual boots with Linux/BSD/AmigaOS/MacOSX/BloatWareOS/DownTheStreet BehindTheWarehouseOS and WinXP? Or is it that M$ eventually wants all dual boots killed?
Would be interesting to see how they take this and how consumers favour it.
Imagine you bought a TiVo, set it up, and started watching TV and recording shows.
One show you record has a special software which is installed when watching it to make an interactive show, thanks to the magic of TiVo. However, since most people never read through the EULAs, they simply click okay, have fun with the show, whatever, and then perhaps delete the show from their drives.
Well, that software not only included an interactive part of the show you saw, but also installed tracking software that TiVo was fully aware of, but also commercial replacement technology that they weren't.
This software is set that after any one commercial (by testing out its approximate length and change in normalization of sound), it will play one of the commercials it has downloaded and saved for you, over top of whatever commercial was playing. It would be so integrated that the viewer would never notice, and the station or franchise who is showing the channel receives no money or notice of this action.
The only people who make out are TiVo, who got the initial money to have the first part of the software's activity work, but also the software who got the money for these ads to be placed over other ads. This would be a better analogy for what Gator does.
Actually you just sparked something in my mind. Isn't our going after Bin Laden and Al Quaida an infringement on Muslims religios freedom? After all in their eyes we are the great satan, and all they are doing is trying to rid the world of evil. Who is to say what is evil and what is not? With a phrase like one nation under God as a basis for our nations foundation I think we have a very good ground to stand on for retaliating against them, but when you remove God completely from our culture you eliminate any ground we have to stand on.
Okay, this is really really absurd. We never started going after bin Laden (hell, we gave the Taliban guns to fight the Russians after all!), until he started attacking OUR citizens.
Religious freedom is allowed, but with that, the freedom is only alloted so long as it causes no public or social harm. You cannot claim religious freedom when you make a human sacrifice; it's still murder. You cannot claim religious freedom when torturing a pig for three days, then setting him on fire; it's still animal cruelty. And for that, you cannot blow up our embassies, our ships, and torture and kill our citizens, and you cannot hijack and fly our planes into our own buildings, and claim religious freedoms.
I don't like "In God We Trust" on our money, but it's only money. I do not feel that God should be forced as part of our Oaths, especially if the preson being sworn has no belief in God, or any monotheistic beliefs at all. I also don't believe that children should be forced to recite, or even be part of and in group with, any public school or government sanctioned religious context.
If you think that "one nation under God" is nothing, then perhaps we should be teaching Creationism in history class, and stop teaching evolution in biology? Where is the line really drawn, without just saying no religious impressions in public schools?
Only the Ninth Circuit Court (mostly western states) ruled it unConstitutional, and as such, there is a few months before it becomes effective, to allow room for the Supreme Court to hear an appeal by the States affected.
Except that income tax is mostly federal and sales tax is strictly state. Not everyone pays sales tax, depends on their state. And not everyone pays a state income tax.
If you want to be a professional musician and not spend your time in Ramadas or weddings, then you've got a choice... Try to break through the monopoly of the publishers, or just go with their flow.
Don't get upset at the copyrights, get upset at the contracts these corporations impose on the artists, and the monopolies they have with major distribution chains.
Try to find your local indie band at any national record chain, and chances are unless they're on MTV or Clear Channel, they'll not be found. This is because the national chains go through publishers or huge distributors, where only the top publishing houses can sell through.
You'd have to go to a local chain or a mom and pop store to find indie artists most of the time, or just to the artists themselves.
What we need is an overhaul of the music distribution chain. Sites like eMusic and MP3.com were set to do that until they were bought out by big publishers. They weren't bought out because they were failing, they were bought because they imposed a threat on the distribution network.
Hell, if you want to be rich, it's not making a religion, it's not winning the lottery, is threatening legally the bottom line of a multi-national conglomerate. Find a better, legal way to do what the publishers do, and they'll find a way to offer you money to go away.
Well, you may be a bit happier, knowing the next book is _Humans_, and the third book is _Hybrids_. The titles alone should tell you how the first book's characters end up.
*MAY SPOIL*
In the novel, though, people who commited horrible crimes such as murder, had to have their genetic code cleansed from the gene pool. It may sound to be an easy fix for crime just there, but to ensure that any of the "bad genes" would not be around, *ANYONE* who shared at least 50% of their genes (brothers, sisters, children), were ALSO sterilized.
It makes it a little more involved to have your family ensure that you're an angel, knowing that their crimes can end your ability to have a family.
To read more of Sawyer's stories and order autographed copies direct from him, visit:
http://www.sfwriter.com/
Best way to support an author is a direct sale. (:
I'm talking about mainly on install, and to be able to change the norm on the machine itself.
Sure I can download any number of browsers or email clients for my machine, but Microsoft's will still be the "dominant", never going away ever. That's not exactly choice, but a struggle.
And I use WordPerfect for an office suite, since I refuse to put up with the annoyances of Office. However, there's no office suite which comes preinstalled on any Windows package that I'm aware.
These are the choices I'm talking about. Why can't there be a Windows for Offices with like WordPerfect, Office and another office suite all included? Etc.? Hard drives are large enough, bulk licensing could be cheap, and I'm certain people would jump at the chance of being installed on a normal Windows install on a disc.
But again, Microsoft probably has considered these and has not gone with them. It's disappointing, too.
Even though they may not consider it now, and they have considered it before, they should start embracing open source simply for choice.
I have a laptop which is a Sony Vaio, with WinXP Home, and it has one email client and one browser, among other one things.
I also have a dual-boot desktop (Win2K and Mandrake 8.2), and I enjoy working on the Mandrake side, because there's a choice of applications.
If I want to browse the web, I have Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, Galeon, Lynx... I'm not tied to one browser EVER. Even when an url is highlighted, I can choose which browser to open it into.
With email, again, there are many choices for me. I also have many security choices easily found, like do not display HTML email, do not allow JavaScript or popups, etc.
I prefer choice packaged with my OS. Not that I choose which ONE I get when I install, but the ability to choose them after install, using the best software for the task at hand.
With Microsoft, I'd wish that they'd embrace this notion, packaging not only their products, but also open source alternatives, so people can choose. And they should also take the notions that many of the open source projects have taken, and allow people to decide on their own security, and install with max security and let them open themselves as they desire.
And don't forget the video players whose discs were just enhanced vinyls.
You can still find these relics at garage sales if you really look. (Not laserdiscs, actual vinyl discs!)
I just love how slashdot people seem to think that copyright should be lessened greatly.
If copyright lasted six months, then people would be abusing GPL software quite often. The license from GPL is for the COPYRIGHT use, that is, it's free to copy and distribute under the rules of the license. If there's no or little copyright, then people do not need to abide by the license agreements.
And as far as people sampling others' works, have you even thought that question out? Sometimes the artists' works are for the same production studio or conglomerate, or they actually ask permission or license the work.
Actually, what I find even stranger is the laws and the judiciary commitees who investigate payola and other such "buying" techniques in order to create monopolies and restrict fair trade in the open marketplace, but will fight tooth-and-nail to keep corporations paying them to help them stay re-elected.
Too bad we don't have a direct check for politicians like they do with other branches, and too bad we can't have free airspace during political drives and election months in order to point out these major rights-exploitation issues.
Incorrect assumption.
Don't forget that CDs never get from the production company to the retail store directly through magic.
Count in distributor, wholesaler, and chain, then the shipping/trucking costs between, and you'll see that the RIAA does not get what's left after packaging, CD cost and cut to artist.
That's funny, I bought CDs specifically for my work and to save desktop space, just ripped them to mp3 and have them on a disk for that computer. Somehow this is the same as distributing the mp3s?
Also, that same work has an mp3 streaming server, and yet, it's licensed. Again, this is illegal, even though there's proper licensing from the music companies?
Don't be so broad to assume that all mp3s are illegal, or doing them at work makes on a criminal. Some people play by the rules, after all.
On I-94 heading between Racine and Milwaukee, you can find large signs on both sides of the highway announcing "Bong Recreation Center". No lie!
Also, for more fun, check out the crap with Ohio's roads, at http://www.roadfan.com/. One of the oldest highway systems sits in northeast Ohio.