for the part about the Constitution - the words "intellectual property" never appear in the Constitution (and in fact were not really used until the 1960s). The Constitution allows Congress to offer limited monopolies to artists and inventers to serve as an incentive for them to keep creating and discovering. It's not a "property" nor is it really a "right" - it's a privilege that Congress is allowed to grant for a limited time. At the time it was 14 years, I think; now it is 70 years after the death of the artist -- ridiculous, as you point out.
Bill Gates was not a thief; he just understood that PDP-10 time is a fundamental right. He was just trying out the PDP-10 to see if he wanted to buy one.
Since they could collect exact statistics on what was being downloaded most often, it wouldn't be too hard to set up a reasonable way to distribute funds based on popularity. What's the worry here anyway? That this agency would become another RIAA? As long as they can't censor what is being shared, this really isn't the same -- it's p2p, meaning the sharing of music is between artists and fans (or fans and fans), no stranglehold over distribution means most of the organization's power is eliminated. Sure, they will be fatcats with egos the size of saturn getting rich off other people's talent, but such leeches will always exist. They existed long before recording technology ever existed. The mistake in the 20th century was putting them in charge of anything important.
Greetings. I represent the RIAA. The song "la la la - I can't hear you!" is copyrighted by BMG, an RIAA member corporation. Your appropriation of the lyrics without permission of the copyright holder is in direct violation of Title 17 USC 101-810. Indeed, your transmission of said lyrics over the internet constitutes a distribution of copyrighted material, and your use of the "online distribution system" known as "slashdot" for your criminal activity amounts to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. Moreover, the use of the "moderator" system to enhance the visibility and thus the distribution of our client's intellectual property multiplies the damages significantly. Please cease and desist in the use and distribution of our client's property or face legal action.
Yeah but when they come to break down your door they need a geographic address, not an IP address -- presumably the address you signed up for your ISP with. So most likely the actual pirate here signed up for an ISP using her home address and name.
This woman does laundry a lot and has no dryer, so she hangs her clothes to dry. When the RIAA said she was using an "online distribution system" to make plaintiff's music files available, they were not referring to a computer; what they meant was that she is often heard whistling copyrighted songs while she hangs clothes on the line; hence, "online distribution system." Typical slashbots rush to this criminal's defense when it is clear she was openly and shamelessly stealing music and she was caught red-handed. Meanwhile, the RIAA music executives are being deprived of a living (or at least of a third yacht) thanks to the lawless actions of such criminals. Eventually this will kill music, as the RIAA warned us about home taping so long ago -- why would an artist bother creating or recording new songs when any old lady can just come by forty years later and whistle it without paying the company that distributes your cds a dime?
The skyrocketing costs are not due to making changes in game play but in the successful game developers' increasing appetite for booze, coke, and whores.
Talked to Uncle Ed for four hours on the cell phone today. I sure as hell hope that guy from the university was telling the truth when he said we wouldn't get charged for long distance calls; Uncle Ed is all the way down in Capistrano. I took a crap on a chick in a convertible again today. I love doing that. I wish that grey-cheeked green pigeon would call me; it's been almost a week since we rubbed beaks. Maybe he thinks I'm fat....
A factual post, with a link to a credible news source, disputing a rumor posted as "news for nerds" -- dude, you're really spoiling all the fun around here.
The politics of your examples aside (others have pointed this out, and they are quite right), these are different kinds of works. The first is a sort of pseudo-journalism and the second pretends to be a piece of scholarship. The first actually did get published by a smaller press and the author was not sued (probably because the allegations were not far off the mark). The second got the guy into trouble and rightly so -- the credibility of academic writing and research in general depends upon peer review rooting out such problems, but academic publishers usually do not go to press either without reasonable fact-checking work. But with memoirs, autobiographies, and other literary works, standards are different -- a certain amount of artistic license is de riguer; who decides when it is too much?
If it's not doing things like falsely accusing someone of being a child molester, what the fuck does it really matter?
And perhaps even if it is? Read Navahoax: a story about a very similar situation as this one, where a writer made up supposedly nonfiction autobiographical accounts and was published (the publishers here also say we don't fact check such stories). The stories in this case do deal with child molestation, among other things, and while the stories are not accusations per se, one wonders about the implications of publishing material like this under false pretenses. I tend to agree that it doesn't make that much difference, since one can perhaps get greater truths from fictional works, and if the phony "memoirs" label makes it easier for some people to accept those truths, what's the harm? On the other hand, I would think a publisher should make it their business to know whether this was really a memoir or is a fictional memoir, since it is their decision to market the book a certain way. Of course, even in truthful autobiographies there will be exaggeration and writer's license to interpret things in various ways; I'm not sure there's always an easy line to draw between truth and fiction.
I checked aclu.org, and even read some of the articles linked there, but was unable to find Some Bleeding-Heart's Cry of Foul Play against a Pedophile. Could you please provide a direct link to this work of literature, or perhaps a.torrent file? I'd like to burn it to DVD.
and there is a difference between distribution and possession, which is really the issue here, methinks. You're just bringing up rape to sensationalize the discussion. The fact is, this does have implications beyond child porn because there are other situations where burning a cd or photocopying a picture have legal implications. This would also have implications for copies stored on a hard drive, which there have been many such cases, and to my knowledge none of those cases resulted in this sort of ruling.
Especially true when he could have consulted Black's Law Dictionary, or any court case in copyright law or obscenity law dealing with the production of new works by copying old ones; IANAL but I am sure there are some precedents to look at. Certainly he could have offered a useful interpretation of the legislature's intent when they used that word, which quite obviously did not include practices that would include photocopying someone else's work and sticking the copies in a desk drawer.
Slashdot Mirror
King Tut ran an early version of linux on his computer.
Apple's implementation is much snappier!
Yes, it's eerie. The first page of the magazine just says "First Page!" And there's a story called "Imagine..." about clustering Altairs....
for the part about the Constitution - the words "intellectual property" never appear in the Constitution (and in fact were not really used until the 1960s). The Constitution allows Congress to offer limited monopolies to artists and inventers to serve as an incentive for them to keep creating and discovering. It's not a "property" nor is it really a "right" - it's a privilege that Congress is allowed to grant for a limited time. At the time it was 14 years, I think; now it is 70 years after the death of the artist -- ridiculous, as you point out.
Bill Gates was not a thief; he just understood that PDP-10 time is a fundamental right. He was just trying out the PDP-10 to see if he wanted to buy one.
Since they could collect exact statistics on what was being downloaded most often, it wouldn't be too hard to set up a reasonable way to distribute funds based on popularity. What's the worry here anyway? That this agency would become another RIAA? As long as they can't censor what is being shared, this really isn't the same -- it's p2p, meaning the sharing of music is between artists and fans (or fans and fans), no stranglehold over distribution means most of the organization's power is eliminated. Sure, they will be fatcats with egos the size of saturn getting rich off other people's talent, but such leeches will always exist. They existed long before recording technology ever existed. The mistake in the 20th century was putting them in charge of anything important.
Dear Steve:
Greetings. I represent the RIAA. The song "la la la - I can't hear you!" is copyrighted by BMG, an RIAA member corporation. Your appropriation of the lyrics without permission of the copyright holder is in direct violation of Title 17 USC 101-810. Indeed, your transmission of said lyrics over the internet constitutes a distribution of copyrighted material, and your use of the "online distribution system" known as "slashdot" for your criminal activity amounts to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. Moreover, the use of the "moderator" system to enhance the visibility and thus the distribution of our client's intellectual property multiplies the damages significantly. Please cease and desist in the use and distribution of our client's property or face legal action.
Yeah but when they come to break down your door they need a geographic address, not an IP address -- presumably the address you signed up for your ISP with. So most likely the actual pirate here signed up for an ISP using her home address and name.
This woman does laundry a lot and has no dryer, so she hangs her clothes to dry. When the RIAA said she was using an "online distribution system" to make plaintiff's music files available, they were not referring to a computer; what they meant was that she is often heard whistling copyrighted songs while she hangs clothes on the line; hence, "online distribution system." Typical slashbots rush to this criminal's defense when it is clear she was openly and shamelessly stealing music and she was caught red-handed. Meanwhile, the RIAA music executives are being deprived of a living (or at least of a third yacht) thanks to the lawless actions of such criminals. Eventually this will kill music, as the RIAA warned us about home taping so long ago -- why would an artist bother creating or recording new songs when any old lady can just come by forty years later and whistle it without paying the company that distributes your cds a dime?
The skyrocketing costs are not due to making changes in game play but in the successful game developers' increasing appetite for booze, coke, and whores.
Talked to Uncle Ed for four hours on the cell phone today. I sure as hell hope that guy from the university was telling the truth when he said we wouldn't get charged for long distance calls; Uncle Ed is all the way down in Capistrano. I took a crap on a chick in a convertible again today. I love doing that. I wish that grey-cheeked green pigeon would call me; it's been almost a week since we rubbed beaks. Maybe he thinks I'm fat....
It wasn't the first slave at all. It was Bill Frist's slave!
So the computers they wanted to seize were eMate 300s?
They know because they found the words "First slave!" etched into their tooth enamel.
This guy had a website in 1502? That's pretty advanced, at least for a slave.
A factual post, with a link to a credible news source, disputing a rumor posted as "news for nerds" -- dude, you're really spoiling all the fun around here.
Google buys the Library of Congress. They change the name to glibc.
The politics of your examples aside (others have pointed this out, and they are quite right), these are different kinds of works. The first is a sort of pseudo-journalism and the second pretends to be a piece of scholarship. The first actually did get published by a smaller press and the author was not sued (probably because the allegations were not far off the mark). The second got the guy into trouble and rightly so -- the credibility of academic writing and research in general depends upon peer review rooting out such problems, but academic publishers usually do not go to press either without reasonable fact-checking work. But with memoirs, autobiographies, and other literary works, standards are different -- a certain amount of artistic license is de riguer; who decides when it is too much?
And perhaps even if it is? Read Navahoax: a story about a very similar situation as this one, where a writer made up supposedly nonfiction autobiographical accounts and was published (the publishers here also say we don't fact check such stories). The stories in this case do deal with child molestation, among other things, and while the stories are not accusations per se, one wonders about the implications of publishing material like this under false pretenses. I tend to agree that it doesn't make that much difference, since one can perhaps get greater truths from fictional works, and if the phony "memoirs" label makes it easier for some people to accept those truths, what's the harm? On the other hand, I would think a publisher should make it their business to know whether this was really a memoir or is a fictional memoir, since it is their decision to market the book a certain way. Of course, even in truthful autobiographies there will be exaggeration and writer's license to interpret things in various ways; I'm not sure there's always an easy line to draw between truth and fiction.
Don't you mean statues?
He was not, to my knowledge, charged with copyright violations.
I checked aclu.org, and even read some of the articles linked there, but was unable to find Some Bleeding-Heart's Cry of Foul Play against a Pedophile. Could you please provide a direct link to this work of literature, or perhaps a .torrent file? I'd like to burn it to DVD.
and there is a difference between distribution and possession, which is really the issue here, methinks. You're just bringing up rape to sensationalize the discussion. The fact is, this does have implications beyond child porn because there are other situations where burning a cd or photocopying a picture have legal implications. This would also have implications for copies stored on a hard drive, which there have been many such cases, and to my knowledge none of those cases resulted in this sort of ruling.
Especially true when he could have consulted Black's Law Dictionary, or any court case in copyright law or obscenity law dealing with the production of new works by copying old ones; IANAL but I am sure there are some precedents to look at. Certainly he could have offered a useful interpretation of the legislature's intent when they used that word, which quite obviously did not include practices that would include photocopying someone else's work and sticking the copies in a desk drawer.
At issue is not "child" vs. "adult" but "burning" vs. "making."