> Why do people believe that one civil court > decision changes the whole landscape of law > for the entire world? If my landlord sues me > and somehow I win and get out of paying rent, > does that mean that everybody forever more is > released from paying rent if they have a lease > contract similar to mine?
No, but if their landlord sued them for the same thing, they (or their lawyer) could point to the previous case and have a very, very good chance of winning.
Make a database with lots of geeky stuff in it and a whole range of prices for each item, ranging from the standard market value upwards.
Now stores have to sell those items for less than the going rate. If they put them in their price list at equal or higher to market value, they are duplicating an item in your db and you nail them for copyright infringiment.
!?!???!
This is by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.
> Web content is copyrighted, and by viewing > that page you are making a copy from the > webserver to your browser. So, the publisher > could stipulate under the "site usage" > (license) that you may not alter the content, > therefore prohibiting adblocking. Better yet, > encrypt most of the content and decrypt via a > trivial JavaScript or similar method to invoke > some additional legal bullshit as well.
Sure, that's a great idea. Then a bunch of geeks can write a web page that renders differently in different browsers and go around suing people for "altering the content" by viewing it in their browsers, until the courts finally twig that the current view that the copyright on web pages applies to the post-rendered version is unsustainable.
> If they say unlimited, they better damn well > mean that I have infinite, boundless > bandwidth. They better mean that if I want to > 5000 copies of the latest Red Hat distro > queued and let it download for 24 hours a day, > 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year I can do that.
Actually, technically it would mean you would be able to download all 5000 instataneously. (any finite number of bytes) file size / (infinity) bytes per second = 0. You'd be able to download the entire input of chargen in one second (infinity / infinity = 1) although storing it might be a problem.
It should be obvious that any firm advertising unlimited access is lying because *the ISP themselves* can't have unlimited access.
As far as I'm aware, nobody ever actually managed to get FADE to activate (even when deliberately trying to). Certainly there were never any descriptions as to what it did. It was bad enough that when somebody posted a screenshot with "Original disks do not fade" showing up on it, people on the associated forum of that site thought that the screenshot was a hoax.
A rumor was that FADE actually stands for "Fear And Doubt Engine" and was created purely to make pirates paranoid about whether or not their games would eventually start breaking down.
Normally, markets in a capitalism are producer-led or consumer-led. Producer-led markets appear when a product is popular, and tend to lead to high prices. These are good: there must be some reason why the product is popular, and the producer gets rewarded for producing it. Consumer-led markets appear when a product isn't so popular so producers want to get it out the door, and tend to lead to low prices. These are good too: the consumers can buy their stuff for a lower price.
But IP at the moment is neither of these. IP is an example of a horrible situation: the distribution-led market. The distribution-led market is actually a violation of capitalism; capitalism is based on a free market, but when distribution leading occurs, the market ceases to be free.
In a distribution-led market, producers are forced to accept bad deals from the distributors because they have no other way to get stuff marketed; and consumers are forced to pay high prices (which aren't passed back to the producers) because the distributors, having got their deals from the producers, don't really care that much if the stuff doesn't sell. Everybody loses.
At the moment, copyright - together with other market forces - is acting to maintain that distribution-led situation. And a great point of indignancy is that copyright law was quickly updated to allow for "internet realities", but was never updated to allow for the realities of a distribution-led market. (By means such as barring the transfer of copyright, thus making it impossible for distributors to force artists to give away their entire IP rights.)
Personally, I think the best way would be for the government to simply state: "We're giving you six months. If the market is still distribution-led after that time, copyright law will be abolished. Sort it out amongst yourselves or we'll pull out the rug." (That tactic could have been applied in other cases too. Like "Make it so that key workers can afford houses in all areas. If you haven't done so after six months, mortgage interest will be raised to 500%, thus razing your market to the ground.")
> Just because you suck, don't punish those that > have real talent by forcing them to waste > their time in menial jobs because you steal > their work. Have some respect for other > people's right for a change, rather than > enslaving them.
Why do you assume that anyone who hasn't been paid for their work, must suck?
Let's take an example. Strong Bad e-mails. Some people think these suck, but *very* many people like them. However, by your logic, since the Brothers Chaps have never been paid for any of them, they must suck.
"Well, you can choose to give stuff away if you want." But it's not actually like that. Giving stuff away is the default way of getting it seen. Selling it is the hard bit, and you can't freely choose to sell stuff, because getting in a position to sell IP requires a whole bunch of skills and resources that aren't relevant to creating that IP.
So, yea, let's give those with "real talent" a shot, rather than demanding that even those with great talent must have business acumen too in order to get any reward for it.
(Oh, and by the way, the existance of "talent" is unproven.)
What they didn't mention was that after Lord British was killed, his aides all summoned a bunch of demons into the crowd to "root out the assassin".
Of course, the Lord's justicars having a) summoned evil creatures and b) having the "kill them all and let god sort them out" attitude promptly cause a whole bunch of the roleplaying types to say "well, our characters just wouldn't support Lord British anymore".
> IANAL, but arn't there laws concerning the > methods used to obtain evidence?
For the police to obtain evidence, yes. For anyone else (including RIAA), nope. ("No, officer, I'm not guilty of breaking into his house, because I was just making sure he hadn't stolen anything from me.")
Basically she'd get sued for $156m and lose. Then she'd declare bankruptcy. At that age, probably most significant assets are held by her parents anyway, so she wouldn't lose much.
The real complaint about this type of case isn't anything to do with file sharing, but to do with Denial of Due Process, which starts getting into human rights issues.
Forcing people to settle out of court by threatening to plead the court for a settlement that no individual could ever possibly pay is a despicable practise and action should be taken against it as soon as possible.
Yes, you can argue that the firm may have lost that much. But the fact is that the disparity between the incomes of firms and individuals isn't the *individual's* fault.
More likely, the game will be all about going out and fighting Agent Smiths.
As you level up of course, you can fight Bigger Agent Smith, then Really Big Agent Smith. Oh yea, and some Agent Smiths have guns, and some Agent Smiths have pipes, and some Agent Smiths have can cast Magic^H^H^H^Hatrix Missile and stuff...
> Who keeps signing these ridiculous contracts? > This whole RIAA situation is a result of three > truths: 1) Record company people are shady. 2) > Agents/managers are either shady or > incompetent. 3) Musicians are ignorant.
Nope, it's necessity. If you DON'T sign that contract, you aren't going to get anywhere at all.
And before the "they're providing a service so they can ask whatever terms they like" crew come up here, it's not that simple; the service they're providing is a solution to a problem they create. If there were no big record companies, record stores couldn't refuse to buy from anywhere except the big firms because there would be no big firms. If there were no advertising, nobody would need advertising to compete.
> Top 40 stars are listened to by millions of > people and thus should make millions of > dollars.
But therein lies the rub, you see. By the same logic, teachers who teach thousands of kids, or programmers who write software that millions of people use, should make thousands or millions of dollars. But they don't. Instead, they get paid the same regardless, unless what they do doesn't attract enough people, in which case they don't get paid at all.
It's the "market-facing/boss-facing" split that's the problem. Of course, an awful lot of small musicians are still boss-facing, but all the big guys are market-facing. By far the worst event that has happened to capitalism in the modern age is the fact that it has become impossible to be market-facing unless you are very rich OR you have the support of someone else who is very rich and is allowing you to be market-facing for some reason.
This is an Answer. If I understand correctly, the way things work is that anything the defence admits to in the Answer becomes a locked-down fact of the case which can never be questioned in the court. Equally, the defence has to declare all of their defences in advance.
Given that, the best strategy is always to deny everything then come up with as many defences as possible just in case one works. Remember, the plaintiff has the burden of proof so the defence doesn't need evidence that their active defences are applicable, and either way it creates more work for the plaintiff.
It isn't that simple. If a license is squashed by a court, the court can basically rewrite the terms.
I think the classic example of this is a housing contract. Suppose your landlord doesn't live up to his side of the housing contract so you sue. The court agrees he broke the contract - but then there is no contract, so you have to move out, because nothing is letting you live in the house any more. Would things be fair if it worked that way?
What would be interesting is that, if the GPL is ruled unenforcable, a whole bunch of Linux developers could sue the FSF for misleading them, via the GPL, into thinking their work was protected.
> Nice idea, but slightly off in your timeline. > Cocaine was totally legal when it was a part > of Coca-Cola. You could get it at the pharmacy > like so many abused drugs today. Eventually > someone decided that it was a bad thing, and > they made it illegal.
Also, coca-cola was originally designed as a nice-tasting way of taking medicinal cocaine. The idea that cocaine was added to make the soda addictive is totally bass-ackwards.
> The problem there is that how does the company > stay in business if they have to maintain a > server for thousands of players to play on but > their only revenue stream is the initial > purchase?
> The MMPORGIES(sp?:-) need to be more like > sitcoms or no actually more like interactive > soap operas. No one cares how many kill > points, they care how you use them on a buddy > that they want to play a practical joke.
What, you mean like The Sims Online?
That was a train wreck, entirely because if the game doesn't support levelling intrinsically it'll appear elsewhere. In TSO, the first few people to make houses had their houses become popular party locations, which meant they got more simoleons (because having other people using your stuff gives you them) which meant they could expand them which meant they stayed popular. Many players just gave up when they realised that there was no point developing their house because nobody would come over.
Re:Didn't mention my favorite activities at all...
on
The Trouble with MMORPGs
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I think what he's more referring to is the Verant style of GM event, though.
Verant's guide to GM events: GM events can only involve a few people. Other players will be resentful if event participants get stuff they can't, purely because they were online at the right time to get in the event. Therefore, avoid giving players special rewards in events. Killing players is OK, because nobody is jealous of that.
Player's response: "When you see an event, log out. There's nothing in it for you and you'll probably get killed." I actually saw this posted on an EQ forum.
There are similar things around for customer protection in the UK - "protected rights", which *can't* be waived, and which must be actively facilitated (unlike regular rights which need only be "not forbidden", leading to stupidity like the US argument that the DMCA doesn't block the fair use right because it doesn't forbid fair use; it makes it impossible, but nothing says a right has to be possible to exercise)
Furthermore, the onus is on the seller to watch out for those rights. So if someone asks you to sign a contract that waives a protected right, the consumer can still sue under their protected right. The seller - AFAIAA - *can't* sue you for breach of contract on the grounds that you promised to waive the right and didn't (because you can't).
The problem with this attitude is: if they make less money as a result, the license will go away pretty quick.
However, if they make MORE money as a result, all the other firms will do the same thing, because of course all the other firms also want to make more money.
The irony here is that Scott Adams himself, in "The Dilbert Principle", postulated that eventually advertisers would become so good at constructing persuasive advertising that buying the product would no longer be optional.
I believe the case made by the "fast food made us fat" people was that the companies should be blamed for having persuaded them to eat fatty food.
Slashdot Mirror
> Why do people believe that one civil court
> decision changes the whole landscape of law
> for the entire world? If my landlord sues me
> and somehow I win and get out of paying rent,
> does that mean that everybody forever more is
> released from paying rent if they have a lease
> contract similar to mine?
No, but if their landlord sued them for the same thing, they (or their lawyer) could point to the previous case and have a very, very good chance of winning.
That's ok.
Make a database with lots of geeky stuff in it and a whole range of prices for each item, ranging from the standard market value upwards.
Now stores have to sell those items for less than the going rate. If they put them in their price list at equal or higher to market value, they are duplicating an item in your db and you nail them for copyright infringiment.
!?!???!
This is by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard of.
> Web content is copyrighted, and by viewing
> that page you are making a copy from the
> webserver to your browser. So, the publisher
> could stipulate under the "site usage"
> (license) that you may not alter the content,
> therefore prohibiting adblocking. Better yet,
> encrypt most of the content and decrypt via a
> trivial JavaScript or similar method to invoke
> some additional legal bullshit as well.
Sure, that's a great idea. Then a bunch of geeks can write a web page that renders differently in different browsers and go around suing people for "altering the content" by viewing it in their browsers, until the courts finally twig that the current view that the copyright on web pages applies to the post-rendered version is unsustainable.
> If they say unlimited, they better damn well
> mean that I have infinite, boundless
> bandwidth. They better mean that if I want to
> 5000 copies of the latest Red Hat distro
> queued and let it download for 24 hours a day,
> 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year I can do that.
Actually, technically it would mean you would be able to download all 5000 instataneously. (any finite number of bytes) file size / (infinity) bytes per second = 0. You'd be able to download the entire input of chargen in one second (infinity / infinity = 1) although storing it might be a problem.
It should be obvious that any firm advertising unlimited access is lying because *the ISP themselves* can't have unlimited access.
As far as I'm aware, nobody ever actually managed to get FADE to activate (even when deliberately trying to). Certainly there were never any descriptions as to what it did. It was bad enough that when somebody posted a screenshot with "Original disks do not fade" showing up on it, people on the associated forum of that site thought that the screenshot was a hoax.
A rumor was that FADE actually stands for "Fear And Doubt Engine" and was created purely to make pirates paranoid about whether or not their games would eventually start breaking down.
I think rather more the problem is this.
Normally, markets in a capitalism are producer-led or consumer-led. Producer-led markets appear when a product is popular, and tend to lead to high prices. These are good: there must be some reason why the product is popular, and the producer gets rewarded for producing it. Consumer-led markets appear when a product isn't so popular so producers want to get it out the door, and tend to lead to low prices. These are good too: the consumers can buy their stuff for a lower price.
But IP at the moment is neither of these. IP is an example of a horrible situation: the distribution-led market. The distribution-led market is actually a violation of capitalism; capitalism is based on a free market, but when distribution leading occurs, the market ceases to be free.
In a distribution-led market, producers are forced to accept bad deals from the distributors because they have no other way to get stuff marketed; and consumers are forced to pay high prices (which aren't passed back to the producers) because the distributors, having got their deals from the producers, don't really care that much if the stuff doesn't sell. Everybody loses.
At the moment, copyright - together with other market forces - is acting to maintain that distribution-led situation. And a great point of indignancy is that copyright law was quickly updated to allow for "internet realities", but was never updated to allow for the realities of a distribution-led market. (By means such as barring the transfer of copyright, thus making it impossible for distributors to force artists to give away their entire IP rights.)
Personally, I think the best way would be for the government to simply state: "We're giving you six months. If the market is still distribution-led after that time, copyright law will be abolished. Sort it out amongst yourselves or we'll pull out the rug." (That tactic could have been applied in other cases too. Like "Make it so that key workers can afford houses in all areas. If you haven't done so after six months, mortgage interest will be raised to 500%, thus razing your market to the ground.")
> Just because you suck, don't punish those that
> have real talent by forcing them to waste
> their time in menial jobs because you steal
> their work. Have some respect for other
> people's right for a change, rather than
> enslaving them.
Why do you assume that anyone who hasn't been paid for their work, must suck?
Let's take an example. Strong Bad e-mails. Some people think these suck, but *very* many people like them. However, by your logic, since the Brothers Chaps have never been paid for any of them, they must suck.
"Well, you can choose to give stuff away if you want." But it's not actually like that. Giving stuff away is the default way of getting it seen. Selling it is the hard bit, and you can't freely choose to sell stuff, because getting in a position to sell IP requires a whole bunch of skills and resources that aren't relevant to creating that IP.
So, yea, let's give those with "real talent" a shot, rather than demanding that even those with great talent must have business acumen too in order to get any reward for it.
(Oh, and by the way, the existance of "talent" is unproven.)
What they didn't mention was that after Lord British was killed, his aides all summoned a bunch of demons into the crowd to "root out the assassin".
Of course, the Lord's justicars having a) summoned evil creatures and b) having the "kill them all and let god sort them out" attitude promptly cause a whole bunch of the roleplaying types to say "well, our characters just wouldn't support Lord British anymore".
> IANAL, but arn't there laws concerning the
> methods used to obtain evidence?
For the police to obtain evidence, yes. For anyone else (including RIAA), nope. ("No, officer, I'm not guilty of breaking into his house, because I was just making sure he hadn't stolen anything from me.")
Well, not quite.
Basically she'd get sued for $156m and lose. Then she'd declare bankruptcy. At that age, probably most significant assets are held by her parents anyway, so she wouldn't lose much.
This is a fair point.
The real complaint about this type of case isn't anything to do with file sharing, but to do with Denial of Due Process, which starts getting into human rights issues.
Forcing people to settle out of court by threatening to plead the court for a settlement that no individual could ever possibly pay is a despicable practise and action should be taken against it as soon as possible.
Yes, you can argue that the firm may have lost that much. But the fact is that the disparity between the incomes of firms and individuals isn't the *individual's* fault.
And Japan has had a DVD-playing Gamecube - the Panasonic Q - for ages now.
You should be so lucky.
More likely, the game will be all about going out and fighting Agent Smiths.
As you level up of course, you can fight Bigger Agent Smith, then Really Big Agent Smith. Oh yea, and some Agent Smiths have guns, and some Agent Smiths have pipes, and some Agent Smiths have can cast Magic^H^H^H^Hatrix Missile and stuff...
> Who keeps signing these ridiculous contracts?
> This whole RIAA situation is a result of three
> truths: 1) Record company people are shady. 2)
> Agents/managers are either shady or
> incompetent. 3) Musicians are ignorant.
Nope, it's necessity. If you DON'T sign that contract, you aren't going to get anywhere at all.
And before the "they're providing a service so they can ask whatever terms they like" crew come up here, it's not that simple; the service they're providing is a solution to a problem they create. If there were no big record companies, record stores couldn't refuse to buy from anywhere except the big firms because there would be no big firms. If there were no advertising, nobody would need advertising to compete.
> Top 40 stars are listened to by millions of
> people and thus should make millions of
> dollars.
But therein lies the rub, you see. By the same logic, teachers who teach thousands of kids, or programmers who write software that millions of people use, should make thousands or millions of dollars. But they don't. Instead, they get paid the same regardless, unless what they do doesn't attract enough people, in which case they don't get paid at all.
It's the "market-facing/boss-facing" split that's the problem. Of course, an awful lot of small musicians are still boss-facing, but all the big guys are market-facing. By far the worst event that has happened to capitalism in the modern age is the fact that it has become impossible to be market-facing unless you are very rich OR you have the support of someone else who is very rich and is allowing you to be market-facing for some reason.
Well, no..
This is an Answer. If I understand correctly, the way things work is that anything the defence admits to in the Answer becomes a locked-down fact of the case which can never be questioned in the court. Equally, the defence has to declare all of their defences in advance.
Given that, the best strategy is always to deny everything then come up with as many defences as possible just in case one works. Remember, the plaintiff has the burden of proof so the defence doesn't need evidence that their active defences are applicable, and either way it creates more work for the plaintiff.
It isn't that simple. If a license is squashed by a court, the court can basically rewrite the terms.
I think the classic example of this is a housing contract. Suppose your landlord doesn't live up to his side of the housing contract so you sue. The court agrees he broke the contract - but then there is no contract, so you have to move out, because nothing is letting you live in the house any more. Would things be fair if it worked that way?
What would be interesting is that, if the GPL is ruled unenforcable, a whole bunch of Linux developers could sue the FSF for misleading them, via the GPL, into thinking their work was protected.
> Nice idea, but slightly off in your timeline.
> Cocaine was totally legal when it was a part
> of Coca-Cola. You could get it at the pharmacy
> like so many abused drugs today. Eventually
> someone decided that it was a bad thing, and
> they made it illegal.
Also, coca-cola was originally designed as a nice-tasting way of taking medicinal cocaine. The idea that cocaine was added to make the soda addictive is totally bass-ackwards.
> The problem there is that how does the company > stay in business if they have to maintain a
> server for thousands of players to play on but
> their only revenue stream is the initial
> purchase?
Oo, I don't know, ask Blizzard (battle.net)..
> The MMPORGIES(sp? :-) need to be more like
> sitcoms or no actually more like interactive
> soap operas. No one cares how many kill
> points, they care how you use them on a buddy
> that they want to play a practical joke.
What, you mean like The Sims Online?
That was a train wreck, entirely because if the game doesn't support levelling intrinsically it'll appear elsewhere. In TSO, the first few people to make houses had their houses become popular party locations, which meant they got more simoleons (because having other people using your stuff gives you them) which meant they could expand them which meant they stayed popular. Many players just gave up when they realised that there was no point developing their house because nobody would come over.
I think what he's more referring to is the Verant style of GM event, though.
Verant's guide to GM events: GM events can only involve a few people. Other players will be resentful if event participants get stuff they can't, purely because they were online at the right time to get in the event. Therefore, avoid giving players special rewards in events. Killing players is OK, because nobody is jealous of that.
Player's response: "When you see an event, log out. There's nothing in it for you and you'll probably get killed." I actually saw this posted on an EQ forum.
There are similar things around for customer protection in the UK - "protected rights", which *can't* be waived, and which must be actively facilitated (unlike regular rights which need only be "not forbidden", leading to stupidity like the US argument that the DMCA doesn't block the fair use right because it doesn't forbid fair use; it makes it impossible, but nothing says a right has to be possible to exercise)
Furthermore, the onus is on the seller to watch out for those rights. So if someone asks you to sign a contract that waives a protected right, the consumer can still sue under their protected right. The seller - AFAIAA - *can't* sue you for breach of contract on the grounds that you promised to waive the right and didn't (because you can't).
> Make it illegal for a lawyer to become a Judge
Umm, well.. who the heck *are* going to become judges, then? People who don't know the law?
Probably a better bet would be to nationalise lawyers. Make them a public service like the police.
Well, sure.
The problem with this attitude is: if they make less money as a result, the license will go away pretty quick.
However, if they make MORE money as a result, all the other firms will do the same thing, because of course all the other firms also want to make more money.
The irony here is that Scott Adams himself, in "The Dilbert Principle", postulated that eventually advertisers would become so good at constructing persuasive advertising that buying the product would no longer be optional.
I believe the case made by the "fast food made us fat" people was that the companies should be blamed for having persuaded them to eat fatty food.