Actually...Luke would have been cleaning a wooden cylinder with a rounded top. The wood would be painted white with fine black gridlines. The CGI bit would have been added later, with the gridlines to make everything match up.
CGI means you don't have to spend money on expensive models. You can spend the money on expensive computers and hire expensive geeks to run them.
I can create a company called "Rinker Industries" and only sell things to people named Rinker. There is nothing in the law that prevents me from doing this. It might even be a clever marketing scheme...
In some situations, discrimination is mandated by law. You can't discriminate on the basis of age, right? Except for when you sell alcohol or tobacco. Then you can go to jail if you fail to discriminate on the basis of age.
Discrimination on a personal level goes by the less inflammatory name "freedom of association" and is constitutionally protected. I can choose who I wish to associate with and who I do not wish to associate with.
I believe you are thinking of illegal discrimination, the law prohibits specific kinds of discrimination in specific kinds of situations. Businesses may not discriminate on the basis of race in hiring, for example, but unless there is a specific law banning a specific type of discrimination in a specific situation, it is inherently legal.
Now, if I was this lady, assuming she is a member of a protected minority class, I would research my genealogy to see how many people alive today had my name, and what their ethnic makeup was. If most people named "Babcock" were African-Americans, she'd end up practically owning the web site, as their filtering of her name would constitute illeagal discrimination in that case.
Right. I *can* shoot you; that doesn't make it right. However, in a democracy, when most people want to do something, it by definition *is* right, unless it violates some human right. Copyright is not among those; copyright is a legal fiction.
I would argue that unenforceable laws are not just stupid, they are wrong. When everyone wants to do something, and it's against the law, and it's impossible to completely enforce the law, guess what? People do it anyway. In doing so, they knowingly violate the law. They learn that they can break the law and get away with it. They learn disrespect for the law. Authority breaks down. Society collapses. We wind up cooking squirrels over burning copies of Stephen King's last novel, and all because of Lars Ulrich and his crowd. It's just not worth it.
3. Here's the real sticking point (which I'm also the most out-of-my-league about): if it can be proved that a copyright holder knowingly allowed someone to infringe on that copyright and did not take action to prevent it, then the rights to that material can be permanently lost. IANAL, but I consulted one over this very issue (in my case, it was an abandoned role-playing game - the old fashioned pencil and paper kind). This is wrong. Copyright is absolute, period. I can let you violate my copyright for 100 years without losing a single one of my rights under copyright law. You can make billions of dollars over the course of decades by violating my copyrights, and I can sue your for every last time the day before my copyright expires.
Trademarks, however, work exactly as you describe.
Two choices:
1. You don't live in the US
2. You live in the US and are severly confused about copyright laws. If you look hard enough, you can find (as I once did) an intellectual property FAQ (for US law, of course) on the net somewhere. It's a good source of basic info.
I agree - one of the obligations that should go along with copyright is the obligation to ensure that the work is eventually placed in the public domain. Is your performance copyrighted? Did you distribute copies? Very well, then; you have now created an obligation for yourself to see to it that the work is ultimately placed, undamaged, in the public domain. Want to keep the copyright for the whole 120 years? Fine; just be sure it's recorded on non-degradable media, and that the devices that play back the media are still intact 120 years from now.
This is what libraries should be used for. You create a work, you sell a work, you donate one copy to a library. That library then assumes the responsibility of seeing to it that the work remains intact.
One of the rights of ownership is the right to destroy.
This is SO wrong. You don't OWN intellectual property (what a ridiculous concept!)- you hold in trust for the public good. Copyright and patent holders are granted a monopoly in exchange for their willingness to eventually place their work in the public domain.
Right - in the sense that 8-bit emulators make 8-bit software viable again. I would gladly pay $20 for a CD that contained a significant proportion of ALL C-64 software ever published. That's hardly viable...
I've thought about that, too, but it would clearly be an abuse of such a law. You would not be permitted to charge more for a copy than the lowest cost you had previously charged for a copy, plus the actual cost of copying. And if you charge excessively, and this is proved in court, you lose the copyright and the work goes into the public domain.
In short, if you are given rights, you are also given obligations, and if you violate the obligation, you lose the right. Sort of like the right to own a gun. Commit a felony with a gun, lose the right to own a gun.
Raid Over Moscow - THAT was a game. I still remember how to launch the ships (move horizontally SLOWLY, accelerate out FAST, move up a bit). Then flying through the defenses, blowing up the silo, and doing it again three times, all with the six minute clock counting down. Then on to Moscow, to blow up bits and pieces of the Kremlin with a mortar, and finally destroying the robot in a scene reminiscent of Tron, except you had to hit it from the back, five times, and then do it again before the reactor blew up.
Hmm...need at least five vertical pixels, for 3, 8, B, E, and S, and you need at least five horizontal pixels for M. That gives you a maximum resolution of 64*48. You can sort of get by with four horizontally, giving you 80x48. I figured this sort of thing out when I was a ten-year-old larval geek...ah, youth! (wipes away tear)
1. How can Apple sue sites that post info about rumored products?
Apple (just like you and me) can file a lawsuit against anybody, anytime, for any reason. "Suing" just means "filing a lawsuit." I can sue you because the color of your eyes causes me mental anguish. My suit will be thrown out in a heartbeat, but I can file the suit. There would be no benefit to my doing this, of course, but a major corporation, with lots of money and a legitimate-sounding complaint can make defendants spend a lot of money to get the suit thrown out. For many people, the cost of defense against what is essentially a frivolous suit is not worth it; they'll fold. (I know I would - I've got a family to feed, you know?)
2. Why would Apple sue these sites?
Hype, man, hype. Apple is saying "Our new computers are so INSANELY great, they're so TOP SECRET that we will sue people just for posting PICTURES of the CASES!" Hypothetical conversation, overheard on street - "Have you seen the new Mac?" "No! But I have heard that they are so cool! I want to see one!" "Not only do I wish to see one, I also wish to buy one!"
3. Could Apple win?
Not knowing ANY details about the cases, I don't know. But I would suggest that it is possible to trademark the way your product looks. If Apple trademarked their products' appearance, they would be expected to aggressively defend against unauthorized use of that trademark, or else face the loss of the trademark. Apple could certainly trademark the "secret" code names of their products (BHA, anyone?), and could then likewise defend against unauthorized usage. Rumor sites would then be reduced to "We heard about this cool new product Apple is making - we can't tell you what it's called, we can't show you what it looks like, and everyone at Apple is afraid of getting fired, so we can't tell you where we heard it from, but boy is it cool!" Don't know about you, but I consider unsubstantiated rumors to be pretty worthless (MS press releases, anyone?)
Towards the end of the article, they mention that buying systems from OEMs with an imge preloaded costs an extra $30 or so per machine - and rightly so, from the OEM's point ov view; it costs them to change their production line so that your image is loaded instead of their image. The article suggests that a cheap solution is to have no software loaded. This is not always an option, nor is it necessarily cheaper. The extra $30 cost is for having a nonstandard image loaded on the PC.
Note, however, that "no software" is also a nonstandard image, and some OEMs charge extra for or refuse to do it (the number that do has shrunk since Norton Ghost et al became popular). Furthermore, if you ask to have no software loaded, and then load your own custom image, 9 times out of ten, you will still be paying for Windows twice, as OEMs don't usually deduct the price of the Windows software that they don't load. The OEM are charged by MS for every PC they sell within a model line (thank you, consent decree of 1994!), so if the model you buy normally has Windows loaded, the OEM will pay MS for a copy of Windows whether they install it on a particular machine or not. Thus the OEM sees no economic benefit to not loading Windows, and they pass their costs on to you.
It's natural, therefore it's good? The post you are responding to was not a defense of the usage of "hacker" vs "cracker"; it was an exposition of the way langauge works. It is pretty common for technical terms to enter common usage. Often, the common definition is incorrect from a technical perspective. It works the other way to, with terms going from common to technical usage. "Hacker" is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Every old definition I can find suggests doing something poorly. A bad writer is a hack. A bad cough is a hack. Hacking at meat or wood or golf balls indicates the hacker's inability to do any better.
My own pet peeve is "imaginary," as in "imaginary number." There is nothing imaginary about them. They are just as real, and just as abstract, as the so-called real numbers. Yet the term, despite its incorrect connotations, persists.
Anyway, like it or not, "hacker" in its mainstream usage, means someone who cracks computer systems. Don't try to enforce technical definitions on people who have no need for them, and don't try to reengineer the language. Feel free to ignore me (I know you do anyway:), but realize that trying to explain to non-techs the difference between hacking and cracking is pretty pointless.
I tire of the "They'll never finish it" press that Mozilla gets. Did people expect this would be done in six months to a year? Idiots! The team was handed a boatload of source code. They went through it, line-by-line, and fixed some problems. Then they decided to chuck the whole thing (and rightly so - if you haven't time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again?). They start from scratch. They begin releasing functional, though still alpha, code. Then the buzzards start circling. It just doesn't add up. You might as well say that Internet Explorer is going to flop because it's taken them what, 5 years to get to this point? And Mozilla's been around for only two? And we're going to get not only a decent free browser, but also a whole pile of (reasonably) good code to bang away on? How long did it take Linux to reach 1.0, and how long after that before the pundits declared it was ready for prime time?
IMHO, Mozilla is what a BIG open source project should look like. It might take longer to get off the ground than closed-source, but the end result is so superior, and so amenable to improvement, that it will drive its competitors into the ground on technical merits. Of course, this has nothing to do with market share; it's stupid to look at Mozilla's market share, just as it's stupid to look at the market share for IE 6.0.
Mozilla is only likely to fail if AOL/Time Warner decides to kill the project. But even then, all the code's out there, right? It'll survive in some form. THAT'S the bit that I think the doubters REALLY don't get.
Whaddaya mean "no viable business plan?" I think "Get venture capitalists to give us tons of money and then give ourselves six figure incomes and maybe (1 inna million chance) we'll get rich and certainly we'll get invaluable experience" is pretty viable.
These are some important points. If someone else starts using my trademark, and uses it extensively, and I do nothing to protect my trademark, it is possible that they would ultimately be able to sue ME for my use of the trademark, claiming that my use infringes on their trademark.
On the other hand, if I have a copyrighted work, you could sell billions of unauthorized copies of my work over a period of decades without altering my fundamental right to control my work. you could build up a multi-billion dollar business based on selling my work for fifty years, and I could still sue you, take it all away, and have you thrown in jail forever.
So don't ever buy that corporate-lawyer line of kaka that says "Oh, we HAVE to sue copyright violators, or we could lose our rights!" If you ever hear lawyer-types saying this, they are either liars or morons (or both).
Anyone who decides to use it will find that they're at least 2 generations behind by the time they can get a product to market.
Well, that's how it is now, isn't it? When the next new stable kernel is released, hand a copy of the source code to your favorite comp sci grad and ask them to develop some improvements. If they've not been actively involved in studying or developing the kernel before you hand them the source, it's going to take them a while just to read the code, let alone grok it, and it will be a while after that before they coud significantly improve it.
Meanwhile, the current kernel developers already know the code, know where the weaknesses are, know how they want to improve it, and will be quite a ways ahead of anyone starting from scratch. This, BTW, is one of the reasons why ESR says that opening your currently closed source will not hurt your business; if your competitors decide to copy what you've done, it will take them a long time to get up to speed.
Person=People People=Sheep Corporation=$$$ $$$=TV ads TV ads="Hey sheep, do this!" (they do)
Don't get all prissy and individualistic about this, BTW. A person is smart. People are dumb. A person cannot be manipulated through the media. People can be. Odd paradox that, rather like the tragedy of the commons.
Let's see, four guys, musicians, call themselves artists, claim that what they do is art, spend lots of time together, travel together, sleep in close proximity, make sure that EVERYONE knows that they are wildly and promiscuously hetero...yup, they're definitely pansies:)
But would a court (the Consitutionally-mandated interpreters of the law, according to my high school government class) agree with this? If a public school, a government entity, taught people how to download MP3s, would that be fair use? I don't think so. The owner of a a copyright has ABSOLUTE CONTROL over their work. For a member of Congress to make a copy of that work is to deprive them of their intellectual property rights. Note that phrase - "property rights." As in the government may not deprive you of your property without due process of law. As in eminent domain - the government can not take your property without compensating you. The congress-critters in question were not merely violating the law; they were violating the Constitution.
So what does that tell you about the screwed-up state of copyright law?
Funny, so's mine; that's what brought the example to mind. I spent some time with him last week. He was harvesting wheat. 3% of the wheat kernels were sprouting in the ears, and it was therefore good only for animal feed. So there we are, looking at two semi trailers full of wheat kernels(as well as some grasshoppers and lady bugs). I ate a handful; it was kinda tasty. He's saying he might break even on it - fully edible, more food than 80% of the world has ever seen in one place, and he can't make a living.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually...
Packets are information.
All information is copyrightable.
The information is created by a product controlled by Corporation X.
The packets are, at least, a derivative work, copyrightable by corporation X.
Actually...Luke would have been cleaning a wooden cylinder with a rounded top. The wood would be painted white with fine black gridlines. The CGI bit would have been added later, with the gridlines to make everything match up.
CGI means you don't have to spend money on expensive models. You can spend the money on expensive computers and hire expensive geeks to run them.
Discrimination is not illegal.
I can create a company called "Rinker Industries" and only sell things to people named Rinker. There is nothing in the law that prevents me from doing this. It might even be a clever marketing scheme...
In some situations, discrimination is mandated by law. You can't discriminate on the basis of age, right? Except for when you sell alcohol or tobacco. Then you can go to jail if you fail to discriminate on the basis of age.
Discrimination on a personal level goes by the less inflammatory name "freedom of association" and is constitutionally protected. I can choose who I wish to associate with and who I do not wish to associate with.
I believe you are thinking of illegal discrimination, the law prohibits specific kinds of discrimination in specific kinds of situations. Businesses may not discriminate on the basis of race in hiring, for example, but unless there is a specific law banning a specific type of discrimination in a specific situation, it is inherently legal.
Now, if I was this lady, assuming she is a member of a protected minority class, I would research my genealogy to see how many people alive today had my name, and what their ethnic makeup was. If most people named "Babcock" were African-Americans, she'd end up practically owning the web site, as their filtering of her name would constitute illeagal discrimination in that case.
Right. I *can* shoot you; that doesn't make it right. However, in a democracy, when most people want to do something, it by definition *is* right, unless it violates some human right. Copyright is not among those; copyright is a legal fiction.
I would argue that unenforceable laws are not just stupid, they are wrong. When everyone wants to do something, and it's against the law, and it's impossible to completely enforce the law, guess what? People do it anyway. In doing so, they knowingly violate the law. They learn that they can break the law and get away with it. They learn disrespect for the law. Authority breaks down. Society collapses. We wind up cooking squirrels over burning copies of Stephen King's last novel, and all because of Lars Ulrich and his crowd. It's just not worth it.
Argh! Stupid fingers. Last clause in first paragraph should read "and I can sue you for every last dime before my copyright expires."
3. Here's the real sticking point (which I'm also the most out-of-my-league about): if it can be proved that a copyright holder knowingly allowed someone to infringe on that copyright and did not take action to prevent it, then the rights to that material can be permanently lost.
IANAL, but I consulted one over this very issue (in my case, it was an abandoned role-playing game - the old fashioned pencil and paper kind). This is wrong. Copyright is absolute, period. I can let you violate my copyright for 100 years without losing a single one of my rights under copyright law. You can make billions of dollars over the course of decades by violating my copyrights, and I can sue your for every last time the day before my copyright expires.
Trademarks, however, work exactly as you describe.
Two choices:
1. You don't live in the US
2. You live in the US and are severly confused about copyright laws. If you look hard enough, you can find (as I once did) an intellectual property FAQ (for US law, of course) on the net somewhere. It's a good source of basic info.
I agree - one of the obligations that should go along with copyright is the obligation to ensure that the work is eventually placed in the public domain. Is your performance copyrighted? Did you distribute copies? Very well, then; you have now created an obligation for yourself to see to it that the work is ultimately placed, undamaged, in the public domain. Want to keep the copyright for the whole 120 years? Fine; just be sure it's recorded on non-degradable media, and that the devices that play back the media are still intact 120 years from now.
This is what libraries should be used for. You create a work, you sell a work, you donate one copy to a library. That library then assumes the responsibility of seeing to it that the work remains intact.
One of the rights of ownership is the right to destroy.
This is SO wrong. You don't OWN intellectual property (what a ridiculous concept!)- you hold in trust for the public good. Copyright and patent holders are granted a monopoly in exchange for their willingness to eventually place their work in the public domain.
Right - in the sense that 8-bit emulators make 8-bit software viable again. I would gladly pay $20 for a CD that contained a significant proportion of ALL C-64 software ever published. That's hardly viable...
I've thought about that, too, but it would clearly be an abuse of such a law. You would not be permitted to charge more for a copy than the lowest cost you had previously charged for a copy, plus the actual cost of copying. And if you charge excessively, and this is proved in court, you lose the copyright and the work goes into the public domain.
In short, if you are given rights, you are also given obligations, and if you violate the obligation, you lose the right. Sort of like the right to own a gun. Commit a felony with a gun, lose the right to own a gun.
Raid Over Moscow - THAT was a game. I still remember how to launch the ships (move horizontally SLOWLY, accelerate out FAST, move up a bit). Then flying through the defenses, blowing up the silo, and doing it again three times, all with the six minute clock counting down. Then on to Moscow, to blow up bits and pieces of the Kremlin with a mortar, and finally destroying the robot in a scene reminiscent of Tron, except you had to hit it from the back, five times, and then do it again before the reactor blew up.
Great game...
Hmm...need at least five vertical pixels, for 3, 8, B, E, and S, and you need at least five horizontal pixels for M. That gives you a maximum resolution of 64*48. You can sort of get by with four horizontally, giving you 80x48. I figured this sort of thing out when I was a ten-year-old larval geek...ah, youth! (wipes away tear)
1. How can Apple sue sites that post info about rumored products?
Apple (just like you and me) can file a lawsuit against anybody, anytime, for any reason. "Suing" just means "filing a lawsuit." I can sue you because the color of your eyes causes me mental anguish. My suit will be thrown out in a heartbeat, but I can file the suit. There would be no benefit to my doing this, of course, but a major corporation, with lots of money and a legitimate-sounding complaint can make defendants spend a lot of money to get the suit thrown out. For many people, the cost of defense against what is essentially a frivolous suit is not worth it; they'll fold. (I know I would - I've got a family to feed, you know?)
2. Why would Apple sue these sites?
Hype, man, hype. Apple is saying "Our new computers are so INSANELY great, they're so TOP SECRET that we will sue people just for posting PICTURES of the CASES!" Hypothetical conversation, overheard on street - "Have you seen the new Mac?" "No! But I have heard that they are so cool! I want to see one!" "Not only do I wish to see one, I also wish to buy one!"
3. Could Apple win?
Not knowing ANY details about the cases, I don't know. But I would suggest that it is possible to trademark the way your product looks. If Apple trademarked their products' appearance, they would be expected to aggressively defend against unauthorized use of that trademark, or else face the loss of the trademark. Apple could certainly trademark the "secret" code names of their products (BHA, anyone?), and could then likewise defend against unauthorized usage. Rumor sites would then be reduced to "We heard about this cool new product Apple is making - we can't tell you what it's called, we can't show you what it looks like, and everyone at Apple is afraid of getting fired, so we can't tell you where we heard it from, but boy is it cool!" Don't know about you, but I consider unsubstantiated rumors to be pretty worthless (MS press releases, anyone?)
Towards the end of the article, they mention that buying systems from OEMs with an imge preloaded costs an extra $30 or so per machine - and rightly so, from the OEM's point ov view; it costs them to change their production line so that your image is loaded instead of their image. The article suggests that a cheap solution is to have no software loaded. This is not always an option, nor is it necessarily cheaper. The extra $30 cost is for having a nonstandard image loaded on the PC.
Note, however, that "no software" is also a nonstandard image, and some OEMs charge extra for or refuse to do it (the number that do has shrunk since Norton Ghost et al became popular). Furthermore, if you ask to have no software loaded, and then load your own custom image, 9 times out of ten, you will still be paying for Windows twice, as OEMs don't usually deduct the price of the Windows software that they don't load. The OEM are charged by MS for every PC they sell within a model line (thank you, consent decree of 1994!), so if the model you buy normally has Windows loaded, the OEM will pay MS for a copy of Windows whether they install it on a particular machine or not. Thus the OEM sees no economic benefit to not loading Windows, and they pass their costs on to you.
It's natural, therefore it's good?
:), but realize that trying to explain to non-techs the difference between hacking and cracking is pretty pointless.
The post you are responding to was not a defense of the usage of "hacker" vs "cracker"; it was an exposition of the way langauge works. It is pretty common for technical terms to enter common usage. Often, the common definition is incorrect from a technical perspective. It works the other way to, with terms going from common to technical usage. "Hacker" is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Every old definition I can find suggests doing something poorly. A bad writer is a hack. A bad cough is a hack. Hacking at meat or wood or golf balls indicates the hacker's inability to do any better.
My own pet peeve is "imaginary," as in "imaginary number." There is nothing imaginary about them. They are just as real, and just as abstract, as the so-called real numbers. Yet the term, despite its incorrect connotations, persists.
Anyway, like it or not, "hacker" in its mainstream usage, means someone who cracks computer systems. Don't try to enforce technical definitions on people who have no need for them, and don't try to reengineer the language. Feel free to ignore me (I know you do anyway
I tire of the "They'll never finish it" press that Mozilla gets. Did people expect this would be done in six months to a year? Idiots! The team was handed a boatload of source code. They went through it, line-by-line, and fixed some problems. Then they decided to chuck the whole thing (and rightly so - if you haven't time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again?). They start from scratch. They begin releasing functional, though still alpha, code. Then the buzzards start circling. It just doesn't add up. You might as well say that Internet Explorer is going to flop because it's taken them what, 5 years to get to this point? And Mozilla's been around for only two? And we're going to get not only a decent free browser, but also a whole pile of (reasonably) good code to bang away on? How long did it take Linux to reach 1.0, and how long after that before the pundits declared it was ready for prime time?
IMHO, Mozilla is what a BIG open source project should look like. It might take longer to get off the ground than closed-source, but the end result is so superior, and so amenable to improvement, that it will drive its competitors into the ground on technical merits. Of course, this has nothing to do with market share; it's stupid to look at Mozilla's market share, just as it's stupid to look at the market share for IE 6.0.
Mozilla is only likely to fail if AOL/Time Warner decides to kill the project. But even then, all the code's out there, right? It'll survive in some form. THAT'S the bit that I think the doubters REALLY don't get.
Whaddaya mean "no viable business plan?" I think "Get venture capitalists to give us tons of money and then give ourselves six figure incomes and maybe (1 inna million chance) we'll get rich and certainly we'll get invaluable experience" is pretty viable.
These are some important points. If someone else starts using my trademark, and uses it extensively, and I do nothing to protect my trademark, it is possible that they would ultimately be able to sue ME for my use of the trademark, claiming that my use infringes on their trademark.
On the other hand, if I have a copyrighted work, you could sell billions of unauthorized copies of my work over a period of decades without altering my fundamental right to control my work. you could build up a multi-billion dollar business based on selling my work for fifty years, and I could still sue you, take it all away, and have you thrown in jail forever.
So don't ever buy that corporate-lawyer line of kaka that says "Oh, we HAVE to sue copyright violators, or we could lose our rights!" If you ever hear lawyer-types saying this, they are either liars or morons (or both).
Not in the business sense, no. Gateway sells more computers than Apple. For that matter, Gateway sells more computers to schools than Apple.
Anyone who decides to use it will find that they're at least 2 generations behind by the time they can get a product to market.
Well, that's how it is now, isn't it? When the next new stable kernel is released, hand a copy of the source code to your favorite comp sci grad and ask them to develop some improvements. If they've not been actively involved in studying or developing the kernel before you hand them the source, it's going to take them a while just to read the code, let alone grok it, and it will be a while after that before they coud significantly improve it.
Meanwhile, the current kernel developers already know the code, know where the weaknesses are, know how they want to improve it, and will be quite a ways ahead of anyone starting from scratch. This, BTW, is one of the reasons why ESR says that opening your currently closed source will not hurt your business; if your competitors decide to copy what you've done, it will take them a long time to get up to speed.
Person=People
People=Sheep
Corporation=$$$
$$$=TV ads
TV ads="Hey sheep, do this!" (they do)
Don't get all prissy and individualistic about this, BTW. A person is smart. People are dumb. A person cannot be manipulated through the media. People can be. Odd paradox that, rather like the tragedy of the commons.
Let's see, four guys, musicians, call themselves artists, claim that what they do is art, spend lots of time together, travel together, sleep in close proximity, make sure that EVERYONE knows that they are wildly and promiscuously hetero...yup, they're definitely pansies :)
But would a court (the Consitutionally-mandated interpreters of the law, according to my high school government class) agree with this? If a public school, a government entity, taught people how to download MP3s, would that be fair use? I don't think so. The owner of a a copyright has ABSOLUTE CONTROL over their work. For a member of Congress to make a copy of that work is to deprive them of their intellectual property rights. Note that phrase - "property rights." As in the government may not deprive you of your property without due process of law. As in eminent domain - the government can not take your property without compensating you. The congress-critters in question were not merely violating the law; they were violating the Constitution.
So what does that tell you about the screwed-up state of copyright law?
Funny, so's mine; that's what brought the example to mind. I spent some time with him last week. He was harvesting wheat. 3% of the wheat kernels were sprouting in the ears, and it was therefore good only for animal feed. So there we are, looking at two semi trailers full of wheat kernels(as well as some grasshoppers and lady bugs). I ate a handful; it was kinda tasty. He's saying he might break even on it - fully edible, more food than 80% of the world has ever seen in one place, and he can't make a living.