Perhaps your small business can't afford its own network, or because accessing your network requires a VPN or such, and users may for some reason not be able to access them everywhere they go.
Well, people did want alcohol. If our politicians wouldn't have idiotically implemented prohibition, people probably could have gotten what they wanted without so many skulls being cracked.
ISPs are or at least should be common carriers. And just like ISPs should be providing access to dumb pipes, filehosts should have dumb servers and be protected from liability.
I suspect that such a scenario would draw the ire of an antitrust suit. It's been near useless at protecting the public for the last few decades, but I suspect the revolving door of politicians and lobbyists won't stand for one of their most lucrative scams coming to an end.
If a theatre or a TV station wants to keep a good business relationship with the studio, they won't make unauthorized copies of it. The studios would probably be negotiating on the chain level anyway, and it would be unwise to give or sell a copy to your competitor.
The author spends many man-hours writing a book and requires financial compensation from it so he can afford to live (the alternative is that he gets a job and only writes in his spare time, which I'm sure most people would agree would probably be detrimental to the amount of quality literary works being produced). So the author approaches a publisher and signs a contract saying they will pay him for the work. This contract may stipulate a lump sum, an amount per copy sold, or whatever, that's unimportant. The publisher produces the book, sells it, takes a cut of the profit and hands some cash on to the author. Another publisher buys the book from a high-street shop, scans it and starts printing copies themselves and selling them at a lower price. The original publisher can't shift their stock because they can't afford to sell as cheaply as the new publisher since the original publisher is bound by their contract with the author. The copying publisher has no contract with anyone, so is free to do what they like - in your "no-copyright" world, there are no laws to prevent them from doing this.
That is how books were sold in Germany before they had an effective copyright regime. The result was that the public had more books and authors got paid more. Publishers made money by flooding the market with cheap books before competitors could get out the door with even cheaper ones. Sales of most books (and creative works in general) are very strongly front-loaded, so being first provides a significant advantage.
I certainly support the idea that copyright shouldn't be as long as it currently is, but I don't think that "today's fast paced technological world" has anything to do with this. Morally, why should the author of a book receive less in a "fast paced technological world" than in years gone by? Its true that technology makes it easier for people to copy and therefore of the people reading the author's book a lower proportion will have paid him for it(*), but this is a reality of what *does* happen rather than what *should* morally happen.
Technology has decreased the costs of making an equivalent work, decreased the costs of distribution and reproduction, and increased the potential market. Thus, the author can get an adequate return on investment in less time. Also, there is nothing moral about copyright.
I certainly don't think that copyright should be abolished. It serves a useful purpose
I would disagree. There is a theoretical good purpose for it, but as far as I can tell, it has been an utter failure in fulfilling that purpose.
Within the US tradition, labor alone cannot create copyright, so bringing labor into the debate shows that you are ignorant of the institution, or are referring to a non-US philosophical tradition, virtually all of which are totally irrational.
Now, what the author has the right to do is to control the initial publication of a work. They have such control by virtue of exercising control over something physical, such as a computer on which they type up a novel. After that, they have no control of what happens downstream once a work is published, absent the intervention caused by the legal monopoly of copyright. The right to control via copyright is not something that authors have, but something that is given to them by the government.
Make no mistake. Copyright exists for the sake of society and only for the sake of society, not for the sake of authors.
it accepts that fair use includes a certain amount of copying and sharing, while at the same time reimbursing the recording industry.
Fair use does involve copying and sharing, but since the use is 'fair', there is absolutely no reason that the recording industry should be receive any money. As I understand it, the tax really only covers personal backups and mixtapes. That is not within the realm of what copyright should be allowed to dictate.
if you accept that the artist/recording companies do have a right to make money of their product
That's a very strange notion. "To make money" is not something you can really have an explicit right to do. Copyright gives authors a specific opportunity to make money that a market without it would not offer. And I do not accept that even having that is a right of an author. Instead, it is (in theory) a means to an end of enriching the public.
It's a lot easier to reject a small bill. If there is a bad provision in a small, relatively focused bill, it's easier to defend one's opposition to such a bill. If a bill is 98% reasonable, opposing it for the 2% of garbage in it is a lot harder than if a bill is 60% reasonable and 40% garbage.
They can either get ambiguous laws, (which are going to be mostly toothless), or they can pass the laws bit by bit, like they should. 25 pages in current formatting is plenty for a bill. The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011 is about one page, and is a pretty good example of how laws should be focused. Now, it hasn't been debated and subjected to the changes that would bring, but even if it were to quadruple in length, that would make it about 4 pages. The bad laws tend to be the very large ones. The Patriot Act was over 300 pages. The NDAA was over 500 pages. SOPA was over 70.
If you have a better way of stopping riders, I'd genuinely like to hear it, but I can't think of the legalese way to specifically nail them. Of course, a lot of the bad legislation is long and full of trouble from it's release.
I really wish we'd get a hard limit on how long bills can be to stop this kind of bullshit. Limit bills to roughly 25 pages or an equivalent under current formatting. Then, bills would have to at least somewhat pass on the merit of their own content instead of tagging along on bills that make it illegal to build cannons that shoot puppies filled with explosives at orphans.
That's assuming that population growth remains constant when life expectancy and standard of living increase. However, it seems that living better and longer tends to result in having fewer children. Figuring out the exact effect would be difficult, but it could possibly make overpopulation LESS of an issue. In a nutshell, the way it might work is that people would be forever young and have no intention of settling down, and many people may be more career driven if they can achieve new levels of education. However, a lack of aging doesn't protect us from accidents, homicide, and suicide, so we'd still have those factors taking down our numbers.
The market for ARM based general purpose computers is quite small right now. Microsoft, being an 800 pound gorilla, could put some momentum behind it. Their influence on OEMs is likely a decent factor in why it's hard to find such a machine in the first place, given that ARM machines can't run Windows, and MS isn't too fond of a 'PC' that can't run Windows.
You got it wrong anyway, the expression is "the carpet matched the curtains" or a close variant of that. You can argue about the definition of drapes, but the established home decor metaphor for pubic hair is certainly carpet. For example, lesbians are often referred to as 'carpet munchers.' Neither meaning of drapes makes for a good comparison.
Yeah. It's a rather sad state of affairs how many people this is a new thought for. Indeed, it wasn't until I took a class on copyright law that the original philosophical underpinnings of copyright were known to me.
The full title of the statute of Anne, generally regarded as the first modern copyright act, was "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned." In the US Constitution, the power given to Congress is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" and the means of doing so are "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The notion is that the public waives certain parts of their freedom to copy for a short while. This investment of our liberties is supposed to (in theory) result in more works being produced. Thus, copyright is a trade off between two public interests: enjoying books and having books to enjoy. Those are the two factors to be weighed here when considering policy. Granted, our current policy has completely lost sight of this, so much of the public is unaware of this, and legislators rarely if ever gives serious consideration to the public's interests, when it is the only factor that matters on the issue.
You seem to be assuming that authors need additional protection or that the protection is useful to the ordinary author. Also, you are ignoring that copyright is about the public's interests, with benefits to authors and publishers being incidental. "Something must be done. This is something. This must be done" is poor logic.
I'm not quite sure how you see the states doing something that violates the US Constitution in this instance, because it is a power they have been given control over. It's a state's choice whether they want to recognize gay marriage or not, whether I can marry a 12 year old or not, and so on and so forth. If you have a problem with a state's stance, then consult that state's legislature. I'm more concerned with the federal government using economic threats to exercise powers over states that they don't have, such as the National Minimum Drinking Age Act and the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act.
Personally, I am against the recognition of straight marriage as well. It is a religious institution, so it's between you, your partner(s), friends, family, and deity of choice (if any).
About the only things I can think of where the federal government is involved in marriage are taxes and green cards, both of which I believe just depend on whether or not a state has recognized the marriage or not. Other than that, it is pretty much entirely a state issue. That's why I always roll my eyes when presidential candidates talk about gay marriage stances. It's not their jurisdiction, so there's no reason to let that issue decide your vote.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps your small business can't afford its own network, or because accessing your network requires a VPN or such, and users may for some reason not be able to access them everywhere they go.
Hosting work related files. Those that download the files would most likely be other employees.
Well, people did want alcohol. If our politicians wouldn't have idiotically implemented prohibition, people probably could have gotten what they wanted without so many skulls being cracked.
Who said anything about clients? They could very well be for internal usage.
ISPs are or at least should be common carriers. And just like ISPs should be providing access to dumb pipes, filehosts should have dumb servers and be protected from liability.
I like "Black Flap Scorpion Disk" better.
I suspect that such a scenario would draw the ire of an antitrust suit. It's been near useless at protecting the public for the last few decades, but I suspect the revolving door of politicians and lobbyists won't stand for one of their most lucrative scams coming to an end.
If a theatre or a TV station wants to keep a good business relationship with the studio, they won't make unauthorized copies of it. The studios would probably be negotiating on the chain level anyway, and it would be unwise to give or sell a copy to your competitor.
That is how books were sold in Germany before they had an effective copyright regime. The result was that the public had more books and authors got paid more. Publishers made money by flooding the market with cheap books before competitors could get out the door with even cheaper ones. Sales of most books (and creative works in general) are very strongly front-loaded, so being first provides a significant advantage.
Technology has decreased the costs of making an equivalent work, decreased the costs of distribution and reproduction, and increased the potential market. Thus, the author can get an adequate return on investment in less time. Also, there is nothing moral about copyright.
I would disagree. There is a theoretical good purpose for it, but as far as I can tell, it has been an utter failure in fulfilling that purpose.
Nah, our politicians aren't just whores, they are also really cheap whores.
Within the US tradition, labor alone cannot create copyright, so bringing labor into the debate shows that you are ignorant of the institution, or are referring to a non-US philosophical tradition, virtually all of which are totally irrational.
Now, what the author has the right to do is to control the initial publication of a work. They have such control by virtue of exercising control over something physical, such as a computer on which they type up a novel. After that, they have no control of what happens downstream once a work is published, absent the intervention caused by the legal monopoly of copyright. The right to control via copyright is not something that authors have, but something that is given to them by the government.
Make no mistake. Copyright exists for the sake of society and only for the sake of society, not for the sake of authors.
Fair use does involve copying and sharing, but since the use is 'fair', there is absolutely no reason that the recording industry should be receive any money. As I understand it, the tax really only covers personal backups and mixtapes. That is not within the realm of what copyright should be allowed to dictate.
That's a very strange notion. "To make money" is not something you can really have an explicit right to do. Copyright gives authors a specific opportunity to make money that a market without it would not offer. And I do not accept that even having that is a right of an author. Instead, it is (in theory) a means to an end of enriching the public.
It's a lot easier to reject a small bill. If there is a bad provision in a small, relatively focused bill, it's easier to defend one's opposition to such a bill. If a bill is 98% reasonable, opposing it for the 2% of garbage in it is a lot harder than if a bill is 60% reasonable and 40% garbage.
They can either get ambiguous laws, (which are going to be mostly toothless), or they can pass the laws bit by bit, like they should. 25 pages in current formatting is plenty for a bill. The Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011 is about one page, and is a pretty good example of how laws should be focused. Now, it hasn't been debated and subjected to the changes that would bring, but even if it were to quadruple in length, that would make it about 4 pages. The bad laws tend to be the very large ones. The Patriot Act was over 300 pages. The NDAA was over 500 pages. SOPA was over 70.
If you have a better way of stopping riders, I'd genuinely like to hear it, but I can't think of the legalese way to specifically nail them. Of course, a lot of the bad legislation is long and full of trouble from it's release.
I really wish we'd get a hard limit on how long bills can be to stop this kind of bullshit. Limit bills to roughly 25 pages or an equivalent under current formatting. Then, bills would have to at least somewhat pass on the merit of their own content instead of tagging along on bills that make it illegal to build cannons that shoot puppies filled with explosives at orphans.
That's assuming that population growth remains constant when life expectancy and standard of living increase. However, it seems that living better and longer tends to result in having fewer children. Figuring out the exact effect would be difficult, but it could possibly make overpopulation LESS of an issue. In a nutshell, the way it might work is that people would be forever young and have no intention of settling down, and many people may be more career driven if they can achieve new levels of education. However, a lack of aging doesn't protect us from accidents, homicide, and suicide, so we'd still have those factors taking down our numbers.
Not playing nice with MS means that they get bum deals on licenses for Windows machines, which major OEMs are selling.
The market for ARM based general purpose computers is quite small right now. Microsoft, being an 800 pound gorilla, could put some momentum behind it. Their influence on OEMs is likely a decent factor in why it's hard to find such a machine in the first place, given that ARM machines can't run Windows, and MS isn't too fond of a 'PC' that can't run Windows.
You got it wrong anyway, the expression is "the carpet matched the curtains" or a close variant of that. You can argue about the definition of drapes, but the established home decor metaphor for pubic hair is certainly carpet. For example, lesbians are often referred to as 'carpet munchers.' Neither meaning of drapes makes for a good comparison.
50 years. PSSHAW! Here's what you tell them about their copyrights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5QGkOGZubQ
Yeah. It's a rather sad state of affairs how many people this is a new thought for. Indeed, it wasn't until I took a class on copyright law that the original philosophical underpinnings of copyright were known to me.
The full title of the statute of Anne, generally regarded as the first modern copyright act, was "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned." In the US Constitution, the power given to Congress is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" and the means of doing so are "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The notion is that the public waives certain parts of their freedom to copy for a short while. This investment of our liberties is supposed to (in theory) result in more works being produced. Thus, copyright is a trade off between two public interests: enjoying books and having books to enjoy. Those are the two factors to be weighed here when considering policy. Granted, our current policy has completely lost sight of this, so much of the public is unaware of this, and legislators rarely if ever gives serious consideration to the public's interests, when it is the only factor that matters on the issue.
You seem to be assuming that authors need additional protection or that the protection is useful to the ordinary author. Also, you are ignoring that copyright is about the public's interests, with benefits to authors and publishers being incidental. "Something must be done. This is something. This must be done" is poor logic.
I'm not quite sure how you see the states doing something that violates the US Constitution in this instance, because it is a power they have been given control over. It's a state's choice whether they want to recognize gay marriage or not, whether I can marry a 12 year old or not, and so on and so forth. If you have a problem with a state's stance, then consult that state's legislature. I'm more concerned with the federal government using economic threats to exercise powers over states that they don't have, such as the National Minimum Drinking Age Act and the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act.
Personally, I am against the recognition of straight marriage as well. It is a religious institution, so it's between you, your partner(s), friends, family, and deity of choice (if any).
About the only things I can think of where the federal government is involved in marriage are taxes and green cards, both of which I believe just depend on whether or not a state has recognized the marriage or not. Other than that, it is pretty much entirely a state issue. That's why I always roll my eyes when presidential candidates talk about gay marriage stances. It's not their jurisdiction, so there's no reason to let that issue decide your vote.