Then you agree with my original statement that laws against for-profit piracy is censorship.
Yes it's censorship, however I'm arguing that to an extent it's morally justified censorship. It's good that authors have recourse against publishers simply taking their work, and I think you agree with that.
it started with an author who went to the authorities in Venice and asked for a ten-year period to have exclusive rights to publish his own book so that he could be sufficiently compensated for his work
That was an exceptional case, not a trend-setter. Publishing rights were an agreement between the monarch and the printers to get short monopolies as long as they printed only government-sanctioned books. Read and learn.
Okay, but I'm going to start by calling you out on CHANGING THE SUBJECT.
I didn't CHANGE THE SUBJECT. Copyright is censorship, but kind of justified censorship. The question remains, how much of this censorship is justified?
No, it just irks me that pirates throw around self-serving excuses for their own greed.
What part of the "Website blocking, internet regulation and surveillance, DRM, mass litigation, internet disconnections" do you consider an excuse, because I'd say those are pretty good reasons to think the current amount of copyright is not morally justified. Also, notice that not once have I made reference to piracy; you are the one conflating the position of being against your excessive and unjustified monopolies with piracy.
I also think it's piracy is detrimental and unfair to creators
If it's so detrimental and unfair, then the creators who have a problem with it should stop creating. The bad shit happening in the name of copyright is not worth it, I could live with a few new names on Top 100 list.
One thing I often say to pirates is this: what's a reasonable copyright length?
Is copyright a limit on the things I can say, even if what I'm saying is just repeating what someone else has said? If yes, then copyright is censorship. It's really that simple. In fact, copyright started as a method of censorship in medieval Europe before being codified into law and turned into what it is today.
The question is not whether copyright is censorship, because it is. The question is, how much of this censorship is adequate and reasonable to support and enhance creativity, and at what point does the censorship become harmful to the public.
70 years after death is stupidly long, and defeats the purpose of enriching the public domain for the benefit of the public. Too much censorship, so that needs to be reformed.
Website blocking, internet regulation and surveillance, DRM, mass litigation, internet disconnections. All these things limit the rights of individuals and are far beyond the publisher's monopolies originally granted for 14-28 years. The original copyright could prevent Amazon from copying and publishing your sonnet, but couldn't stop Romeo from taking out his quill and paper and making a copy of your sonnet for his Juliet. Copyright has been extended in ways that interfere with our privacy, property and speech rights and that is has very serious negative effect on the public. There's too much censorship, so it needs to be returned to its original scope: it should only be enforced for commercial copying and natural persons should be immune.
Perhaps changing the status quo is inconvenient for you, because you make lots of money from the current system and don't want it to change. That does not, in any way, justify the status quo.
Gog.com lists about 400 MSDOS and Windows games, almost all of which will run without a hassle under 64 bit Windows 7.
Gog is great, but their catalog is limited -- there are literally thousands of Good Old Games missing, most of which they'll never offer because of licensing issues or because they don't run in Dosbox or because they don't think they can sell them. Those are the sorts of problems I'm referring to, which can lead to many of those games being lost.
The problem is that even the enthusiast finds it hard to warm up to a game with five to twenty-five year old graphics, gameplay and sound --- and that is not an easy problem to fix.
Your "enthusiast" is entirely irrelevant to my argument. I'm talking about preserving these games for posterity, regardless of whether they choose to enjoy them or not.
The Black Mesa total conversion threatens to become the next Duke Nukem Forever.
Again, that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm talking about Valve releasing the source code of the original game, and volunteers taking up the maintenance of the engine and the task of untying it from the platforms and OSs it was written for. Think ScummVM, OpenMW, Spring, 7kaa, Duke3d, Quake, Hexen, etc etc -- there are plenty of success stories.
It's a shame that a lot of old games (including DOS games, circa 1995) have been consigned to the graveyard of dead software, where they can't be ported/maintained because they have no sources and need emulation, they can't be bought except for second/third/20th-hand, they can't be copied/preserved because of copyright. It's shameful, really. I feel quite angry about that tbh, and I'm delighted to see game creators make an effort to release their code.
I sometimes see people arguing that releasing the code is impossible because some parts are based on proprietary code they don't have the rights to. I wish they would just cut that code out and release the rest. There are a lot of eager fans out there who would be very happy to rewrite that code and even develop drop-in open-source replacements that can be reused for other ports (yes, even entire game engines). Let's not let old games end up like old films, rotting away in the archives of underfunded libraries without anyone knowing they ever existed.
Unfortunately, that's not how security works. If the users don't know what they're doing, their systems are insecure no matter how much security you build into them.
Who is going to do the educating, exactly, and how?
At the moment, the only ones trying to teach people about security are frustrated IT workers. Every little bit helps, so if the gov't put some effort into it, quit doing campaigns for the RIAA and started doing something for their citizens, they could improve the situation quite a bit.
There are a lot of possibilities. From introducing security essentials into school curricula (who needs to be taught Powerpoint?), to encouraging companies to take action to safeguard their own data (the recent hacks should be a wakeup call), to backing open source/diversity more.
In fact, that last point needs repeating. A monoculture allows bad people to invest all their energies into exploiting a single type of system, with the promise of huge returns. That's how you get massive botnets and millions of infected PCs all the time. If there was more diversity, say two major OSs instead of one, the potential returns from writing a virus would immediately be cut in half.
educating the fucking users, which is the most glaring and most fundamental security hole there is. Make sure the users know they need to keep the PCs and anti-viruses updated, make sure they know how, make sure users know not to run untrusted programs, make sure they know what counts as a program (screensavers, plugins, installers... we know but they often don't), make sure they don't insert a USB stick they found in the street, if their PC has an instant-on OS option make sure they use that to do their banking instead of their main OS, if there are grandmas out there using Windows for no good reason try and get them to switch to another OS, teach users to recognise suspicious behaviour and ask for help... need I go on?
This ruling is based on an ancient ruling from the 80s. Clicky. The defendant in that case (a video rental shop) was basically running an unlicensed cinema by playing VHS tapes on request in the back of the shop. They were found to be making public performances because a) they were "open to the public", and b) because they were "transmitting" the video from VCRs in the front of the shop to the private rooms in the back.
Here's an interesting part that sounds very similar to Zediva:
The record clearly demonstrates
that showcasing a video cassette at Maxwell's is a significantly different
transaction than leasing a tape for home use. Maxwell's never disposed of the
tapes in its showcasing operations, nor did the tapes ever leave the store. At
all times, Maxwell's maintained physical dominion and control over the tapes.
Its employees actually played the cassettes on its machines. The charges or
fees received for viewing the cassettes at Maxwell's facilities are analytically
indistinguishable from admission fees paid by patrons to gain adimission to any
public theater. Plainly, [**16] in their showcasing operation, the appellants
do not sell, rent, or otherwise dispose of the video cassette. On the facts
presented, Maxwell's "showcasing" operation is a public performance, which, as a
matter of law, constitutes a copyright infringement.
Even though the tapes were technically being rented, the court decided they weren't being rented. Of course, Zediva does actually rent the DVDs for home use, but the judge just went along with a simple and quick ruling identical to the previous one. It's a logically contorted and stupid ruling, but I think he knows the MPAA will come on top anyway, so he might as well hand it to them.
If the company agreed to open the code under the GPL and is now backing out, then there's a problem. The GPL is non-revokable, meaning there's no way for them to release the code and at some later point change their mind and slap a proprietary license on the same code: that code is open forever. Moreover, there's the viral aspect of the GPL, so if they are using GPLed code in their proprietary product, they still need to release the entire source under the GPL!
However, where the OP may have gone wrong is if he was working on a work-for-hire basis (check your contract), which means he wasn't the copyright holder and wasn't allowed to release the code in the first place.
I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of those 1000 IPs belong to underaged kids, not the masterminds behind the attacks or even older individuals with the sense to cover their tracks. Should we look forward to the arrests of hundreds of 13-year-olds? Well, I guess the backlash will be fun to watch...
Really, Lol-speak is a way to express non-verbal things verbally, where the language is too inefficient to use in casual conversation. My favourite example is probably the word "FAIL!", which carries a meaning that the English language can't easily express -- the closest alternative I can think of is the German borrow-word "schadenfreude".
So, they've been releasing crippled recordings for the last twenty years... but rejoice everyone, they are now planning on re-re-re-releasing the same music except without the awful mastering. And they wonder why everybody pirates their crap.
By the same logic, Slashdot belongs to Geeknet which is a US company, so anyone posting here can be extradited to the US and the comments they posted can and will be used against them in a US court of law. Great.
"Intellectual property" is one of the few things that the US produces these days and it employs a large amount of people in a country rife with joblessness.
That's what the lobbyists say. But, of course, it's misleading. There are all sorts of "Intellectual Property" related jobs, the vast majority of which are not affected by file-sharing. The entertainment industries affected are actually quite tiny, and even they are overstating the damage, since they keep having record profits every year!
JSTOR has settled any claims against Aaron, explained they’ve suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute.
Indeed, it's not JSTOR suing but the USA government.
Seems like someone's stepped on the wrong toes... Kind of reminds me of Assange and Strauss-Kahn. Why yes, this tinfoil hat goes with my tinfoil shoes.
No, they are the last people I'd expect to admit that. I'm talking about public opinion, which I'm sure the former would be willing to manipulate to get their internet surveillance.
In my understanding, anti-trust law doesn't only apply to monopolies, but also to any entity that abuses its dominant position in a market to reduce competition. I agree with what you say, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, this is Slashdot. Fact: all rebels look like Princess Leia, except for those who look like Princess Amidala. Do you have a problem with that?
it's middle class shopkeepers who have seen their livelihoods go up in flames
Are you sure it wasn't their insurance companies?
Then you agree with my original statement that laws against for-profit piracy is censorship.
Yes it's censorship, however I'm arguing that to an extent it's morally justified censorship. It's good that authors have recourse against publishers simply taking their work, and I think you agree with that.
it started with an author who went to the authorities in Venice and asked for a ten-year period to have exclusive rights to publish his own book so that he could be sufficiently compensated for his work
That was an exceptional case, not a trend-setter. Publishing rights were an agreement between the monarch and the printers to get short monopolies as long as they printed only government-sanctioned books. Read and learn.
Okay, but I'm going to start by calling you out on CHANGING THE SUBJECT.
I didn't CHANGE THE SUBJECT. Copyright is censorship, but kind of justified censorship. The question remains, how much of this censorship is justified?
No, it just irks me that pirates throw around self-serving excuses for their own greed.
What part of the "Website blocking, internet regulation and surveillance, DRM, mass litigation, internet disconnections" do you consider an excuse, because I'd say those are pretty good reasons to think the current amount of copyright is not morally justified. Also, notice that not once have I made reference to piracy; you are the one conflating the position of being against your excessive and unjustified monopolies with piracy.
I also think it's piracy is detrimental and unfair to creators
If it's so detrimental and unfair, then the creators who have a problem with it should stop creating. The bad shit happening in the name of copyright is not worth it, I could live with a few new names on Top 100 list.
One thing I often say to pirates is this: what's a reasonable copyright length?
Go ask a pirate.
Is copyright a limit on the things I can say, even if what I'm saying is just repeating what someone else has said? If yes, then copyright is censorship. It's really that simple. In fact, copyright started as a method of censorship in medieval Europe before being codified into law and turned into what it is today.
The question is not whether copyright is censorship, because it is. The question is, how much of this censorship is adequate and reasonable to support and enhance creativity, and at what point does the censorship become harmful to the public.
70 years after death is stupidly long, and defeats the purpose of enriching the public domain for the benefit of the public. Too much censorship, so that needs to be reformed.
Website blocking, internet regulation and surveillance, DRM, mass litigation, internet disconnections. All these things limit the rights of individuals and are far beyond the publisher's monopolies originally granted for 14-28 years. The original copyright could prevent Amazon from copying and publishing your sonnet, but couldn't stop Romeo from taking out his quill and paper and making a copy of your sonnet for his Juliet. Copyright has been extended in ways that interfere with our privacy, property and speech rights and that is has very serious negative effect on the public. There's too much censorship, so it needs to be returned to its original scope: it should only be enforced for commercial copying and natural persons should be immune.
Perhaps changing the status quo is inconvenient for you, because you make lots of money from the current system and don't want it to change. That does not, in any way, justify the status quo.
Gog.com lists about 400 MSDOS and Windows games, almost all of which will run without a hassle under 64 bit Windows 7.
Gog is great, but their catalog is limited -- there are literally thousands of Good Old Games missing, most of which they'll never offer because of licensing issues or because they don't run in Dosbox or because they don't think they can sell them. Those are the sorts of problems I'm referring to, which can lead to many of those games being lost.
The problem is that even the enthusiast finds it hard to warm up to a game with five to twenty-five year old graphics, gameplay and sound --- and that is not an easy problem to fix.
Your "enthusiast" is entirely irrelevant to my argument. I'm talking about preserving these games for posterity, regardless of whether they choose to enjoy them or not.
The Black Mesa total conversion threatens to become the next Duke Nukem Forever.
Again, that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm talking about Valve releasing the source code of the original game, and volunteers taking up the maintenance of the engine and the task of untying it from the platforms and OSs it was written for. Think ScummVM, OpenMW, Spring, 7kaa, Duke3d, Quake, Hexen, etc etc -- there are plenty of success stories.
It's a shame that a lot of old games (including DOS games, circa 1995) have been consigned to the graveyard of dead software, where they can't be ported/maintained because they have no sources and need emulation, they can't be bought except for second/third/20th-hand, they can't be copied/preserved because of copyright. It's shameful, really. I feel quite angry about that tbh, and I'm delighted to see game creators make an effort to release their code.
I sometimes see people arguing that releasing the code is impossible because some parts are based on proprietary code they don't have the rights to. I wish they would just cut that code out and release the rest. There are a lot of eager fans out there who would be very happy to rewrite that code and even develop drop-in open-source replacements that can be reused for other ports (yes, even entire game engines). Let's not let old games end up like old films, rotting away in the archives of underfunded libraries without anyone knowing they ever existed.
Unfortunately, that's not how security works. If the users don't know what they're doing, their systems are insecure no matter how much security you build into them.
Who is going to do the educating, exactly, and how?
At the moment, the only ones trying to teach people about security are frustrated IT workers. Every little bit helps, so if the gov't put some effort into it, quit doing campaigns for the RIAA and started doing something for their citizens, they could improve the situation quite a bit.
There are a lot of possibilities. From introducing security essentials into school curricula (who needs to be taught Powerpoint?), to encouraging companies to take action to safeguard their own data (the recent hacks should be a wakeup call), to backing open source/diversity more.
In fact, that last point needs repeating. A monoculture allows bad people to invest all their energies into exploiting a single type of system, with the promise of huge returns. That's how you get massive botnets and millions of infected PCs all the time. If there was more diversity, say two major OSs instead of one, the potential returns from writing a virus would immediately be cut in half.
educating the fucking users, which is the most glaring and most fundamental security hole there is. Make sure the users know they need to keep the PCs and anti-viruses updated, make sure they know how, make sure users know not to run untrusted programs, make sure they know what counts as a program (screensavers, plugins, installers... we know but they often don't), make sure they don't insert a USB stick they found in the street, if their PC has an instant-on OS option make sure they use that to do their banking instead of their main OS, if there are grandmas out there using Windows for no good reason try and get them to switch to another OS, teach users to recognise suspicious behaviour and ask for help... need I go on?
Here's an interesting part that sounds very similar to Zediva:
The record clearly demonstrates that showcasing a video cassette at Maxwell's is a significantly different transaction than leasing a tape for home use. Maxwell's never disposed of the tapes in its showcasing operations, nor did the tapes ever leave the store. At all times, Maxwell's maintained physical dominion and control over the tapes. Its employees actually played the cassettes on its machines. The charges or fees received for viewing the cassettes at Maxwell's facilities are analytically indistinguishable from admission fees paid by patrons to gain adimission to any public theater. Plainly, [**16] in their showcasing operation, the appellants do not sell, rent, or otherwise dispose of the video cassette. On the facts presented, Maxwell's "showcasing" operation is a public performance, which, as a matter of law, constitutes a copyright infringement.
Even though the tapes were technically being rented, the court decided they weren't being rented. Of course, Zediva does actually rent the DVDs for home use, but the judge just went along with a simple and quick ruling identical to the previous one. It's a logically contorted and stupid ruling, but I think he knows the MPAA will come on top anyway, so he might as well hand it to them.
Why, that's over twice as inappropriate! In Missouri you'll get capital punishment for that!
If the company agreed to open the code under the GPL and is now backing out, then there's a problem. The GPL is non-revokable, meaning there's no way for them to release the code and at some later point change their mind and slap a proprietary license on the same code: that code is open forever. Moreover, there's the viral aspect of the GPL, so if they are using GPLed code in their proprietary product, they still need to release the entire source under the GPL!
However, where the OP may have gone wrong is if he was working on a work-for-hire basis (check your contract), which means he wasn't the copyright holder and wasn't allowed to release the code in the first place.
I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of those 1000 IPs belong to underaged kids, not the masterminds behind the attacks or even older individuals with the sense to cover their tracks. Should we look forward to the arrests of hundreds of 13-year-olds? Well, I guess the backlash will be fun to watch...
It's proof that their numbers are off!
Really, Lol-speak is a way to express non-verbal things verbally, where the language is too inefficient to use in casual conversation. My favourite example is probably the word "FAIL!", which carries a meaning that the English language can't easily express -- the closest alternative I can think of is the German borrow-word "schadenfreude".
I believe they've already announced they are working on HTML5 support.
Processor die. There are daemons there.
It was a sofa.
So, they've been releasing crippled recordings for the last twenty years... but rejoice everyone, they are now planning on re-re-re-releasing the same music except without the awful mastering. And they wonder why everybody pirates their crap.
By the same logic, Slashdot belongs to Geeknet which is a US company, so anyone posting here can be extradited to the US and the comments they posted can and will be used against them in a US court of law. Great.
"Intellectual property" is one of the few things that the US produces these days and it employs a large amount of people in a country rife with joblessness.
That's what the lobbyists say. But, of course, it's misleading. There are all sorts of "Intellectual Property" related jobs, the vast majority of which are not affected by file-sharing. The entertainment industries affected are actually quite tiny, and even they are overstating the damage, since they keep having record profits every year!
JSTOR has settled any claims against Aaron, explained they’ve suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute. Indeed, it's not JSTOR suing but the USA government.
Seems like someone's stepped on the wrong toes... Kind of reminds me of Assange and Strauss-Kahn. Why yes, this tinfoil hat goes with my tinfoil shoes.
No, they are the last people I'd expect to admit that. I'm talking about public opinion, which I'm sure the former would be willing to manipulate to get their internet surveillance.
Are you kidding? This is PROOF that current laws are more than enough for law enforcement to track down and arrest hackers.
In my understanding, anti-trust law doesn't only apply to monopolies, but also to any entity that abuses its dominant position in a market to reduce competition. I agree with what you say, though.