I share everyone's frustration that you have to opt out of a process by which another entity can expose you to the risk of identify theft, but I can personally attest that this site is effective. I have even moved a few times since I signed up, and still remain opted-out.
Oh, lossless with respect to the source data. So, you would be okay with MP3 if that was the format of the original recording?
I think it's more useful to focus on how good the recording sounds, rather than get hung up on the format. That brings me back to my original point: does MP3 sound okay to you? If so, then just let it go, man; and if not, then you might have a career in your ear.
We'll have to just disagree on whether a "master" creates art with no outside influence or help. Black Hawk Down is a bad example for your case, because it's not even an "original" piece of fiction, it was actually based on real events. But even pure fiction isn't purely the result of the writer's creativity. I'm sure you agree that if an author rips off a predecessor, then the author "owes" that predecessor. I'm simply saying that all authors "owe" all of their predecessors and contemporaries to some degree.
And I strongly disagree with this:
I'd say that the fact that the song is such a part of modern culture is proof in and of itself that the copyright restrictions aren't particularly onerous. If they were, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because we'd be unaware of its existence.
We're only talking about that song *because* we know about it. Why don't we talk about that really great song that was written by that one guy in the early 1940s -- you know, that really deep and inspiring one, the one that got bought by that company, which went out of business before releasing it widely. Golly, why can't I remember the name, you know it's the one that the author then wanted to give a copy to his children, but wasn't allowed to. Oh well, I guess it's gone forever.
Um, okay, now as far as Elton, Yoko, and Jello are concerned -- uh, I don't have a well-formed opinion. My first thought is, yes, they might be immoral for denying the use of works created long, long ago. Really, that would come down to a matter of the term of the copyright. Would it be immoral for Shakespeare's descendants to deny the public theater the right to put on Hamlet? I'd say yes, but it's a lot more clear when it's been hundreds of years.
Don't put me in the group with people who want to do away with copyright. I just want to get the balance right.
Most of what you said is very reasonable and correct. I nitpick only the following:
The Somali warlords are partially to credit for the movie, as is the rest of humanity, and on a fading penumbra, everything in existence. Again, nothing is created in a vacuum. There would be no need to expire copyrights if it were -- the expiration is a recognition of the shared ownership of the work.
Yes, not having free Queen albums is morally outrageous. You said it sarcastically, and I say it seriously. Queen albums aren't really what I'm worried about today, but it's a reasonable synecdochic stand-in for all of culture: not having widespread free access to the canon of human culture is morally outrageous.
Oh, okay, so you don't demand "lossless" audio, you demand the same level of lossiness as CD audio. Got it. Well, no, that's not "unreasonable", but neither is it "unreasonable" that that isn't available. It's not available because CD-quality audio is ten times bigger than MP3-quality audio, which is still, even today, a lot of bits to move around the internet.
You and me are a lot alike. I'm not "against" CD-quality audio. When I buy music, I usually buy used CDs. I even buy those CDs online, the way you want; the only difference is that the bits are delivered by the postal service instead of by my ISP.
Sure, we all want the best quality available, constrained by the delivery technology. The internet is constrained by a low bitrate relative to the post office, which is why you can't get as many bits-per-second as you can from the post office. (You probably already know that every day the post office delivers a lot more bits than the internet.)
In the future, the internet will be faster, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that you'll be able to download regular CD audio. In fact, if you think there's an emerging market for that, you could start it up yourself. But the rest of us aren't hung up on it.
In the future when you make this same case, be careful not to use the word "lossless", which is what caught me up. Say that you want the same quality as a CD. Oh, one last thing -- CD audio sounds flat and empty compared to DVD-Audio. If you could easily download CD-quality audio, would that be good enough, or would you then want DVD-Audio?
No way, bloke, I'm a yankee! I know of The Chicken Dance, but if The Birdie Song is a sufficiently original adaptation of it, then The Birdie Song enjoys its own copyright term. The OP used The Birdie Song as an example of a terrible song, and I imagine OP was referring to the Tweets version.
Now as for The Chicken Dance, I would support universal perpetual strict copyright on that song, keeping it out of the public domain -- and away from the public -- for all time.
No, no, you're wrong. The public indeed did a lot to contribute to the song. Have you noticed that the song lyrics are written in English? Luckily the English language is in the public domain, or else Queen would owe William the Conqueror (or whoever) royalties. Have you noticed that the song is written in the C-major scale? (Actually I don't know what scale it's in.) Well, musical scales were invented by someone long before Queen. Have you noticed that the song sounds a lot like some other rock songs of that era?
Queen didn't write the song in a cultural vacuum. We give them a lot of credit for the song, and we recognize that credit with a certain amount of unnatural legal rights. The law balances those rights with the interests of the culture, which also contributed to the work. Many of us think the law is out of balance, and is immoral.
BTW, 28 years is mostly arbitrary, and in this case corresponds to the original term. I think 28 years is a bit long, I think 20 or 25 is about right, but I'd be happy to compromise on 28.
What do you even mean by "lossless"? Do you mean analog? You want to download cassette tapes or something? All binary formats are lossy. For that matter, so are all analog formats. The standard is not "lossy vs lossless" but "does it sound good". Do high-bitrate MP3s or AACs not sound good to you? If not, then good lord man, get off of Slashdot and begin your career as one of those "golden ear" people.
By the way, it's perfectly fine not to buy music online. I usually don't. I like to buy CDs and encode them myself. But it's a petty and untenable claim to carp about sound loss.
I just want to make the point that Bohemian Rhapsody should be free, considering it entered the moral public domain in 2003 (released in 1975, 28 year copyright term). It's high time our community codified our disdain for perpetual copyright by insisting on a moral public domain.
The Birdie Song (I had to look it up) was released in 1981, so we moral people should continue to pay for it (or better, not listen to it) until sometime later this year on the anniversary of the release date.
Yes, you're totally right of course; but the operative word is "should". No computer "should" ever crash, but they do precisely because the programmer didn't "plan to cope with" something. As a programmer, I take full personal blame.
I ask myself that about Windows about fifty times a day.
"Frack! Seriously!? After 20 years of Windows development, trying to open a text file while connected to VPN causes Windows to lock up for 4 minutes!?"
"Frack! Seriously!? After 20 years of Windows development, I still can't rearrange the items in the task bar!?"
"Frack! Seriously!? Alt-F4 was the best shortcut they could think of for 'Close Window'!?"
"Frack! Why don't they show keyboard shortcuts to all the menu items!?"
"Frack! Are you telling me that all Windows users pay for trivial things like FTP clients? FTP has been free for thirty years!"
Well I don't think that's actually what happened. You say the price of gas "was up" and travel "plummeted"; but I would say that the price of gas "skyrocketed" and travel "was down slightly".
I'm not an economist, but my only econ class taught me about "elasticity of demand". For gasoline, demand is very much not elastic, which means that if the price goes up or down, demand will only change a little bit. The price of gas had to go way way way up before driving habits changed. Remember ten years ago when gas was $1.30? Gas had to *triple* in price before driving decreased, and driving decreased by under three percent.
But still, even if it were true that a gas tax hike would result in less driving, we could have a spirited discussion about whether that was good or bad.
This is a non-sequitur, but are you implying that sales taxes should normally precede income taxes? If so, why? I tend to prefer income taxes, because to me the fairness of the tax (rich people pay more) outweighs the violation of privacy (government knows my income).
Yes. This solution is so glaringly obvious that there must be some sinister reason they are ignoring it. I mean, seriously? You're going to go with a fancypants expensive satellite-based high-tech solution requiring lots of new legislation, training, infrastructure, and other costs, not to mention the overwhelming privacy violation -- instead of just raising the tax a little bit? What, seriously? I call shenanigans.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes! Same here. And that site is
www.optoutprescreen.com
I share everyone's frustration that you have to opt out of a process by which another entity can expose you to the risk of identify theft, but I can personally attest that this site is effective. I have even moved a few times since I signed up, and still remain opted-out.
Apple keyboards are fine.
Oh, lossless with respect to the source data. So, you would be okay with MP3 if that was the format of the original recording?
I think it's more useful to focus on how good the recording sounds, rather than get hung up on the format. That brings me back to my original point: does MP3 sound okay to you? If so, then just let it go, man; and if not, then you might have a career in your ear.
We'll have to just disagree on whether a "master" creates art with no outside influence or help. Black Hawk Down is a bad example for your case, because it's not even an "original" piece of fiction, it was actually based on real events. But even pure fiction isn't purely the result of the writer's creativity. I'm sure you agree that if an author rips off a predecessor, then the author "owes" that predecessor. I'm simply saying that all authors "owe" all of their predecessors and contemporaries to some degree.
And I strongly disagree with this:
I'd say that the fact that the song is such a part of modern culture is proof in and of itself that the copyright restrictions aren't particularly onerous. If they were, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because we'd be unaware of its existence.
We're only talking about that song *because* we know about it. Why don't we talk about that really great song that was written by that one guy in the early 1940s -- you know, that really deep and inspiring one, the one that got bought by that company, which went out of business before releasing it widely. Golly, why can't I remember the name, you know it's the one that the author then wanted to give a copy to his children, but wasn't allowed to. Oh well, I guess it's gone forever.
Um, okay, now as far as Elton, Yoko, and Jello are concerned -- uh, I don't have a well-formed opinion. My first thought is, yes, they might be immoral for denying the use of works created long, long ago. Really, that would come down to a matter of the term of the copyright. Would it be immoral for Shakespeare's descendants to deny the public theater the right to put on Hamlet? I'd say yes, but it's a lot more clear when it's been hundreds of years.
Don't put me in the group with people who want to do away with copyright. I just want to get the balance right.
I think you missed my point. The key word was "moral", as opposed to "legal".
Also, I think it's sometimes even longer than you said.
Most of what you said is very reasonable and correct. I nitpick only the following:
The Somali warlords are partially to credit for the movie, as is the rest of humanity, and on a fading penumbra, everything in existence. Again, nothing is created in a vacuum. There would be no need to expire copyrights if it were -- the expiration is a recognition of the shared ownership of the work.
Yes, not having free Queen albums is morally outrageous. You said it sarcastically, and I say it seriously. Queen albums aren't really what I'm worried about today, but it's a reasonable synecdochic stand-in for all of culture: not having widespread free access to the canon of human culture is morally outrageous.
Oh, okay, so you don't demand "lossless" audio, you demand the same level of lossiness as CD audio. Got it. Well, no, that's not "unreasonable", but neither is it "unreasonable" that that isn't available. It's not available because CD-quality audio is ten times bigger than MP3-quality audio, which is still, even today, a lot of bits to move around the internet.
You and me are a lot alike. I'm not "against" CD-quality audio. When I buy music, I usually buy used CDs. I even buy those CDs online, the way you want; the only difference is that the bits are delivered by the postal service instead of by my ISP.
Sure, we all want the best quality available, constrained by the delivery technology. The internet is constrained by a low bitrate relative to the post office, which is why you can't get as many bits-per-second as you can from the post office. (You probably already know that every day the post office delivers a lot more bits than the internet.)
In the future, the internet will be faster, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that you'll be able to download regular CD audio. In fact, if you think there's an emerging market for that, you could start it up yourself. But the rest of us aren't hung up on it.
In the future when you make this same case, be careful not to use the word "lossless", which is what caught me up. Say that you want the same quality as a CD. Oh, one last thing -- CD audio sounds flat and empty compared to DVD-Audio. If you could easily download CD-quality audio, would that be good enough, or would you then want DVD-Audio?
{Shrug} Yeah, that's democracy, not morality.
PS I make that argument all the time. It's a good argument, but obviously flawed in many ways.
No way, bloke, I'm a yankee! I know of The Chicken Dance, but if The Birdie Song is a sufficiently original adaptation of it, then The Birdie Song enjoys its own copyright term. The OP used The Birdie Song as an example of a terrible song, and I imagine OP was referring to the Tweets version.
Now as for The Chicken Dance, I would support universal perpetual strict copyright on that song, keeping it out of the public domain -- and away from the public -- for all time.
No, no, you're wrong. The public indeed did a lot to contribute to the song. Have you noticed that the song lyrics are written in English? Luckily the English language is in the public domain, or else Queen would owe William the Conqueror (or whoever) royalties. Have you noticed that the song is written in the C-major scale? (Actually I don't know what scale it's in.) Well, musical scales were invented by someone long before Queen. Have you noticed that the song sounds a lot like some other rock songs of that era?
Queen didn't write the song in a cultural vacuum. We give them a lot of credit for the song, and we recognize that credit with a certain amount of unnatural legal rights. The law balances those rights with the interests of the culture, which also contributed to the work. Many of us think the law is out of balance, and is immoral.
BTW, 28 years is mostly arbitrary, and in this case corresponds to the original term. I think 28 years is a bit long, I think 20 or 25 is about right, but I'd be happy to compromise on 28.
No, you won't. You'll think up some other excuse.
What do you even mean by "lossless"? Do you mean analog? You want to download cassette tapes or something? All binary formats are lossy. For that matter, so are all analog formats. The standard is not "lossy vs lossless" but "does it sound good". Do high-bitrate MP3s or AACs not sound good to you? If not, then good lord man, get off of Slashdot and begin your career as one of those "golden ear" people.
By the way, it's perfectly fine not to buy music online. I usually don't. I like to buy CDs and encode them myself. But it's a petty and untenable claim to carp about sound loss.
I think most of us here claim not to listen to that 10% of most-popular music. I definitely make that claim.
I just want to make the point that Bohemian Rhapsody should be free, considering it entered the moral public domain in 2003 (released in 1975, 28 year copyright term). It's high time our community codified our disdain for perpetual copyright by insisting on a moral public domain.
The Birdie Song (I had to look it up) was released in 1981, so we moral people should continue to pay for it (or better, not listen to it) until sometime later this year on the anniversary of the release date.
how seriously does Microsoft take compatibility?
who said it was okay for Apple to brick unlocked iPhones? i don't have an iPhone, but i thought it was a dick move if there ever was one.
offtopic: what kind of hardware do you use for that box, and how do you like the software configuration?
Yes, you're totally right of course; but the operative word is "should". No computer "should" ever crash, but they do precisely because the programmer didn't "plan to cope with" something. As a programmer, I take full personal blame.
That is a compelling and convincing argument. You have deepened my understanding.
I ask myself that about Windows about fifty times a day.
"Frack! Seriously!? After 20 years of Windows development, trying to open a text file while connected to VPN causes Windows to lock up for 4 minutes!?"
"Frack! Seriously!? After 20 years of Windows development, I still can't rearrange the items in the task bar!?"
"Frack! Seriously!? Alt-F4 was the best shortcut they could think of for 'Close Window'!?"
"Frack! Why don't they show keyboard shortcuts to all the menu items!?"
"Frack! Are you telling me that all Windows users pay for trivial things like FTP clients? FTP has been free for thirty years!"
Well I don't think that's actually what happened. You say the price of gas "was up" and travel "plummeted"; but I would say that the price of gas "skyrocketed" and travel "was down slightly".
I'm not an economist, but my only econ class taught me about "elasticity of demand". For gasoline, demand is very much not elastic, which means that if the price goes up or down, demand will only change a little bit. The price of gas had to go way way way up before driving habits changed. Remember ten years ago when gas was $1.30? Gas had to *triple* in price before driving decreased, and driving decreased by under three percent.
Reference
But still, even if it were true that a gas tax hike would result in less driving, we could have a spirited discussion about whether that was good or bad.
This is a non-sequitur, but are you implying that sales taxes should normally precede income taxes? If so, why? I tend to prefer income taxes, because to me the fairness of the tax (rich people pay more) outweighs the violation of privacy (government knows my income).
Close. That's actually what I meant by "shenanigans".
Yes. This solution is so glaringly obvious that there must be some sinister reason they are ignoring it. I mean, seriously? You're going to go with a fancypants expensive satellite-based high-tech solution requiring lots of new legislation, training, infrastructure, and other costs, not to mention the overwhelming privacy violation -- instead of just raising the tax a little bit? What, seriously? I call shenanigans.
Yeah. I agree with you. I think the waste of time is all the crap we do during the day that *isn't* fun.
What about for mousing? Does it bother you to move your hand to your mouse all the time?