"Serious restrictions on freedom of expression"? It would be nice to know WHAT part of Europe you are referring to.
Most of them.
IMHO, the country I live in stille are more free when it comes to expression than the US.
Really? What enlightened place would that be? Can't be Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy, or Spain.
The copyright restrictions pushed on us now are backed by interests over in the great media publishing giant in the west,
You don't know squat. The current copyright regime was mostly imposed by Europe on the rest of the world, back when Europe still had some international muscle and backbone. European book and news publishers are extremely powerful and they are pushing for their own restrictions. Yeah, US software publishers and the US movie industry are trying to get their cut, but who can blame them?
Are you living under a rock? Do you know anything about politics in Europe? Just recently John Galliano was hauled into criminal court for "racist comments"; he is facing a fine and prison time. In a drunken stupor, he had called a woman a "Jewish bitch" and said "I love Hitler". Mind you, this is a gay Jewish fashion designer having a private argument in a bar, not some political agitator speaking to the masses.
No fair use? Citation needed because I seriously believe you pulled that one out of your ass
Type "fair use" into Wikipedia (the English version).
over here at least schools are free to use published articles in their entirety as they see fit, for example
Perhaps, perhaps not. In many countries, schools pay for that, you just don't know it.
And yeah spreading hate and trying to retroactively alter history (eg. negationism) isn't allowed in most of Europe, which is bad how?
Translation: Europeans believe the version of history taught by the government because other versions are considered "alterations". It works so well you don't even notice it.
There's limits to prevent LACK of competition (ask all of your fellow Americans that get the "choice" of having only 1 cable provider how well that works for them)
Yeah, because as we all know, every European is guaranteed a choice of three ISPs by law, right?
No idea why you were modded informative, as a Troll you did a damn good job though
Obviously you have "no idea"; you have "no idea" of a lot of things.
Unpopular as software patents are here on slashdot, under current patent laws, they're completely justified
They'd be justified if their patents were valid, but they probably are not. However, as long as they keep the licensing costs below what a legal fight would likely cost a company, companies will license.
I can't even remotely justify it as either humiliating or desperate; it's well-played despite being immensely back-handed.
Microsoft doesn't need more money (they have plenty of that), they need market share and new successful products, and they have neither and their cash doesn't seem to help them. They tried buying successful startups and integrating them into Microsoft only to have the resulting products fail miserably.
Yeah, and that will happen after you launch a successful Facebook competitor and become a gazillionaire, right? These patents matter because the few companies that could possibly compete with facebook are global.
As for "truly free", Europe has serious restrictions on freedom of expression, much more onerous copyright restrictions (no fair use, for example), and strong limits on competition; in comparison, software patents are a small issue. And software patents are being pushed onto the member countries through the EU.
That's because version numbers matter. Major version number changes mean that something breaks compatibility. Minor version number changes mean that there are significant changes in functionality. And the third number is changed when there are only bug fixes.
Did I say that anywhere? I'm actually not for a complete abolition of patents or copyrights. But companies have manipulated the political process so that patents and copyrights work mostly in their favor and against the interests of society as a whole, and even against the interests of artists and engineers, and that needs to be addressed.
I think copyrights should require registration and be limited to 28 years, and for patents, we should drop the presumption of validity in court and have the patent owner actually prove novelty and non-obviousness in court when there is a dispute.
There is still a barrier to entry for fashion. If you want to duplicate a dress you love you have to spin up a factory in China or spend hours at a sewing machine, sourcing materials etc.
The overhead of that is insignificant compared to the profit. And it doesn't really matter how difficult it is, the fact is that tens of thousands of companies do just that, yet name-brand fashion houses have no problem selling their creations.
A movie copied is a perfect duplicate. Whether that's a Chinese DVD or an 'official' DVD it'll be identical bit for bit.
That's a false analogy, since DVDs themselves are really just low quality knock-offs of the original movies. The equivalent of a name-brand designer dress is the projection in a good movie theater. That's how the movie industry measures its success, and that doesn't require copyrights or draconian enforcement against home viewers to protect.
You're barking up the wrong tree. I did not argue for the complete abolition of patents or copyrights, I pointed out the fallacy in someone's arguments. Actually, I am for a restoration of the copyright terms as they were originally envisioned: 14 years, plus another 14 years, with a registration requirement. And patents should be easier to defeat in court.
The world revolves around IP. If it didn't exist, millions in the US alone would be unemployed and the global economy would be much smaller.
Your argument is like saying that we should spill oil into the ocean because cleaning it up creates jobs and economic growth. It does, but the collateral damage is too high and the work is not productive or beneficial. That's why we penalize companies for oil spills instead of rewarding them. Your argument is for the kind of approach that was popular in the Soviet Union: creating fake jobs just to give people work.
In fact, if copyrights and patents didn't exist, people would have different kinds of jobs--arguably jobs that would be a lot more beneficial to society. But, as I was saying: I wasn't even arguing for a complete abolition of copyrights or patents, I was pointing out errors in someone's arguments.
And like I said, that commercial crap pays for the indie films that you love so much (which I would point out are almost all 1) Made with the intent to profit. 2) Crewed by crews who work on "commercial Crap" 3) Borrowing equipment from rental houses which bought it from studios renting their gear for "Commercial Crap".... The entire industry is funded by "commercial crap". And I've never heard of a feature film which wasn't financed with on the assumption that it could pay itself off from a distribution deal.
It is the commercial movie industry that is responsible for making films so expensive and for perpetuating this model. By feeding audiences a constant diet of over-the-top visuals, stunts, etc., all films need to conform to that model. It's just like when fast food restaurants get customers accustomed to lots of fat, sugar, and salt. Good drama and storytelling doesn't require more than actors, a stage, and some cheap props.
Not to mention that 95% of a film crew has no creative input. Why would an electrician work on a film when he isn't going to get payed? "For the love the art." What art? He's an electrician.
See above: first, most of the crew is only there to create an expensive visual style that has little to do with the drama itself. Second, yes, people donate their time and skill just to be part of an artistic endeavor. Third, from many industries, we know that professionals and artists actually share tools voluntarily when intellectual property laws don't prevent them from doing it.
Without the ability to sign a distribution deal (and IP law to protect the distributor's exclusivity) then almost none of those "micro budget" indie films in the $200k range would get funded.
And the problem with that would be... what?
My grandfather was conductor of a local symphony, all volunteers and non-professionals, and they were good. That's all gone thanks to the commercial music industry. It's the same with the movie industry, killing off theater and drama.
And the problem is getting worse: the movie industry, just like newspapers, sees its oligopoly erode as production is getting cheaper and cheaper. In a few years, telling a story as a movie will cost next to nothing. That's why the studios are getting ever more aggressive about asserting rights to stories, names, and ideas--things they themselves usually didn't even come up with in the first place.
I would highly disagree that True Grit, Jaws, Star Wars, Munich, Blood Diamond, 2001, Battlestar Galactica, Good Night and Good Luck, The Assassination of Jesse James etc etc etc... are all just commercial crap.
That's incorrect. In Europe, you often acquire a copyright even for a 2D reproduction. Depending on the circumstances, this may be a totally new copyright or a more limited right.
Furthermore, calling it "copyfraud" doesn't make it fraud; as your link itself points out: companies do it and they get away with it.
It all comes down to what makes your own moral Geiger counter start clicking.
That "moral Geiger counter" seems to be broken at the other end, however, when content creators use political muscle to extend copyright terms again and again; when they prevent content from getting into the public domain through legal tricks; when they force consumers to buy the same content again and again through technological obsolescence; when TV and movie studios raid the literary classics for ideas and then try to claim copyrights on the resulting stories; when they demand fees and taxes in order to compensate them for private copying and then still go out and prevent that copying.
Morality and decency has to be a two-way street, but right now, consumers are by-and-large treating the studios and publishers morally, while they are screwing consumers over again and again.
Many geeks work for companies who sell intellectual property. If there was no protection for intellectual property then there would be no employer to provide them a salary.
Many people get paid to create without intellectual property protection. I'm not just talking open source developers and academics, but also really big industries like fashion:
The movie and TV industries are insignificant in comparison, both in the degree of creativity (barely existent) and in their economic significance (small).
In the case of TV and Film you would probably have none of the films or TV shows you've seen in the last few years.
Maybe we'd get some decent content again instead of that low-quality, derivative commercial crap. Maybe people would enter the industry again who do it because they care about the product instead of fame and fortune. Maybe live theater would start doing better again. Altogether, there's a good chance that performing arts would greatly improve if we got rid of the legal basis under which Hollywood and the TV studios have gotten big and usurped our culture.
If you're an author
Nobody is forcing you to be an author now, and nobody would be forcing you to be an author if we curtail or abolish copyright.
And that's ignoring just the morality of it.
What morality? Copyrights and patents are a utilitarian deal: we give you this opportunity for profit in order to encourage you to create something. And as a society, we can change the deal, and if you don't like it, just don't create anything and become a plumber instead. The world doesn't owe you a job as a writer or movie maker.
ALL PROPERTY IS IMAGINARY PROPERTY. Your house is wood. Who says you get to own that wood and brick and concrete? A piece of paper, if that. There is no special property to material goods which imbues it with moral worth.
Wow, are you really that dim that you don't understand the difference between something physical and something non-physical?
Furthermore, copyrights and patents are temporary, artificial grants of monopolies, something that is legally and practically quite distinct from property.
Well, Fuck You. I want to make a living off of my creativity and intellect. I work long, often 14+ hour days to create what you want to have. If imaginary property has no value and requires no input of resources go fucking do it yourself. But no, you won't (and you probably can't even if you wanted to).
(1) Many geeks don't get more than a salary from their intellectual creations. They'd likely get the same salary if copyright didn't exist. In fact, copyright and patents often make work harder and less pleasant for geeks.
(2) Just because something takes work to create doesn't mean there should be laws that ensure you get paid for it. It's a cost/benefit tradeoff. If copyrights and patents didn't exist, some content might not get created, and other content that doesn't get created now would get created. It's far from obvious that we'd be worse off.
From the way you describe your work and your attitudes towards it, I have my doubts that we'd be worse off without your creations.
And I'm certainly guilty just this week of failing to pay for parking and downloading torrents.
Well, I'm not. Sounds like you really have a problem with moral behavior, which is probably why you complain so loudly about other people's torrents and then insist on immoral intellectual property laws.
I must have written part of my post in invisible ink. There's no, "And it's Google's fault!"
That is the usual implication of these complaints against Google from Europeans. If that wasn't your intent, it's a good idea to be clearer.
The people who should be most ashamed of their behaviour are the British people for tolerating the behaviour of their recent governments,
This isn't "recent" British governments. European copyright law has been messed up for at least a century, and Europeans imposed much of it on the rest of the world, including the US.
Of course, being given the opportunity to take advantage doesn't absolve you of the responsibility for taking it. Your moral obligation is to what is moral, not to what is legal. (Yes, corporations have no inherent morals. Yes, that's a problem.)
Google has already been pushing the envelope on making information free in Europe and European publishers and media companies are up in arms about it. Why do you think Google is getting all that bad press in Europe?
I think asking them to give up the little legal leverage they have over the content they digitize is really asking too much. If they did, what would happen is that European publishers would jump on the content, sell it at inflated prices, and then complain about Google destroying their business. Kind of like they're doing already.
First of all, Google acquired a copyright to the scans, not the work itself. Second, the fact that Google even acquired that is the fault of European copyright law. Europe could adopt laws under which 2D reproductions of 2D originals do not acquire a separate copyright.
As for the British library, it only has itself to blame for not letting other people scan its content. Don't try to turn the arrogance and possessiveness of the British library into Google's fault.
That "Don't dress like a slut" comment came right out of the bad old days of rape legal defense. Defense attorneys used to work two arguments:
What arguments defense attorneys use to get their sleazy clients off the hook is totally irrelevant. What matters is that it is a reasonable inference that women who dress scantily are at higher risk of getting raped.
Do you really think how a woman is dressed matters to a rapist?
Yes. And so do you: men are sexually aroused by visible sexual characteristics (or, in some cases, fetishes). Take the visual stimulus away and you get less arousal, and likely less rape.
Time for some soul-searching maybe. When you see a hot woman, and you know you can't have her, it makes you just a little bit frustrated, and maybe a little bit angry, doesn't it?
I'm not the GP poster, but personally I have no interest in women at all. But as a gay man, I have absolutely no trouble understanding that if I don't want to get beat up or raped, I have to dress appropriately depending on circumstances and stay out of some situations. There are also places that it isn't sensible for me to go as a white male or a wimpy geek. Getting upset about that is about as sensible as getting upset about the existence of gravity. That realization has nothing to do with the morality or legality of such attacks, nor should it have any bearing on legal proceedings.
And by the way, that "Slut Walk" comment came from a Toronto police officer who implied that a woman deserved to be raped because she dressed like a slut. [msn.com]
No, that's not what he "implied". You quoted what he said:
A Toronto police officer who told a gathering of university students that women could avoid sexual assault by not dressing like "sluts" has issued an apology.
When women expose primary or secondary sexual characteristics to men, some of the men are going to lack the impulse control to keep themselves from raping the women. It doesn't imply anything about who "deserves" what, it is not a moral judgment, it's just an observation about biology. If that observation is demeaning to anybody, it's demeaning to men.
Our society gives men and women a lot of freedoms, in the sense of not making things illegal. For example, in some places, you can drive without a seat belt. You can smoke. You can have sex without a condom. You can own a gun. And you can now expose parts of your body to the public that used to land you in jail, and unmarried women and men can get together privately late at night. The fact that you can do those things and that you have those freedoms doesn't mean that it is wise to take advantage of them or that society will go out of its way to make your conduct safe.
None of that means that society doesn't punish the guilty or try to care for you afterwards. If you leave your bike unlocked and it gets stolen, the thief is still a criminal in the eyes of the law. If you have wild unprotected sex and catch HIV, health insurance will still cover you. And if you're a woman and run scantily clad through a group of thugs or if you go home with someone you picked up at a bar and got to see more than his etchings, police will still try to find the rapists and bring them to judgment. Nevertheless, we can tell all these people that their behavior was stupid.
Speaking as a brother, a husband and a father of daughters, the boy that made that comment has no business being allowed out on his own, let alone wearing a badge.
Your misrepresentations and demagoguery aren't going to make your daughters any safer. And with all your political correctness and self-righteous indignation, if your daughters "dressed like sluts", you'd give them an earful because you know full well that doing so is a bad idea.
Able is parenting things they clearly didn't invent. That is fraud. And other companies are not doing it to the same degree.
For legalistic reasons, that kind of fraud is hard to prosecute these days. That is something that needs to change. Apple needs to be held responsible for their actions, and companies like apple need to be punished if we want to have a computer industry in this country at all.
Yes, they have copyrights on the compilation. But they have to respect the rights of the Linux copyright holders, and those rights say "you can only distribute the software under these conditions".
So, if they want to distribute, they have to allow modification. If they don't allow modification, they can enjoy their own copyright in the privacy of their own home, but they can't distribute the compilation without violating someone else's copyright.
Slashdot Mirror
Europe does not guarantee fair use rights to its citizens. Go look up the details on Wikipedia under... wait for it... "fair use".
Most of them.
Really? What enlightened place would that be? Can't be Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy, or Spain.
You don't know squat. The current copyright regime was mostly imposed by Europe on the rest of the world, back when Europe still had some international muscle and backbone. European book and news publishers are extremely powerful and they are pushing for their own restrictions. Yeah, US software publishers and the US movie industry are trying to get their cut, but who can blame them?
Are you living under a rock? Do you know anything about politics in Europe? Just recently John Galliano was hauled into criminal court for "racist comments"; he is facing a fine and prison time. In a drunken stupor, he had called a woman a "Jewish bitch" and said "I love Hitler". Mind you, this is a gay Jewish fashion designer having a private argument in a bar, not some political agitator speaking to the masses.
Type "fair use" into Wikipedia (the English version).
Perhaps, perhaps not. In many countries, schools pay for that, you just don't know it.
Translation: Europeans believe the version of history taught by the government because other versions are considered "alterations". It works so well you don't even notice it.
Yeah, because as we all know, every European is guaranteed a choice of three ISPs by law, right?
Obviously you have "no idea"; you have "no idea" of a lot of things.
They'd be justified if their patents were valid, but they probably are not. However, as long as they keep the licensing costs below what a legal fight would likely cost a company, companies will license.
Microsoft doesn't need more money (they have plenty of that), they need market share and new successful products, and they have neither and their cash doesn't seem to help them. They tried buying successful startups and integrating them into Microsoft only to have the resulting products fail miserably.
Yeah, and that will happen after you launch a successful Facebook competitor and become a gazillionaire, right? These patents matter because the few companies that could possibly compete with facebook are global.
As for "truly free", Europe has serious restrictions on freedom of expression, much more onerous copyright restrictions (no fair use, for example), and strong limits on competition; in comparison, software patents are a small issue. And software patents are being pushed onto the member countries through the EU.
That's because version numbers matter. Major version number changes mean that something breaks compatibility. Minor version number changes mean that there are significant changes in functionality. And the third number is changed when there are only bug fixes.
Did I say that anywhere? I'm actually not for a complete abolition of patents or copyrights. But companies have manipulated the political process so that patents and copyrights work mostly in their favor and against the interests of society as a whole, and even against the interests of artists and engineers, and that needs to be addressed.
I think copyrights should require registration and be limited to 28 years, and for patents, we should drop the presumption of validity in court and have the patent owner actually prove novelty and non-obviousness in court when there is a dispute.
The overhead of that is insignificant compared to the profit. And it doesn't really matter how difficult it is, the fact is that tens of thousands of companies do just that, yet name-brand fashion houses have no problem selling their creations.
That's a false analogy, since DVDs themselves are really just low quality knock-offs of the original movies. The equivalent of a name-brand designer dress is the projection in a good movie theater. That's how the movie industry measures its success, and that doesn't require copyrights or draconian enforcement against home viewers to protect.
You're barking up the wrong tree. I did not argue for the complete abolition of patents or copyrights, I pointed out the fallacy in someone's arguments. Actually, I am for a restoration of the copyright terms as they were originally envisioned: 14 years, plus another 14 years, with a registration requirement. And patents should be easier to defeat in court.
Your argument is like saying that we should spill oil into the ocean because cleaning it up creates jobs and economic growth. It does, but the collateral damage is too high and the work is not productive or beneficial. That's why we penalize companies for oil spills instead of rewarding them. Your argument is for the kind of approach that was popular in the Soviet Union: creating fake jobs just to give people work.
In fact, if copyrights and patents didn't exist, people would have different kinds of jobs--arguably jobs that would be a lot more beneficial to society. But, as I was saying: I wasn't even arguing for a complete abolition of copyrights or patents, I was pointing out errors in someone's arguments.
It is the commercial movie industry that is responsible for making films so expensive and for perpetuating this model. By feeding audiences a constant diet of over-the-top visuals, stunts, etc., all films need to conform to that model. It's just like when fast food restaurants get customers accustomed to lots of fat, sugar, and salt. Good drama and storytelling doesn't require more than actors, a stage, and some cheap props.
See above: first, most of the crew is only there to create an expensive visual style that has little to do with the drama itself. Second, yes, people donate their time and skill just to be part of an artistic endeavor. Third, from many industries, we know that professionals and artists actually share tools voluntarily when intellectual property laws don't prevent them from doing it.
And the problem with that would be... what?
My grandfather was conductor of a local symphony, all volunteers and non-professionals, and they were good. That's all gone thanks to the commercial music industry. It's the same with the movie industry, killing off theater and drama.
And the problem is getting worse: the movie industry, just like newspapers, sees its oligopoly erode as production is getting cheaper and cheaper. In a few years, telling a story as a movie will cost next to nothing. That's why the studios are getting ever more aggressive about asserting rights to stories, names, and ideas--things they themselves usually didn't even come up with in the first place.
Well, I think you have not taste.
That's incorrect. In Europe, you often acquire a copyright even for a 2D reproduction. Depending on the circumstances, this may be a totally new copyright or a more limited right.
Furthermore, calling it "copyfraud" doesn't make it fraud; as your link itself points out: companies do it and they get away with it.
That "moral Geiger counter" seems to be broken at the other end, however, when content creators use political muscle to extend copyright terms again and again; when they prevent content from getting into the public domain through legal tricks; when they force consumers to buy the same content again and again through technological obsolescence; when TV and movie studios raid the literary classics for ideas and then try to claim copyrights on the resulting stories; when they demand fees and taxes in order to compensate them for private copying and then still go out and prevent that copying.
Morality and decency has to be a two-way street, but right now, consumers are by-and-large treating the studios and publishers morally, while they are screwing consumers over again and again.
Many people get paid to create without intellectual property protection. I'm not just talking open source developers and academics, but also really big industries like fashion:
http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html
The movie and TV industries are insignificant in comparison, both in the degree of creativity (barely existent) and in their economic significance (small).
Maybe we'd get some decent content again instead of that low-quality, derivative commercial crap. Maybe people would enter the industry again who do it because they care about the product instead of fame and fortune. Maybe live theater would start doing better again. Altogether, there's a good chance that performing arts would greatly improve if we got rid of the legal basis under which Hollywood and the TV studios have gotten big and usurped our culture.
Nobody is forcing you to be an author now, and nobody would be forcing you to be an author if we curtail or abolish copyright.
What morality? Copyrights and patents are a utilitarian deal: we give you this opportunity for profit in order to encourage you to create something. And as a society, we can change the deal, and if you don't like it, just don't create anything and become a plumber instead. The world doesn't owe you a job as a writer or movie maker.
Wow, are you really that dim that you don't understand the difference between something physical and something non-physical?
Furthermore, copyrights and patents are temporary, artificial grants of monopolies, something that is legally and practically quite distinct from property.
I think it's a lot more; the idea of people going to the store in order to scan barcodes to rip off movies they don't own is ridiculous.
But who cares anyway? The software has substantial non-infringing uses.
(1) Many geeks don't get more than a salary from their intellectual creations. They'd likely get the same salary if copyright didn't exist. In fact, copyright and patents often make work harder and less pleasant for geeks.
(2) Just because something takes work to create doesn't mean there should be laws that ensure you get paid for it. It's a cost/benefit tradeoff. If copyrights and patents didn't exist, some content might not get created, and other content that doesn't get created now would get created. It's far from obvious that we'd be worse off.
From the way you describe your work and your attitudes towards it, I have my doubts that we'd be worse off without your creations.
Well, I'm not. Sounds like you really have a problem with moral behavior, which is probably why you complain so loudly about other people's torrents and then insist on immoral intellectual property laws.
Really? How is picking up my DVD off my shelf and then downloading a lower quality torrent on my phone so that I can take it with me "theft"?
That is the usual implication of these complaints against Google from Europeans. If that wasn't your intent, it's a good idea to be clearer.
This isn't "recent" British governments. European copyright law has been messed up for at least a century, and Europeans imposed much of it on the rest of the world, including the US.
Google has already been pushing the envelope on making information free in Europe and European publishers and media companies are up in arms about it. Why do you think Google is getting all that bad press in Europe?
I think asking them to give up the little legal leverage they have over the content they digitize is really asking too much. If they did, what would happen is that European publishers would jump on the content, sell it at inflated prices, and then complain about Google destroying their business. Kind of like they're doing already.
The HTC Desire already has a tiny pointing device integrated into its selection key (an optical mouse). How much smaller do these things need to be?
http://www.htc.com/www/product/desire/overview.html
First of all, Google acquired a copyright to the scans, not the work itself. Second, the fact that Google even acquired that is the fault of European copyright law. Europe could adopt laws under which 2D reproductions of 2D originals do not acquire a separate copyright.
As for the British library, it only has itself to blame for not letting other people scan its content. Don't try to turn the arrogance and possessiveness of the British library into Google's fault.
What arguments defense attorneys use to get their sleazy clients off the hook is totally irrelevant. What matters is that it is a reasonable inference that women who dress scantily are at higher risk of getting raped.
Yes. And so do you: men are sexually aroused by visible sexual characteristics (or, in some cases, fetishes). Take the visual stimulus away and you get less arousal, and likely less rape.
I'm not the GP poster, but personally I have no interest in women at all. But as a gay man, I have absolutely no trouble understanding that if I don't want to get beat up or raped, I have to dress appropriately depending on circumstances and stay out of some situations. There are also places that it isn't sensible for me to go as a white male or a wimpy geek. Getting upset about that is about as sensible as getting upset about the existence of gravity. That realization has nothing to do with the morality or legality of such attacks, nor should it have any bearing on legal proceedings.
No, that's not what he "implied". You quoted what he said:
When women expose primary or secondary sexual characteristics to men, some of the men are going to lack the impulse control to keep themselves from raping the women. It doesn't imply anything about who "deserves" what, it is not a moral judgment, it's just an observation about biology. If that observation is demeaning to anybody, it's demeaning to men.
Our society gives men and women a lot of freedoms, in the sense of not making things illegal. For example, in some places, you can drive without a seat belt. You can smoke. You can have sex without a condom. You can own a gun. And you can now expose parts of your body to the public that used to land you in jail, and unmarried women and men can get together privately late at night. The fact that you can do those things and that you have those freedoms doesn't mean that it is wise to take advantage of them or that society will go out of its way to make your conduct safe.
None of that means that society doesn't punish the guilty or try to care for you afterwards. If you leave your bike unlocked and it gets stolen, the thief is still a criminal in the eyes of the law. If you have wild unprotected sex and catch HIV, health insurance will still cover you. And if you're a woman and run scantily clad through a group of thugs or if you go home with someone you picked up at a bar and got to see more than his etchings, police will still try to find the rapists and bring them to judgment. Nevertheless, we can tell all these people that their behavior was stupid.
Your misrepresentations and demagoguery aren't going to make your daughters any safer. And with all your political correctness and self-righteous indignation, if your daughters "dressed like sluts", you'd give them an earful because you know full well that doing so is a bad idea.
Able is parenting things they clearly didn't invent. That is fraud. And other companies are not doing it to the same degree.
For legalistic reasons, that kind of fraud is hard to prosecute these days. That is something that needs to change. Apple needs to be held responsible for their actions, and companies like apple need to be punished if we want to have a computer industry in this country at all.
Where is my human level OCR, Mr. Kurzweil? Still waiting for that one.
Yes, they have copyrights on the compilation. But they have to respect the rights of the Linux copyright holders, and those rights say "you can only distribute the software under these conditions".
So, if they want to distribute, they have to allow modification. If they don't allow modification, they can enjoy their own copyright in the privacy of their own home, but they can't distribute the compilation without violating someone else's copyright.