Let's put it this way, could Evolution be proven wrong? Perhaps, but it would take an insane level of evidence to do that. Something like finding a rabbit fossil where only single cell organisms should be. Absent from that level of insane evidence, challenges to Evolution are in the "tweak not toss" category. Maybe hominids developed a little earlier. Maybe dinosaurs were a little different. A tweak here and a tweak there and Evolution survives as a changed theory. (You still won't get cavemen riding dinosaurs, though.)
So while it is true that Evolution could be proven wrong, the chances are minuscule. You have better odds of buying a single lotto ticket and hitting the $300 million jackpot than you have of Evolution being proven completely and totally wrong.
With fraud alerts, banks/lenders/etc are recommended to do some verification work, but they aren't *required* to do so. Some institutions might skip the verification and thus allow more ID theft to go on. Better to freeze your credit entirely. It costs some money to place, thaw and remove (how much depends on your state and whether or not you've been a victim of ID theft), but it is definitely worthwhile. As a bonus, since credit card companies can't see your credit information, they won't "pre-approve" you for credit cards and send those blank forms which then need to be shredded lest some ID thief steal them.
Of course, the credit agencies hate security freezes. They want you to place fraud alerts because they can still sell your credit information and you can still sign up for store credit cards on the fly. That's why their lobbyists will fight any bill that promises to make security freezes less expensive or easier to obtain.
That's what my wife and I did to our credit after my identity was stolen. It was a slight hassle when I needed to buy a new car. I had to thaw our credit for a small time frame. Still, that slight hassle is nothing compared with the hassle of repairing a stolen identity. Of course, the credit agencies don't like security freezes. They make their money off of selling your data to other companies and they can't sell frozen accounts. They'd much rather you put a next-to-useless fraud alert on your account so they could continue to profit off of your information (and so you could still open up accounts spur of the moment).
More than once she mentions items which don't have copyright protections because they are "too utilitarian." If computer software is "about utility" why should it have copyright protection?
As far as trademark is concerned, this only really applies to the logo. You can't trademark a design. I can't make a new type of shoe and say "this is trademarked so now you can't copy it." I can, however, make a unique "shoe logo" and stamp it prominently on every shoe I sell. Then, when the knockoff designers make copies of my shoes, they won't have the cool design on their shoes.
When it comes to the question of why pay for a movie when you download it for free, this is where I think price, availability, hassle and extras can tip the scales. First of all, don't price your product too high or people won't buy it and will seek out other methods of obtaining it (either used or pirated versions). Secondly, make your product available. I can't count how many times people have said they wanted to buy movie X but couldn't because it wasn't released in their DVD region. Thirdly, if you add hassles to your legal copy (DRM, unskippable ads, etc) people will flock away from it. Alternatively, if you make it hassle-free, people will choose it over trying to find and download a good pirated copy. Lastly, if you include cool extra features in your paid-version, people will buy that over the "just the movie DVD rip" torrent.
This isn't to say that everyone would flock to the paid-for copy. There are people out there who would download the pirated version even if the movie company was selling a DRM-free, Platinum Version with a thousand extra features for $5. You just need to realize that these people aren't your customers. Just like Gucci realized that the people buying cheap Gucci knock-offs weren't their customers.
Perhaps you can even find a way to profit from them like some high fashion designers who knocked off their own looks for sale to the "cheap knockoff" chains. To give an example from Disney, they're currently giving away free music every day for 50 days. ( http://twitter.com/disneymusic ) The "free music buffs" will eat this up and download every one. They might even discover that they like the song and go out and buy the album it came from. In the end, Disney is "out" 50 songs yet potentially increases their sales. (And yes, I know that Disney is a huge source of our current copyright woes, but like any big company there are good things they do and bad things. I figured I'd give them credit for one of the good things.)
How old's the TCP/IP stack running most computers?
TCP/IP isn't protected by copyright. Anyone can write code to communicate via TCP/IP without paying any copyright holder.
How old's the Linux/OSX/Windows kernel?
Focusing just on Windows for a second (since admittedly that's the one I know the most about), it is almost a year old (Windows 7). It was preceded by a version (Vista) that is now 3 years old. That, in turn, was preceded by a version (XP) that is now over 8 years old. This is where most people who use Windows will stop, though a minority might use previous versions like ME (9 years old), 98 (nearly 12 years old) or 95 (closing in on 15 years old). You can also go all the way back to Windows 1.0 if you want, but virtually nobody uses that anymore.
Since XP is still the most used OS (followed by Vista and Windows 7), I'd say that the lifespan of a Windows kernel is somewhere around 10 years at the most. (Certainly not 95 years!)
What about the MP3 file format?
How many other file formats were created that aren't being used anymore? Should long copyright terms be maintained on them to protect MP3?
To bring this back to the world of film, there were 47 films released in 1977. (Source: http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/index1977.php ) Of these, one (Star Wars) is still a major money earner and perhaps five are still moderate money earners. The rest likely bring in only the occasional DVD sale. So for the sake of profits from perhaps 6 movies, the copyright on 41 movies is lengthened. Going back another decade to 1967 ( http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/index1967.php ), there are 33 films of which maybe 5 still make moderate amounts of money. Why should we keep copyrights on 85% of works lengthened for the sake of 15% of works?
Back in 2004, Ars Technica reported that the PTC was responsible for 99% of the complaints that the FCC receives and was seeking to get auto-generated complaints (aka spam complaints) accepted as valid by the FCC. (Source: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2004/12/4442.ars )
I don't know if they're still generating most of them, but whenever someone is complaining about indecency on TV, it seems to be the PTC. In my mind, they're just a bunch of stuck up whiners. (Though they do seem to be for ala carte cable* so they're not all bad.)
* Granted this is so they could ditch channels that show "dirty" programs like Friends or *gasp* Family Guy and only have channels that show clean programs like Everyone Loves Raymond.
I'm under no illusion that I would have been beaten up. I could have easily taken any one of them one-on-one and they knew that also. That's why they would bully me in groups of three or more but were quiet if they passed me in the hall by themselves. Still, I was so angry at that moment that my first strike might have seriously injured one of the bullies before the rest of them had time to react.
From reading the responses, it looks like most people encountered "physical bullies." The big brutes who would push you down to steal your lunch money or beat you up behind the school if you didn't do as they said.
I had psychological bullies. They never threatened to beat me up. Though non-violent, I was a big guy and they rightly figured out that I would easily beat them up if I decided to fight back. Instead, they would follow me around making fun of me, blocking my entrance to class, etc. All of these actions didn't threaten me with physical harm, but it was relentless torment. Day in and day out. If I tried to avoid them, they'd follow me and tease me more. It wasn't a question of *if* they would torment me on a given day but *how much* would they torment me.
Needless to say, it took it's toll. If I fought back, well they never laid a hand on me so I'd be the bad guy and would have been punished as such. (Or at least, that's what I was afraid of at the time.) I didn't feel like I had anyone to talk to about it so I bottled my feelings up and came close to being extremely violent over it.
My salvation came when I opened up to a friend of mine who happened to be on speaking terms with the bullies. They thought of their activities as "just harmless fun" and didn't think it was anything that was really hurting me. They stopped, but it took me years to recover.
Countering a physical bully is one thing: You fight back and suddenly you aren't this easy target anymore. Countering a psychological bully is another matter entirely. Fighting just makes you seem like the aggressor since the school has no proof of the bullying happening (or chooses to turn a blind eye until it gets violent).
When my high school reunion approached, I wanted to go to it to show all the bullies what a success in life I was and to see how awful their lives were. I thought it would be closure to my years of being relentlessly bullied by a "gang" of kids in high school.
Then, I found out that my high school reunion was going to charge admission and I thought about it more. I decided that I didn't need any closure. I had my good life. I had found and married a wonderful woman and had two great kids. I didn't need them to acknowledge anything about what I had done with my life. I also didn't care about them one way or another. They could be successful executives or homeless junkies, in the end it didn't matter to me. (Though I will still admit to hoping from time to time that they are miserable failures as karmic payback for their years of tormenting me.)
That's outrageous. You have to wonder if he would have gotten in trouble for "touching" if he let the bully punch him repeatedly. After all, he would have been "touching" the bully's fists with his head, stomach, etc. What would the school have him do, especially on a school bus where there is limited movement? Jump off the bus to keep from touching the bully?
I ran into bullying also, but unlike you I did not fight back for fear of being punished the same as the bullies. I held in my anger and frustration over the situation and it affected me deeply.
One day, while my bullies (they'd never confront me alone) blocked my entrance to my classroom, I saw red. I mean that literally. Everything looked like it was tinted red and I was about to strike out very violently at the nearest bully. Luckily, my teacher walked up at that moment and dispersed the bullies.
To this day, it still scares me thinking about just what I might have done had my teacher been a few minutes late. Whenever I hear of school shootings or kids taking their lives due to bullying, I think back to high school and realize that I could have been one of those kids had things fallen out differently.
So if you post a photo of yourself, your wife, your kids, or some other loved one, are you ok with some ad company using that photo in an ad campaign of theirs (no matter what the product) without asking for your permission or giving you any monetary compensation? I know I'm not. Just because I post something on the Internet doesn't mean I've given up my copyright ownership of the item.
I think you've just hit upon the most effective form of DRM yet. Everyone who buys a copy of the Ultimate Shimmery Shining Steel Special Edition gets a disc encased in ten feet of solid steel. Let's see the pirates try to copy that! Sure, the people who buy it won't be able to view the movie, but that's a small price (for them) to pay for protecting movies from those evil, evil pirates.
So we have some prisoners and we want them to get some skills for when they leave prison.
Make them work?
Great idea!
Doing data entry?
Ok, I guess since they'll be low paid.
For banks?
Wait a second... For banks? So we'll have prisoners handling massive amounts of banking data?!!! Something tells me this won't end well. For the banking customers, that is. It might end very well for the prisoners (some side cash "earned") and Radiant (cut costs means bonuses for management).
I tried it out. They don't just provide the fact, they say who the sources are (either domain name or, by clicking "Show Sources" the direct URLs). So if you find a fact on Google, you can check the sources to make sure it is reputable.
That's nothing. If Looney Tunes has taught me anything, plugging the pipe up with golf balls/shredded tires will cause the pipe to bulge... then the entire ground will bulge... then the entire area with explode covering everything with oil for miles around.
And it wouldn't be too big a burden on YouTube (or pretty much any other site) to police their user uploaded content? Let's say I upload a video. There's a copyright on that video so should YouTube prevent it from being uploaded? Well, what about if I was the one who made it? Should they allow it now? What if I made it for a studio who now owns the copyright? Deny it? What if the (enlightened) studio is working with me to promote their products by putting the video online? Allow it?
There is no way for Google to sort through all of these. The only option for them might be to shut down YouTube completely. (Which is exactly what Viacom really wants.)
Some kids take pens and pencils and mark up desks costing schools money. Given this reasoning, we should ban all pencils and pens in schools and give detention to any student found with them.
Also, paper can be turned into spitballs which not only need to be cleaned up but cause distractions. Therefore, all paper should be banned also.
I do that too (played via a CinemaTube and external HDD), but technically that's illegal also. Ok, not illegal to rip it but illegal to have a tool that will rip it which pretty much makes the "right to rip" moot. Of course, I don't share out my rips so there aren't any "lost sales" for the MPAA to worry about.
As others have said, it's unfair to factor in paying for 3 seasons of a show for each year.
I've looked into this also and most of the shows I care about are on Hulu or Netflix streaming. Other than that, though, there are a few I'd have to pay for (Mythbusters). Assuming a household of 4 people with each person following 4 shows that need to be paid for (at $2 per episode) and assuming about 25 episodes per season (to keep things even), you'd need to pay 4 * 4 * 2 * 25 or $800 a year. This comes out to about $67 a month which is comparable to cable subscriptions.
In my personal case, my kids are young and could be satisfied with Netflix (both online & DVD), library DVD rentals and the occasional DVD purchase. I'd be happy with Netflix and buying Mythbusters. My wife would have a few shows she would want to buy (say, 4). So, for us, our monthly show purchase cost would be about $21. Even after adding in Netflix (~$14), it would be less than cable TV. (We haven't cut yet, but might just do it soon.)
Slashdot Mirror
Let's put it this way, could Evolution be proven wrong? Perhaps, but it would take an insane level of evidence to do that. Something like finding a rabbit fossil where only single cell organisms should be. Absent from that level of insane evidence, challenges to Evolution are in the "tweak not toss" category. Maybe hominids developed a little earlier. Maybe dinosaurs were a little different. A tweak here and a tweak there and Evolution survives as a changed theory. (You still won't get cavemen riding dinosaurs, though.)
So while it is true that Evolution could be proven wrong, the chances are minuscule. You have better odds of buying a single lotto ticket and hitting the $300 million jackpot than you have of Evolution being proven completely and totally wrong.
The ad on the RSS feed for this story was for a Tetris clone called 99 Bricks. Irony?
With fraud alerts, banks/lenders/etc are recommended to do some verification work, but they aren't *required* to do so. Some institutions might skip the verification and thus allow more ID theft to go on. Better to freeze your credit entirely. It costs some money to place, thaw and remove (how much depends on your state and whether or not you've been a victim of ID theft), but it is definitely worthwhile. As a bonus, since credit card companies can't see your credit information, they won't "pre-approve" you for credit cards and send those blank forms which then need to be shredded lest some ID thief steal them.
Of course, the credit agencies hate security freezes. They want you to place fraud alerts because they can still sell your credit information and you can still sign up for store credit cards on the fly. That's why their lobbyists will fight any bill that promises to make security freezes less expensive or easier to obtain.
That's what my wife and I did to our credit after my identity was stolen. It was a slight hassle when I needed to buy a new car. I had to thaw our credit for a small time frame. Still, that slight hassle is nothing compared with the hassle of repairing a stolen identity. Of course, the credit agencies don't like security freezes. They make their money off of selling your data to other companies and they can't sell frozen accounts. They'd much rather you put a next-to-useless fraud alert on your account so they could continue to profit off of your information (and so you could still open up accounts spur of the moment).
More than once she mentions items which don't have copyright protections because they are "too utilitarian." If computer software is "about utility" why should it have copyright protection?
As far as trademark is concerned, this only really applies to the logo. You can't trademark a design. I can't make a new type of shoe and say "this is trademarked so now you can't copy it." I can, however, make a unique "shoe logo" and stamp it prominently on every shoe I sell. Then, when the knockoff designers make copies of my shoes, they won't have the cool design on their shoes.
When it comes to the question of why pay for a movie when you download it for free, this is where I think price, availability, hassle and extras can tip the scales. First of all, don't price your product too high or people won't buy it and will seek out other methods of obtaining it (either used or pirated versions). Secondly, make your product available. I can't count how many times people have said they wanted to buy movie X but couldn't because it wasn't released in their DVD region. Thirdly, if you add hassles to your legal copy (DRM, unskippable ads, etc) people will flock away from it. Alternatively, if you make it hassle-free, people will choose it over trying to find and download a good pirated copy. Lastly, if you include cool extra features in your paid-version, people will buy that over the "just the movie DVD rip" torrent.
This isn't to say that everyone would flock to the paid-for copy. There are people out there who would download the pirated version even if the movie company was selling a DRM-free, Platinum Version with a thousand extra features for $5. You just need to realize that these people aren't your customers. Just like Gucci realized that the people buying cheap Gucci knock-offs weren't their customers.
Perhaps you can even find a way to profit from them like some high fashion designers who knocked off their own looks for sale to the "cheap knockoff" chains. To give an example from Disney, they're currently giving away free music every day for 50 days. ( http://twitter.com/disneymusic ) The "free music buffs" will eat this up and download every one. They might even discover that they like the song and go out and buy the album it came from. In the end, Disney is "out" 50 songs yet potentially increases their sales. (And yes, I know that Disney is a huge source of our current copyright woes, but like any big company there are good things they do and bad things. I figured I'd give them credit for one of the good things.)
TCP/IP isn't protected by copyright. Anyone can write code to communicate via TCP/IP without paying any copyright holder.
Focusing just on Windows for a second (since admittedly that's the one I know the most about), it is almost a year old (Windows 7). It was preceded by a version (Vista) that is now 3 years old. That, in turn, was preceded by a version (XP) that is now over 8 years old. This is where most people who use Windows will stop, though a minority might use previous versions like ME (9 years old), 98 (nearly 12 years old) or 95 (closing in on 15 years old). You can also go all the way back to Windows 1.0 if you want, but virtually nobody uses that anymore.
Since XP is still the most used OS (followed by Vista and Windows 7), I'd say that the lifespan of a Windows kernel is somewhere around 10 years at the most. (Certainly not 95 years!)
How many other file formats were created that aren't being used anymore? Should long copyright terms be maintained on them to protect MP3?
To bring this back to the world of film, there were 47 films released in 1977. (Source: http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/index1977.php ) Of these, one (Star Wars) is still a major money earner and perhaps five are still moderate money earners. The rest likely bring in only the occasional DVD sale. So for the sake of profits from perhaps 6 movies, the copyright on 41 movies is lengthened. Going back another decade to 1967 ( http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/index1967.php ), there are 33 films of which maybe 5 still make moderate amounts of money. Why should we keep copyrights on 85% of works lengthened for the sake of 15% of works?
Holy Dollar Sign Pound Sign Asterisk Exclamation Point!
Back in 2004, Ars Technica reported that the PTC was responsible for 99% of the complaints that the FCC receives and was seeking to get auto-generated complaints (aka spam complaints) accepted as valid by the FCC. (Source: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2004/12/4442.ars )
I don't know if they're still generating most of them, but whenever someone is complaining about indecency on TV, it seems to be the PTC. In my mind, they're just a bunch of stuck up whiners. (Though they do seem to be for ala carte cable* so they're not all bad.)
* Granted this is so they could ditch channels that show "dirty" programs like Friends or *gasp* Family Guy and only have channels that show clean programs like Everyone Loves Raymond.
I'm under no illusion that I would have been beaten up. I could have easily taken any one of them one-on-one and they knew that also. That's why they would bully me in groups of three or more but were quiet if they passed me in the hall by themselves. Still, I was so angry at that moment that my first strike might have seriously injured one of the bullies before the rest of them had time to react.
From reading the responses, it looks like most people encountered "physical bullies." The big brutes who would push you down to steal your lunch money or beat you up behind the school if you didn't do as they said.
I had psychological bullies. They never threatened to beat me up. Though non-violent, I was a big guy and they rightly figured out that I would easily beat them up if I decided to fight back. Instead, they would follow me around making fun of me, blocking my entrance to class, etc. All of these actions didn't threaten me with physical harm, but it was relentless torment. Day in and day out. If I tried to avoid them, they'd follow me and tease me more. It wasn't a question of *if* they would torment me on a given day but *how much* would they torment me.
Needless to say, it took it's toll. If I fought back, well they never laid a hand on me so I'd be the bad guy and would have been punished as such. (Or at least, that's what I was afraid of at the time.) I didn't feel like I had anyone to talk to about it so I bottled my feelings up and came close to being extremely violent over it.
My salvation came when I opened up to a friend of mine who happened to be on speaking terms with the bullies. They thought of their activities as "just harmless fun" and didn't think it was anything that was really hurting me. They stopped, but it took me years to recover.
Countering a physical bully is one thing: You fight back and suddenly you aren't this easy target anymore. Countering a psychological bully is another matter entirely. Fighting just makes you seem like the aggressor since the school has no proof of the bullying happening (or chooses to turn a blind eye until it gets violent).
When my high school reunion approached, I wanted to go to it to show all the bullies what a success in life I was and to see how awful their lives were. I thought it would be closure to my years of being relentlessly bullied by a "gang" of kids in high school.
Then, I found out that my high school reunion was going to charge admission and I thought about it more. I decided that I didn't need any closure. I had my good life. I had found and married a wonderful woman and had two great kids. I didn't need them to acknowledge anything about what I had done with my life. I also didn't care about them one way or another. They could be successful executives or homeless junkies, in the end it didn't matter to me. (Though I will still admit to hoping from time to time that they are miserable failures as karmic payback for their years of tormenting me.)
That's outrageous. You have to wonder if he would have gotten in trouble for "touching" if he let the bully punch him repeatedly. After all, he would have been "touching" the bully's fists with his head, stomach, etc. What would the school have him do, especially on a school bus where there is limited movement? Jump off the bus to keep from touching the bully?
I ran into bullying also, but unlike you I did not fight back for fear of being punished the same as the bullies. I held in my anger and frustration over the situation and it affected me deeply.
One day, while my bullies (they'd never confront me alone) blocked my entrance to my classroom, I saw red. I mean that literally. Everything looked like it was tinted red and I was about to strike out very violently at the nearest bully. Luckily, my teacher walked up at that moment and dispersed the bullies.
To this day, it still scares me thinking about just what I might have done had my teacher been a few minutes late. Whenever I hear of school shootings or kids taking their lives due to bullying, I think back to high school and realize that I could have been one of those kids had things fallen out differently.
So if you post a photo of yourself, your wife, your kids, or some other loved one, are you ok with some ad company using that photo in an ad campaign of theirs (no matter what the product) without asking for your permission or giving you any monetary compensation? I know I'm not. Just because I post something on the Internet doesn't mean I've given up my copyright ownership of the item.
I think you've just hit upon the most effective form of DRM yet. Everyone who buys a copy of the Ultimate Shimmery Shining Steel Special Edition gets a disc encased in ten feet of solid steel. Let's see the pirates try to copy that! Sure, the people who buy it won't be able to view the movie, but that's a small price (for them) to pay for protecting movies from those evil, evil pirates.
So we have some prisoners and we want them to get some skills for when they leave prison.
Make them work?
Great idea!
Doing data entry?
Ok, I guess since they'll be low paid.
For banks?
Wait a second... For banks? So we'll have prisoners handling massive amounts of banking data?!!! Something tells me this won't end well. For the banking customers, that is. It might end very well for the prisoners (some side cash "earned") and Radiant (cut costs means bonuses for management).
I tried it out. They don't just provide the fact, they say who the sources are (either domain name or, by clicking "Show Sources" the direct URLs). So if you find a fact on Google, you can check the sources to make sure it is reputable.
Actually, this was for the hit program "Survivor: Galaxy" and the black hole was just voted off.
Weekend at George's?
That's nothing. If Looney Tunes has taught me anything, plugging the pipe up with golf balls/shredded tires will cause the pipe to bulge... then the entire ground will bulge... then the entire area with explode covering everything with oil for miles around.
And it wouldn't be too big a burden on YouTube (or pretty much any other site) to police their user uploaded content? Let's say I upload a video. There's a copyright on that video so should YouTube prevent it from being uploaded? Well, what about if I was the one who made it? Should they allow it now? What if I made it for a studio who now owns the copyright? Deny it? What if the (enlightened) studio is working with me to promote their products by putting the video online? Allow it?
There is no way for Google to sort through all of these. The only option for them might be to shut down YouTube completely. (Which is exactly what Viacom really wants.)
Some kids take pens and pencils and mark up desks costing schools money. Given this reasoning, we should ban all pencils and pens in schools and give detention to any student found with them.
Also, paper can be turned into spitballs which not only need to be cleaned up but cause distractions. Therefore, all paper should be banned also.
Taking school authority seriously is one thing, but should we also teach kids that we should follow authority no matter how stupid the rules seem?
I do that too (played via a CinemaTube and external HDD), but technically that's illegal also. Ok, not illegal to rip it but illegal to have a tool that will rip it which pretty much makes the "right to rip" moot. Of course, I don't share out my rips so there aren't any "lost sales" for the MPAA to worry about.
As others have said, it's unfair to factor in paying for 3 seasons of a show for each year.
I've looked into this also and most of the shows I care about are on Hulu or Netflix streaming. Other than that, though, there are a few I'd have to pay for (Mythbusters). Assuming a household of 4 people with each person following 4 shows that need to be paid for (at $2 per episode) and assuming about 25 episodes per season (to keep things even), you'd need to pay 4 * 4 * 2 * 25 or $800 a year. This comes out to about $67 a month which is comparable to cable subscriptions.
In my personal case, my kids are young and could be satisfied with Netflix (both online & DVD), library DVD rentals and the occasional DVD purchase. I'd be happy with Netflix and buying Mythbusters. My wife would have a few shows she would want to buy (say, 4). So, for us, our monthly show purchase cost would be about $21. Even after adding in Netflix (~$14), it would be less than cable TV. (We haven't cut yet, but might just do it soon.)