but where exactly does our right to "fair use" come from?
Good question. This is what the law reads:
Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified in that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --
1.the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2.the nature of the copyrighted work;
3.the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4.the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. (Emphasis added)
While IANAL, it seems to me that this is very different from the concept of 'Fair Use' that is thrown around on Slashdot - that is mostly limited copying for education purposes is allowed as 'fair use'.
The following links give some examples of 'Fair Use'.
So we're seeing one giant step BACKWARDS the past few years, then.
Bingo. The steps backwards we are seeing are due to the fact that existing laws/institutions were and are not protecting copyright holders. Thus the only way they can protect themselves is with means very much less desirable to society as a whole. As/if conventional copyright/patent laws become unsatisfactory, creators of intellectual property will become less willing to make their work available in forms that these laws traditionally protected. The result we are seeing is a return to less freedom to the user and a decline in utility for these materials.
The history of intellectual property is quite clear - and the reasons that we have copyright and patent laws are still fundamentally sound.
I think it would be highly unlikely that all 160 countries that recognize patent rights would immediately follow the US down the toilet.
People would no longer be hampered by fascist laws and life saving drugs would suddenly be affordable to third world countries.
Third world countries don't have the infrastructure to deliver the drugs even if they were FREE. Look at the history of vacinations or control of common parisites in Africa. The UN not only has to supply the drugs free, but also supply the infrastructure to deliver them.
Also the best possible solutions to technological problems would be quickly adopted by all as opposed to people spending an incredible amount of effort trying to circumvent somebody else's patent and reinventing the wheel. What a waste!
People who spout this sort of nonsense have NO grasp of the history of technology in commerce. Prior to the establishment of patents in 18th century England innovation and dissemination of technological progress was greatly hampered by the need for inventors to keep their inventions secret to prevent their being copied. The result was machines in sealed boxes, guilds where the methods of manufacture were kept secret by draconian contract, and licenses or contracts prohibiting the reverse engineering of goods sold. Some historians even attribute the onset of the industrial revolution to the passage of patent laws. Talk about re-inventing the wheel - since there was no body of published technology (i.e. patents) anyone wanting to develop an invention had to do so from scratch since everything was kept secret.
Patents changed all that by establishment of a right to commercial exploitation for a limited period of time of an invention in exchange for full disclosure.
If you think that people cannot get together to innovate, consider NASA.
Yes, let's consider NASA. A giant pork-barrel for defense contractors. No stockholders. No profitability. No responsiveness whatsoever to market needs.
Consider also that innovation is already heavily funded by governments
After repealing patents ALL innovation will have to be funded by governments. Didn't the Soviet Union and Japan's MITI teach us a lesson about centrally planned economies?
Do a search on the net for DARPA funded projects and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about.
My Dad was a senior DARPA project manager. He got to administer projects like the ceramic diesel engine. Give me a fscking break.
The US Patent files have ALWAYS been public (since the founding of the UPTO over 200 years ago anyway).
Anyone can saunter into the USPTO and peruse the files.
It's a very different question as to whether a government agency should be required to spend taxpayer dollars to make their files freely available on the internet. The cost for doing so is non-trivial; many would argue that the people who use it should pay for it.
Would you expect to go to the USPTO and not have to pay for use of the photocopy machine ? I wouldn't.
I prefer a schedule where only major updates are done once every few months.
Yeah, and in the meantime your server is wide open to attackers. Most compromises of Windows systems occur because of the patch every few months mentality.
The fact is that good security requires the holes be plugged as soon as they are discovered.
I don't think Apple is worse. Back in the early days they bundled in products like MacWrite and MacPaint. When they realized this was hurting the development of better third party products, they dropped these products. Fat chance of Microsoft ever responding in such a manner.
Re:I believe you're wrong
on
Bioinformatics
·
· Score: 2
As a PhD student in bioinformatics, I must say I strongly disagree with you.
I am not saying its a bad career choice, or anything like that. But the article made it sound like this was going to cause a big increase in the overall demand for CS types. It just isn't so. The overall projections are not something I just made up, either - there are plenty of well thought out surveys being published as to where this is going. I have advanced degrees in Math, Chemistry and a lot experience in industrial use of statistics, as well as strong programming skills, and have followed this field with great interest. Living in central NJ, where many of these bioinformatics companies are headquartered, this seemed like a field that I would be able use my skills. But after some real investigation of the nature of the business I decided that this was not where I wanted to go.
You talk about 'companies with thier foot biology', please tell me what exactly those are except the Pharmas and Agribusinesses? Nobody else is messing with genes.
Hospitals are not going to have people writing bioinformatics software on staff - there is a little matter of FDA regulations on what they can use. Biotech companies that develop hardware are part of the core bioinformatics industry - their customers are the same Pharmas. Departments at universities are nice IF you can get a faculty position. Otherwise you will be paid $30,000 per year and be living grant to grant. No thanks.
There is something to be said for this position (that drug companies can't make money on curing diseases but rather by selling drugs that treat symptoms),
I don't buy it. Drug companies operate in a competitive marketplace, whith very cost concious insurance companies footing the bill. If company A has a product that treats on symptoms, it's product will be soon replaced by company B's that actually treats the disease. Finally B's product will be driven out of the market by a product from Company C that cures the disease. The body of medical knowledge IS cumulative, and company C's route to profit is to develop a better product than B's.
Sure, there is a process here, and some diseases may never have a cure, but the fact is that cures do really enter the marketplace, and drive out treatments.
Don't quit your day job. While bioinformatics is a very interesting and exciting area, it is also a very small field, with potential for maybe to be a $10 billion industry at most. Bioinformatics companies have a very limited number of potential clients - other pharm companies - for which they perform various services. In addition the skills requirements usually include advanced degrees in biology or statistics, things few average programmers can offer.
It's the same code running on the same box - a dual P2 400 with 0.5 GB of RAM. No ifdefs. Programs are invoked from the command line. Relatively small results datasets are saved to files. Because of the size of the input dataset, and the crappy indexes the main performance determinant is the efficiency of disk i/o and buffering thereof.
For this application the 2.4 kernel kicks butt up and down the street all day. YMMV.
Every evening I run a disk/memory intensive program that does a 3 year analysis of the US stock market. When moving from 2.2.x to 2.4.x I obtained a run time decrease from 270 to 190 seconds. This to me was a VERY impressive upgrade. The same code running on Win2000 takes 1300 seconds to run.
And your Kodak example does not work; repatriation of overseas profits is a positive item in the current a/c
Repatriation of profits certainly is included in the c/a, however profits are only a fraction of the total economic activity represented by the foreign manufacture and importation of goods. The net c/a from this activity is clearly negative.
What is important if the ratio of domestic revenues to total revenues. Clearly that is falling for large American companies, which of course are those listed in the public markets. Thus relying on historic GDP - market valuation ratios to gauge whether a stock is overvalued is misleading because it neglects the stake in offshore economic activity such companies have.
New York had the highest energy costs in the nation.
New York State is not at all homogenous. NY City and Long Island have horrendously high rates, while central and western NY are quite low.
There is always a political tug of war regarding distribution of cheap hydro power from the St. Lawrence to the rest of the state, but you could always count on upstate being relatively cheap.
When I moved from upstate NY to NJ my power rates tripled.
your theory would have the implication that the USA was selling more goods and services overseas than it imported.
This has nothing to do with balance of payments. A company can make plenty of money in overseas operations without importing or exporting squat.
Suppose I'm Kodak, and manufacture my CD-R's in Mexico, and sell them worldwide. When sold in the US they look like imports to your statistics, and thus negative. However to Kodak they are a positive part of their revenue and profit picture.
look at how doctors have to be on call and serve a residency that means they have to work 18 hr shifts and are continually on call for a few YEARS... all while being paid CRAP
Give me a break. The average US Doctor's salary is over $190,000. So what if you have put in a residency, the payoff is BIG.
Slashdot Mirror
but where exactly does our right to "fair use" come from?
Good question. This is what the law reads:
Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified in that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --
1.the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2.the nature of the copyrighted work;
3.the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4.the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. (Emphasis added)
While IANAL, it seems to me that this is very different from the concept of 'Fair Use' that is thrown around on Slashdot - that is mostly limited copying for education purposes is allowed as 'fair use'.
The following links give some examples of 'Fair Use'.
http://www.cetus.org/fair5.html
http://www.control-g.com/CFUL.00.html
http://www.cs.orst.edu/~cook/copyr.html
So we're seeing one giant step BACKWARDS the past few years, then.
Bingo. The steps backwards we are seeing are due to the fact that existing laws/institutions were and are not protecting copyright holders. Thus the only way they can protect themselves is with means very much less desirable to society as a whole. As/if conventional copyright/patent laws become unsatisfactory, creators of intellectual property will become less willing to make their work available in forms that these laws traditionally protected. The result we are seeing is a return to less freedom to the user and a decline in utility for these materials.
The history of intellectual property is quite clear - and the reasons that we have copyright and patent laws are still fundamentally sound.
Kinda like the DMCA, right? Oh... the DMCA applies EVEN WITH patent laws. Interesting.
The DCMA covers copyrighted materials which is a completely different body of law.
Reverse engineering FOR THE PURPOSES OF EVADING COPY PROTECTION is the prohibition here. If you have some other use in mind, go ahead.
All countries would have to follow suit.
I think it would be highly unlikely that all 160 countries that recognize patent rights would immediately follow the US down the toilet.
People would no longer be hampered by fascist laws and life saving drugs would suddenly be affordable to third world countries.
Third world countries don't have the infrastructure to deliver the drugs even if they were FREE. Look at the history of vacinations or control of common parisites in Africa. The UN not only has to supply the drugs free, but also supply the infrastructure to deliver them.
Also the best possible solutions to technological problems would be quickly adopted by all as opposed to people spending an incredible amount of effort trying to circumvent somebody else's patent and reinventing the wheel. What a waste!
People who spout this sort of nonsense have NO grasp of the history of technology in commerce. Prior to the establishment of patents in 18th century England innovation and dissemination of technological progress was greatly hampered by the need for inventors to keep their inventions secret to prevent their being copied. The result was machines in sealed boxes, guilds where the methods of manufacture were kept secret by draconian contract, and licenses or contracts prohibiting the reverse engineering of goods sold. Some historians even attribute the onset of the industrial revolution to the passage of patent laws. Talk about re-inventing the wheel - since there was no body of published technology (i.e. patents) anyone wanting to develop an invention had to do so from scratch since everything was kept secret.
Patents changed all that by establishment of a right to commercial exploitation for a limited period of time of an invention in exchange for full disclosure.
If you think that people cannot get together to innovate, consider NASA.
Yes, let's consider NASA. A giant pork-barrel for defense contractors. No stockholders. No profitability. No responsiveness whatsoever to market needs.
Consider also that innovation is already heavily funded by governments
After repealing patents ALL innovation will have to be funded by governments. Didn't the Soviet Union and Japan's MITI teach us a lesson about centrally planned economies?
Do a search on the net for DARPA funded projects and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about.
My Dad was a senior DARPA project manager. He got to administer projects like the ceramic diesel engine. Give me a fscking break.
Folks, this is for corporate legal offices, and does not bode well for the struggling entrepreneur or the academic researcher.
To begin with most University libraries have the patent database on CD ROM available for full text searching and immediate printout.
If the entreprenuer is struggling to the point where he cannot afford $75 for one month access to Delpion, he isn't going to make it anyway.
That would solve the problem.
Sure would. It would cause a mass exodus of all technolgical development from the US to countries that do recognize patents.
The US Patent files have ALWAYS been public (since the founding of the UPTO over 200 years ago anyway).
Anyone can saunter into the USPTO and peruse the files.
It's a very different question as to whether a government agency should be required to spend taxpayer dollars to make their files freely available on the internet. The cost for doing so is non-trivial; many would argue that the people who use it should pay for it.
Would you expect to go to the USPTO and not have to pay for use of the photocopy machine ? I wouldn't.
No. Patents cannot be copyrighted.
Windows XP can.
Sounds nice, except it isn't a released product.
I prefer a schedule where only major updates are done once every few months.
Yeah, and in the meantime your server is wide open to attackers. Most compromises of Windows systems occur because of the patch every few months mentality.
The fact is that good security requires the holes be plugged as soon as they are discovered.
MacOSX can't burn CD's because of a bug,
Not true at all. OS X was not capable of burning CDs when originally shipped because the components were not ready.
Since shipping Apple has supplied several downloadable updates and enhancements, one of which enables CD burning.
I don't think Apple is worse. Back in the early days they bundled in products like MacWrite and MacPaint. When they realized this was hurting the development of better third party products, they dropped these products. Fat chance of Microsoft ever responding in such a manner.
As a PhD student in bioinformatics, I must say I strongly disagree with you.
I am not saying its a bad career choice, or anything like that. But the article made it sound like this was going to cause a big increase in the overall demand for CS types. It just isn't so. The overall projections are not something I just made up, either - there are plenty of well thought out surveys being published as to where this is going. I have advanced degrees in Math, Chemistry and a lot experience in industrial use of statistics, as well as strong programming skills, and have followed this field with great interest. Living in central NJ, where many of these bioinformatics companies are headquartered, this seemed like a field that I would be able use my skills. But after some real investigation of the nature of the business I decided that this was not where I wanted to go.
You talk about 'companies with thier foot biology', please tell me what exactly those are except the Pharmas and Agribusinesses? Nobody else is messing with genes.
Hospitals are not going to have people writing bioinformatics software on staff - there is a little matter of FDA regulations on what they can use. Biotech companies that develop hardware are part of the core bioinformatics industry - their customers are the same Pharmas. Departments at universities are nice IF you can get a faculty position. Otherwise you will be paid $30,000 per year and be living grant to grant. No thanks.
There is something to be said for this position (that drug companies can't make money on curing diseases but rather by selling drugs that treat symptoms),
I don't buy it. Drug companies operate in a competitive marketplace, whith very cost concious insurance companies footing the bill. If company A has a product that treats on symptoms, it's product will be soon replaced by company B's that actually treats the disease. Finally B's product will be driven out of the market by a product from Company C that cures the disease. The body of medical knowledge IS cumulative, and company C's route to profit is to develop a better product than B's.
Sure, there is a process here, and some diseases may never have a cure, but the fact is that cures do really enter the marketplace, and drive out treatments.
Don't quit your day job. While bioinformatics is a very interesting and exciting area, it is also a very small field, with potential for maybe to be a $10 billion industry at most. Bioinformatics companies have a very limited number of potential clients - other pharm companies - for which they perform various services. In addition the skills requirements usually include advanced degrees in biology or statistics, things few average programmers can offer.
Try printing in color to a HP Deskjet printer from Linux.
Over three years it's still positive.
It's the same code running on the same box - a dual P2 400 with 0.5 GB of RAM. No ifdefs. Programs are invoked from the command line. Relatively small results datasets are saved to files. Because of the size of the input dataset, and the crappy indexes the main performance determinant is the efficiency of disk i/o and buffering thereof.
For this application the 2.4 kernel kicks butt up and down the street all day. YMMV.
Every evening I run a disk/memory intensive program that does a 3 year analysis of the US stock market. When moving from 2.2.x to 2.4.x I obtained a run time decrease from 270 to 190 seconds. This to me was a VERY impressive upgrade. The same code running on Win2000 takes 1300 seconds to run.
And your Kodak example does not work; repatriation of overseas profits is a positive item in the current a/c
Repatriation of profits certainly is included in the c/a, however profits are only a fraction of the total economic activity represented by the foreign manufacture and importation of goods. The net c/a from this activity is clearly negative.
What is important if the ratio of domestic revenues to total revenues. Clearly that is falling for large American companies, which of course are those listed in the public markets. Thus relying on historic GDP - market valuation ratios to gauge whether a stock is overvalued is misleading because it neglects the stake in offshore economic activity such companies have.
New York had the highest energy costs in the nation.
New York State is not at all homogenous. NY City and Long Island have horrendously high rates, while central and western NY are quite low.
There is always a political tug of war regarding distribution of cheap hydro power from the St. Lawrence to the rest of the state, but you could always count on upstate being relatively cheap.
When I moved from upstate NY to NJ my power rates tripled.
your theory would have the implication that the USA was selling more goods and services overseas than it imported.
This has nothing to do with balance of payments. A company can make plenty of money in overseas operations without importing or exporting squat.
Suppose I'm Kodak, and manufacture my CD-R's in Mexico, and sell them worldwide. When sold in the US they look like imports to your statistics, and thus negative. However to Kodak they are a positive part of their revenue and profit picture.
look at how doctors have to be on call and serve a residency that means they have to work 18 hr shifts and are continually on call for a few YEARS... all while being paid CRAP
Give me a break. The average US Doctor's salary is over $190,000. So what if you have put in a residency, the payoff is BIG.
while historical data shows it as always regressing towards a value of 50% of the GDP
Historically a US company's market was almost all domestic. That is not true any more. A large US company often has 50% of it's revenue offshore.
Correcting for offshore economic activity and the 50 year average of 70% puts the current GDP/valuation at no more than 10% above historic norms.