Well, what about home recycling systems based on nanotech disassembly?
Please list where they can be purchased today.
If no one wants to do them, then we can either re-engineer the work to be fun, we can re-engineer it to not be needed, or we can re-engineer it to be automated.
Please explain how to re-engineer the job of miner to be either fun or automated. Remember that mine work requires large amounts of manual intervention and dangerous. List all the technology involved indicating those that do and do not exist today.
Besides, why not just create a public logistics system for moving packages, where the same trucks or robotic vehicles or subway tubes that bring stuff to the homes take unwanted stuff away?
What will power this "public logistics system"? Please list all the known self-guiding robotic vehicles in existence today. Who will build the subway tubes?
Even decades ago we had all the technology to do this almost entirely automatically much more safely.
citation needed Please list all the technology.
Robots. Also, you can print things fully assembled with 3D printers.
Please list all advanced mechanical devices that are completely assembled by robots. How much does that 3D scanner and the 3D printer cost? Are you going to buy one for everyone? Quoting an opinion piece from an anti-capitalism website is not proof of anything. I could just as well use the quote "Greed is good" as it has the exact same support as your quote.
Using sites such as adbusters.org and primitivism.com to bolster your point is foolishness. They are opinion sites with no real scientific research behind them. They propaganda, not fact.
You say in ten years we will have cars that drive themselves, but flying cars have been ten years away for the last fifty years and we still don't have them. The dream of ubiquitous robots has been much closer for almost as long, yet the most common autonomous household robot is the Roomba, a robotic vacuum that is more successful as a niche product conversation piece than a vacuum cleaner.
Everything you have posted relies on non-existent technology, most of which is not even close to being available. Some of the technology would be incredibly dangerous (how do you contain a nanotech general disassembler? What happens if one falls in?)
The society you describe depends on everyone cooperating and being completely altruistic. The history of the humans shows this not to be case. Just look at the USSR for a good example of what happens when a system requires human to be completely altruistic. Or, you could look at both your own link concerning the aboriginal Americans and Columbus, or go talk to some said same about the ancient laws.
Your whole post is at best wishful thinking and at worst failed sociological and political systems.
The issue here is precisely that infringing copyright by downloading and sharing a few songs is simply not a 22,500$ per title crime, EVEN if one does it on purpose.
Why can't we all work a lot less, or some who want to work do it, and others who have other things to do (like raise children or be musicians) do that instead?
And, where will the necessities of modern life come from? If people only do the work they want to do, who will do the dirty jobs? Who will collect the trash? Who will work in the sewer plants? Who will raise the crops and slaughter the animals? Who will mine and smelt the ores? Who will work on the assembly lines doing the same three things for hours on end?
Who will do anything, especially anything even slightly unpleasant, if they can sit around doing nothing and get the same return?
Do you suggest we do away with money? Are you suggesting a collectivist, socialist society? Haven't we seen how well that utopian pipe-dream worked out in real life?
Or, are you suggesting we all return to a tribal hunter/gatherer society? Return to the good old days of huts and an average life expectancy of 40 years and no birth control?
Your little propaganda site is pretty poor substitute for history and common sense.
Microsoft's net income is just under 10 billion euros. The fine was just under 1 billion euros. That is 10%.
The average income in Europe is just over 17 thousand euros. Is the average speeding fine in Europe 1,700 euros?
In the U.S., speeding fines are generally less than $300.00. The average income is just over $41,000. That is.73%.
It is not the equivalent of a speeding ticket, not by an order of magnitude.
"A few days" is more like a full order of magnitude low. 900 million is about a full month's income for Microsoft.
And, that doesn't take into account the fact that the OP is comparing apples to oranges as the offenses are completely different and the penalties are completely different.
We're I to torrent my favorite artists discography (uploading it in the process, and thereby infringing copyright on several tracks), I would be fined... $675,000.
You would be fined up to $150,000.00 per infringement, assuming you are found to have knowingly and willfully infringed. Assuming you act like you didn't know what you were doing was infringement, the damages could be as little as $200.00.
The fine you listed for letting a parking meter run out is 120 times the actual damages. The speeding fine you listed is an infinitely greater amount than the actual damages assuming one does no physical damage to anything.
In the state of Florida, car theft is a third degree felony. One can get 5 years and $5,000 fine. If one steals a car worth $1,000.00 and one makes $20,000 per year and one gets the maximum, one is fined, in effect $105,000 plus loss of freedom.
In this case, dumbass admitted he willfully infringed on someone else's rights and was found liable for $22,500 per infringement. Had he not admitted to it, the damages would have been much less severe, possibly as little as $1,600.
The argument is dead on arrival. The respondent had a fair trial in which he admitted to knowingly and willfully infringing copyrights. He was not denied due process and the damages were awarded as per USC 17.
His fair use argument suffers from the same defect. By definition, what he admitted to was not fair use, but rather infringement.
The claim that "music consumers" should not be subject to the penalties of the law can not be supported. The law applies to all infringers.
Now, I happen to agree that the law is wrong and that the actual damages suffered by the entire record indusry as a result of "file sharing" is close to zero.
Actual damages have nothing to do with the award. The award is statutory. Just like being five minutes late to feed the meter a quarter will get you a $15.00 fine. The damages awarded are not necessarily related to the amount of actual damages. And, it could have been much worse.
The damages are not awarded at $1/song, nor are the damages punitive. Rather, the damages in this case are statutory.
The damages are award as per USC 17 504(c)(2), under which, if "the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000." And, that is per infringement.
Perhaps you should actually learn about copyright law before making statements about it.
I do not steal music, but I am just as likely to be dragged into court as anyone else because the detection methods used by the RIAA are (a) flawed and (b) irrelevant
Please explain how you are "likely to be dragged into court" citing examples.
In other words, you believe in a system where the lazy leach off of the industrious.
Yes, I am sure people who work for a living will have no problem paying the huge amount of taxes that will be required to support those that do not wish to work or wish to work on something that produces little or no income.
At less than a dozen libraries in the United States...Nobody knows where they are or can be found--and just because it shows in a catalog doesn't mean the first two places I contacted could locate it.
So, you are a lazy fuck
Or would have sent it to me even if they could.
Maybe, maybe not, but you didn't even try. Or, ask them to send you a fair-use copy.
My professor had some 40 year old yellowed mimeograph
I see.... You are trying to find a 40yo magazine article.
In other words, you are a lazy loser who wanted to find a 40yo magazine article, did a crappy job of trying to find a copy, and gave up. And now, you are trying to blame your failure on copyright, which, even if it didn't exist and the article was in the public domain, did not cause the loss and/or destruction of the original publications.
Burning works makes them available to no one. Copyright makes works unavailable to very few people. Example: One can borrow a copyrighted book from a library. One can not borrow, or in any other way, access a book that has been burned.
James Boyle, "Bradbury's firemen at least set fire to their own culture out of deep ideological commitment, vile though it may have been. We have set fire to our cultural record for no reason;
We have not "set fire to our cultural record". The firemen in Bradbury's story systematically destroyed works to remove them from the culture. There is no such destruction and/or removal of works from our culture. There is a limiting of the works for the benefit of the copyright holders, but the works still exist and are accessible. The works are even available at lending libraries.
His statement is not a fallacy. It is an outright lie.
of unknown quality who compete on price for services of unknown quality offered, not just the original publisher who may stop supporting old software, which is better support than 90% of FLOSS the support for which consists of using Google and checking forums hoping for an actual response that doesn't boil down to STFU and RTFM n00b!.
There, fixed that for you.
Canonical sells paid support for their distribution, and the other Linux distributors support their distribution. And, it is only the default install of their distribution. They do not support anything that is not a part of the default install. That leaves a massive amount of unsupported software.
CE? It's the only Windows-brand operating system that runs on anything with better battery life than an x86 netbook. That's because makers of other devices aren't free to port the operating system to more power-efficient architectures.
Red Herring: this is about what grandma will do, not what developers can or can not do.
Freedom, not price.
Most people don't care about what you think is freedom. They do not care about source code access. They care about price, features, and support. What part of that did you not understand? They see free, as in beer and if they have to pay, they will pay for a known quantity and a name.
Red herring. The required testing effort increases with each supported configuration whether the software is free or non-free. At some point, the price of testing exceeds what the mass market is willing to pay for a license to run non-free software.
You need to look up the meaning of red herring, or just see where I called you on it up above. At some point, what you say may be true, but that does not change the fact that free software will reach that same point a hell of a lot quicker. People are willing to pay for commercial software that has been tested. People are not willing to pay for "free" software because then it is not what they consider free.
And pay per call, or just give up after the publisher's date of end of support. At least with free software, several firms can compete for users' support dollars.
Or not pay per call depending on company. And, at least there is someone to call, as opposed to FLOSS where there is generally no one to call. Please tell me who I call for support for GIMP? How about MPlayer? Xine? How about Abiword? OpenOffice.org? Thunderbird? FireFox? While firms can compete for a user's support dollars, are there any? And, if so, how does one tell what quality of support one will get?
No, she's going to pay someone else to do it for her.
No, she won't. She will use Windows.
Or the people who use the feature aren't willing to provide enough resources to anybody who can help maintain the feature.
What is your point, exactly? This is free software, so there is no motivation to "provide enough resources". If one has to do that, one may as well buy software.
Every checkbox doubles the number of combinations and therefore increases the number of things that can go wrong.
Open source software can't provide features because they can't test them all? Really? Maybe that why software companies hire people to test the software. Maybe free software developers should do that. Oh, wait, they can't because they give away their product. I guess you think people should "provide enough resources" to the developers to get the software tested. Again, where is the motivation of the people.
What you and the rest of the FLOSS fanboys don't seem to realize is that 95% of people who use computers, the casual user/consumers, don't care about source code access. They care about up-front cost, features, and support. If they are going to have to pay, they may as well go with what they can buy in a store where they can call someone at customer support, not hunt around the internet hoping to find an answer. They want what they consider value, and that is not source code access.
Slashdot Mirror
Please explain why. Remember, your explanation must be relevant to children.
Please list where they can be purchased today.
Please explain how to re-engineer the job of miner to be either fun or automated. Remember that mine work requires large amounts of manual intervention and dangerous. List all the technology involved indicating those that do and do not exist today.
What will power this "public logistics system"? Please list all the known self-guiding robotic vehicles in existence today. Who will build the subway tubes?
citation needed Please list all the technology.
Please list all advanced mechanical devices that are completely assembled by robots. How much does that 3D scanner and the 3D printer cost? Are you going to buy one for everyone?
Quoting an opinion piece from an anti-capitalism website is not proof of anything. I could just as well use the quote "Greed is good" as it has the exact same support as your quote.
Using sites such as adbusters.org and primitivism.com to bolster your point is foolishness. They are opinion sites with no real scientific research behind them. They propaganda, not fact.
You say in ten years we will have cars that drive themselves, but flying cars have been ten years away for the last fifty years and we still don't have them. The dream of ubiquitous robots has been much closer for almost as long, yet the most common autonomous household robot is the Roomba, a robotic vacuum that is more successful as a niche product conversation piece than a vacuum cleaner.
Everything you have posted relies on non-existent technology, most of which is not even close to being available. Some of the technology would be incredibly dangerous (how do you contain a nanotech general disassembler? What happens if one falls in?)
The society you describe depends on everyone cooperating and being completely altruistic. The history of the humans shows this not to be case. Just look at the USSR for a good example of what happens when a system requires human to be completely altruistic. Or, you could look at both your own link concerning the aboriginal Americans and Columbus, or go talk to some said same about the ancient laws.
Your whole post is at best wishful thinking and at worst failed sociological and political systems.
USC 17 405 says you are wrong.
And, where will the necessities of modern life come from? If people only do the work they want to do, who will do the dirty jobs?
Who will collect the trash?
Who will work in the sewer plants?
Who will raise the crops and slaughter the animals?
Who will mine and smelt the ores?
Who will work on the assembly lines doing the same three things for hours on end?
Who will do anything, especially anything even slightly unpleasant, if they can sit around doing nothing and get the same return?
Do you suggest we do away with money? Are you suggesting a collectivist, socialist society? Haven't we seen how well that utopian pipe-dream worked out in real life?
Or, are you suggesting we all return to a tribal hunter/gatherer society? Return to the good old days of huts and an average life expectancy of 40 years and no birth control?
Your little propaganda site is pretty poor substitute for history and common sense.
Microsoft's net income is just under 10 billion euros. The fine was just under 1 billion euros. That is 10%.
The average income in Europe is just over 17 thousand euros. Is the average speeding fine in Europe 1,700 euros?
In the U.S., speeding fines are generally less than $300.00. The average income is just over $41,000. That is .73%.
It is not the equivalent of a speeding ticket, not by an order of magnitude.
"A few days" is more like a full order of magnitude low. 900 million is about a full month's income for Microsoft.
And, that doesn't take into account the fact that the OP is comparing apples to oranges as the offenses are completely different and the penalties are completely different.
My self-interest does not include supporting whiny assholes who demand part of my hard-earned income so they can sit on their asses.
Tell you what, Paul, you send me half your salary so I don't have to work and I will agree with you. Until then, your belief holds no weight.
The OP made a statement. I asked for proof. End of discussion.
How about getting your facts straight?
You would be fined up to $150,000.00 per infringement, assuming you are found to have knowingly and willfully infringed. Assuming you act like you didn't know what you were doing was infringement, the damages could be as little as $200.00.
The fine you listed for letting a parking meter run out is 120 times the actual damages. The speeding fine you listed is an infinitely greater amount than the actual damages assuming one does no physical damage to anything.
In the state of Florida, car theft is a third degree felony. One can get 5 years and $5,000 fine. If one steals a car worth $1,000.00 and one makes $20,000 per year and one gets the maximum, one is fined, in effect $105,000 plus loss of freedom.
In this case, dumbass admitted he willfully infringed on someone else's rights and was found liable for $22,500 per infringement. Had he not admitted to it, the damages would have been much less severe, possibly as little as $1,600.
The argument is dead on arrival. The respondent had a fair trial in which he admitted to knowingly and willfully infringing copyrights. He was not denied due process and the damages were awarded as per USC 17.
His fair use argument suffers from the same defect. By definition, what he admitted to was not fair use, but rather infringement.
The claim that "music consumers" should not be subject to the penalties of the law can not be supported. The law applies to all infringers.
Prove that statement with actual legal opinions and references, including quarterly or yearly financial statements.
This is where you failed:
Actual damages have nothing to do with the award. The award is statutory. Just like being five minutes late to feed the meter a quarter will get you a $15.00 fine. The damages awarded are not necessarily related to the amount of actual damages. And, it could have been much worse.
The damages are not awarded at $1/song, nor are the damages punitive. Rather, the damages in this case are statutory.
The damages are award as per USC 17 504(c)(2), under which, if "the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000." And, that is per infringement.
Perhaps you should actually learn about copyright law before making statements about it.
Please explain how you are "likely to be dragged into court" citing examples.
In other words, you believe in a system where the lazy leach off of the industrious.
Yes, I am sure people who work for a living will have no problem paying the huge amount of taxes that will be required to support those that do not wish to work or wish to work on something that produces little or no income.
Let us examine your statements.
So, you are a lazy fuck
Maybe, maybe not, but you didn't even try. Or, ask them to send you a fair-use copy.
I see.... You are trying to find a 40yo magazine article.
In other words, you are a lazy loser who wanted to find a 40yo magazine article, did a crappy job of trying to find a copy, and gave up. And now, you are trying to blame your failure on copyright, which, even if it didn't exist and the article was in the public domain, did not cause the loss and/or destruction of the original publications.
That about sum it up, right?
Burning works makes them available to no one. Copyright makes works unavailable to very few people. Example: One can borrow a copyrighted book from a library. One can not borrow, or in any other way, access a book that has been burned.
We have not "set fire to our cultural record". The firemen in Bradbury's story systematically destroyed works to remove them from the culture. There is no such destruction and/or removal of works from our culture. There is a limiting of the works for the benefit of the copyright holders, but the works still exist and are accessible. The works are even available at lending libraries.
His statement is not a fallacy. It is an outright lie.
Let me tell you of a magical place where one can borrow and read a book. It is called a Library.
of unknown quality who compete on price for services of unknown quality offered, not just the original publisher who may stop supporting old software, which is better support than 90% of FLOSS the support for which consists of using Google and checking forums hoping for an actual response that doesn't boil down to STFU and RTFM n00b!.
There, fixed that for you.
Canonical sells paid support for their distribution, and the other Linux distributors support their distribution. And, it is only the default install of their distribution. They do not support anything that is not a part of the default install. That leaves a massive amount of unsupported software.
Red Herring: this is about what grandma will do, not what developers can or can not do.
Most people don't care about what you think is freedom. They do not care about source code access. They care about price, features, and support. What part of that did you not understand? They see free, as in beer and if they have to pay, they will pay for a known quantity and a name.
You need to look up the meaning of red herring, or just see where I called you on it up above. At some point, what you say may be true, but that does not change the fact that free software will reach that same point a hell of a lot quicker. People are willing to pay for commercial software that has been tested. People are not willing to pay for "free" software because then it is not what they consider free.
Or not pay per call depending on company. And, at least there is someone to call, as opposed to FLOSS where there is generally no one to call. Please tell me who I call for support for GIMP? How about MPlayer? Xine? How about Abiword? OpenOffice.org? Thunderbird? FireFox? While firms can compete for a user's support dollars, are there any? And, if so, how does one tell what quality of support one will get?
No, she won't. She will use Windows.
What is your point, exactly? This is free software, so there is no motivation to "provide enough resources". If one has to do that, one may as well buy software.
Open source software can't provide features because they can't test them all? Really? Maybe that why software companies hire people to test the software. Maybe free software developers should do that. Oh, wait, they can't because they give away their product. I guess you think people should "provide enough resources" to the developers to get the software tested. Again, where is the motivation of the people.
What you and the rest of the FLOSS fanboys don't seem to realize is that 95% of people who use computers, the casual user/consumers, don't care about source code access. They care about up-front cost, features, and support. If they are going to have to pay, they may as well go with what they can buy in a store where they can call someone at customer support, not hunt around the internet hoping to find an answer. They want what they consider value, and that is not source code access.
Says the Linux/(F)LOSS fanboy.
In other words, you are complaining that NORAD has gone out of its way and not supported Linux, which is the same damned thing.
Yes, they should do that because it would be better for you and just fuck the kids who this is really for.
You are just another selfish geek thinking the world should revolve around your wants.
Maybe NORAD decided not to waste the manpower to support an OS that has less than 5% market share.
Oh, wait, that headline doesn't sound anywhere near as outrageous.