However - we are moving in the same direction as Germany in many other cases. We are already paying a "piracy" tax on all blank media sold.
No, we're not. We're paying GEMA-Gebühren, which is not a tax ("Steuer"), but a levy ("Gebühr"). If you're unaware of the difference, check who collects them: taxes are collected by the state (with the exception of Mehrwertsteuer [i.e. VAT] for which another collection mechanism exists). And it doesn't cover piracy, it compensates for private and academic use copying, which is legal in Germany.
What doesn't make sense is that it's a tax on something which is illegal.
No, it isn't. Firstly, it's not a tax, it's a levy collected by a third body and redistributed to creators of written content. Secondly, it doesn't compensate them for illegal copying, it compensates them for the amount of Fair Use copying that is legal under German law (private and academic use).
I'm surprised that people aren't more upset by the fact that you had here a court creating law.
It isn't. It just says that the already existing mandatory compensation fee on Xerox machines (and the like) also extends to PCs. The fee was established to compensate content creators for the copying (of written content) that is allowed under the German Fair Use law. I think it's a bit ridiculous to apply this to computers, but obviously the court thought otherwise.
While on the face of it I think the ruling is bogus, I'd be a little bit more upset that judiciary just created a new tax, something that is clearly the job of a legislative body.
No. First, it's not a tax (that goes to the state), it's a fee (that goes to a separate body that redistributes it to content creators). Second, the fee isn't new, it already existed; the court only decided whether it also applied to computers or not.
that some sort of legislative body makes the laws and the judicial system rules on disputes over those laws.
Does anybody care about napster.com since it was corporatized?
Napster was a company right from the start. Someone had to be running the Napster servers. The fact that they had no business model worth speaking of and that they were later bought out doesn't change their initial commercial nature.
Perhaps the next file you download has Bin Laden's latest prayer steganographized into it; ignorant of this, you feel compelled to share the file further !!
Are Bin Laden speeches (prayers whatever) illegal now or what? It would be news to me if they were found somehow comparable to child pornography, from a legal point of view.
The problem with Freenet isn't that it's a channel for kiddie porn, but that anyone who uses it could potentially be charged with distributing child pornography.
Given how Freenet works, this would be (almost) impossible to prove. And due to the anonymous nature of the network, you can be charged with it about as much as US Postal could if you put child pornography in a sealed envelope.
To my knowledge, Russia now has another space port, Plesetsk, and is actively developing it. Perhaps this is to minimise dependency on Kazakhstan and "their" Baikonur.
Both are completely different centers. Plesetsk is an old missile base, development and control center. It's mainly being used for military launches and for polar orbits, to which the Baikonur site is ill-suited. Plesetsk has no facilities for manned launches.
Baikonur a.k.a. Tyuratam was leased to Russia by Kazakhstan in 1994 for a yearly lease of US-$ 115 million. The lease contract ran until 2014 initially and was prolonged to 2050 in 2004. The site is administered by the Russians and simultaneously under Russian and Kazakh law, an interesting situation legally. The difficult phase you describe was between 1991 and 1994; as of now, the situation is quite stable.
I'm downloading something huge from Lokitorrent's tracker that isn't Warez or related to the RIAA or MPAA.
Should I be punished by having that download bonkered when the tracker is forced to shut down?
No, and you aren't, because their Cease and desist letter is only requesting them to "immediately stop distributing torrents that correspond to copyrighted works owned by MPAA members, stop tracking copyrighted works owned by the MPAA members, and stop all other activities that contribute to infringement", infringement having been mentioned in the preceding sentence as pertaining to MPAA copyrighted works.
If you don't download MPAA materials from LokiTorrent, then the impending suit doesn't affect you at all. I wonder what you're downloading, however, since I don't see a lot of non-infringing material on the site.
Teflon was invented in 1938 by Roy Plunkett at DuPont Laboratories and commercialized in the 1950's. I don't know why this myth connecting teflon and space keeps coming up. Same situation for plastics, if you don't narrow it down specifically.
#1 the computer you're using now -- space exploration pushed the microelectoronics revolution
Microelectronics isn't all that related to space, too. Transistors and ICs were well in use in the 1950's and early sixties. The microelectronics on spacecraft tend to be specifically less complicated than their counterparts on Earth, simply because of radiation resistance. For example, Intel introduced the Pentium in 1993, yet it took them until 2002 (IIRC) to put one on a spacecraft. The contract to develop a space-hardened version of the chip wasn't even awarded until 1998/9. Attributing people's PCs to space research is stretching it, too.
Just because something is labeled "space age" doesn't make it actually related to space research. (But then, space research has given us the Space Age Ant Habitat for our desktops, of course.)
Note that you won't catch any Russian spacecraft this way. In Russia, hitchhikers don't show the thumb; this is interpreted as wishing the passers-by a good journey. If you want to hitch a car in Russia, it's usually enough to stand by the roadside; if you want to draw attention to yourself, just raise your arm a little.
And, yes, my computer is almost 10 years old, too. It's amazing what you can get out of old hardware if you have the right distro. -- [...] If you're not conservative by 40, you have no brain
Are you sure you want to send the contents of your hard drive to Bill? How about dd -if=/dev/urandom bs=1G count=20 | mail billg@microsoft.com instead?
And last I checked, piracy still required a boat of some sorts, rather than a computer.
At one point owning slaves was legal. Times change dumbass. Thank you for illustrating the point that whoever owns the discourse owns the mind. It looks like you're accepting this as perfectly appropriate.
The researchers are German, not Spanish. The research is actually taking place in the microrobotics group at the caesar applied sciences research center in Bonn, Germany. The prize is awarded by a Spanish organization, which is why the ceremony is taking place in Spain.
But that's even more US-centric and even less insightful. Don't you think there are local copyright laws applicable to Hollywood movies in Finland or the Netherlands? The fact that MPAA or RIAA are based in the USA doesn't change this. These sites were violating local copyright, which is why local police are getting involved.
Slashdot Mirror
Individual authors do get some money from VG Wort, however, even though it's not a lot.
Baikonur a.k.a. Tyuratam was leased to Russia by Kazakhstan in 1994 for a yearly lease of US-$ 115 million. The lease contract ran until 2014 initially and was prolonged to 2050 in 2004. The site is administered by the Russians and simultaneously under Russian and Kazakh law, an interesting situation legally. The difficult phase you describe was between 1991 and 1994; as of now, the situation is quite stable.
If you don't download MPAA materials from LokiTorrent, then the impending suit doesn't affect you at all. I wonder what you're downloading, however, since I don't see a lot of non-infringing material on the site.
Nope. Institute of Slavonic Studies, Bonn university, Germany. :)
Just because something is labeled "space age" doesn't make it actually related to space research. (But then, space research has given us the Space Age Ant Habitat for our desktops, of course.)
Note that you won't catch any Russian spacecraft this way. In Russia, hitchhikers don't show the thumb; this is interpreted as wishing the passers-by a good journey. If you want to hitch a car in Russia, it's usually enough to stand by the roadside; if you want to draw attention to yourself, just raise your arm a little.
The dog is on fire to remind you.
Not on Emacs 19.34, though ;)
The researchers are German, not Spanish. The research is actually taking place in the microrobotics group at the caesar applied sciences research center in Bonn, Germany. The prize is awarded by a Spanish organization, which is why the ceremony is taking place in Spain.
There's actually a lot of pretty accents that go with it in Polish, which Slashdot doesn't allow to enter... but you can copy them from here
And if you do, you might want to send them christmas greetings as well ;) "Merry Christmas" is "Weselych Swiat" in Polish.
But that's even more US-centric and even less insightful. Don't you think there are local copyright laws applicable to Hollywood movies in Finland or the Netherlands? The fact that MPAA or RIAA are based in the USA doesn't change this. These sites were violating local copyright, which is why local police are getting involved.