It's not about removing responsibility. Two parties can be responsible. One is responsible for acting in certain way, but if they do so as the result of the action of another, then that person also caused it. While people talk about "apportioning blame", in reality we're not looking at dividing it up like a cake. We're blaming one person fully for what happened, but another person fully for putting a situation in place that resulted in that happening.
Gravity causes things to fall to the earth.
I'm holding a ball. If I let go it will fall to the ground. As a result, letting go will cause it to fall to the ground.
Okay. Are you trying to convince me that Brazil should extend this law and make anonymous telephone calls and post illegal? Both would be possible to arrange.
A lie can cause serious damage to someone. Some neighbours of mine had their home vandalised because they had been falsely accused of being involved in animal experimentation. If you post such a lie deliberately then aren't you in some way responsible for the harm suffered?
But Google is offering to allow people to post whatever they want maliciously, and offering to hide their identity from everyone - even themselves. If Google is going to allow people to do this, then why are they not taking on responsibility for the harm themselves?
The thing is, a lot of us don't care that much about Open Source. Sure, there's a lot of fondness for the little guy, but personally I find it hard to get my knickers in a twist when someone violates the GPL. The source code that they based their changes on is still available. If the violators didn't use GPLed code in the first place we'd not be in a better position.
The collaborations seem to have worked. CD and s/pdif were collaborations with Philips, who had the sense not to keep too tight a rein on the technology. The others were all niche products. None of them gained mass consumer support.
I have a semantic nitpick to add. Wouldn't a potential person of interest differ from a person of potential interest in that the former is not yet a person and the latter is not yet of interest.
Just for the latest, non-revolutionary update to an existing product?
It seems a bit of a waste of an opportunity. We know Apple are going to release a new version of the iPhone at some point. It doesn't sound like there's going to be a compelling reason to upgrade. It just seems too much for not a significant enough product.
If I don't know what a MAC address is, then that's still not a lot of help. Wouldn't it make more sense to say what a MAC address is rather than what it stands for?
Finding a graphics card that can handle 1920x1200 for desktop applications is easy. Pretty much everything from the past 5 years will manage that.
Hell, my netbook goes up to 1360x768 without trouble (I'm sure it would manage 1080p if I had a 1080p monitor). A mid range graphics card easily has 4 times the pixel pushing capability.
I agree. It would have made a lot more sense to have had a mechanical connection to the tray. Then the human would have been able to use anticipation to try and catch the thing out.
I'm sure the robot would still have been able to deal with that to. Would have been nice to see.
If somebody was reckless or malicious you sue them. Otherwise you simply have an insurance company agree to cover additional costs incurred in this unlikely but obviously quite plausible event. Why does everything have to be settled by litigation?
People are generally against change. If you forced different sized bills on people they'd get used to this in a month or so and wonder why they ever cared in the first place.
Britain didn't change to a decimalised currency until the 1970's. Were people against it? Some were. In the 90's the 5p and 10p and 50p coins were shrunk. People objected to that as well. Nobody would want to change back though.
There wouldn't be a pressing need to change the existing bills. They're locked in a vault somewhere. They're not going to be used in a local shop where the owners rarely see $100 bills. They'll be sent to the US government who are quite capable of telling you whether they're faked or not and have a database of bills in circulation.
Apparently £20 notes are the most commonly forged British currency. They're typically what you'll get from a cash machine as well so quite common. I believe that $20 bills are the most common in the US because they're not at all unusual.
Or in other words, the counterfeiters broadly agree with you.
This guy has a niche market. If any EA game had his sales it would be viewed as a commercial disaster. Some people love the story based games but far too many people will go for graphics over gameplay every time.
Al is so far into parodyland it's almost beyond belief that somebody could find against him.
Well, his songs are clearly parodies. I'd just be a little wary. His parody isn't always mocking the actual song. Also there's a separate copyright on the music. I'm no expert on this, so I'm unwilling to say this is definitely outside of fair use. I'm just not totally convinced that it's not.
I'm willing to bet he's got expert advice from his lawyers though.
Lawyers are very conservative though. They'll encourage him to err on the side of caution and get permission. Once again, game theory comes in. If their advice to ask permission is wrong it costs them nothing since we have no way of knowing what the alternative would be. If their advice is wrong then they themselves can be sued for giving bad legal advice.
Ignoring the legal risks still seems like a bad game theory. Say a publisher sues. It's possible that the court doesn't agree that they pay his legal fees. It's even plausible that somehow the plaintiff finds an argument or a piece of case law or something that means he loses. He's no expert on copyright law so it would be daft for him to rely on that. His best outcome is break even and his worst is to lose heaps of money in legal fees. It wouldn't make sense not to get permission based on this.
Hey, maybe he's a nice guy as well. I hope he is. But there's a perfectly reasonable practical legal reason to clear copyright.
You can use it as a defence if someone bring proceedings against you but you don't have to have had a ruling against you already. Fair use is an explicit argument you can make that invalidates the copyright infringement argument.
A typical defence would be "I didn't use any copyrighted material". It would be up to the plaintiff to demonstrate that you did. If this is demonstrated you can then make the argument that it is fair use but you actually need to demonstrate that rather than have the plaintiff demonstrate that it isn't.
we called on YouTube to fix the Content ID system so that it will not automatically remove videos unless there is a match between the video and audio tracks of a submitted fingerprint and nearly the entirety (e.g, 90% or more) of the challenged content is comprised of a single copyrighted work.
Wouldn't have helped in this case. The audio track is unchanged. The video track only has the subtle changes of the subtitles. The content is entirely taken from Downfall (Apart from the subtitles).
Slashdot Mirror
to remove responsibility from the situation.
It's not about removing responsibility. Two parties can be responsible. One is responsible for acting in certain way, but if they do so as the result of the action of another, then that person also caused it. While people talk about "apportioning blame", in reality we're not looking at dividing it up like a cake. We're blaming one person fully for what happened, but another person fully for putting a situation in place that resulted in that happening.
Gravity causes things to fall to the earth.
I'm holding a ball. If I let go it will fall to the ground. As a result, letting go will cause it to fall to the ground.
Okay. Are you trying to convince me that Brazil should extend this law and make anonymous telephone calls and post illegal? Both would be possible to arrange.
If you can't uphold your legal obligations when running a business then you don't get to run the business. You don't get laws waived.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Libel is more of a problem with broadcast media than one-to-one.
A lie can cause serious damage to someone. Some neighbours of mine had their home vandalised because they had been falsely accused of being involved in animal experimentation. If you post such a lie deliberately then aren't you in some way responsible for the harm suffered?
But Google is offering to allow people to post whatever they want maliciously, and offering to hide their identity from everyone - even themselves. If Google is going to allow people to do this, then why are they not taking on responsibility for the harm themselves?
The thing is, a lot of us don't care that much about Open Source. Sure, there's a lot of fondness for the little guy, but personally I find it hard to get my knickers in a twist when someone violates the GPL. The source code that they based their changes on is still available. If the violators didn't use GPLed code in the first place we'd not be in a better position.
The collaborations seem to have worked. CD and s/pdif were collaborations with Philips, who had the sense not to keep too tight a rein on the technology. The others were all niche products. None of them gained mass consumer support.
I have a semantic nitpick to add. Wouldn't a potential person of interest differ from a person of potential interest in that the former is not yet a person and the latter is not yet of interest.
I think if they threw him out in flight then he'd be morally entitled to 50% of his fare back.
Just for the latest, non-revolutionary update to an existing product?
It seems a bit of a waste of an opportunity. We know Apple are going to release a new version of the iPhone at some point. It doesn't sound like there's going to be a compelling reason to upgrade. It just seems too much for not a significant enough product.
I think the point is that it's a 500 year old painting. Although they could have simply said "referring to the famous 500 year old painting")
" unique Mac (Media Access Control) "
If I don't know what a MAC address is, then that's still not a lot of help. Wouldn't it make more sense to say what a MAC address is rather than what it stands for?
I'm sure this is the intent 2 Ayes for each Nay. 2/3 majority is simply a means of expressing this efficiently.
Finding a graphics card that can handle 1920x1200 for desktop applications is easy. Pretty much everything from the past 5 years will manage that.
Hell, my netbook goes up to 1360x768 without trouble (I'm sure it would manage 1080p if I had a 1080p monitor). A mid range graphics card easily has 4 times the pixel pushing capability.
I agree. It would have made a lot more sense to have had a mechanical connection to the tray. Then the human would have been able to use anticipation to try and catch the thing out.
I'm sure the robot would still have been able to deal with that to. Would have been nice to see.
If somebody was reckless or malicious you sue them. Otherwise you simply have an insurance company agree to cover additional costs incurred in this unlikely but obviously quite plausible event. Why does everything have to be settled by litigation?
People are generally against change. If you forced different sized bills on people they'd get used to this in a month or so and wonder why they ever cared in the first place.
Britain didn't change to a decimalised currency until the 1970's. Were people against it? Some were. In the 90's the 5p and 10p and 50p coins were shrunk. People objected to that as well. Nobody would want to change back though.
There wouldn't be a pressing need to change the existing bills. They're locked in a vault somewhere. They're not going to be used in a local shop where the owners rarely see $100 bills. They'll be sent to the US government who are quite capable of telling you whether they're faked or not and have a database of bills in circulation.
So it's not pointless. Not for the treasury anyway. It keeps their monopoly going.
Apparently £20 notes are the most commonly forged British currency. They're typically what you'll get from a cash machine as well so quite common. I believe that $20 bills are the most common in the US because they're not at all unusual.
Or in other words, the counterfeiters broadly agree with you.
Not for everyone.
This guy has a niche market. If any EA game had his sales it would be viewed as a commercial disaster. Some people love the story based games but far too many people will go for graphics over gameplay every time.
Al is so far into parodyland it's almost beyond belief that somebody could find against him.
Well, his songs are clearly parodies. I'd just be a little wary. His parody isn't always mocking the actual song. Also there's a separate copyright on the music. I'm no expert on this, so I'm unwilling to say this is definitely outside of fair use. I'm just not totally convinced that it's not.
I'm willing to bet he's got expert advice from his lawyers though.
Lawyers are very conservative though. They'll encourage him to err on the side of caution and get permission. Once again, game theory comes in. If their advice to ask permission is wrong it costs them nothing since we have no way of knowing what the alternative would be. If their advice is wrong then they themselves can be sued for giving bad legal advice.
Ignoring the legal risks still seems like a bad game theory. Say a publisher sues. It's possible that the court doesn't agree that they pay his legal fees. It's even plausible that somehow the plaintiff finds an argument or a piece of case law or something that means he loses. He's no expert on copyright law so it would be daft for him to rely on that. His best outcome is break even and his worst is to lose heaps of money in legal fees. It wouldn't make sense not to get permission based on this.
Hey, maybe he's a nice guy as well. I hope he is. But there's a perfectly reasonable practical legal reason to clear copyright.
Not quite.
You can use it as a defence if someone bring proceedings against you but you don't have to have had a ruling against you already. Fair use is an explicit argument you can make that invalidates the copyright infringement argument.
A typical defence would be "I didn't use any copyrighted material". It would be up to the plaintiff to demonstrate that you did. If this is demonstrated you can then make the argument that it is fair use but you actually need to demonstrate that rather than have the plaintiff demonstrate that it isn't.
Legally the labels would still be entitled to take legal action. They'd most likely lose but Weird Al presumably doesn't want to deal with the hassle.
we called on YouTube to fix the Content ID system so that it will not automatically remove videos unless there is a match between the video and audio tracks of a submitted fingerprint and nearly the entirety (e.g, 90% or more) of the challenged content is comprised of a single copyrighted work.
Wouldn't have helped in this case. The audio track is unchanged. The video track only has the subtle changes of the subtitles. The content is entirely taken from Downfall (Apart from the subtitles).