So much for the presumption of innocence. Given the number of false positives they get they can't reasonably claim they expect to find weapons in every bag they search.
Given the number of innocent people on the road, a Police Officer can't *possibly* assume that every traffic ticket he writes is going to turn into an altercation.
But the cops still act that way, because it could happen. If anyone in the law enforcement community investigagtes / searches anyone, they should assume danger until they prove otherwise. That's what they get paid to do.
That tactic works fine on the phone, but it wouldn't work so well in person. They either have a badge identifying themselves as a supervisor or they don't.
No. They'll be a staff of nothing but low-level "supervisors" getting paid only $.50 more than the security guards. Write the law wrong, or let the airlines get good lawyers, and there won't be any secuirty "guards" anymore, they'll all be "supervisors."
As for assuming any particular sum of money, that's just wrongheaded. By assuming $500, you're making it very unsafe for anyone to carry more than that. That's just wrong.
Why the HELL would you carry more than $500 cash on you, and *not* have a documented security device? For Christ's sake, anyone with that kind of money should have traveller's checks or a debit card.
Remember: I only disagreed with the ones I noted. All the rest seemed perfectly viable. (And the ones that you commented on & I didn't refute just don't seem worth the counterpost.;) )
do you think the phone system should support a moderate amount of privacy in which wiretapping should only be conducted after authorities can provide grounds for the tap? (I understand that this is not the case anymore in the USA as of mildly recently?)
Right now, tonight, I think that the phone system *should* be pseudo-private. But I also think that Keepers of the Peace (military, police, *not* anyone who's not paid by my taxes) should be able to listen in. I think an automatic system to locate probable suspects is a viable alternative to random wiretaps.
I'm curious to hear under what terms and for what reasons you consider the entire Internet infrastructure to be, essentially, a public park where anything you do can be seen by those who enter...
Because that's what it essentially is. Or, rather, that's what it *should* be. The darn thing was originally a trust-based peer-to-peer network, and now it's a trustless client/server finnagle that doesn't realize that nothing's really changed about the 'net, we just stopped using a lot of it.
There are three reasons I think that it should be considered public space.
1: Every event that happens is logged. With a warrant, I could open up mail.nycap.rr.com and find the mail logs for everyone around me. I suspect that AOL has a similar cache of AIM messages, and that most other packet tranmissions are logged.
2: Every event uses someone else's property. The entire 'net is built on people running connections between points at varying speeds, and then agreeing to let other connections connect to theirs for concurrencty.
3: Resources are shared amongst all. If I start sucking bandwidth or doing other nasty things, I can cause problems for everyone nearby.
While I'm all for allowing people to press tort claims (civl suits) for person-to-person and corporation-to-person suits of unwarranted invasion of privacy, I think the 'net would work best if everyone remembered that privacy is *not* something guaranteed on the 'net, and the only thing keeping them "private" is the relative PITA of tracking someone down.
(The best examples of warranted privacy violation are tracking down a mischevious message to a community's boards, and keeping SPAM out.)
Good gosh, you think the FBI has the right to investigate anyone, on any whim?
Yes. As long as they don't have anything better do to, and as long as they don't intimidate or obstruct the life of those that they don't have reasonable suspicion of.
The FBI is more than welcome to know that I was in a "medivalist government" group, that my best friend from high school made noises about militias, and that my credit rating sucks.
Geez, it's never your problem until it happens to you is it?
(Actually it is--and I've gotten flamed for making is such.) It's not my problem until I make it mine, or it happens to me. And it's not *a* problem until it happens, either.
You, sir, use a laptop as a portable, not a laptop.
Battery life is *more* important than processor speed, to me. Were I in the market for a new lappytop, I'd want something that I could use for a several hour stretch in the park, in the car, or just wherever the feng shui is best for writing.
Once it can run the word processor and MP3 player at once, at a speed I don't cringe at, I'm happy & the rest is just gravy.
You're right. Your right to safety is every bit as important as my right to safety, and my right to travel is just as important as yours.
But each of our rights to safety outweighs our rights to travel. You can not travel and be safe, but you can't travel and be "unsafe" in the way airport security checks against.
3 No passenger will be separated from his baggage during the screening process. All screening of passenger carry-on items shall be handled in the full view of the passenger.
This is ludicrous. A carry-on item is screened with the assumption that it might contain a weapon for use in hijacking. A discreet search by a competent guard will be more effective, and less embarassing.
4 All passengers traveling with family members shall have the right to have one adult family member present during all aspects of the screening process.
Also foolish. If they're criminals, leaving them together will allow them to obfuscate any crime, and possibly allow them to overpower or outwit the guards. If they're innocent, leaving them together will encourage reciporcal indignation, slowing down the process.
5 Baggage screeners shall take extraordinary care to repack all items in passenger's luggage neatly and carefully.
Foolish. Make the airline responsible for the fair-market replacement of any items damaged, and require a private place for the customer to repack.
Some passenger's done pack their luggage neatly and carefully; why should secuirty guards be forced to do it for them?
8. Screeners will not be permitted to search the contents of a wallet or other item carrying passenger's cash or credit cards without a supervisor present.
Silly. All this does is encouage false "supervisors."
A better idea would be to require all such checks to be completed in front of a functioning recording device, and assume a $500 cash-on-hand if the recording device isn't working. Make the airline have the burden of proof, and the recording device won't be ignored.
# All passengers who have personal items confiscated at the screening stations shall be provided with mailing envelopes for use in mailing seized items to passenger's home address. The passenger shall be permitted to place the item in the envelope, seal the envelope, and place the item in the U.S. mail at the screening station.
Gha. Talk about not understanding what "confiscated" means.
Better: No otherwise legal item shall be confiscated. The passenger may have otherwise legal items packed into USPS containers, and sent home at their own expense. Passengers shouldn't have the *right* to pack their own contraband, and neither should airlines be liable for shipping the items back to the passenger.
I hope you never go into the field of project management.
I hope you don't either.
"No, you can't have my corporate records! Those are trade secrets, and to divulge them to my employer would contitute a violation of my privacy!"
To restate: you have no privacy from the government. You have no privacy in a public place. You have no privacy at your job. You have *NO* privacy on the interent.
The government (specifically, the FBI & other internal police forces) has the duty of looking at all the places where we don't have privacy, and finding criminals and dangerous citizens. The *only* time this becomes a problem is when it's abused or used to wrongfully accuse someone.
If you want, take out "to them" from the line you quoted. The meaning is more clear then, when applied as a general principle.
The thing that bothers me the most is that they are assuming I have money to burn. "Here, would you like to buy this, or this, or this? No? Oh, how about this, or this, or this? No? What about..." This frustrates me, because they really think I will make an impulsive decision and just buy everything at a whim. Is this really how most people behave?
THEY'RE A STORE!
Sheesh. It's not like they're kicking your out for loitering--and it's not like you can really browse there, or get some coffee. Amazon.com (rightly) assumes that if you're going to their store, you're going to buy something.
t isn't "cool", it's a simple recognition of the facts. Did you miss the news last month when it came out that the FBI had a 2^16 page file on one of CA's uni presidents in the 70's, simply because they didn't think he was "tough enough" on liberal professors? Or the earlier revelation that they had a whopping big file on that Dangerous Enemy of the Republic, Albert Einstein?
*gasp!* You mean that the FBI investigates people? Or that they actually *know* what *famous people* did?
Gee, what a shock! How dare they do their job, when they're supposed to automatically know who the "bad guys" are and go after them and them only!
(Yes, I know the FBI used its investigations as a form of intimidation; but that doesn't mean they shouldn't as a group still do it, just that the folks in charge need to be smacked & fired.)
What has Left-Right got to do with it? Not wanting to be spied on is "normal".
No, it isn't. No one "normal" stands next to the ATM so the camera doesn't capture your picture, or changes telephone lines "because this might be tapped", or routinely spends hours searching their PC for "spyware."
"Normal" people simply don't care, as they know it happens. They only care when it wrongly happens to them (i.e., their nude spyware photos are slapped on the web), and that's the only tiem they should.
If you're complaining that the free software community doesn't supply public domain code samples, then that's a totally different issue. What does any of this have to do with the GPL???
It's a debate of MS's IP ease-of-use with the FSF's (which is the GPL.)
The "sample code" supplied from the FSF is probably source code, which means it's GPL'd--which means that if you *look* at it, you could get dragged into court for copyright infringement.
That was my simple point. MS's line about "IP rights ease" is accurate. That's all.:)
We definitely are increasingly having Orwell's big brother/sister. I'd say the distinction is that society is welcoming/asking for it.
You don't get it.
Orwell predicted that the fall of privacy would lead to one great power ruling over everyone. But with privacy gone, and the dirty laundry of *everyone* in public, it's going to be well nigh impossible to become the "one trusted source."
I don't care if the police watch my every move, track my footsteps, and know what I have for breakfast. I don't care if *you* can find that out just as easily as they can. Because if the system reaches its logical fullness, I'll never be able to be accused of a crime I didn't do (multiple redundant information gathering sources would ensure that), and I would never be afraid to walk down an alleyway; I could just *check* to see if anyone's lurking down there without looking.
The problem is the inevitable half-assed implementation. *sigh*. It's going to happen--can we just stop wasting time trying to *fight* it, and spend some energy on doing it *right?*
Don't be a dork. The GPL doesn't apply to anything you might happen to create with GPL'd interpreters, compilers, editors, software-making-things or anything else - it only applies when you use CODE that's been GPLd in your program.
The GPL does not define what "code" is, and doesn't do a perfect job saying what "included with" means. It's ambiguous, which is a fault that all copyleft licenses deal with. MS's EULAs, on the other hand, are as specific as anyone else out there.
Believe me, if you happened to get some Windows source code and used it in your own program without paying MS through the nose for it, you'd be hearing from their lawyers in very short order.
If I bought one of MS's coding suites and wrote an application in it, *any* sample code I got from MSDN would be fair game to use, extend, embrace, and do just about whatever I want with.
If I did the same thing with a GPL'd compiler, I very well might get dragged into court for using the same sample code to solve a common problem. I'd definitly get hosed if I used the "example code" to fix a *unique* problem.
Linux is *not* perfect. The copyright and IP issues the GPL brings up are *not* conducive to selling the software to make money; this is by design. (Sure, you can sell that software... but the other guy gets to do wathever he wants with it, including selling it himself and undercutting you.)
MS has decided to compete with the GPL by offering clear-cut ways to write code and sell it to make money. FSF decided to compete with the status quo by having an infectious (or "sticky") license.
No, an obligation would be "must." I stated, at worst, a compulsion or ideal state. Like "you should only have one sexual partner in your entire life", not "you must have only one sexual partner in your entire life, or I'll kill you."
LotR's deus ex machina makes its heroes nonheroic. It shouldn't do that. Tolkien can be artsy and go against the grain if he wants to, but that doesn't change what should have happened.
This tactic has worked for Microsoft OVER AND OVER again. Why throw away a perfectly good tactic that has yet to fail?
Because the US. Government is suing them for that tactic. It's a good bet that in two or six years they'll be a different administration in the white house, that'll be more than willing to correct the slap-on-the-wrist punnishment that MS is aiming for.
Changing their tactics to encourage other companies to support them & make indirect money doing so is a VERY good strategy for Microsoft.
If I came to your house, with godlike computing powers, and offered to make you an OSS system that does everything that MS's latest idea did, wouldn't you use it? History says *YES*.
As for those who tried to "dance with the devil"... Dell, Gateway, Intel, NVidia, Apple, and AMD all seem to be doing just fine, at least in large part to a mid-90s alliance with Microsoft.
I find the GPL to be more straightforward than any MS licence I have read, but they really are right about the IP ownership. "All your IP are belong to us" is pretty clear!
You're not a lawyer, or even someone who's taken a freshman business law class. (I'm the latter + more, not the former.)
The GPL is simply structred, but it creates conditions that aren't. MS's EULAs are complexly strucutred, but the end result is pretty simple.
GPL: "We offer no warranties." MS: "We offer no warranties."
GPL: "Your software is our software, unless you only used a library, but only if that library isn't part of the same program. See legally inadmissable anectode and rant for clarification.
Oh, and don't use some other license for your software. Your software is our software, and all our software is FREE (as in sheep and boobies, not as in beer)"
MS: "Our software is your software. Your software is your software, except for the parts that you didn't write. But you can put those parts in your software since that's why we sold you this software-making-thing."
There's no doubt that MS's EULAs are more complex, and make some rather distasteful tactics. But they are, compared to the GPL, a hell of a lot simpler to use to make software that you're going to sell for a profit and not have the FSF take you randomly to court over.
Please, don't spread anit-MS FUD. The GPL (and other OSS) beats MS on moral ground, end-user fiscal cost, and average reliablity of the software. It *doesn't* beat MS on ease-of-end-userness or ease-of-making-money-with.
Pretending that it does won't change anything. Go out, fix the @#$ing spellcheck in OpenOffice so it doesn't @%ck up em-dashes, and get me an OSS word processor I can use!
Tolkien did not want LotR to be multiple books. It is one large story, and was separated into separate parts because the publisher was afraid people would be intimidated by the huge tome that is the collected LotR. Of course, if you feel like replying, you could give more specific examples, and if need be, I may be willing to concede some aspects of pacing.
Considering the ammount of time that Tolkien had *allready* spent on the books, he could have re-worked the pacing. Pseudo-dramatic cliffhangers have a place in serial tv shows that repeat every week, not in novels in a trilogy or in acts in a book.
Chop LotR into six parts--six acts, if you will. Time and time again, something is introduced (Tom Bambadil) or occurs (Strider being the king) in one act and one act alone, with little or no mention or occurance elsewhere.
Aside from the rancid deus ex machina that is the end, Gandalfs abrupt return and conquests in acts 3-4 strike me as jarring.
I seem to remember the books being positively rife with foreshadowing. Of course, I havent really proven anything there. I guess I would like you to reply with an example.
"A king's hands are healing hands" comes out of nowhere, and [evil wizard what's his name--don't have the books with me]'s sudden appearence in book 6 was just, well, jarring.
I'm sure I could go back and re-read the books three or four times, and I'd find forshadowing too. But just because it's there doesn't mean that it's good forshadowing, or appropriately spaced.
Ok, Im not really sure why having the climactic scene in the last book is a problem
I wasn't referring to acts 5 & 6. I was referring to act 5. Act 6 is just fluff and a hobbit-grows-up point.
The way the ring is destroyed in the end is, in my opinion, one of the best aspects of the books. The entire point of that scene is to show that no living being could have the willpower to throw the ring into the fire, so great was its powers of temptation and treachery. (Spoiler ahead, watch yourself folks.) Having Gollum seize the ring from Frodo and then fall into the pit amidst his excitement over being reunited with his precious further refutes your claim about foreshadowing, as it fulfills the predictions Gandalf made way back in the Fellowship of the Ring. Gandalf specifically wanrs Frodo not to kill Gollum, both out of pity and because Gandalf felt that Gollum still had some purpose to fulfill. If Frodo had ignored that advice and killed Gollum, ironically, he would have doomed all of existance to defeat at the hands of Sauron. In my opinion, that scene was very, very well done.
I hated it. Fantasies and epic stories should be about mortals becoming heroes and defeating impossible odds--not about "how they don't build them like this anymore" or "God steps in and saves the day."
I'll refrain from commenting on the design of the ring and Sauron's relative power. Quite simply, Frodo's "corruption" by the ring was not believeable, and for something rife with all the powers of worst villian in all of creation, the ring certainly didn't do very much.
It's a difference of opinion, I guess. You like the climax of LotR--I say again that he succeeded by selling a book that was not in and of itself great, but that simply managed to inspire the imaginations of others. For some parts and some people, that inspiration is "wow, this is cool, I wish I could do something like this." For others, it's "Nice idea--but I could do something better than that!"
Obviously, I am a biased, Slashdot-reading LotR geek. I dont pretend to be impartial, as these are some of my favorite books, and I am not trying to say that they are immune to criticism; I have some complaints of my own about the books. But aside from possibly some complaints about pacing, I think the criticsm you have thrown at the books are entirely off base.
I'm biased too; everyone in the whole world's biased.
I think LotR's faults are enough to knock it off its pedestal for me. You like it. Despite what some English majors will try and tell you, there's really no way to tell which of us is right and which of us is wrong.
you can really see the areas the characters traveled and feel like you are there. the problem is though, that you really don't know how the characters feel since tolkien doesn't develop that side of the book enough
No disagreemnt on you points, but the literary part of me's got to correct your grammar.
You should be saying "I" or "the reader," not "you." I (the assumned target) didn't find most of the scenery in LotR to be breathtaking or engaging. And since you have no idea if I did or didn't share your opinion, you shoulnd't have phrased your sentence as if you did.
Sorry, my wife makes the same grammatical mess up all the time, and I'm trying to cure her of the bad colloquial habits which cause other people to not instantly respect her intellect, which (understandibly) ticks her off.
Also, I don't think that second-guessing Tolkien is something that I'd condone. Tolkien was arguably one of the most brilliant writers of the last century
I'd oppose that argument. Tolkien's books were badly paced, his storyline brought in new elements with little or no forshadowing, and the climactic scene of entire story took place in book 5/6, and was solved by a villian.
That said, and ignoring the abyssmal story finale that was the sixth book (part II of vol 3), LotR has an amazing ablity to inspire people to create new things. (This in itself is no measure of greatness, but the breadth and width of Tolkien's inspirees are.)
I prefer to look at the movies as a seperate work, inspired by the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Or, as I say half-jokingly, "it's missing something from the books--all the parts that suck.";)
In 1987 we bought a new Chevy Astro. That car was driven from hell to back, had the engine replaced relatively early, and was driven by my father day in and day out until he finally got a new one--in 1998. (That's 11 years later, btw.)
Dad gave the van to my brother, who drove it for the next three years, until its mechanical problems finally all crashed at once. If he had maintained the darn thing, it would probably still be on the road, too.
And in all this time, the interior has *never* gotten more than "filthy." The celing didn't fall down. The carpet didn't wear away. And, in more than 300,000 miles of driving, the darn thing *still* ran as good as any other vehicle of comparable age or milage that I've ever seen. (Give me the cash to fix the several comparatively minor problems with it, and it'd be back on the road easily.)
Stop spewing FUD. GM builds cars as good as any other car company in the American market... the only reason they (and Dodge and Ford) have a bad rep at all is because no one bother's to export the cheap POSes from other countries.
Your ISP has a number of valid reasons (IMO) to ban p2p -- bandwidth is a completely fair one. Illegality (if proven) is another. However, morality has got to be just about the worst reason. I don't want someone qualitatively deciding what is "moral" or not for me. And I don't want my ISP presuming that what I am doing is illegal. The burden of proof for illegal activities should be on the ISP, NOT the customer.
The ISP is, presumably, a private company. They can, if they want, decide that you can't use their network unless you go to their church and their political party.
File sharing programs are, quite simply, used by the vast majority for the express purpose of copyright infringement. If you had a water bong, you *might* be using it to smoke tobacco, but that's not likely. If I carry a rifle into the mall, I *might* just be looking for one in the sporting goods store with the same stock, but the security guard isn't going to assume I am until that's proven.
When you're dealing with something that's reasonably going to be used for an illegal activity, don't be surprised if people assume that you're using it for illegal activities while you're dealing with it.
(And besides the point, KaZaa's evil bloated spyware that crashes PCs and doens't know when to let up. It deserves to die, and other p2p file sharing programs can stay or go with no care from me.)
# just because people with lots of money can get laws passed, it doesn't make it 'the right way to live' -- you are cringing behind an absurd and unthinking stance of "it's the law"
Hardly absurd. It *is* the law. We believe in rule of law here on Planet Earth, and that means that we obey the laws until such time as those laws are changed.
Copyright, in all its glory, was passed not by people with lots of money, but by people who wanted to read books. And it was extended to cover movies, music, and software by judges who probably didn't have a lot of money.
(If you feel like living without rule of law, then by all means show up at my door so I can beat the @$$# out of you.;) I mean, not doing so would just be obeying a silly law, right?)
# these people running the large businesses are being dicks. they are squeezing people every chance they can TO TAKE MORE MONEY. its all about the money, and the ingrained definition of business to take as much as possible while pushing the envelope of human decency. Their dicks, so I'm a dick. fsck 'em I serve 800Kb/s 24/7 of all I can.
Actually, the ingrained, legal purpose of a business is *to make the most money*, and that's it. Rarely is the best way to make money pissing the majority off.
Hence, AOLTW's Road Runner business test-markets its blockage of KaZaa, to see how it can make the most money--by blocking it and avoiding the fines and legal fees it would have to pay, or by not blocking it and keeping the % of subscribers that would unsubscribe with KaZaa blocked.
at its heart, the REAL ISSUE with copyright is that it DOES NOT MAKE SENSE to OWN information. if you look carefully, without the screwed up context of "business promotion" in which we currently live, then the whole idea of allowing excusivity of information is COMPLETELY ABSURD and UNENFORCEABLE. The only reason big money buys/sets up laws to allow copyright now it to promote businesses (NOTE: not content creators any more) into taking more money than they otherwise could without it.
I am a "content creator", though I prefer the terms "writer" or "author." I currently have a manuscript out there looking for a publisher. Copyright law is the *only* thing that keeps a random publishing house from saying "I want to see it all" and then publishing it without my consent.
Copyright law is the only thing that keeps a random recording company from walking into an indi band's free show, buying one copy of their lovingly-mixed CD, then mass producing it and selling it for billions of dollars and not giving the band one red cent.
We live in a capitalistic society, drDugan. People do things because they can make money doing them. I would not have spent nearly as much time writing as I did if I did not think that I could make money by finishing the story. I would still have written, but unless I could make money by writing the story, it would not have been worth my time to do it as anything more than a recreational activity.
Personally, I'm grateful that we live in a society were the creation of new stories and songs and movies is as valued as the creation of a bunch of other things that *don't* bring any happiness to us all. I gadly pay $18 to go see a movie with my wife; that's about what we pay if we just go out to eat, but we enjoy the movie a lot more than we enjoy the dinner.
# technology will bring down copyright. maybe not eliminate it, but certainly reign in the ABSURD notion of life +70 years or whatever unbelievable state we have now. These companies "suffering" from copyright infringement are FSCKING DINOSAURS and deserve to be raped by the sting of new technology. I wanted to puke when hollings bitches about our precious multi-billion dollar content industry that is just a short toss from a mass indoctrination engine. tell me one thing Sony pictures or universal pictures has done to innovate, to create something of value for our society. to make their product better. NOTHING. (well, maybe extra scenes on DVDs) The create content/crap. its information with no value other than the artificially created market of scarcity that is now GONE because of technology.
Sony Pictures, specifically, created Final Fantasy (which I enjoyed seeing, even if it was a disappointment), and I can guarantee that they wouldn't have done that if they couldn't have made money on it.
Sony, Universal, and a whole bunch of other companies sell their movies on DVDs and VHS, which means I can buy a copy and watch them whenever I want to. If America didn't give them the legal tools to reduce copying of those DVDs down to the point where they profit, I assure you that we'd never see another DVD again--or at the very least, that the price would skyrocket up to the new market's profitability point.
Before you complain about how cheap a DVD or CD is to make, I want you to think about something. Do you have a better idea? Not just for you. Not just for me. For everyone, everywhere, who likes movies and wants to see more movies and music and software and books and stuff made. Do you have a plan to implement this idea, a way to change the world so we *can* get everything "for free," and everyone who worked to make these things as they are still gets to eat and be happy and be encouraged on a basic level to make some more.
Linux and most OSS suffers from a very real, basic problem, a problem that I'm suffering from right now as I realize that I was supposed to start writing four hours ago. It's not the day job. This great, creative effort that others will enjoy and love and makes the world a really better place (in a way that answering phones and sending letters doesn't), DOES NOT PAY THE BILLS.
Until these great things *do* pay the bills, it's irresponsible to devote the bulk of one's time to them. The bills have to be paid. The rent has to be met. Food has to get onto the table, and gas needs to get into the car. Once all of that's done, THEN me and the OSS hackers and every other creative person who hasn't won the creativity lottery gets to do what we love to do, and spend even a little bit of time making something that will enrich the world.
Now, if I can state a practical case to *someday soon* make some money from my Art, I can justify putting more time into it. I can stay up late. I can sacrafice things that I need to do to stay healthier and get promoted on the bet that I will make some money from doing this thing that I love.
If you take away copyright, you kill that long practical bet. I'd be limited to the generosity of others. I'd be limited to only the recreational time I can spend on the work. I and hundreds of thousands of others like me would lose even the slim chance of getting appreciated--really, basically, fiscally appreciated--for what we do.
If you've read this far, I do have one last point to make. Copyright does need to be reformed. It should not apply to engineered software. It should not last for 70 years past the author's death. It should not be able to be held by corporations.
Ideally, were I to re-write the law, traditional copyright would apply only to works of art--things that are *not* practical necessities. It would last for the life of the author or his spouse, and then for two years after their deaths to pay off the final bills. Nothing at all could be authored by a corporation, and only those with a substantial creative input (as defined by the time-honored reasonable man standard) could be co-authors.
Software innovations could be covered by patents, with hard-coded RAND rates for patents. Breaking news and technical journals and compiled software programs would not be covered by copyrihgt, but by a "personage" right. Make it a crime to attribute something to Microsoft or Dan Rather or whomever without their permission, and you let them set their own market worth through marketing.
what you are saying is NOT TRUE. It is a convenient lie we tell ourselves to rationalize the current situation. Without copyright, people would still make music. they would make plays and movies and all the other forms of entertainment we all love. If you are about to disagree, THINK. people have been entertaining themselves for many many generations before we had copyright, the vivendi group, and 800 million dollar blockbusters.
And they were doing it in one of two ways, musically speaking:
* Badly done performances by whomever happened to live nearby
* Live performances on the rare occasion that a good musician was in town.
The modern world is *vastly* different than the old world, and the differences pretty much all boil down to easier copying.
Copyright was invented, not for music, not for software, but for the written word. It was a legal construct so someone who writes something--be it a novel or newspaswer clip--would have legal recourse when the publisher / newspaper printed it, made oodles of money, and didn't give the author one red cent.
Copyright has been expanded to cover other creative acts, as media for conveying those acts has become convenient and copyable. Since it's a extant legal construct, it's what's used by the people who hold the rights to creative works (be they software or music) as a way to exert control over how their creations are used by going to court and suing people for "copying without permission." The courts decided that sometimes the argument of the other guy was a good idea to let stand, and so Fair Use came about.
the reality is that content producers work for businesses. businesses are designed to take money from the population. copyright in its current form keeps these businesses profiting very very well.
"interesting. Wrong, but interesting." (*grin*)
I'll agree that "Content producers" work for businesses--anyone who calls themselves that doesn't deserve even a distant relation with *art*. But businesses use copyright rather effectively--they sell a copy (or in software, a specific permission to make copies) and get money for it. A lot of money.
But that's how money works. Businesses (or just plain ordinary people) make something that other people want, and then get money for it so they can get what *they* want. Businesses exist, in a social view, to provide a valued service or good to the community. In a capital view, they exist to exchange a valued service or good for money, which the owner(s) of that business then exchange for the things that they want/need/lust after.
Personally, I think copyright's just find as it is--asdie from that software bit, but even that can be dealt with. Stephen King's still got the copyright notice on his book, and I can be confident that whenever I buy something with his name on it (or the name of any other author), he's getting his $.50 for the bundle of paper he didn't pay anything to print, but which he made worth printing.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic. The really annoying part though, is that I'm too close to the mark, in how these ISP's think...
Actually, I don't think you are. KaZaa is a baltant tool for copyright infringement--a reasonable man could very well find it to be so, and that means a Judge could as well.
An ISP is required to stop copyright infringement that it's formally warned about. Road Runner could be quietly blocking KaZaa as a preventive measure--they're trying to figure out if the "lost sales" from subscribers leaving will overrule the legal costs of not blocking them.
And, of course, the fact that Road Runner is owned by AOL Time Warner means that all it takes is an inter-company memo from the media group to the 'net group to start figuring out a way to kill KaZaa. Trust me--they'd much rather change based on internal stimulus than external lawsuits.
As for the TOS--your service is exactly what you agreed to with them, nothing more and nothing less. It's up to them to find the happy medium between the white hats that want to have unfettered access and the scared newbies that just don't want their boxes owned; once they find that happy medium, they maximize their profits and they're happy.
Don't like the way they work? Start your own ISP. Upstream bandwidth can't be that much once you reach critical mass, and you might even be able to use RR's cable networks to boot.
Slashdot Mirror
So much for the presumption of innocence. Given the number of false positives they get they can't reasonably claim they expect to find weapons in every bag they search.
Given the number of innocent people on the road, a Police Officer can't *possibly* assume that every traffic ticket he writes is going to turn into an altercation.
But the cops still act that way, because it could happen. If anyone in the law enforcement community investigagtes / searches anyone, they should assume danger until they prove otherwise. That's what they get paid to do.
That tactic works fine on the phone, but it wouldn't work so well in person. They either have a badge identifying themselves as a supervisor or they don't.
;) )
No. They'll be a staff of nothing but low-level "supervisors" getting paid only $.50 more than the security guards. Write the law wrong, or let the airlines get good lawyers, and there won't be any secuirty "guards" anymore, they'll all be "supervisors."
As for assuming any particular sum of money, that's just wrongheaded. By assuming $500, you're making it very unsafe for anyone to carry more than that. That's just wrong.
Why the HELL would you carry more than $500 cash on you, and *not* have a documented security device? For Christ's sake, anyone with that kind of money should have traveller's checks or a debit card.
Remember: I only disagreed with the ones I noted. All the rest seemed perfectly viable. (And the ones that you commented on & I didn't refute just don't seem worth the counterpost.
do you think the phone system should support a moderate amount of privacy in which wiretapping should only be conducted after authorities can provide grounds for the tap? (I understand that this is not the case anymore in the USA as of mildly recently?)
...
Right now, tonight, I think that the phone system *should* be pseudo-private. But I also think that Keepers of the Peace (military, police, *not* anyone who's not paid by my taxes) should be able to listen in. I think an automatic system to locate probable suspects is a viable alternative to random wiretaps.
I'm curious to hear under what terms and for what reasons you consider the entire Internet infrastructure to be, essentially, a public park where anything you do can be seen by those who enter
Because that's what it essentially is. Or, rather, that's what it *should* be. The darn thing was originally a trust-based peer-to-peer network, and now it's a trustless client/server finnagle that doesn't realize that nothing's really changed about the 'net, we just stopped using a lot of it.
There are three reasons I think that it should be considered public space.
1: Every event that happens is logged. With a warrant, I could open up mail.nycap.rr.com and find the mail logs for everyone around me. I suspect that AOL has a similar cache of AIM messages, and that most other packet tranmissions are logged.
2: Every event uses someone else's property. The entire 'net is built on people running connections between points at varying speeds, and then agreeing to let other connections connect to theirs for concurrencty.
3: Resources are shared amongst all. If I start sucking bandwidth or doing other nasty things, I can cause problems for everyone nearby.
While I'm all for allowing people to press tort claims (civl suits) for person-to-person and corporation-to-person suits of unwarranted invasion of privacy, I think the 'net would work best if everyone remembered that privacy is *not* something guaranteed on the 'net, and the only thing keeping them "private" is the relative PITA of tracking someone down.
(The best examples of warranted privacy violation are tracking down a mischevious message to a community's boards, and keeping SPAM out.)
Good gosh, you think the FBI has the right to investigate anyone, on any whim?
Yes. As long as they don't have anything better do to, and as long as they don't intimidate or obstruct the life of those that they don't have reasonable suspicion of.
The FBI is more than welcome to know that I was in a "medivalist government" group, that my best friend from high school made noises about militias, and that my credit rating sucks.
Geez, it's never your problem until it happens to you is it?
(Actually it is--and I've gotten flamed for making is such.) It's not my problem until I make it mine, or it happens to me. And it's not *a* problem until it happens, either.
Most could give a rip about battery life or heat.
You, sir, use a laptop as a portable, not a laptop.
Battery life is *more* important than processor speed, to me. Were I in the market for a new lappytop, I'd want something that I could use for a several hour stretch in the park, in the car, or just wherever the feng shui is best for writing.
Once it can run the word processor and MP3 player at once, at a speed I don't cringe at, I'm happy & the rest is just gravy.
You're right. Your right to safety is every bit as important as my right to safety, and my right to travel is just as important as yours.
But each of our rights to safety outweighs our rights to travel. You can not travel and be safe, but you can't travel and be "unsafe" in the way airport security checks against.
All men are created equal. All rights are not.
Some of those are just plain nuts.
;)
3 No passenger will be separated from his baggage during the screening process. All screening of passenger carry-on items shall be handled in the full view of the passenger.
This is ludicrous. A carry-on item is screened with the assumption that it might contain a weapon for use in hijacking. A discreet search by a competent guard will be more effective, and less embarassing.
4 All passengers traveling with family members shall have the right to have one adult family member present during all aspects of the screening process.
Also foolish. If they're criminals, leaving them together will allow them to obfuscate any crime, and possibly allow them to overpower or outwit the guards. If they're innocent, leaving them together will encourage reciporcal indignation, slowing down the process.
5 Baggage screeners shall take extraordinary care to repack all items in passenger's luggage neatly and carefully.
Foolish. Make the airline responsible for the fair-market replacement of any items damaged, and require a private place for the customer to repack.
Some passenger's done pack their luggage neatly and carefully; why should secuirty guards be forced to do it for them?
8. Screeners will not be permitted to search the contents of a wallet or other item carrying passenger's cash or credit cards without a supervisor present.
Silly. All this does is encouage false "supervisors."
A better idea would be to require all such checks to be completed in front of a functioning recording device, and assume a $500 cash-on-hand if the recording device isn't working. Make the airline have the burden of proof, and the recording device won't be ignored.
# All passengers who have personal items confiscated at the screening stations shall be provided with mailing envelopes for use in mailing seized items to passenger's home address. The passenger shall be permitted to place the item in the envelope, seal the envelope, and place the item in the U.S. mail at the screening station.
Gha. Talk about not understanding what "confiscated" means.
Better: No otherwise legal item shall be confiscated. The passenger may have otherwise legal items packed into USPS containers, and sent home at their own expense. Passengers shouldn't have the *right* to pack their own contraband, and neither should airlines be liable for shipping the items back to the passenger.
The rest of them are good, though.
I hope you never go into the field of project management.
I hope you don't either.
"No, you can't have my corporate records! Those are trade secrets, and to divulge them to my employer would contitute a violation of my privacy!"
To restate: you have no privacy from the government. You have no privacy in a public place. You have no privacy at your job. You have *NO* privacy on the interent.
The government (specifically, the FBI & other internal police forces) has the duty of looking at all the places where we don't have privacy, and finding criminals and dangerous citizens. The *only* time this becomes a problem is when it's abused or used to wrongfully accuse someone.
If you want, take out "to them" from the line you quoted. The meaning is more clear then, when applied as a general principle.
The thing that bothers me the most is that they are assuming I have money to burn. "Here, would you like to buy this, or this, or this? No? Oh, how about this, or this, or this? No? What about..." This frustrates me, because they really think I will make an impulsive decision and just buy everything at a whim. Is this really how most people behave?
THEY'RE A STORE!
Sheesh. It's not like they're kicking your out for loitering--and it's not like you can really browse there, or get some coffee. Amazon.com (rightly) assumes that if you're going to their store, you're going to buy something.
t isn't "cool", it's a simple recognition of the facts. Did you miss the news last month when it came out that the FBI had a 2^16 page file on one of CA's uni presidents in the 70's, simply because they didn't think he was "tough enough" on liberal professors? Or the earlier revelation that they had a whopping big file on that Dangerous Enemy of the Republic, Albert Einstein?
*gasp!* You mean that the FBI investigates people? Or that they actually *know* what *famous people* did?
Gee, what a shock! How dare they do their job, when they're supposed to automatically know who the "bad guys" are and go after them and them only!
(Yes, I know the FBI used its investigations as a form of intimidation; but that doesn't mean they shouldn't as a group still do it, just that the folks in charge need to be smacked & fired.)
What has Left-Right got to do with it? Not wanting to be spied on is "normal".
No, it isn't. No one "normal" stands next to the ATM so the camera doesn't capture your picture, or changes telephone lines "because this might be tapped", or routinely spends hours searching their PC for "spyware."
"Normal" people simply don't care, as they know it happens. They only care when it wrongly happens to them (i.e., their nude spyware photos are slapped on the web), and that's the only tiem they should.
If you're complaining that the free software community doesn't supply public domain code samples, then that's a totally different issue. What does any of this have to do with the GPL???
:)
It's a debate of MS's IP ease-of-use with the FSF's (which is the GPL.)
The "sample code" supplied from the FSF is probably source code, which means it's GPL'd--which means that if you *look* at it, you could get dragged into court for copyright infringement.
That was my simple point. MS's line about "IP rights ease" is accurate. That's all.
We definitely are increasingly having Orwell's big brother/sister. I'd say the distinction is that society is welcoming/asking for it.
You don't get it.
Orwell predicted that the fall of privacy would lead to one great power ruling over everyone. But with privacy gone, and the dirty laundry of *everyone* in public, it's going to be well nigh impossible to become the "one trusted source."
I don't care if the police watch my every move, track my footsteps, and know what I have for breakfast. I don't care if *you* can find that out just as easily as they can. Because if the system reaches its logical fullness, I'll never be able to be accused of a crime I didn't do (multiple redundant information gathering sources would ensure that), and I would never be afraid to walk down an alleyway; I could just *check* to see if anyone's lurking down there without looking.
The problem is the inevitable half-assed implementation. *sigh*. It's going to happen--can we just stop wasting time trying to *fight* it, and spend some energy on doing it *right?*
Don't be a dork. The GPL doesn't apply to anything you might happen to create with GPL'd interpreters, compilers, editors, software-making-things or anything else - it only applies when you use CODE that's been GPLd in your program.
The GPL does not define what "code" is, and doesn't do a perfect job saying what "included with" means. It's ambiguous, which is a fault that all copyleft licenses deal with. MS's EULAs, on the other hand, are as specific as anyone else out there.
Believe me, if you happened to get some Windows source code and used it in your own program without paying MS through the nose for it, you'd be hearing from their lawyers in very short order.
If I bought one of MS's coding suites and wrote an application in it, *any* sample code I got from MSDN would be fair game to use, extend, embrace, and do just about whatever I want with.
If I did the same thing with a GPL'd compiler, I very well might get dragged into court for using the same sample code to solve a common problem. I'd definitly get hosed if I used the "example code" to fix a *unique* problem.
Linux is *not* perfect. The copyright and IP issues the GPL brings up are *not* conducive to selling the software to make money; this is by design. (Sure, you can sell that software... but the other guy gets to do wathever he wants with it, including selling it himself and undercutting you.)
MS has decided to compete with the GPL by offering clear-cut ways to write code and sell it to make money. FSF decided to compete with the status quo by having an infectious (or "sticky") license.
No, an obligation would be "must." I stated, at worst, a compulsion or ideal state. Like "you should only have one sexual partner in your entire life", not "you must have only one sexual partner in your entire life, or I'll kill you."
LotR's deus ex machina makes its heroes nonheroic. It shouldn't do that. Tolkien can be artsy and go against the grain if he wants to, but that doesn't change what should have happened.
This tactic has worked for Microsoft OVER AND OVER again. Why throw away a perfectly good tactic that has yet to fail?
Because the US. Government is suing them for that tactic. It's a good bet that in two or six years they'll be a different administration in the white house, that'll be more than willing to correct the slap-on-the-wrist punnishment that MS is aiming for.
Changing their tactics to encourage other companies to support them & make indirect money doing so is a VERY good strategy for Microsoft.
If I came to your house, with godlike computing powers, and offered to make you an OSS system that does everything that MS's latest idea did, wouldn't you use it? History says *YES*.
As for those who tried to "dance with the devil"... Dell, Gateway, Intel, NVidia, Apple, and AMD all seem to be doing just fine, at least in large part to a mid-90s alliance with Microsoft.
I find the GPL to be more straightforward than any MS licence I have read, but they really are right about the IP ownership. "All your IP are belong to us" is pretty clear!
You're not a lawyer, or even someone who's taken a freshman business law class. (I'm the latter + more, not the former.)
The GPL is simply structred, but it creates conditions that aren't. MS's EULAs are complexly strucutred, but the end result is pretty simple.
GPL: "We offer no warranties."
MS: "We offer no warranties."
GPL: "Your software is our software, unless you only used a library, but only if that library isn't part of the same program. See legally inadmissable anectode and rant for clarification.
Oh, and don't use some other license for your software. Your software is our software, and all our software is FREE (as in sheep and boobies, not as in beer)"
MS: "Our software is your software. Your software is your software, except for the parts that you didn't write. But you can put those parts in your software since that's why we sold you this software-making-thing."
There's no doubt that MS's EULAs are more complex, and make some rather distasteful tactics. But they are, compared to the GPL, a hell of a lot simpler to use to make software that you're going to sell for a profit and not have the FSF take you randomly to court over.
Please, don't spread anit-MS FUD. The GPL (and other OSS) beats MS on moral ground, end-user fiscal cost, and average reliablity of the software. It *doesn't* beat MS on ease-of-end-userness or ease-of-making-money-with.
Pretending that it does won't change anything. Go out, fix the @#$ing spellcheck in OpenOffice so it doesn't @%ck up em-dashes, and get me an OSS word processor I can use!
I'm glad you're here to tell us what should be in the genre.
I read the genre. I would like to write the genre. I have an opinion about how it should be.
Don't like it? Fine. Got one of your own? By all means go ahead and share it.
But don't bitch about me speaking my mind when I do it.
Tolkien did not want LotR to be multiple books. It is one large story, and was separated into separate parts because the publisher was afraid people would be intimidated by the huge tome that is the collected LotR. Of course, if you feel like replying, you could give more specific examples, and if need be, I may be willing to concede some aspects of pacing.
Considering the ammount of time that Tolkien had *allready* spent on the books, he could have re-worked the pacing. Pseudo-dramatic cliffhangers have a place in serial tv shows that repeat every week, not in novels in a trilogy or in acts in a book.
Chop LotR into six parts--six acts, if you will. Time and time again, something is introduced (Tom Bambadil) or occurs (Strider being the king) in one act and one act alone, with little or no mention or occurance elsewhere.
Aside from the rancid deus ex machina that is the end, Gandalfs abrupt return and conquests in acts 3-4 strike me as jarring.
I seem to remember the books being positively rife with foreshadowing. Of course, I havent really proven anything there. I guess I would like you to reply with an example.
"A king's hands are healing hands" comes out of nowhere, and [evil wizard what's his name--don't have the books with me]'s sudden appearence in book 6 was just, well, jarring.
I'm sure I could go back and re-read the books three or four times, and I'd find forshadowing too. But just because it's there doesn't mean that it's good forshadowing, or appropriately spaced.
Ok, Im not really sure why having the climactic scene in the last book is a problem
I wasn't referring to acts 5 & 6. I was referring to act 5. Act 6 is just fluff and a hobbit-grows-up point.
The way the ring is destroyed in the end is, in my opinion, one of the best aspects of the books. The entire point of that scene is to show that no living being could have the willpower to throw the ring into the fire, so great was its powers of temptation and treachery. (Spoiler ahead, watch yourself folks.) Having Gollum seize the ring from Frodo and then fall into the pit amidst his excitement over being reunited with his precious further refutes your claim about foreshadowing, as it fulfills the predictions Gandalf made way back in the Fellowship of the Ring. Gandalf specifically wanrs Frodo not to kill Gollum, both out of pity and because Gandalf felt that Gollum still had some purpose to fulfill. If Frodo had ignored that advice and killed Gollum, ironically, he would have doomed all of existance to defeat at the hands of Sauron. In my opinion, that scene was very, very well done.
I hated it. Fantasies and epic stories should be about mortals becoming heroes and defeating impossible odds--not about "how they don't build them like this anymore" or "God steps in and saves the day."
I'll refrain from commenting on the design of the ring and Sauron's relative power. Quite simply, Frodo's "corruption" by the ring was not believeable, and for something rife with all the powers of worst villian in all of creation, the ring certainly didn't do very much.
It's a difference of opinion, I guess. You like the climax of LotR--I say again that he succeeded by selling a book that was not in and of itself great, but that simply managed to inspire the imaginations of others. For some parts and some people, that inspiration is "wow, this is cool, I wish I could do something like this." For others, it's "Nice idea--but I could do something better than that!"
Obviously, I am a biased, Slashdot-reading LotR geek. I dont pretend to be impartial, as these are some of my favorite books, and I am not trying to say that they are immune to criticism; I have some complaints of my own about the books. But aside from possibly some complaints about pacing, I think the criticsm you have thrown at the books are entirely off base.
I'm biased too; everyone in the whole world's biased.
I think LotR's faults are enough to knock it off its pedestal for me. You like it. Despite what some English majors will try and tell you, there's really no way to tell which of us is right and which of us is wrong.
you can really see the areas the characters traveled and feel like you are there. the problem is though, that you really don't know how the characters feel since tolkien doesn't develop that side of the book enough
No disagreemnt on you points, but the literary part of me's got to correct your grammar.
You should be saying "I" or "the reader," not "you." I (the assumned target) didn't find most of the scenery in LotR to be breathtaking or engaging. And since you have no idea if I did or didn't share your opinion, you shoulnd't have phrased your sentence as if you did.
Sorry, my wife makes the same grammatical mess up all the time, and I'm trying to cure her of the bad colloquial habits which cause other people to not instantly respect her intellect, which (understandibly) ticks her off.
Also, I don't think that second-guessing Tolkien is something that I'd condone. Tolkien was arguably one of the most brilliant writers of the last century
;)
I'd oppose that argument. Tolkien's books were badly paced, his storyline brought in new elements with little or no forshadowing, and the climactic scene of entire story took place in book 5/6, and was solved by a villian.
That said, and ignoring the abyssmal story finale that was the sixth book (part II of vol 3), LotR has an amazing ablity to inspire people to create new things. (This in itself is no measure of greatness, but the breadth and width of Tolkien's inspirees are.)
I prefer to look at the movies as a seperate work, inspired by the work of J.R.R. Tolkien. Or, as I say half-jokingly, "it's missing something from the books--all the parts that suck."
My family swears by GM cars, mostly Chevys.
In 1987 we bought a new Chevy Astro. That car was driven from hell to back, had the engine replaced relatively early, and was driven by my father day in and day out until he finally got a new one--in 1998. (That's 11 years later, btw.)
Dad gave the van to my brother, who drove it for the next three years, until its mechanical problems finally all crashed at once. If he had maintained the darn thing, it would probably still be on the road, too.
And in all this time, the interior has *never* gotten more than "filthy." The celing didn't fall down. The carpet didn't wear away. And, in more than 300,000 miles of driving, the darn thing *still* ran as good as any other vehicle of comparable age or milage that I've ever seen. (Give me the cash to fix the several comparatively minor problems with it, and it'd be back on the road easily.)
Stop spewing FUD. GM builds cars as good as any other car company in the American market... the only reason they (and Dodge and Ford) have a bad rep at all is because no one bother's to export the cheap POSes from other countries.
Your ISP has a number of valid reasons (IMO) to ban p2p -- bandwidth is a completely fair one. Illegality (if proven) is another. However, morality has got to be just about the worst reason. I don't want someone qualitatively deciding what is "moral" or not for me. And I don't want my ISP presuming that what I am doing is illegal. The burden of proof for illegal activities should be on the ISP, NOT the customer.
The ISP is, presumably, a private company. They can, if they want, decide that you can't use their network unless you go to their church and their political party.
File sharing programs are, quite simply, used by the vast majority for the express purpose of copyright infringement. If you had a water bong, you *might* be using it to smoke tobacco, but that's not likely. If I carry a rifle into the mall, I *might* just be looking for one in the sporting goods store with the same stock, but the security guard isn't going to assume I am until that's proven.
When you're dealing with something that's reasonably going to be used for an illegal activity, don't be surprised if people assume that you're using it for illegal activities while you're dealing with it.
(And besides the point, KaZaa's evil bloated spyware that crashes PCs and doens't know when to let up. It deserves to die, and other p2p file sharing programs can stay or go with no care from me.)
# just because people with lots of money can get laws passed, it doesn't make it 'the right way to live' -- you are cringing behind an absurd and unthinking stance of "it's the law"
;) I mean, not doing so would just be obeying a silly law, right?)
Hardly absurd. It *is* the law. We believe in rule of law here on Planet Earth, and that means that we obey the laws until such time as those laws are changed.
Copyright, in all its glory, was passed not by people with lots of money, but by people who wanted to read books. And it was extended to cover movies, music, and software by judges who probably didn't have a lot of money.
(If you feel like living without rule of law, then by all means show up at my door so I can beat the @$$# out of you.
# these people running the large businesses are being dicks. they are squeezing people every chance they can TO TAKE MORE MONEY. its all about the money, and the ingrained definition of business to take as much as possible while pushing the envelope of human decency. Their dicks, so I'm a dick. fsck 'em I serve 800Kb/s 24/7 of all I can.
Actually, the ingrained, legal purpose of a business is *to make the most money*, and that's it. Rarely is the best way to make money pissing the majority off.
Hence, AOLTW's Road Runner business test-markets its blockage of KaZaa, to see how it can make the most money--by blocking it and avoiding the fines and legal fees it would have to pay, or by not blocking it and keeping the % of subscribers that would unsubscribe with KaZaa blocked.
at its heart, the REAL ISSUE with copyright is that it DOES NOT MAKE SENSE to OWN information. if you look carefully, without the screwed up context of "business promotion" in which we currently live, then the whole idea of allowing excusivity of information is COMPLETELY ABSURD and
UNENFORCEABLE. The only reason big money buys/sets up laws to allow copyright now it to promote businesses (NOTE: not content creators any more) into taking more money than they otherwise could without it.
I am a "content creator", though I prefer the terms "writer" or "author." I currently have a manuscript out there looking for a publisher. Copyright law is the *only* thing that keeps a random publishing house from saying "I want to see it all" and then publishing it without my consent.
Copyright law is the only thing that keeps a random recording company from walking into an indi band's free show, buying one copy of their lovingly-mixed CD, then mass producing it and selling it for billions of dollars and not giving the band one red cent.
We live in a capitalistic society, drDugan. People do things because they can make money doing them. I would not have spent nearly as much time writing as I did if I did not think that I could make money by finishing the story. I would still have written, but unless I could make money by writing the story, it would not have been worth my time to do it as anything more than a recreational activity.
Personally, I'm grateful that we live in a society were the creation of new stories and songs and movies is as valued as the creation of a bunch of other things that *don't* bring any happiness to us all. I gadly pay $18 to go see a movie with my wife; that's about what we pay if we just go out to eat, but we enjoy the movie a lot more than we enjoy the dinner.
# technology will bring down copyright. maybe not eliminate it, but certainly reign in the ABSURD notion of life +70 years or whatever unbelievable state we have now. These companies "suffering" from copyright infringement are FSCKING DINOSAURS and deserve to be raped by the sting of new technology. I wanted to puke when hollings bitches about our precious multi-billion dollar content industry that is just a short toss from a mass indoctrination engine. tell me one thing Sony pictures or universal pictures has done to innovate, to create something of value for our society. to make their product better. NOTHING. (well, maybe extra scenes on DVDs) The create content/crap. its information with no value other than the artificially created market of scarcity that is now GONE because of technology.
Sony Pictures, specifically, created Final Fantasy (which I enjoyed seeing, even if it was a disappointment), and I can guarantee that they wouldn't have done that if they couldn't have made money on it.
Sony, Universal, and a whole bunch of other companies sell their movies on DVDs and VHS, which means I can buy a copy and watch them whenever I want to. If America didn't give them the legal tools to reduce copying of those DVDs down to the point where they profit, I assure you that we'd never see another DVD again--or at the very least, that the price would skyrocket up to the new market's profitability point.
Before you complain about how cheap a DVD or CD is to make, I want you to think about something. Do you have a better idea? Not just for you. Not just for me. For everyone, everywhere, who likes movies and wants to see more movies and music and software and books and stuff made. Do you have a plan to implement this idea, a way to change the world so we *can* get everything "for free," and everyone who worked to make these things as they are still gets to eat and be happy and be encouraged on a basic level to make some more.
Linux and most OSS suffers from a very real, basic problem, a problem that I'm suffering from right now as I realize that I was supposed to start writing four hours ago. It's not the day job. This great, creative effort that others will enjoy and love and makes the world a really better place (in a way that answering phones and sending letters doesn't), DOES NOT PAY THE BILLS.
Until these great things *do* pay the bills, it's irresponsible to devote the bulk of one's time to them. The bills have to be paid. The rent has to be met. Food has to get onto the table, and gas needs to get into the car. Once all of that's done, THEN me and the OSS hackers and every other creative person who hasn't won the creativity lottery gets to do what we love to do, and spend even a little bit of time making something that will enrich the world.
Now, if I can state a practical case to *someday soon* make some money from my Art, I can justify putting more time into it. I can stay up late. I can sacrafice things that I need to do to stay healthier and get promoted on the bet that I will make some money from doing this thing that I love.
If you take away copyright, you kill that long practical bet. I'd be limited to the generosity of others. I'd be limited to only the recreational time I can spend on the work. I and hundreds of thousands of others like me would lose even the slim chance of getting appreciated--really, basically, fiscally appreciated--for what we do.
If you've read this far, I do have one last point to make. Copyright does need to be reformed. It should not apply to engineered software. It should not last for 70 years past the author's death. It should not be able to be held by corporations.
Ideally, were I to re-write the law, traditional copyright would apply only to works of art--things that are *not* practical necessities. It would last for the life of the author or his spouse, and then for two years after their deaths to pay off the final bills. Nothing at all could be authored by a corporation, and only those with a substantial creative input (as defined by the time-honored reasonable man standard) could be co-authors.
Software innovations could be covered by patents, with hard-coded RAND rates for patents. Breaking news and technical journals and compiled software programs would not be covered by copyrihgt, but by a "personage" right. Make it a crime to attribute something to Microsoft or Dan Rather or whomever without their permission, and you let them set their own market worth through marketing.
what you are saying is NOT TRUE. It is a convenient lie we tell ourselves to rationalize the current situation. Without copyright, people would still make music. they would make plays and movies and all the other forms of entertainment we all love. If you are about to disagree, THINK. people have been entertaining themselves for many many generations before we had copyright, the vivendi group, and 800 million dollar blockbusters.
And they were doing it in one of two ways, musically speaking:
* Badly done performances by whomever happened to live nearby
* Live performances on the rare occasion that a good musician was in town.
The modern world is *vastly* different than the old world, and the differences pretty much all boil down to easier copying.
Copyright was invented, not for music, not for software, but for the written word. It was a legal construct so someone who writes something--be it a novel or newspaswer clip--would have legal recourse when the publisher / newspaper printed it, made oodles of money, and didn't give the author one red cent.
Copyright has been expanded to cover other creative acts, as media for conveying those acts has become convenient and copyable. Since it's a extant legal construct, it's what's used by the people who hold the rights to creative works (be they software or music) as a way to exert control over how their creations are used by going to court and suing people for "copying without permission." The courts decided that sometimes the argument of the other guy was a good idea to let stand, and so Fair Use came about.
the reality is that content producers work for businesses. businesses are designed to take money from the population. copyright in its current form keeps these businesses profiting very very well.
"interesting. Wrong, but interesting." (*grin*)
I'll agree that "Content producers" work for businesses--anyone who calls themselves that doesn't deserve even a distant relation with *art*. But businesses use copyright rather effectively--they sell a copy (or in software, a specific permission to make copies) and get money for it. A lot of money.
But that's how money works. Businesses (or just plain ordinary people) make something that other people want, and then get money for it so they can get what *they* want. Businesses exist, in a social view, to provide a valued service or good to the community. In a capital view, they exist to exchange a valued service or good for money, which the owner(s) of that business then exchange for the things that they want/need/lust after.
Personally, I think copyright's just find as it is--asdie from that software bit, but even that can be dealt with. Stephen King's still got the copyright notice on his book, and I can be confident that whenever I buy something with his name on it (or the name of any other author), he's getting his $.50 for the bundle of paper he didn't pay anything to print, but which he made worth printing.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic. The really annoying part though, is that I'm too close to the mark, in how these ISP's think...
Actually, I don't think you are. KaZaa is a baltant tool for copyright infringement--a reasonable man could very well find it to be so, and that means a Judge could as well.
An ISP is required to stop copyright infringement that it's formally warned about. Road Runner could be quietly blocking KaZaa as a preventive measure--they're trying to figure out if the "lost sales" from subscribers leaving will overrule the legal costs of not blocking them.
And, of course, the fact that Road Runner is owned by AOL Time Warner means that all it takes is an inter-company memo from the media group to the 'net group to start figuring out a way to kill KaZaa. Trust me--they'd much rather change based on internal stimulus than external lawsuits.
As for the TOS--your service is exactly what you agreed to with them, nothing more and nothing less. It's up to them to find the happy medium between the white hats that want to have unfettered access and the scared newbies that just don't want their boxes owned; once they find that happy medium, they maximize their profits and they're happy.
Don't like the way they work? Start your own ISP. Upstream bandwidth can't be that much once you reach critical mass, and you might even be able to use RR's cable networks to boot.