Let's see, I want to sue Firestone because they knowingly sold me faulty tires that caused my accident. They only want to spend $100 for their legal defense so I have to loan them the money so I can sue them?
Let's keep it in your context, and assuming the RIAA was in the right here. The RIAA would have to loan me $100,000 so they can rightfully sue me for $20,000? Brilliant!
As far as the government aspect... Yeah, I want limit the DA's ability to prosecute the a-hole who raped and murdered my daughter because he's a homeless crack head.
Since you obviously have no access to a dictionary, I thought I'd help. BTW, you're a disgrace to the human race.
tautology ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tô-tl-j) n. pl. tautologies
Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy. An instance of such repetition.
Logic. An empty or vacuous statement composed of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it logically true whether the simpler statements are factually true or false; for example, the statement Either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow.
I'm sorry, your thoughts are too well thought out and intelligent to be posted here. You'll have to delete and resubmit using at least one reference to: copyright Nazis, Micro$oft, etc.
My take is this. Publishing houses have no impact on artistic freedom. People can choose to create any type of music, literature, movies, etc., they choose to create. The simple fact is that if you want to make a lot of money then you need to create something that a lot of people want to buy. If you're main driver is in creating art, so be it, but then don't whine if you're not on a top 40 radio station or best seller list. That's the free market component of it.
Lots of people state the music/publishing industry is a hinderance to new music styles. Personally, looking over the past 30 years I can say that metal rock, disco, rap, etc., all started out as small movements outside of the mainstream in small clubs and venues, and were powerful enough to capture a mainstream audience.
Publishing houses do invest in risky ventures with artists. For every Tom Clancy there's hundreds of writers who will never earn out their advances because their works aren't appealing to a big enough audience. And it's not because of funny accounting, it's because their books don't sell.
We publish about 140 books a year. We write off over $5 million dollars a year in unearned advances paid to authors.
"Every copyright holder is a partial owner of my CD burner, my Xerox machine, my hard drive, my VCR, my CD-Rs, etc because they dictate what I can and cannot do with my own property. "
No they don't. They dictate what you can do with their property. You are free to make as many copies of your home movie, term paper, original songs, etc., as you'd like.
"We can turn your next sentence against you for this one:"
Only if you take it out of context as you did. The original poster stated copyright provides no financial incentive to the work owners. He "proved" his point by pointing out all those who have not made money. He was wrong, and so are you.
How on earth did this get modded to 3:Interesting?
"If I said I didn't have an incentive to grow oranges uness I could plant a tree in your yard, or if I said I didn't have an incentive to grow cotton unless I could own slaves on the plantation, most people would see this is these as the worthless shallow arguments that they are."
Not only are these arguments shallow and worthless, they are not relavent to any discussion of copyright. In what way does copyrigt give anyone ownership of your property or personal freedom?
"A deception that copyrights somehow financially benefit artists and creators. The simple fact is, that for every artist that makes it "big" there are litterally thousands who copyrights haven't helped a bit, even hindered, or destroyed."
Keep that bit or tripe in you mind as you go to see X-Men 2 this weekend and ask yourself if the studio, writers, actors, etc., would have invested their time and hundreds of millions of dollars to create this work if there was no financial benefit in it for them. Yes there are thousands of of artists who haven't made a dime from their creations - this is a result of a free and capitalist economy, not the fault of copyright. Would those artists have made money without copyright?
I am a book publisher, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that people who write for a living actually like to make a living from their writing. Those that don't...generally cut way back on their production or quit writing altogether.
That would be scary. Combined with the other "automated toy" links already posted, a robot to do my taxes and sit at the computer for me would make me totally replaceable in my wife's eyes.
This implies that our protections are tied to the taxes we pay...which I think is a dangerous position. Does this mean the unemployed/homeless have no (or perhaps less in states will sales taxes) protections?
The unemployed and homeless pay taxes if they have an earned income.
To state the obvious, a corporation, while an entity with protections, has no self interest in earning money.
Corps don't have an interest in earning money? Money in the bank doesn't help the corporation to re-invest (captial expenditures) in itself? Would you invest in a company that paid out every cent it earned to employess and investors? If you did, you wouldn't be a good investor. There is a clear separation legally between the assets of the company and the assets of it's employees - you pay taxes on your assets, why shouldn't the corp.
Its easy to expect corporations to bare societies burdens because...
I'm not expecting corps to bear the burden - but I do expect corps to pay their share of the burden. I don't complain about paying taxes - even though I get taxed on my gross, not how much I have at the end year.
Corporations should pay taxes because they enjoy all of the protections private individuals do. So they should have the same
Employees pay taxes on the portion of the corporate earnings they get to keep, so why shouldn't corporations have to pay tax on the portion of earnings it gets to keep?
And, it's not a double tax since each "person" in the equation is only paying tax on the portion of revenue they keep.
We don't need laws (or courts) to defeat spam
on
AOL Wins Anti-Spam Case
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What we need is for the backbone providers to start charging for the bandwidth that gets used. For example: Spammer A on Backbone X sends out a billion messages a day. Backbones Y and Z charge Backbone X for taking up so much of their bandwidth. Backbone X sees it's not economically feasible to allow Spammer A to send out the spam.
This is, admittedly, simplistic. But, for once, I'd like to see economics work in an open market without having the lawyers get rich.
From http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html:
"1790: Copyright Act of 1790 The First Congress implemented the copyright provision of the U.S. Constitution in 1790. The Copyright Act of 1790, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books to the Authors and Proprietors of Such Copies, was modeled on the Statute of Anne (1710). It granted American authors the right to print, re-print, or publish their work for a period of fourteen years and to renew for another fourteen. The law was meant to provide an incentive to authors, artists, and scientists to create original works by providing creators with a monopoly. At the same time, the monopoly was limited in order to stimulate creativity and the advancement of "science and the useful arts" through wide public access to works in the "public domain." Major revisions to the act were implemented in 1831, 1870, 1909, and 1976. "
From http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/std/resour ces/copyright/history.htm:
LICENSING ACT 1662
"The ability to print books easily and cheaply raised the issue of piracy. As the number of printers increased in England, the King exercised the royal prerogative to regulate the book trade and protect printers against piracy. This was the first of many decrees to control what was being printed. It was the Licensing Act of 1662 which established a register of licensed books, along with the requirement to deposit a copy of the book to be licensed. Deposit was administered by the Stationers' Company who were given powers to seize books suspected of containing matters hostile to the Church or Government. By 1681 the Licensing Act had been repealed and the Stationers' Company had passed a by-law that established rights of ownership for books registered to a number of its members so as to continue regulating the printing trade themselves."
I have done my reading - have you? Copyrights were put in place to protect the $$$ investment by the creators. The end result being more in the public domain after the copyright ran out - but the laws were put in place for $.
Stop bringing up Disney. Nothing is stopping you from creating your own Snow White or Little Mermaid story, movie, whatever. You are only being stopped from using their version of the story. Get over it.
So, artists just need to put up with the stealing because of the "ease of duplication"? Hmmm, very interesting. I don't suppose you would be upset if someone stole your identity and ruined you financially because of the ease of duplicating your personal information then, would you?
>>When a taxi driver makes money with his taxi, s/he is making a quick buck off someone else's work - the work of those who designed and built the car. When a restaurant owner makes money, s/he is making money off of the work of the people who built the restaurant and the furniture and cooking utensils. When an singer has a concert, s/he is making a quick buck off the people who did the work of making the speakers, microphone and electronics.
>>Sure, the people and companies who build the cars, buildings and furniture, and speakers are paid for it. But they aren't continuously paid for it over and over again until years after death.
You're right, they don't get paid for it forever - because that wasn't the terms for their sale. They set the terms that were acceptable to them and they are happy.
>>After about 30-40 years, the creators of the copyrighted work have been paid more than well enough for what they did (and if they didn't make much money in the first 40 years, they aren't going to make anything after that time either).
Who is to decide when someone has been paid enough? Would you agree to a society were the populace could just show up at your house and decide "you've earned enough this year, we're taking the rest"? No, you wouldn't.
>>The point is that copyright was introduced because it was thought that without copyright, creative content would either be kept private by the creators and not distributed to the public at all, or just would not be created. So the original goal of copyright was to increase the number of works that made it into the public domain, by giving the creators a financial incentive to create and distribute.
No...Copyright was introduced to give incentive to businesses and authors/artists to invest in and create works. The incentive being they would be better able to make $$$$$ from their works instead of having them pirated away.
>>Who's to decide what 'greatly' means in your context? Will it end world hunger? No. Will it cure cancer? No. Will I be able to show my (grand)children the entertainment I grew up with, in an uneditted non-PC form, without owing anyone anything? Yes.
Sorry, but you being able to show your grandchildren the shows you watched in the format you choose is not a priority for society.
>>Well, not only are you then limited by what happens to be in the library, it won't be free for much longer. More and more books are appearing on shelves shrinkwrapped with a pretty EULA borrowed from the new 'digital' legislation. The contract of first sale is no more. As it happens more and more, without 'whining', it becomes more acceptable. Libraries will soon be museums, nothing more.
It's THEIR product. And, again, the issue you have with the shrinkwrapped books is not a copyright issue - it's a licensing issue. If you don't like the terms - don't buy it. Nothing talks like money - or the absence of money. Companies will try out new business models - if they fail, they change. The licensing won't affect libraries - lack of funding affects libraries.
I'd really like to see all these people complaining DO something for a change. Use your own money to commission a book and give it away for free. Start your own recording studio and build your own distribution channel and give artists free access so they can sell their music cheaply, or give it away and keep the money they want. Come on, show those rich, greedy bastards a thing or two!
What??? You don't want to invest your nestegg in a business and then give the profits away or have someone else tell you when you've earned enough? What a shock! (Sorry for the sarcasm.)
What needs to change is all the whining about it. Face it, for software, copyright is just about irrelevant - it's the licensing terms that it's released under that are important. Those are what determine your rights in relation to a work. The length of copyright is also moot in relation to software - that fabulous C program you wrote last night has a shelf life somewhat shorter than bell-bottom jeans.
For those of you that want to bring up Walt Disney - do you really think society would benefit greatly if the copyright on Mickey Mouse ended? Give me a break. The only people who would benefit are those who wish to make a buck or two off of someone else's work. I have no tears for them.
At one time in our recent history a short copyright length actually benefitted society because information was costly and not as easy to find. So putting information in the public domain increased access and was a real benefit to society. That's not true today. Information is cheap and difficult to avoid. Who cares if it's going to be 120 years (or whatever the number is) before John Irving's novels fall in to the public domain? You want to read one - check one out of the library, it's free.
You pissed because music is more expensive than you'd like? Listen to the radio - it's free! And, by listening to the radio and not purchasing the music you give the music industry a reason to lower their prices.
Whatever you do, just shut up and stop whining.
Re:$5 to anyone who proves this statement wrong-
on
The Economics of Spam
·
· Score: 1
he is not paying a single dime for the bandwidth costs that my ISP incurs. She also only pays a fraction of the communication cost that the open relay has, plus that when such an open relay belongs to someone who has to pay for each byte he sends, you can bet she's not going to pay the owners bill either.
She is paying for the bandwidth. If the downstream providers aren't being compensated properly for the use of their bandwidth they will charge her provider more for its use - and they in turn will charge her more for it's use. The bandwidth is being paid for.
My mailbox costs me nothing. I don't know what it's like in the US, but here you buy a mailbox in some shop, you plant it in front of your house and it costs nothing from then on, no matter how much (commercial or other) mail is deposited in it.
Your e-mailbox also costs you nothing above it's original purchase until you use it. Just like your snail-mailbox. Do you really think the price of a stamp is not affected by the volume of mail the snail-spammers send through the system?
The right to free speech is something entirely different from the (non-existing) right to be heard however, and that's the main problem here: these spammers are forcing you to listen to them and make you pay for it.
I guess that's the price we pay for having a completely open Internet. Perhaps you'd prefer it if the Internet were regulated to control what types of speech are propagated?
The big difference is that her business' sole purpose is spamming. If "people" like her wouldn't exist, no-one would need anti-spam software. The main purpose of a manufacturer of air purifiers is not to polute, but to manufacture air purifiers. Even if no air purifier manufacturers existed, people would still want air purifiers since there would still be polution.
The air purifier manufacturer is contributing to the need to purchase their product.
BTW, I hate spam as much as the next person - especially the IM spam I'm getting.
What a GREAT idea! After all, there's no law against writing fraudulent checks!
Re:$5 to anyone who proves this statement wrong-
on
The Economics of Spam
·
· Score: 1
- She's paying for the open relays and proxies. She's getting charged by her ISP for the amount of bandwidth she's taking up. The owners of the pipelines between her and your inbox have business arrangements with each other that account for traffic loads. So, when she pays her monthly ISP bill (which covers her traffic load) she IS paying the postage in the same way snail-mailers do. If your ISP has high bandwidth charges then set up your mail program to retrieve headers first. Delete what you don't want to waste real bandwidth on and download the message bodies later. In terms of the cost of storage - your mailbox costs you as well. You pay for it through the postage you, and others, pay.
- Commercial speech is protected speech
- Her business is no more 'mob like' than many other manufacturer in the country. Companies that sell you air purifiers are contributing to air pollution, for example.
Can you please explain how this is theft? They seem to be following the rules of the GPL - making the source available and publishing the final result under the GPL.
Some notes relative to the computer book publishing business:
First for you technical writing copyright hounds: It is usually very easy to retain copyright for your work - just ask for it. The shelf life of your content is so short all the publisher really cares about is who gets the licensing rights. Even if you assign copyright to the publisher you will more than likely get that back when your book is taken out of print.
Authors are not screwed on royalty. If you've ever seen a fully loaded P&L for a book you'll realize that in the end the publisher and the author basically split the pie. And that's if the author is getting a 10% royalty. The difference is the author gets most of their money up front while the publisher waits 18-24 months to get theirs.
Why you might get half royalties for electronic content: Every online site wants the material in a specific format. It costs money to get your content put into that format. There is no revenue going back to the publisher in that market. Publisher's do it now in hopes the market may one day take off. The Publisher is assuming virtually all of the risk in entering that market and deserves the lion's share of the paltry returns. In the future, as the market grows you'll see more equity.
That's not a very strong argument. You are assuming that the information, voice and features the person is trying to find on the first site will be duplicated elsewhere with different technology.
KDE and GNOME don't exist outside of the market. They are distributed commercially on the shelves of computer and book stores everywhere - in the box with the rest of the Linux distribution.
Slashdot Mirror
That would work soooo well.
Let's see, I want to sue Firestone because they knowingly sold me faulty tires that caused my accident. They only want to spend $100 for their legal defense so I have to loan them the money so I can sue them?
Let's keep it in your context, and assuming the RIAA was in the right here. The RIAA would have to loan me $100,000 so they can rightfully sue me for $20,000? Brilliant!
As far as the government aspect... Yeah, I want limit the DA's ability to prosecute the a-hole who raped and murdered my daughter because he's a homeless crack head.
"Extendable copyright terms are the real problem preventing the creation of new works under the current copyright system."
Explain to me how copyright extensions are preventing the creation of new works...
I would agree they might stem the creation of derivative works, but not new works.
Since you obviously have no access to a dictionary, I thought I'd help. BTW, you're a disgrace to the human race.
tautology ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tô-tl-j)
n. pl. tautologies
Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy.
An instance of such repetition.
Logic. An empty or vacuous statement composed of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it logically true whether the simpler statements are factually true or false; for example, the statement Either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow.
Why would you want to debase yourself?
I'm sorry, your thoughts are too well thought out and intelligent to be posted here. You'll have to delete and resubmit using at least one reference to: copyright Nazis, Micro$oft, etc.
My take is this. Publishing houses have no impact on artistic freedom. People can choose to create any type of music, literature, movies, etc., they choose to create. The simple fact is that if you want to make a lot of money then you need to create something that a lot of people want to buy. If you're main driver is in creating art, so be it, but then don't whine if you're not on a top 40 radio station or best seller list. That's the free market component of it.
Lots of people state the music/publishing industry is a hinderance to new music styles. Personally, looking over the past 30 years I can say that metal rock, disco, rap, etc., all started out as small movements outside of the mainstream in small clubs and venues, and were powerful enough to capture a mainstream audience.
Publishing houses do invest in risky ventures with artists. For every Tom Clancy there's hundreds of writers who will never earn out their advances because their works aren't appealing to a big enough audience. And it's not because of funny accounting, it's because their books don't sell.
We publish about 140 books a year. We write off over $5 million dollars a year in unearned advances paid to authors.
"Every copyright holder is a partial owner of my CD burner, my Xerox machine, my hard drive, my VCR, my CD-Rs, etc because they dictate what I can and cannot do with my own property. "
No they don't. They dictate what you can do with their property. You are free to make as many copies of your home movie, term paper, original songs, etc., as you'd like.
"We can turn your next sentence against you for this one:"
Only if you take it out of context as you did. The original poster stated copyright provides no financial incentive to the work owners. He "proved" his point by pointing out all those who have not made money. He was wrong, and so are you.
How on earth did this get modded to 3:Interesting?
"If I said I didn't have an incentive to grow oranges uness I could plant a tree in your yard, or if I said I didn't have an incentive to grow cotton unless I could own slaves on the plantation, most people would see this is these as the worthless shallow arguments that they are."
Not only are these arguments shallow and worthless, they are not relavent to any discussion of copyright. In what way does copyrigt give anyone ownership of your property or personal freedom?
"A deception that copyrights somehow financially benefit artists and creators. The simple fact is, that for every artist that makes it "big" there are litterally thousands who copyrights haven't helped a bit, even hindered, or destroyed."
Keep that bit or tripe in you mind as you go to see X-Men 2 this weekend and ask yourself if the studio, writers, actors, etc., would have invested their time and hundreds of millions of dollars to create this work if there was no financial benefit in it for them. Yes there are thousands of of artists who haven't made a dime from their creations - this is a result of a free and capitalist economy, not the fault of copyright. Would those artists have made money without copyright?
I am a book publisher, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that people who write for a living actually like to make a living from their writing. Those that don't...generally cut way back on their production or quit writing altogether.
That would be scary. Combined with the other "automated toy" links already posted, a robot to do my taxes and sit at the computer for me would make me totally replaceable in my wife's eyes.
This implies that our protections are tied to the taxes we pay...which I think is a dangerous position. Does this mean the unemployed/homeless have no (or perhaps less in states will sales taxes) protections?
...
The unemployed and homeless pay taxes if they have an earned income.
To state the obvious, a corporation, while an entity with protections, has no self interest in earning money.
Corps don't have an interest in earning money? Money in the bank doesn't help the corporation to re-invest (captial expenditures) in itself? Would you invest in a company that paid out every cent it earned to employess and investors? If you did, you wouldn't be a good investor. There is a clear separation legally between the assets of the company and the assets of it's employees - you pay taxes on your assets, why shouldn't the corp.
Its easy to expect corporations to bare societies burdens because
I'm not expecting corps to bear the burden - but I do expect corps to pay their share of the burden. I don't complain about paying taxes - even though I get taxed on my gross, not how much I have at the end year.
Corporations should pay taxes because they enjoy all of the protections private individuals do. So they should have the same
Employees pay taxes on the portion of the corporate earnings they get to keep, so why shouldn't corporations have to pay tax on the portion of earnings it gets to keep?
And, it's not a double tax since each "person" in the equation is only paying tax on the portion of revenue they keep.
What we need is for the backbone providers to start charging for the bandwidth that gets used. For example: Spammer A on Backbone X sends out a billion messages a day. Backbones Y and Z charge Backbone X for taking up so much of their bandwidth. Backbone X sees it's not economically feasible to allow Spammer A to send out the spam.
This is, admittedly, simplistic. But, for once, I'd like to see economics work in an open market without having the lawyers get rich.
From http://arl.cni.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html:
r ces/copyright/history.htm:
"1790: Copyright Act of 1790
The First Congress implemented the copyright provision of the U.S. Constitution in 1790. The Copyright Act of 1790, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books to the Authors and Proprietors of Such Copies, was modeled on the Statute of Anne (1710). It granted American authors the right to print, re-print, or publish their work for a period of fourteen years and to renew for another fourteen. The law was meant to provide an incentive to authors, artists, and scientists to create original works by providing creators with a monopoly. At the same time, the monopoly was limited in order to stimulate creativity and the advancement of "science and the useful arts" through wide public access to works in the "public domain." Major revisions to the act were implemented in 1831, 1870, 1909, and 1976. "
From http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/std/resou
LICENSING ACT 1662
"The ability to print books easily and cheaply raised the issue of piracy. As the number of printers increased in England, the King exercised the royal prerogative to regulate the book trade and protect printers against piracy. This was the first of many decrees to control what was being printed. It was the Licensing Act of 1662 which established a register of licensed books, along with the requirement to deposit a copy of the book to be licensed. Deposit was administered by the Stationers' Company who were given powers to seize books suspected of containing matters hostile to the Church or Government. By 1681 the Licensing Act had been repealed and the Stationers' Company had passed a by-law that established rights of ownership for books registered to a number of its members so as to continue regulating the printing trade themselves."
I have done my reading - have you? Copyrights were put in place to protect the $$$ investment by the creators. The end result being more in the public domain after the copyright ran out - but the laws were put in place for $.
Stop bringing up Disney. Nothing is stopping you from creating your own Snow White or Little Mermaid story, movie, whatever. You are only being stopped from using their version of the story. Get over it.
So, artists just need to put up with the stealing because of the "ease of duplication"? Hmmm, very interesting. I don't suppose you would be upset if someone stole your identity and ruined you financially because of the ease of duplicating your personal information then, would you?
>>When a taxi driver makes money with his taxi, s/he is making a quick buck off someone else's work - the work of those who designed and built the car. When a restaurant owner makes money, s/he is making money off of the work of the people who built the restaurant and the furniture and cooking utensils. When an singer has a concert, s/he is making a quick buck off the people who did the work of making the speakers, microphone and electronics.
>>Sure, the people and companies who build the cars, buildings and furniture, and speakers are paid for it. But they aren't continuously paid for it over and over again until years after death.
You're right, they don't get paid for it forever - because that wasn't the terms for their sale. They set the terms that were acceptable to them and they are happy.
>>After about 30-40 years, the creators of the copyrighted work have been paid more than well enough for what they did (and if they didn't make much money in the first 40 years, they aren't going to make anything after that time either).
Who is to decide when someone has been paid enough? Would you agree to a society were the populace could just show up at your house and decide "you've earned enough this year, we're taking the rest"? No, you wouldn't.
>>The point is that copyright was introduced because it was thought that without copyright, creative content would either be kept private by the creators and not distributed to the public at all, or just would not be created. So the original goal of copyright was to increase the number of works that made it into the public domain, by giving the creators a financial incentive to create and distribute.
No...Copyright was introduced to give incentive to businesses and authors/artists to invest in and create works. The incentive being they would be better able to make $$$$$ from their works instead of having them pirated away.
You must belong to the Revisionist History Club.
>>Who's to decide what 'greatly' means in your context? Will it end world hunger? No. Will it cure cancer? No. Will I be able to show my (grand)children the entertainment I grew up with, in an uneditted non-PC form, without owing anyone anything? Yes.
Sorry, but you being able to show your grandchildren the shows you watched in the format you choose is not a priority for society.
>>Well, not only are you then limited by what happens to be in the library, it won't be free for much longer. More and more books are appearing on shelves shrinkwrapped with a pretty EULA borrowed from the new 'digital' legislation. The contract of first sale is no more. As it happens more and more, without 'whining', it becomes more acceptable. Libraries will soon be museums, nothing more.
It's THEIR product. And, again, the issue you have with the shrinkwrapped books is not a copyright issue - it's a licensing issue. If you don't like the terms - don't buy it. Nothing talks like money - or the absence of money. Companies will try out new business models - if they fail, they change. The licensing won't affect libraries - lack of funding affects libraries.
I'd really like to see all these people complaining DO something for a change. Use your own money to commission a book and give it away for free. Start your own recording studio and build your own distribution channel and give artists free access so they can sell their music cheaply, or give it away and keep the money they want. Come on, show those rich, greedy bastards a thing or two!
What??? You don't want to invest your nestegg in a business and then give the profits away or have someone else tell you when you've earned enough? What a shock! (Sorry for the sarcasm.)
What needs to change is all the whining about it. Face it, for software, copyright is just about irrelevant - it's the licensing terms that it's released under that are important. Those are what determine your rights in relation to a work. The length of copyright is also moot in relation to software - that fabulous C program you wrote last night has a shelf life somewhat shorter than bell-bottom jeans.
For those of you that want to bring up Walt Disney - do you really think society would benefit greatly if the copyright on Mickey Mouse ended? Give me a break. The only people who would benefit are those who wish to make a buck or two off of someone else's work. I have no tears for them.
At one time in our recent history a short copyright length actually benefitted society because information was costly and not as easy to find. So putting information in the public domain increased access and was a real benefit to society. That's not true today. Information is cheap and difficult to avoid. Who cares if it's going to be 120 years (or whatever the number is) before John Irving's novels fall in to the public domain? You want to read one - check one out of the library, it's free.
You pissed because music is more expensive than you'd like? Listen to the radio - it's free! And, by listening to the radio and not purchasing the music you give the music industry a reason to lower their prices.
Whatever you do, just shut up and stop whining.
he is not paying a single dime for the bandwidth costs that my ISP incurs. She also only pays a fraction of the communication cost that the open relay has, plus that when such an open relay belongs to someone who has to pay for each byte he sends, you can bet she's not going to pay the owners bill either.
She is paying for the bandwidth. If the downstream providers aren't being compensated properly for the use of their bandwidth they will charge her provider more for its use - and they in turn will charge her more for it's use. The bandwidth is being paid for.
My mailbox costs me nothing. I don't know what it's like in the US, but here you buy a mailbox in some shop, you plant it in front of your house and it costs nothing from then on, no matter how much (commercial or other) mail is deposited in it.
Your e-mailbox also costs you nothing above it's original purchase until you use it. Just like your snail-mailbox. Do you really think the price of a stamp is not affected by the volume of mail the snail-spammers send through the system?
The right to free speech is something entirely different from the (non-existing) right to be heard however, and that's the main problem here: these spammers are forcing you to listen to them and make you pay for it.
I guess that's the price we pay for having a completely open Internet. Perhaps you'd prefer it if the Internet were regulated to control what types of speech are propagated?
The big difference is that her business' sole purpose is spamming. If "people" like her wouldn't exist, no-one would need anti-spam software. The main purpose of a manufacturer of air purifiers is not to polute, but to manufacture air purifiers. Even if no air purifier manufacturers existed, people would still want air purifiers since there would still be polution.
The air purifier manufacturer is contributing to the need to purchase their product.
BTW, I hate spam as much as the next person - especially the IM spam I'm getting.
What a GREAT idea! After all, there's no law against writing fraudulent checks!
- She's paying for the open relays and proxies. She's getting charged by her ISP for the amount of bandwidth she's taking up. The owners of the pipelines between her and your inbox have business arrangements with each other that account for traffic loads. So, when she pays her monthly ISP bill (which covers her traffic load) she IS paying the postage in the same way snail-mailers do. If your ISP has high bandwidth charges then set up your mail program to retrieve headers first. Delete what you don't want to waste real bandwidth on and download the message bodies later. In terms of the cost of storage - your mailbox costs you as well. You pay for it through the postage you, and others, pay.
- Commercial speech is protected speech
- Her business is no more 'mob like' than many other manufacturer in the country. Companies that sell you air purifiers are contributing to air pollution, for example.
Can you please explain how this is theft? They seem to be following the rules of the GPL - making the source available and publishing the final result under the GPL.
Some notes relative to the computer book publishing business:
First for you technical writing copyright hounds: It is usually very easy to retain copyright for your work - just ask for it. The shelf life of your content is so short all the publisher really cares about is who gets the licensing rights. Even if you assign copyright to the publisher you will more than likely get that back when your book is taken out of print.
Authors are not screwed on royalty.
If you've ever seen a fully loaded P&L for a book you'll realize that in the end the publisher and the author basically split the pie. And that's if the author is getting a 10% royalty. The difference is the author gets most of their money up front while the publisher waits 18-24 months to get theirs.
Why you might get half royalties for electronic content:
Every online site wants the material in a specific format. It costs money to get your content put into that format. There is no revenue going back to the publisher in that market. Publisher's do it now in hopes the market may one day take off. The Publisher is assuming virtually all of the risk in entering that market and deserves the lion's share of the paltry returns. In the future, as the market grows you'll see more equity.
That's not a very strong argument. You are assuming that the information, voice and features the person is trying to find on the first site will be duplicated elsewhere with different technology.
KDE and GNOME don't exist outside of the market. They are distributed commercially on the shelves of computer and book stores everywhere - in the box with the rest of the Linux distribution.