But, legally speaking, they're fully upholding the contract: it becomes legal to start copying as soon as the copyright expires. It just turns out not to be physically possible.
And yes, your strategy would suck for them, in the short run. But in the long run, DRM will be totally secure, and we'll be screwed.
I've seen estimates suggesting the average is around 20-25 years, and never seen anyone claim that they will last more than 35 years. CD-Rs are estimated much shorter, usually less than 15 years. If you have anything really important stored on such media, I would consider at least a migrating hard drive backup for it.
I would say that this situation is typically neither repeated nor intended solely to harass, but IANAL. It seems to me it happens once, and is intended to frighten you into handing over money. Legally in the US, this may or may not be extortion, but from the practical point of view of someone at the receiving end, it is.
I was speaking from the corporate point of view of course. And the long term plan is obviously to drop copyright entirely, and rely on unbreakable DRM to protect their interests forever. They won't even need DRM cracking to be illegal in any way, it will simply be impossible, so unless we write laws to protect ourselves from this outcome, media companies will have nothing to worry about.
What, you didn't send the spammers remove notices? I sent them all remove notices to let them know I 'died' *wink* *wink* and now I don't get any spam at all.
Because DRM has nothing to do with copyright. Imagine the corresponding technology with books: they might put a glaze on every sheet of paper to make it impossible to photocopy. Just because the work passes into public domain doesn't mean they have to go out and deglaze every book, it just means it becomes legal for you to copy the book if you want to and can. The can being the interesting part of the equation. If it should still prove to be impossible to copy the book... well then I suppose the company that can reproduce the book will continue to do so at a profit. And that's the beauty of DRM: it will allow companies to continue to profit from their works even long after copyright has expired.
Actually, non violent civil disobedience of bad laws is one of the most respected and useful ways to change bad laws. If the police will refuse to enforce this by not arresting the mayor, that will be even better.
Yeah, my design workaround would be to have a small record harddrive and a larger storage harddrive. Move the shows from the one to the other for playback.
My point was that you can make a dual hard drive pvr work in this way, just as you could a dual deck vcr. Not that any existing pvr works this way, but you could, and then presumably you're either around the patent, or the dual deck vcr is prior art.
You don't get to rewrite other people's rules just because you want to do something that benefits you.
To play devil's advocate, my game is reality, and I play to make money. In my reality, I can sell items from a game online for real money. Just because you introduce a game and want to play it a certain way, don't think that you get to rewrite my rules just for your benefit.
The problem people are having with patents is that: a) nearly all of them are too broad b) nearly all of them are trivial c) there's no sense of proportion
And my guess is that you're speaking as someone whose ideas have never been squashed by an obviously bogus patent.
The problem we have with a, is that patents cover too much. Even a vaguely similar idea gets covered, and you wind up paying money to someone who had nothing to do with your innovation.
The problem with b is, you come up with some simple product that no one is marketing, and start selling it, only to have the patent holder come knocking for a piece of your action, and surprise surprise the patent office has granted a patent on your idea, even though it was so obvious you wouldn't have even considered patenting it yourself. Furthermore, there's no allowance for independent invention, so even if you got to your idea completely on your own, if you got there a day late that idea belongs to someone else.
The problem with c is, even if the patent covers only a tiny portion of your device, you can be extorted for basically everything. It doesn't come to that, but the patent holder typically will pick up more than a 'fair' share of the profits.
All in all, the patent system is so broken right now, we would be better off without it entirely. Which is not to say that some middle ground position might not be even better.
Restricting the aftermarket in games has always been about companies seeing an opportunity to profit for themselves. Even if they can't deliver in this generation of games, they don't want you getting used to the notion that you can buy and sell from other players. I remember this being a big discussion in the development of diablo 2... people spent a long time talking about how to have a real cash aftermarket for items controlled by blizzard, but in the end we didn't have the resources to do it.
Indeed, infant mortality would be part of the calculation of life expectancy, if you're keeping records. If you're dating fossilized remains, the odds that you're finding any infants to date are quite small, because their softer bones are less likely to survive.
And indeed, the whole point of the original vegeterianism leading to no meat preference post was that it would have to not just be practiced but preferred for mating over thousands of generations to overcome an existing evolved trait.
Indeed, no where in the study did they claim that the pray-er wasn't benefitted, just that the pray-ee wasn't.
Though somewhat worrisome: the pray-ees in one similar study were slightly worse off than the non-prayees, so I guess you have to hope that your prayers didn't make your sister in law's leukemia worse.
I was referring to indirect deaths obviously. People who died because better computer software wasn't available to help with their medical problems, etc. etc.
Slashdot Mirror
But, legally speaking, they're fully upholding the contract: it becomes legal to start copying as soon as the copyright expires. It just turns out not to be physically possible.
And yes, your strategy would suck for them, in the short run. But in the long run, DRM will be totally secure, and we'll be screwed.
I've seen estimates suggesting the average is around 20-25 years, and never seen anyone claim that they will last more than 35 years. CD-Rs are estimated much shorter, usually less than 15 years. If you have anything really important stored on such media, I would consider at least a migrating hard drive backup for it.
There's at least one guy in the 2-digit ids who acknowledges he bought the account as a birthday gift to himself in his sig.
I would say that this situation is typically neither repeated nor intended solely to harass, but IANAL. It seems to me it happens once, and is intended to frighten you into handing over money. Legally in the US, this may or may not be extortion, but from the practical point of view of someone at the receiving end, it is.
I was speaking from the corporate point of view of course. And the long term plan is obviously to drop copyright entirely, and rely on unbreakable DRM to protect their interests forever. They won't even need DRM cracking to be illegal in any way, it will simply be impossible, so unless we write laws to protect ourselves from this outcome, media companies will have nothing to worry about.
What, you didn't send the spammers remove notices? I sent them all remove notices to let them know I 'died' *wink* *wink* and now I don't get any spam at all.
But if I understand you correctly, you will care for the first hundred years after you die?
Because DRM has nothing to do with copyright. Imagine the corresponding technology with books: they might put a glaze on every sheet of paper to make it impossible to photocopy. Just because the work passes into public domain doesn't mean they have to go out and deglaze every book, it just means it becomes legal for you to copy the book if you want to and can. The can being the interesting part of the equation. If it should still prove to be impossible to copy the book ... well then I suppose the company that can reproduce the book will continue to do so at a profit. And that's the beauty of DRM: it will allow companies to continue to profit from their works even long after copyright has expired.
It's extortion when you haven't committed the copyright infringement but have no hope of defeating their lawyers.
Bogus mod alert: get the troll mod metamods.
(4 insightful, 1 troll)
Actually, non violent civil disobedience of bad laws is one of the most respected and useful ways to change bad laws.
If the police will refuse to enforce this by not arresting the mayor, that will be even better.
Yeah, my design workaround would be to have a small record harddrive and a larger storage harddrive. Move the shows from the one to the other for playback.
Yes, but only one of us would have broken the kind of law that gets police officers involved.
My point was that you can make a dual hard drive pvr work in this way, just as you could a dual deck vcr. Not that any existing pvr works this way, but you could, and then presumably you're either around the patent, or the dual deck vcr is prior art.
You don't get to rewrite other people's rules just because you want to do something that benefits you.
To play devil's advocate, my game is reality, and I play to make money. In my reality, I can sell items from a game online for real money. Just because you introduce a game and want to play it a certain way, don't think that you get to rewrite my rules just for your benefit.
So either a dual-deck vcr is prior art, or a dual-harddrive dvr isn't a violation, right?
The problem people are having with patents is that:
a) nearly all of them are too broad
b) nearly all of them are trivial
c) there's no sense of proportion
And my guess is that you're speaking as someone whose ideas have never been squashed by an obviously bogus patent.
The problem we have with a, is that patents cover too much. Even a vaguely similar idea gets covered, and you wind up paying money to someone who had nothing to do with your innovation.
The problem with b is, you come up with some simple product that no one is marketing, and start selling it, only to have the patent holder come knocking for a piece of your action, and surprise surprise the patent office has granted a patent on your idea, even though it was so obvious you wouldn't have even considered patenting it yourself. Furthermore, there's no allowance for independent invention, so even if you got to your idea completely on your own, if you got there a day late that idea belongs to someone else.
The problem with c is, even if the patent covers only a tiny portion of your device, you can be extorted for basically everything. It doesn't come to that, but the patent holder typically will pick up more than a 'fair' share of the profits.
All in all, the patent system is so broken right now, we would be better off without it entirely. Which is not to say that some middle ground position might not be even better.
Restricting the aftermarket in games has always been about companies seeing an opportunity to profit for themselves. Even if they can't deliver in this generation of games, they don't want you getting used to the notion that you can buy and sell from other players. I remember this being a big discussion in the development of diablo 2 ... people spent a long time talking about how to have a real cash aftermarket for items controlled by blizzard, but in the end we didn't have the resources to do it.
Apparently it's $2.50. Seems ridiculously high to me. I could see paying like 1-5c for something like this, maybe.
Indeed, infant mortality would be part of the calculation of life expectancy, if you're keeping records. If you're dating fossilized remains, the odds that you're finding any infants to date are quite small, because their softer bones are less likely to survive.
And indeed, the whole point of the original vegeterianism leading to no meat preference post was that it would have to not just be practiced but preferred for mating over thousands of generations to overcome an existing evolved trait.
Thanks, hopefully they made the point clear: that just because someone does something good, it doesn't excuse whatever evil they've done.
now that's one that hadn't occurred to me, maybe i'll try that next time, thanks!
I've tried to use ExEx about two dozen times, and never has my answer been available without a subscription.
Indeed, no where in the study did they claim that the pray-er wasn't benefitted, just that the pray-ee wasn't.
Though somewhat worrisome: the pray-ees in one similar study were slightly worse off than the non-prayees, so I guess you have to hope that your prayers didn't make your sister in law's leukemia worse.
I was referring to indirect deaths obviously. People who died because better computer software wasn't available to help with their medical problems, etc. etc.