But we want people to be able to think of public spaces as still offering privacy in some ways. Anti-snooping laws are based on an expectation of privacy.
If the courts ruled that being near a red-light camera (or any other anti-crime camera) negated that expectation of privacy, the police could mount very sensitive microphones on the cameras and catch people who whispered something about drugs twenty feet away. Or, people who commented that they didn't like the government.
Not being able to use your senses to judge when you have an expectation of privacy would end up with a world like in 1984, where there's a TV everywhere, all capable of watching you and you don't know if they're listening or not.
Red-light cameras are a pretty specific instance, but I fear they're only the beginning. Once that works why not install cameras in the park where kids make drug deals (and people go to get out of the house and talk). Why not install cameras in the inner-city to deter crime (where a whistle-blower might meet the press).
If your car had to carry the anti-speeder camera, and you carried the anti-druggy recording microphone, people would be better able to judge when they were being spied on. Not for the benefit of the criminals, but for everyone else covered by the same net of automated devices.
I'm not claiming a natural right to property, I'm claiming that there isn't a natural right to information property.
The only 'right' you have in this area is one that we the people around you (and you) grant. It is a restriction on others so it shouldn't be granted without an idea of its costs to us.
The reason I feel that intellectual property laws are a lesser sort than physical property laws (still no claim that those are of a beyond-question status) is that by our basic functioning we violate intellectual property laws. If one caveman sees another hunting near a waterhole and catching prey, he will naturally copy this action. Today this would be patented (even if the newness was simply in the obvious combination of an old location and an old weapon, such as hunting game in the grasslands with a sling) and you would be granted a monopoly on this action simply for being the first person to talk about doing it. One caveman would listen to another tell a story and he'd tell the story to someone else, or use elements of it to improve his own stories. Today that story is copyrighted, despite it direct and indirect origins in the public domain, and depending on the courts, mentioning the characters from it or telling a similar enough story can be a violation. Never though, could one caveman take the food from another and yet feed both of them.
It is this difference, that information has always been shared and copied and refined by society as a whole, that makes intellectual property laws lesser. They've taken an action that everyone did (and still does) and regulated it for the good of some. Sure, some may be almost everyone, and the good might be huge, but it also might not. I see the "some" who benefit from extended IP laws getting smaller every day, as does good to society. I think everyone benefits from a system that ensures short-term profits to creators, or at least the right to try to profit, by preventing others from simply duplicating their work. I do not see any additional value from patents on obvious extensions of technology, or copyrights lasting more than a hundred years, that would induce a creator to create (of anything worth-while - which excludes obvious patents) when he would not have done so otherwise.
By "no additional value" I mean, does not offer a greater incentive. If I give a poor man $100 he's able to eat. He'd work for a few days for this. If I give him a thousand he's able to buy shelter and clothing. He'd work for a month for this. If I give him a thousand a month for life he's well off for the rest of his life. He'd work quite hard to get this. If I give his estate $1000/ month for six hundred years it makes essentially no difference to him and he won't work much harder. (He might be able to secure slightly more credit, but that's about it.)
I think we should not give additional value to creators beyond what is required to get them to create because that value comes from the pockets of others, or the restrictions upon others.
If copyrights and patents could be returned to our earlier ideas of them, as a tradeoff that benefitted everyone, before corporate interests corrupted them, I would be much more supportive of them.
I read both of your posts at once so my answers might be mingled between my two posts.
In my original post to you (the grandparent of this) I merely meant to point out that viewing/executing a copyrighted work isn't in itself a violation (except the noted case of public showings, and this is the presenter's fault). In the case of an NDA you're signing something in exchange for being presented with secret information, not for being allowed to read the information. If you found that same work lying on the street (not having previously signed an NDA with its creators) you'd be free of any restrictions on its use, except for those of copyright.
As for the *crowded* bus analogy though, it falls down in one area - the movie theater (and thus the producers) are not being deprived of a seat that they could have sold. Was the bus empty this would be different. (And many comapnies recognize this difference, selling lower-cost standby fares to take advantage of this.)
A better analogy would be one where by purchasing a service once you kept other people from purchasing the service in the future.
Now, we recognize my right to say that I think you are providing an inferior service, thus denying you future earning potential. We don't recognize my right to take your information and directly provide it to someone else though. Where in between does the line get drawn? Could I summarize your information to someone else? Could I provide quotes? Must I keep my actions secret lest someone assume they were influenced by your advice and unfairly cheat you by copying me?
We clearly recognize some copying/reproduction/relation of the copyrighted work as having value to society. All I'm trying to say is that the specific limits are arbitrary and not handed down by god. Perhaps it's time to examine this and potentially, allow for private taping. (After all, as some point out, at some point this'll be moot what with built-in computers that record everything we see.)
How about creating tamper-proof speeder-cams and installing them on cars to watch the cars around them. If you see someone speed (and the GPS - doable because this is voluntary) records the location as a public road, you report them with hard evidence.
The problem with a black-box is that it doesn't understand context. Perhaps I was racing along my private property (a field next to the road). Perhaps I was accelerating to pass someone and clear a lane for an ambulance. Then there's the "if you think you're alone, you have some right to privacy" argument that says that if I think I'm alone recording my actions is a privacy violation. If the device that's reporting me is in my car it would seem like a privacy violation - if the device reporting me is in your car it pretty much can't be a privacy violation because provably you were there as well. (And I can't use the excuse that I was alone and my actions endangered nobody else.)
Not at all, as long as the tampering merely renders the device obviously untrustable. If you want to crack it open, go for it. But law enforcement can't trust it so you'll need a fresh one to actually drive with. As long as a few people are willing to buy and crack one open, no new technology (remote checking, etc) can be built in without people finding out.
And this is the root of my disgust with the situation. Videotaping the movie is going to let this one guy replay the movie at low quality. It doesn't deserve hideously high fines, nor does it deserve jailtime. Not only should it be a civil matter, but the fine should also reflect the damage caused and a reasonable fine for disincentive purposes.
But they say, this movie could be copied onto DVD and sold to millions of people, each of whom would have seen the movie and bought the DVD... And maybe they're even right, but *THIS GUY* didn't do that. He's innocent of the larger crime until proven guilty - merely having the ability (a copied movie and two VCRs) does not prove further guilt. Sure it sucks to know the big guys who very likely hired him will get away, but that's one of the problems in police/detective work. There are known ways to investigate this to find the people whose crimes do warrant jailtime and million-dollar punishments.
I'm with Michael on this - the abuses and excesses of the MPAA do mean we should stay away from theaters. When the punishment (and enforcement methods) fit the crime and the right people pay the price, it's just. When the MPAA does the legal equivalent of killing a few rioters to discourage the rest they've gone too far.
Also, their actions while overblown are also ineffective, because the forces behind these tapings can afford to hire a few expendable junkies to do the taping, despite any risks. Much the same as politically motivated riots are started by people with an agenda - if bystanders get killed they merely appear to be martyrs and the agitators of the riot are unharmed.
> You do need special permission to listen to a song
There's the misunderstanding. No, you don't need any special permission to listen to a song or watch a movie or read a book. Only making the copy requires permission. If you find a book on the street you may read it. If you find my photocopy of a book you may still legally read it.
Copyright is very narrowly focussed on that act of making copies (and knowingly selling them), not of what you may do with a copy. This is why EULAs are bunk - you bought the software and do not need any permission to do anything with is. USA law explicitly allows permission for all incidental copies created in the use of the software. The exception is public performances, which are treated a bit like a copy because they distribute a work to many people. Being in the audience at an unlicensed performance isn't illegal though, nor is listening to an unlicensed radio station that doesn't pay royalties.
The problem with your 'Robbed My Company' terminology is that while a screener might actually deter a potential paying viewer, the assumption that you have a right to profit regardless of business model is a damaging one. What about if I tell my friend the secret of your movie before they see it ("The butler did it") and he chooses not to see your movie because of its cliched ending? Have I *STOLEN* a ticket sale from you, or merely educated a consumer? What about if you see widgets and I teach people how to make widgets - or perhaps I have millions sitting around and I decide to give them away - is this *THEFT*?
Use words for the original meanings, don't make them up. If someone takes a tangible item from you (depriving you of the item) that's theft. If they merely use the item without permission (using your store toilet in an employee-only area) it's not theft because you weren't deprived of it, but there are crimes like trespassing that were committed (probably). I've heard people say that when their home was broken into they felt violated and raped. Should we then start calling B&Es *RAPE* just to make them sound worse? What do we say about people who were really raped? Do they get the same watered down term that suggests their VCR was stolen, or do we make up a new term? I suggest *MURDERED*, it sounds really bad and will get them a lot of sympathy for emotional people who are unable to evaluate a situation without trigger words to tell them how to feel. Seriously though, theft is a term for when a person takes an item depriving the original owner of it. Intellectual property can't be stolen. Your government-granted monopoly may be violated but that's it.
Remember though that these are not natural rights. Copyright prevents the retelling of what we've seen - something that is natural to do. Folk music was based on continual sharing for thousands of years until just recently the final generations have been locked up. The product is a legacy of thousands of people but the last person to fix it in tangible form owns it for a hundred years (and probably forever, with copyright as it is now). These IP laws are fairly recent legal inventions, people survived without them and could again. Even if some businesses would be disadvantaged, progress would still continue. You're arguing this as if violating these monopoly grants is the same as physical world theft and murder (ie, tangible). It is not and can't be seen that way. If I violate your copyright or your patent the closest analogy would probably be selling a product or service in a government-granted monopoly market. (Telephony, licensed (medical, engineering, etc) services, official suppliers, etc).
If you don't see these laws as a natural right, hopefully you'll refrain from using emotional language when talking about them. If you do that you'll help people rationally evaluate the issues and hopefully pass laws that really help the issue - making sure that society has a rich library of intangibles to draw from (by providing incentives to creators). Remember that the taxpayers are supposed to pay for laws (and they do cost) that help the taxpayers - copyright and patents (etc) are a deal that's supposed to help the taxpayers by ensuring a chance at profit to the creators. To the taxpayers, any system that creates works/ideas in the public domain is a working system.
I had a similar idea - require a law or civics class in grade twelve, before the point at which people become legally responsible for all their actions. Tie it to full citizen-hood (In other words, the ability to be considered an adult and buy booze, live on your own, etc). The definition of complexity would be that 95% (or some high number) of grade-twelve graduates have to pass the course. If you can't write laws that can be understood by the majority of citizens, they're too complex and you need to improve the schools or simplify the law.
Your idea of having certain licensed areas require more specific training is a good way of handling things like doctors or engineers whose fields deal with specialized laws. No need that everyone know the wiring code for commercial buildings - it's merely enough that they know it's a licensed area and what a non-licensed person is allowed to do in that area.
It seems insane that ignorance of the law is no excuse when the full legal code is too complex for anyone without years of legal training to understand.
One benefit is that a limit on the complexity of laws would lead to simplification, probably often by striking down old laws and combining similar laws. No need to have a statute on the books from the 1800s if nobody would enforce it. And no need to have six laws banning various guns when you could have one simpler law that banned guns with whatever common property all of those laws covered.
We already trust our courts to apply the laws reasonably - not every contingency needs to be spelled out, just enough that you've got a good way to know if your intentions are illegal before putting them into action. And perhaps, to cover the case where it would be in doubt, there'd be a way to petition the court for a decision before-hand. (Much like the idea of putting wills through probate before death and having the courts help you divide your assets as you see fit, instead of providing a forum for people to misinterpret and twist your words.)
You just know that if NASA released the algorithms they used for anything space related they'd have tons of people looking them over. From the bitter, trying to prove the government is stupid, or scientists looking to help or for ideas, to video game companies wanting to advertise that their game's simulation of a Mars lander is based on real NASA code.
Somewhere in there an imperial to metric conversion failure would be caught.
Popular projects never lack for developers or testers.
What's the difference between an order from the leader of the country and a civilian law? Seems to me you're nitpicking to allow certain really bad laws to be broken and not others.
You either have the moral ability, and right, to judge that some laws are bad and should be broken, or *all* laws, rules, edicts, etc, from your lawful superiors are sacrosanct.
I feel that people do have the right to judge. Some laws are big and obvious like orders to commit genocide, and some are minor, like laws saying you can't unweld the hood of your car. Saying that people don't get to judge can't work in an imperfect world.
God you're an idiot. Sorry for the flame, but your post just screams it. You just don't see the problem with the way the world would be if we all played along like the sheep you think we should be.
Just because a way of reading a disk may violate a law that your country may have does not mean that a whole activity is illegal.
As far as the law in my jurisdiction is concerned, that disk is just a collection of copyrighted ones and zeros. I can do anything to it that doesn't involve another copy, except in such a way as is required to use the product.
Note though that the game company doesn't get to dictate the use, the courts do. Microsoft may say that the intended use it for an XBox only but the courts have struck down similar product-tying restrictions for a long time. Ford isn't allowed to require you to use Ford tires, or tie your warranty to your using Ford tires. And while Ford could encrypt the radio's output signal so only Ford radios worked with the stock speakers, they couldn't stop anyone else from reverse engineering the encryption, and producing a radio that would work with Ford's 'protected' speakers.
I'm sure this pissed off Microsoft, and Ford, but really, why should we care? We pay them a fair price (they set it, we choose to agree) to purchase a product. Why should they get control over future use of that product just because it comes on a CD instead of being a tangible product like a chair? Why is there this assumption that a piece of paper in the box that you don't get to see until a legal sale is finalized is some kind of binding contract?
Is there any reason why you shouldn't play your XBox game on the PC? I mean, other than that Microsoft won't like it...
What makes this a 'rule'? If I sell you a toaster that I intend you to toast bread with, how does it hurt me that you toast bagels? And even if it does cost me a Bagel-Toaster sale, why is that your fault? When exactly does my silly restriction become a 'rule'? Maybe it's when I put a piece of paper inside the box and tell you it's a contract?
The stupid rationalization is all on the side of the companies wanting to control the consumers. How is buying an XBox game different than buying a toaster? How does it matter if I put it in a DVD-ROM drive on the computer, or on the XBox, or in the microwave? It's still a sale to them.
There's a difference between marginalized and ignored.
The current system doesn't provide any choices. You get either tax-and-spend or spend-and-tax, with a side order of either religion or offensive political correctness.
I'd love to see the Libertarians have some say in government. I'm very much not a Libertarian, they seem out of touch with reality, but I'd like to see someone who thought government needed to justify itself.
Similarly, I'd like to see some extreme socialists get into power and provide a solid, if low-end, safety net. I believe much crime comes (and always will unless we purge the poor) because of desperation. If my child was dying for want of a $10k operation and my job didn't make that possible I'd consider robbing a bank.
But then I want the majority of representation to smooth this out. Not completely ignore it like now, but just keep the extremists in control. We've already got representative government and multiple levels that exist to stop bread-and-circuses and other excesses of unbridled democracy. Let's get a system that actually tries to listen to the people it supposedly represents.
Politics today is a joke. There's a lot of talk about how the parties support different things but it all comes down to being led by the nose by a few very loud lobbies and corporate bribes. Perhaps, if a party had to do something other than simply not be the other guys, they'd do more than merely talk.
Why vote? You're always going to get exactly the same lies and sellouts.
Well, Bush is a special case. He's very religious for one, and in favour of a lot of unreasonable control. He's the cause of a lot of people crossing party lines.
But, by and large Libertarians tend to avoid the Dems.
The republicans don't need to do anything other than not being the democrats to get your votes. Well, you may 'throw them away' on third-party candidates, but you aren't going to vote Dem so the Repubs are safe.
It's the people in the middle who can influence the parties, and that's why the parties usually (except when religious people like Bush are in charge) cluster as close to the middle as they can - they want the people who might actually change their votes. The extreme opposites are considered safe and the party doesn't do anything to cater to them.
This is why you guys (USAians in general) need to switch to proportional representation and the approval vote - third parties could actually get some real support and the big two would have to distinguish themselves.
I'm not forcing you to do anything by saying "I won't trust you till you explain yourself".
Vader, the unredeemable evil, atoned the only way he could - dying by destroying the emperor. This route is open for Ballmer...
Short of that, I don't see why we should trust Jeffery Dahlmer just because he's helping out at the children's hospital, or rush to invest in Ken Lay's new business proposal just because it's environmentally friendly.
In short, intelligent people recognize that Microsoft has a history of illegal actions (see court decisions) and that Bill Gates is known to value vengance and absolute control over personal success (see any number of biographies), trusting him to be doing something not designed to harm his competitors, let alone being benevolent, isn't reasonable.
You're the astroturfer. You say there's a herd mentality and imply that dislike of Microsoft is foolish. Do you actually have a reason for this, or are you simply implying that just because an opinion is widely held that it isn't logical? Microsoft's past actions have shown that they are unwilling to let the market forces dictate the winner. Why should we assume they're not setting out to cheat people yet again? Especially after their comments last year about the terrible socialist open source and how the government should never use it...
What did the baby bells invent? Well, probably a fair number of things, but let's pretend that they didn't do anything at all. So what?
The opening of the telephone industry allowed companies who do invent things to enter the market.
Personally I think the local telephone industry should have been opened much more. AT&T had its monopoly taken away from it and handed, mostly intact, to a group of smaller companies. People were still as good as forced to deal with a single company, but one who wasn't a technical monopoly and as such had a lot less government oversight. Service wise the baby bells are probably the worst companies to deal with. I pity people in the USA who need physical wires from the telco.
Only now with cellphones taking off has the market truly opened up. Before it was technically open but the local telco would sabotage their competitors mercilessly by screwing up install orders, delaying on rush jobs, etc. Now they're losing the ability to interfere because everyone is going cellular, or microwave to alternate carriers.
If Microsoft used its monopoly powers illegally (and that's pretty much a given) we should break them up and punish the exec who made those decisions, as well as the stockholders (indirectly) who benefitted from these illegal actions. Buyer beware.
And yes, even if Microsoft because the Mother Theresa of the industry, giving ponies to everyone, they should still be broken up or otherwise removed from their position of power. To do anything else is to say that a tax cheat should keep their ill-gotten gains just because they had been generous with that stolen money in later years.
If we don't punish criminal actions we sanction them and create an environment where you have to break the law merely to keep up with your competitors.
The difference is that when one water resistant jacket leaks through they don't all, world-wide, begin to leak.
As soon as one person writes a program to crack the drm and distributes it, everyone can copy their music or download unencumbered music from some Russian ftp site.
It's like a master-key scenario. With one exploit you've opened all the locks you want, instead of investing time on each lock.
If you want general liability insurance, buy it. Don't blame the makers of a $10 widget when you base your entire company on it and find that a $10 product isn't designed to be robust, enterprise-level quality.
It's the sue-based-on-damages mentality that leads to people expecting to get rich based on doing something stupid. It's not the $10M responbility of a car company that you waited until the last day to cash in a lottery ticket and then when the car failed to start, lost the chance. There are services like AAA (or a backup car, etc) that you can pay for if you want guarantees.
You're close on some things, but you miss some things. The point is to to the heavy lifting of coding and to leave the fiddly work to the computer, hence compilers. Right. But an IDE for programming with tool-tips that pop up as you type variable and function names isn't necessarily the way to go. I rarely find myself grasping for the name of an API function. Usually I'm using two or three at most in any given routine and typing them is only a fraction of a second of time. It might be kind of handy to be reminded what type a certain variable is, but usually when you're going to call a function you've already got the data (in the right formats) and you just plug it in.
I do have an API reference open when I code, but that's for the real questions. Ones that can't be answered by seeing the function declarations. I know what a call does, and what it wants, I want to know what error code it'll return in obscure-case-X, or some such. I don't find alt-tab to be too hard to switch to a different window.
As for the command-line thing, with a few exceptions where gnu-zip may be better or worse than pkzip, I'd use pretty much the same command as you. The difference is that if I had a complex problem I could write a complex command-line to handle it. I'm debugging a real-time system that locks parts of itself in memory. I needed to see which processes on the system had memory locked, as well as a certain section of the source for each one. One fairly short line consisting of three commands and I've searched through/proc/PID/status, printed select lines from processes, and pulled some code out of the source tree for matching files. Total time, a minute or two. There was a ton of info, but I only wanted a brief summary and fortunately I had the tools available to do that. I then tossed it into a shell script and I won't even have to type it again. Pulling up the task manager in windows is pretty easy, but how do you cross-reference that with source files?
I'm a lot more efficient at what I do because of the tools I've got to work with. IDEs are great in some areas, neutral in others, and a handicap in others. Being stuck with a GUI as your only tool would suck. That said, browsing photos and picking the ones with flowers in them would really suck to do at a command-line. Real efficiency comes from having all the tools available and the experience to judge when to stop trying to bang a stuck door open with a screwdriver and to pick up a hammer.
1) Why do you think this ChiGong master was different? I sincerely want to fix people's computers and to redesign bad websites but it's also a business. He needed to eat and teaching probably didn't leave time for a full-time job. What I'm saying is, even if he did want to make money, is that a bad thing? As long as he offers you something of value (to you) and doesn't pressure you into taking it...
2) High-pressure salesmen are *everywhere*. Used-car salesmen in the USA, merchants in a Thailand street-mall, etc. Based on my travels I'd actually say that North-America and Europe are the best for this. Most everything has a price tag on it and while you could dicker over some things, you usually don't have to. In many parts of the world it's customary to haggle over *everything*, often including traffic tickets.
Slashdot Mirror
But we want people to be able to think of public spaces as still offering privacy in some ways. Anti-snooping laws are based on an expectation of privacy.
If the courts ruled that being near a red-light camera (or any other anti-crime camera) negated that expectation of privacy, the police could mount very sensitive microphones on the cameras and catch people who whispered something about drugs twenty feet away. Or, people who commented that they didn't like the government.
Not being able to use your senses to judge when you have an expectation of privacy would end up with a world like in 1984, where there's a TV everywhere, all capable of watching you and you don't know if they're listening or not.
Red-light cameras are a pretty specific instance, but I fear they're only the beginning. Once that works why not install cameras in the park where kids make drug deals (and people go to get out of the house and talk). Why not install cameras in the inner-city to deter crime (where a whistle-blower might meet the press).
If your car had to carry the anti-speeder camera, and you carried the anti-druggy recording microphone, people would be better able to judge when they were being spied on. Not for the benefit of the criminals, but for everyone else covered by the same net of automated devices.
I'm not claiming a natural right to property, I'm claiming that there isn't a natural right to information property.
The only 'right' you have in this area is one that we the people around you (and you) grant. It is a restriction on others so it shouldn't be granted without an idea of its costs to us.
The reason I feel that intellectual property laws are a lesser sort than physical property laws (still no claim that those are of a beyond-question status) is that by our basic functioning we violate intellectual property laws. If one caveman sees another hunting near a waterhole and catching prey, he will naturally copy this action. Today this would be patented (even if the newness was simply in the obvious combination of an old location and an old weapon, such as hunting game in the grasslands with a sling) and you would be granted a monopoly on this action simply for being the first person to talk about doing it. One caveman would listen to another tell a story and he'd tell the story to someone else, or use elements of it to improve his own stories. Today that story is copyrighted, despite it direct and indirect origins in the public domain, and depending on the courts, mentioning the characters from it or telling a similar enough story can be a violation. Never though, could one caveman take the food from another and yet feed both of them.
It is this difference, that information has always been shared and copied and refined by society as a whole, that makes intellectual property laws lesser. They've taken an action that everyone did (and still does) and regulated it for the good of some. Sure, some may be almost everyone, and the good might be huge, but it also might not. I see the "some" who benefit from extended IP laws getting smaller every day, as does good to society. I think everyone benefits from a system that ensures short-term profits to creators, or at least the right to try to profit, by preventing others from simply duplicating their work. I do not see any additional value from patents on obvious extensions of technology, or copyrights lasting more than a hundred years, that would induce a creator to create (of anything worth-while - which excludes obvious patents) when he would not have done so otherwise.
By "no additional value" I mean, does not offer a greater incentive. If I give a poor man $100 he's able to eat. He'd work for a few days for this. If I give him a thousand he's able to buy shelter and clothing. He'd work for a month for this. If I give him a thousand a month for life he's well off for the rest of his life. He'd work quite hard to get this. If I give his estate $1000/ month for six hundred years it makes essentially no difference to him and he won't work much harder. (He might be able to secure slightly more credit, but that's about it.)
I think we should not give additional value to creators beyond what is required to get them to create because that value comes from the pockets of others, or the restrictions upon others.
If copyrights and patents could be returned to our earlier ideas of them, as a tradeoff that benefitted everyone, before corporate interests corrupted them, I would be much more supportive of them.
I read both of your posts at once so my answers might be mingled between my two posts.
In my original post to you (the grandparent of this) I merely meant to point out that viewing/executing a copyrighted work isn't in itself a violation (except the noted case of public showings, and this is the presenter's fault). In the case of an NDA you're signing something in exchange for being presented with secret information, not for being allowed to read the information. If you found that same work lying on the street (not having previously signed an NDA with its creators) you'd be free of any restrictions on its use, except for those of copyright.
As for the *crowded* bus analogy though, it falls down in one area - the movie theater (and thus the producers) are not being deprived of a seat that they could have sold. Was the bus empty this would be different. (And many comapnies recognize this difference, selling lower-cost standby fares to take advantage of this.)
A better analogy would be one where by purchasing a service once you kept other people from purchasing the service in the future.
Now, we recognize my right to say that I think you are providing an inferior service, thus denying you future earning potential. We don't recognize my right to take your information and directly provide it to someone else though. Where in between does the line get drawn? Could I summarize your information to someone else? Could I provide quotes? Must I keep my actions secret lest someone assume they were influenced by your advice and unfairly cheat you by copying me?
We clearly recognize some copying/reproduction/relation of the copyrighted work as having value to society. All I'm trying to say is that the specific limits are arbitrary and not handed down by god. Perhaps it's time to examine this and potentially, allow for private taping. (After all, as some point out, at some point this'll be moot what with built-in computers that record everything we see.)
How about creating tamper-proof speeder-cams and installing them on cars to watch the cars around them. If you see someone speed (and the GPS - doable because this is voluntary) records the location as a public road, you report them with hard evidence.
The problem with a black-box is that it doesn't understand context. Perhaps I was racing along my private property (a field next to the road). Perhaps I was accelerating to pass someone and clear a lane for an ambulance. Then there's the "if you think you're alone, you have some right to privacy" argument that says that if I think I'm alone recording my actions is a privacy violation. If the device that's reporting me is in my car it would seem like a privacy violation - if the device reporting me is in your car it pretty much can't be a privacy violation because provably you were there as well. (And I can't use the excuse that I was alone and my actions endangered nobody else.)
Not at all, as long as the tampering merely renders the device obviously untrustable. If you want to crack it open, go for it. But law enforcement can't trust it so you'll need a fresh one to actually drive with. As long as a few people are willing to buy and crack one open, no new technology (remote checking, etc) can be built in without people finding out.
And this is the root of my disgust with the situation. Videotaping the movie is going to let this one guy replay the movie at low quality. It doesn't deserve hideously high fines, nor does it deserve jailtime. Not only should it be a civil matter, but the fine should also reflect the damage caused and a reasonable fine for disincentive purposes.
But they say, this movie could be copied onto DVD and sold to millions of people, each of whom would have seen the movie and bought the DVD... And maybe they're even right, but *THIS GUY* didn't do that. He's innocent of the larger crime until proven guilty - merely having the ability (a copied movie and two VCRs) does not prove further guilt. Sure it sucks to know the big guys who very likely hired him will get away, but that's one of the problems in police/detective work. There are known ways to investigate this to find the people whose crimes do warrant jailtime and million-dollar punishments.
I'm with Michael on this - the abuses and excesses of the MPAA do mean we should stay away from theaters. When the punishment (and enforcement methods) fit the crime and the right people pay the price, it's just. When the MPAA does the legal equivalent of killing a few rioters to discourage the rest they've gone too far.
Also, their actions while overblown are also ineffective, because the forces behind these tapings can afford to hire a few expendable junkies to do the taping, despite any risks. Much the same as politically motivated riots are started by people with an agenda - if bystanders get killed they merely appear to be martyrs and the agitators of the riot are unharmed.
> You do need special permission to listen to a song
There's the misunderstanding. No, you don't need any special permission to listen to a song or watch a movie or read a book. Only making the copy requires permission. If you find a book on the street you may read it. If you find my photocopy of a book you may still legally read it.
Copyright is very narrowly focussed on that act of making copies (and knowingly selling them), not of what you may do with a copy. This is why EULAs are bunk - you bought the software and do not need any permission to do anything with is. USA law explicitly allows permission for all incidental copies created in the use of the software. The exception is public performances, which are treated a bit like a copy because they distribute a work to many people. Being in the audience at an unlicensed performance isn't illegal though, nor is listening to an unlicensed radio station that doesn't pay royalties.
The problem with your 'Robbed My Company' terminology is that while a screener might actually deter a potential paying viewer, the assumption that you have a right to profit regardless of business model is a damaging one. What about if I tell my friend the secret of your movie before they see it ("The butler did it") and he chooses not to see your movie because of its cliched ending? Have I *STOLEN* a ticket sale from you, or merely educated a consumer? What about if you see widgets and I teach people how to make widgets - or perhaps I have millions sitting around and I decide to give them away - is this *THEFT*?
Use words for the original meanings, don't make them up. If someone takes a tangible item from you (depriving you of the item) that's theft. If they merely use the item without permission (using your store toilet in an employee-only area) it's not theft because you weren't deprived of it, but there are crimes like trespassing that were committed (probably). I've heard people say that when their home was broken into they felt violated and raped. Should we then start calling B&Es *RAPE* just to make them sound worse? What do we say about people who were really raped? Do they get the same watered down term that suggests their VCR was stolen, or do we make up a new term? I suggest *MURDERED*, it sounds really bad and will get them a lot of sympathy for emotional people who are unable to evaluate a situation without trigger words to tell them how to feel. Seriously though, theft is a term for when a person takes an item depriving the original owner of it. Intellectual property can't be stolen. Your government-granted monopoly may be violated but that's it.
Remember though that these are not natural rights. Copyright prevents the retelling of what we've seen - something that is natural to do. Folk music was based on continual sharing for thousands of years until just recently the final generations have been locked up. The product is a legacy of thousands of people but the last person to fix it in tangible form owns it for a hundred years (and probably forever, with copyright as it is now). These IP laws are fairly recent legal inventions, people survived without them and could again. Even if some businesses would be disadvantaged, progress would still continue. You're arguing this as if violating these monopoly grants is the same as physical world theft and murder (ie, tangible). It is not and can't be seen that way. If I violate your copyright or your patent the closest analogy would probably be selling a product or service in a government-granted monopoly market. (Telephony, licensed (medical, engineering, etc) services, official suppliers, etc).
If you don't see these laws as a natural right, hopefully you'll refrain from using emotional language when talking about them. If you do that you'll help people rationally evaluate the issues and hopefully pass laws that really help the issue - making sure that society has a rich library of intangibles to draw from (by providing incentives to creators). Remember that the taxpayers are supposed to pay for laws (and they do cost) that help the taxpayers - copyright and patents (etc) are a deal that's supposed to help the taxpayers by ensuring a chance at profit to the creators. To the taxpayers, any system that creates works/ideas in the public domain is a working system.
I had a similar idea - require a law or civics class in grade twelve, before the point at which people become legally responsible for all their actions. Tie it to full citizen-hood (In other words, the ability to be considered an adult and buy booze, live on your own, etc). The definition of complexity would be that 95% (or some high number) of grade-twelve graduates have to pass the course. If you can't write laws that can be understood by the majority of citizens, they're too complex and you need to improve the schools or simplify the law.
Your idea of having certain licensed areas require more specific training is a good way of handling things like doctors or engineers whose fields deal with specialized laws. No need that everyone know the wiring code for commercial buildings - it's merely enough that they know it's a licensed area and what a non-licensed person is allowed to do in that area.
It seems insane that ignorance of the law is no excuse when the full legal code is too complex for anyone without years of legal training to understand.
One benefit is that a limit on the complexity of laws would lead to simplification, probably often by striking down old laws and combining similar laws. No need to have a statute on the books from the 1800s if nobody would enforce it. And no need to have six laws banning various guns when you could have one simpler law that banned guns with whatever common property all of those laws covered.
We already trust our courts to apply the laws reasonably - not every contingency needs to be spelled out, just enough that you've got a good way to know if your intentions are illegal before putting them into action. And perhaps, to cover the case where it would be in doubt, there'd be a way to petition the court for a decision before-hand. (Much like the idea of putting wills through probate before death and having the courts help you divide your assets as you see fit, instead of providing a forum for people to misinterpret and twist your words.)
You just know that if NASA released the algorithms they used for anything space related they'd have tons of people looking them over. From the bitter, trying to prove the government is stupid, or scientists looking to help or for ideas, to video game companies wanting to advertise that their game's simulation of a Mars lander is based on real NASA code.
Somewhere in there an imperial to metric conversion failure would be caught.
Popular projects never lack for developers or testers.
Convenient distinction, for one such as yourself who says law is sacrosanct ... some law. The law you support of course.
What's the difference between an order from the leader of the country and a civilian law? Seems to me you're nitpicking to allow certain really bad laws to be broken and not others.
You either have the moral ability, and right, to judge that some laws are bad and should be broken, or *all* laws, rules, edicts, etc, from your lawful superiors are sacrosanct.
I feel that people do have the right to judge. Some laws are big and obvious like orders to commit genocide, and some are minor, like laws saying you can't unweld the hood of your car. Saying that people don't get to judge can't work in an imperfect world.
God you're an idiot. Sorry for the flame, but your post just screams it. You just don't see the problem with the way the world would be if we all played along like the sheep you think we should be.
Just because a way of reading a disk may violate a law that your country may have does not mean that a whole activity is illegal.
As far as the law in my jurisdiction is concerned, that disk is just a collection of copyrighted ones and zeros. I can do anything to it that doesn't involve another copy, except in such a way as is required to use the product.
Note though that the game company doesn't get to dictate the use, the courts do. Microsoft may say that the intended use it for an XBox only but the courts have struck down similar product-tying restrictions for a long time. Ford isn't allowed to require you to use Ford tires, or tie your warranty to your using Ford tires. And while Ford could encrypt the radio's output signal so only Ford radios worked with the stock speakers, they couldn't stop anyone else from reverse engineering the encryption, and producing a radio that would work with Ford's 'protected' speakers.
I'm sure this pissed off Microsoft, and Ford, but really, why should we care? We pay them a fair price (they set it, we choose to agree) to purchase a product. Why should they get control over future use of that product just because it comes on a CD instead of being a tangible product like a chair? Why is there this assumption that a piece of paper in the box that you don't get to see until a legal sale is finalized is some kind of binding contract?
Fuck man, open your eyes!
Is there any reason why you shouldn't play your XBox game on the PC? I mean, other than that Microsoft won't like it...
What makes this a 'rule'? If I sell you a toaster that I intend you to toast bread with, how does it hurt me that you toast bagels? And even if it does cost me a Bagel-Toaster sale, why is that your fault? When exactly does my silly restriction become a 'rule'? Maybe it's when I put a piece of paper inside the box and tell you it's a contract?
The stupid rationalization is all on the side of the companies wanting to control the consumers. How is buying an XBox game different than buying a toaster? How does it matter if I put it in a DVD-ROM drive on the computer, or on the XBox, or in the microwave? It's still a sale to them.
People like you really piss me off.
And continue to brutally murder each other as they had been doing up until then.
There's a difference between marginalized and ignored.
The current system doesn't provide any choices. You get either tax-and-spend or spend-and-tax, with a side order of either religion or offensive political correctness.
I'd love to see the Libertarians have some say in government. I'm very much not a Libertarian, they seem out of touch with reality, but I'd like to see someone who thought government needed to justify itself.
Similarly, I'd like to see some extreme socialists get into power and provide a solid, if low-end, safety net. I believe much crime comes (and always will unless we purge the poor) because of desperation. If my child was dying for want of a $10k operation and my job didn't make that possible I'd consider robbing a bank.
But then I want the majority of representation to smooth this out. Not completely ignore it like now, but just keep the extremists in control. We've already got representative government and multiple levels that exist to stop bread-and-circuses and other excesses of unbridled democracy. Let's get a system that actually tries to listen to the people it supposedly represents.
Politics today is a joke. There's a lot of talk about how the parties support different things but it all comes down to being led by the nose by a few very loud lobbies and corporate bribes. Perhaps, if a party had to do something other than simply not be the other guys, they'd do more than merely talk.
Why vote? You're always going to get exactly the same lies and sellouts.
Well, Bush is a special case. He's very religious for one, and in favour of a lot of unreasonable control. He's the cause of a lot of people crossing party lines.
But, by and large Libertarians tend to avoid the Dems.
The republicans don't need to do anything other than not being the democrats to get your votes. Well, you may 'throw them away' on third-party candidates, but you aren't going to vote Dem so the Repubs are safe.
It's the people in the middle who can influence the parties, and that's why the parties usually (except when religious people like Bush are in charge) cluster as close to the middle as they can - they want the people who might actually change their votes. The extreme opposites are considered safe and the party doesn't do anything to cater to them.
This is why you guys (USAians in general) need to switch to proportional representation and the approval vote - third parties could actually get some real support and the big two would have to distinguish themselves.
I'm not forcing you to do anything by saying "I won't trust you till you explain yourself".
Vader, the unredeemable evil, atoned the only way he could - dying by destroying the emperor. This route is open for Ballmer...
Short of that, I don't see why we should trust Jeffery Dahlmer just because he's helping out at the children's hospital, or rush to invest in Ken Lay's new business proposal just because it's environmentally friendly.
In short, intelligent people recognize that Microsoft has a history of illegal actions (see court decisions) and that Bill Gates is known to value vengance and absolute control over personal success (see any number of biographies), trusting him to be doing something not designed to harm his competitors, let alone being benevolent, isn't reasonable.
You're the astroturfer. You say there's a herd mentality and imply that dislike of Microsoft is foolish. Do you actually have a reason for this, or are you simply implying that just because an opinion is widely held that it isn't logical? Microsoft's past actions have shown that they are unwilling to let the market forces dictate the winner. Why should we assume they're not setting out to cheat people yet again? Especially after their comments last year about the terrible socialist open source and how the government should never use it...
What did the baby bells invent? Well, probably a fair number of things, but let's pretend that they didn't do anything at all. So what?
The opening of the telephone industry allowed companies who do invent things to enter the market.
Personally I think the local telephone industry should have been opened much more. AT&T had its monopoly taken away from it and handed, mostly intact, to a group of smaller companies. People were still as good as forced to deal with a single company, but one who wasn't a technical monopoly and as such had a lot less government oversight. Service wise the baby bells are probably the worst companies to deal with. I pity people in the USA who need physical wires from the telco.
Only now with cellphones taking off has the market truly opened up. Before it was technically open but the local telco would sabotage their competitors mercilessly by screwing up install orders, delaying on rush jobs, etc. Now they're losing the ability to interfere because everyone is going cellular, or microwave to alternate carriers.
If Microsoft used its monopoly powers illegally (and that's pretty much a given) we should break them up and punish the exec who made those decisions, as well as the stockholders (indirectly) who benefitted from these illegal actions. Buyer beware.
And yes, even if Microsoft because the Mother Theresa of the industry, giving ponies to everyone, they should still be broken up or otherwise removed from their position of power. To do anything else is to say that a tax cheat should keep their ill-gotten gains just because they had been generous with that stolen money in later years.
If we don't punish criminal actions we sanction them and create an environment where you have to break the law merely to keep up with your competitors.
The difference is that when one water resistant jacket leaks through they don't all, world-wide, begin to leak.
As soon as one person writes a program to crack the drm and distributes it, everyone can copy their music or download unencumbered music from some Russian ftp site.
It's like a master-key scenario. With one exploit you've opened all the locks you want, instead of investing time on each lock.
If you want general liability insurance, buy it. Don't blame the makers of a $10 widget when you base your entire company on it and find that a $10 product isn't designed to be robust, enterprise-level quality.
It's the sue-based-on-damages mentality that leads to people expecting to get rich based on doing something stupid. It's not the $10M responbility of a car company that you waited until the last day to cash in a lottery ticket and then when the car failed to start, lost the chance. There are services like AAA (or a backup car, etc) that you can pay for if you want guarantees.
You're close on some things, but you miss some things. The point is to to the heavy lifting of coding and to leave the fiddly work to the computer, hence compilers. Right. But an IDE for programming with tool-tips that pop up as you type variable and function names isn't necessarily the way to go. I rarely find myself grasping for the name of an API function. Usually I'm using two or three at most in any given routine and typing them is only a fraction of a second of time. It might be kind of handy to be reminded what type a certain variable is, but usually when you're going to call a function you've already got the data (in the right formats) and you just plug it in.
/proc/PID/status, printed select lines from processes, and pulled some code out of the source tree for matching files. Total time, a minute or two. There was a ton of info, but I only wanted a brief summary and fortunately I had the tools available to do that. I then tossed it into a shell script and I won't even have to type it again. Pulling up the task manager in windows is pretty easy, but how do you cross-reference that with source files?
I do have an API reference open when I code, but that's for the real questions. Ones that can't be answered by seeing the function declarations. I know what a call does, and what it wants, I want to know what error code it'll return in obscure-case-X, or some such. I don't find alt-tab to be too hard to switch to a different window.
As for the command-line thing, with a few exceptions where gnu-zip may be better or worse than pkzip, I'd use pretty much the same command as you. The difference is that if I had a complex problem I could write a complex command-line to handle it. I'm debugging a real-time system that locks parts of itself in memory. I needed to see which processes on the system had memory locked, as well as a certain section of the source for each one. One fairly short line consisting of three commands and I've searched through
I'm a lot more efficient at what I do because of the tools I've got to work with. IDEs are great in some areas, neutral in others, and a handicap in others. Being stuck with a GUI as your only tool would suck. That said, browsing photos and picking the ones with flowers in them would really suck to do at a command-line. Real efficiency comes from having all the tools available and the experience to judge when to stop trying to bang a stuck door open with a screwdriver and to pick up a hammer.
1) Why do you think this ChiGong master was different? I sincerely want to fix people's computers and to redesign bad websites but it's also a business. He needed to eat and teaching probably didn't leave time for a full-time job. What I'm saying is, even if he did want to make money, is that a bad thing? As long as he offers you something of value (to you) and doesn't pressure you into taking it...
2) High-pressure salesmen are *everywhere*. Used-car salesmen in the USA, merchants in a Thailand street-mall, etc. Based on my travels I'd actually say that North-America and Europe are the best for this. Most everything has a price tag on it and while you could dicker over some things, you usually don't have to. In many parts of the world it's customary to haggle over *everything*, often including traffic tickets.