Nobody's fixed the price of OpenOffice.org at $0. That's the price Sun charges for downloads from their website. But there are plenty of people willing to sell you a copy for a wide variety of prices.
Well, they may have been buying a lawsuit. They've done it before, Caldera's purchase of DRDOS being largely for the Microsoft anti-trust action they took against MS.
That said, back in 2000, there was no sign that Caldera was anything but a Linux supporter. And as their management has been replaced since, I think in some ways it's Old SCO, New SCO, and Current SCO, three different entities.
Andrew Orlowski wrote the best coverage I saw of the Microsoft monopoly trial, and pretty much changed my mind from one of "Well, if Microsoft wants to include a browser, then so be it, you can't stop progress" to "Hang the bastards!" (obviously I mean as past tense being "hung" not "hanged", I'm an opponent of the Death Penalty. Ooer, little bit of politics, little bit of politics.)
Perhaps I didn't read El Reg's article properly, but I was under the impression the most damning charges it makes are about the assertion that Project Monteray was worked on by an SCO fully aware that it was part of a migration to "Linux":
At least five articles published this month suggest that Project Monterey, the joint Unix that was being co-developed by IBM, the Santa Cruz Operation and Sequent beginning in 1998 was only a "stop-gap" measure. The participants, she asserts, had from the start bet that Linux would supplant their proprietary Unix offerings. And more damningly, she claims that SCO knew this at the time, and has declined to reveal this secret strategy.
"Project Monterey was the stopgap, in a way, I gather. It worked for the enterprise right away, and it was a path to smoothly move to Linux as it matured," wrote Jones.
There is a serious problem with this hypothesis: it isn't true.
PJ seems only concerned, as I read her response, about whether PM was intended to run on the POWER architecture. I'm not sure how much the latter matters as much as the former. The former implies an allegation of SCO seeing the Linux kernel as the future, which would make SCO's later decision to come back and attack it legally interesting.
WRT the quoted part, I think he's keying off two different definitions of Unix that are used within the community. There's Unix the philosophy, and Unix the operating system written by Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson and others. Linux isn't the latter, but most would probably go along with the idea that it's an example of a kernel that would fit into the former in some way.
I think SCO has generally been incompetent and this guy actually admits so much from the beginning. They tried to blow a "contract violation" up to being a major copyright dispute, arguing for billions of dollars in compensation when the contract dispute itself wouldn't have pulled anything like that. Part of this is possibly SCO realising it has to go for broke because it's up against a company it'll almost certainly lose against, so it needs to find ways of getting that company to settle.
This has backfired. By making it look like they're accusing Linux of being a copy of Unix and containing multiple copyright violations, they've put IBM in a position where, given it's bet the house on GNU and Linux, it has to show it stands by what it's done and that the product it's selling is legal, and at the same time it has to prevent a precedent from being set that encourages everyone to find some minor problem they had with IBM and turn it into a lawsuit.
As for this person's view on the whole thing, I suspect he's just as wrong as the more rabid SCO opponents he chastises. He claims to have no doubt that real Unix code can be found in Linux. I have no doubt this isn't true, because we've seen the best examples of what SCO could find, and we know they're not as represented. Moreover, we have no reason to think it would even be necessary to do this.
But his point of view is interesting, and he gives good reasons to think.
Actually I think he understands that. The issue is that people are under the impression Apple does directly contribute, and so start blaming the KHTML team when WebCore has features that KHTML does not. He's not criticising Apple so much as criticising the massive group of people, including many Slasdotters, who do not understand the issues involved and claim that KHTML is benefiting from Apple's involvement.
If I buy a car, rice it out, and sell it, the fact that it's been modified doesn't change that consumers are best informed knowing what it originally was; if I just said it was a car, then how can people make a careful buying decision not knowing if I started with a sports car or a compact?
Bad analogy. Nobody advertises a riced-out car as "A Pontiac Firebird designed by John Smith at General Motors." And even if we pretend my issue is purely with the title of the film, which conveys a hell of a lot more than the name of a car, the analogy would still be utterly moronic, because the last part of your sentence can easily be covered by you describing the car. "It's a sports car", you could say.
And most ricers aren't tricking out a car to turn a sports car into a Sedan.
No, as far as copyright law and policy should be concerned, it's all about the public interest, and with regards to what aspect of authors we use in incentivizing them to create, we use their greed.
Copyright is utilitarian; it's economic. It's inappropriate to entertain silly notions of some sort of romanticized kind of authorship.
As far as the constitution goes and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a predominantly US-written document, it's not purely economic. The Constitution doesn't limit the author's rights to those that are economic, and copyright law doesn't generally allow something simply because it doesn't hurt sales and revenue. The UN Declaration of Human Rights goes further and talks explictly about moral rights. So historically, you're talking out of your arse.
In any case, despite you appearing to think the contrary, you just agreed with me. You are only interested in the money. You think the only way an artist can be harmed is if their ability to make money from their own works is compromised. You have little understanding of why people produce art, and why they'd want control over how its used in their lifetimes, especially when it's attributed to them.
We're just screwing it up lately, in no small part due to people with attitudes like your own, who can't treat it rationally.
I fail to see how your view is more "rational" than mine. In your world, artistic integrity doesn't exist. No rational artist would create works of any serious value and merit in a world in which someone with an agenda hostile to their's can take that work and push it as a legitimate version of the original. The bill that's passed is all about that. It explicitly and needlessly allows something to happen that in any other context would result in defamation suits. And why? So that "editors", currently the majority of which sympathetic to the views of the administration, can pass off their works as those of other's.
The truth is, you're an extremist. It's one thing to say "You know, people should be able to build upon other's works", it's another to claim that people should have views, works, opinions, et al attributed to them that clearly they wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. You support the latter. Beyond a simple, generic, hatred of artists, something the language you choose more than hints at, I can't see any rationale for your views, and a generic hatred of artists is anything but rational.
Alas, no. This is what Vonage wants you to think they do. What actually happens is you get routed to a local emergency center when you dial 911, but it's not the same 911 center you'd get if you used a regular landline or cellphone.
This is one of the reasons why the FCC's taking an interest. IIRC, the Texas AG is suing them over precisely this issue.
Another option might be for people to enter the location of where they are on a website when they set up their VoIP service, the one replacing their landline, that goes over their DSL or Cable connection and is therefore tethered to one location.
For those cases where they are in a hotel, and have their laptop with them using the hotel's WLAN, a great option might be for those people to use the hotel phone when calling 911. Likewise, if they're in a coffee shop, or a client's site, and they have an urgent need to call 911, they can use the coffee shop or their client's telephone to make the call.
For those cases where they're running VoIP over, say, a cellphone link, perhaps the best option might be to unplug the cellphone and then call 911 from that. I'm not sure how effective VoIP over GRPS/UMTS/cdma2000 would be anyway, but I'm pretty sure the 911 service built into the phone would work better. And remember folks - for GSM and UMTS, if you're in some obscure part of the world and don't know the local number (911 isn't universal), you can always dial "112." It's standard on all GSM phones. You can use the local emergency number too, it's just 112 works everywhere, unlike 911 which is largely a North American thing.
Am I missing something here? I'm pretty sure I've covered all the bases.
Is there some pressing need for a GPS system in every laptop?
As long as the viewer knows the film has been altered (which is implicit here: the veiwer paid to have it altered), where's the problem?
Because the viewer is having something presented to them as a version of something when it is not. Again, what's the problem with removing the artist's name from the credits when they ask to be disassociated with such an edit?
Why do you think an "artist" (the term is a bit of a stretch for product from Hollywood, but anyway) has any special right to determine the terms by which I can view the movie I paid for?
There are plenty of artists in Hollywood and elsewhere in the movie industry. I've watched some remarkable pieces of cinema of late both from populists and from the slightly more obscure and art-house. Reading between the lines here, I think you really do hate artists. I think that's what this is about. I don't think this is about you exercising "rights" so much as you "sticking it" to the George Lucases of this world.
Again though, you seem to be doing absolutely everything you can to avoid addressing the point. Nobody here is arguing the terms by which you can view a movie. The problem is you're not viewing a movie, you're viewing an edit of one - someone else's edit - and you're viewing it passed off as a version of the original. You're happy to attribute things to the original artists that clearly were never meant. You're happy for others to do the same thing. You are actively encouraging people to lie, to you, and to others, about what those artists have done.
Why are you so opposed to artists disassociating themselves from edits? Why do you believe a law should be passed preventing artists from requiring this?
Answer the question. Don't give me another half-wit answer about "I can do what I like, if I want to hit fast forward I should be able to", because that has nothing to do with the principle here. I personally consider unauthorized third party edits to be deeply insulting, but this goes beyond that. You've had it explained several times. You keep pretending that I'm talking about your right to skip chapters. Are you just stupid, or is your argument so shallow you're afraid to post it?
In fairness, people who loved Star Wars didn't, generally, like Episodes I and II. (or VI for that matter. EMACS is better.) So it is news that a prominent one likes III.
And I argued you should be strapped down, eyelids opened a'la A Clockwork Orange (Oh, sorry, you probably haven't watched it. But don't worry, I've edited a version for you that will not offend your moral sensibilities. You can download it here.) where exactly?
The movie creator has a moral right to expect to not be deliberately misrepresented. To release "edits" for a movie for others to watch, present those edits as a way of accessing the original work without *insert objectionable content here*, when actually those edits invariably change the entire meaning of the film, and continue to refer to the finished product as being "by" that artist, is grossly unfair, and is misrepresenting them.
It's that simply. You want to release edits for someone else's film? Go right ahead, but do the decent thing and take their name off the film unless they consent to it.
The creater has the right to get paid, nothing more.
Ah, another advocate of whoredom. Money's everything to you, right? Any friends ever accused you of knowing the price of everything, and value of nothing?
They'll know the work was altered in the first place, as they went out of their way to buy the altered version
But they will not know that:
The fact that the entire meaning of the film has been altered isn't something they'll even know.
My statement of fact isn't negated by yours. Most of the time, those buying these edits will assume that what they're seeing is a version of the original movie, not an entirely different film saying something different that happens to share the same footage.
Beyond that, why does it even matter?
Because slimeballs are producing edits to fit with their "moral"/political agenda and then attributing these edits to the authors behind the original movie.
All I've asked for is something simple: if you're going to fuck with someone else's work, attributing to it editing, language, contexts, et al, at odds with the original, at least do the decent and honourable thing and don't give it the same name and don't include the original artist's name, unless they specifically want you to.
How hard is that? The only reason I can possibly think of for defending what's happened here is on a "I hate artists. They give me films with stuff I don't like in them. Therefore they're evil" basis. Sorry, I disagree. If you don't like their films, don't watch them. And if you must "edit" them to fit your own views rather than those of the filmmakers, don't insult the people who gave you the material you're working in the first place.
Absolutly correct. But if the video is not released in a CSS-xxx format that works on the majority of DVD players then it isn't watchable. Given existing hardware isn't going to get an upgrade to support this new format then my previous post still applies.
Hold on, because I'm not sure what you're refering to. If this is about the "you have to watch the entire film without skipping bits" thing, then we're not talking about a new format, the technology already exists. If we're talking about artists refusing to allow their movies to be released upon DVD, instead releasing it upon its successor, then, well, we're in the same boat as the VHS to DVD upgrade. It's certainly not something I want to see happen, and I fear the artist haters who have gotten this law passed have put us in this situation.
Certainly though, if the movie's available on DVD, just with antiskip turned on, then it's available, it can be watched with all modern DVD players, and it's a PITA. (We're talking about the same technology as is used to prevent you, in most players, from skipping the FBI warning) but it still doesn't impact on whether the movie's any good. The movie being good is independent of whether going to the bathroom means you miss a few minutes.
But to be serious again, just because someone sells something doesn't mean you have to buy it. I assume that you live in the USA given you are posting about this. Given we have about 1,000,000 ways to entertain ourselves in an average day here I cannot see much reason to get worked up over not watching a movie. It just isn't worth it...
I quite agree... It does amaze me that the anti-artist lobby hasn't figured that one out.
I was very careful to refer to releasing edits and not copies of edited movies, read what I said again and you'll see we're essentially saying the same thing, you've just misunderstood what I meant by "edit".
As far as your other comment goes, most people are opposing what I've said, and I'm usually arguing against non-consensual P2P and other piracy mechanisms. Even if I did believe, however, that there was nothing wrong with ripping a song and then distributing it to millions of anonymous strangers without the consent of the artist, that wouldn't necessarily mean I support modifying the song to mean something different and passing it off as something essentially the same as the original, "only cleaner!"
It's a one-two punch. Those supporting both non-consensual file sharing and non-consensual film editing are essentially saying they both want to deprive artists of the ability to make money from music sales, and they want to deprive artists of the ability to have their message heard as they intended if they disagree with that message. While I'm sure there are people with both views, I suspect the only reason someone would fall into both camps would be a hatred of artists.
If it's watchable, it's usable. Until recently, most movies made all their money at the cinema, and I don't recall ever going into a cinema with a remote control.
And, yes, I'm sure DVD releases are more marketable, but there's a difference between something being marketable and something being good. Actually, I think the two concepts rarely co-incide...
You would know that it was edited in some fashion,
I didn't argue against that. I said that you wouldn't know (in the vast majority of cases) what was edited out and what the impact that scene had on the rest of the film.
If you, to take my example again, remove the rape scene from Monster, you end up with an entirely different film, one that would almost certainly be at odds with what Patty Jenkins was trying to do. A person watching this may be aware that edits have occurred, but they wouldn't know the entire film's message had been changed through the use of such edits. They've taken the effort to get what they believe is a "clean" version of a movie, and ended up with an entirely different movie. A movie that's still almost certainly attributed, thanks to the slimeballs behind this bill, to Ms Jenkins.
Monster is a great example because it contains exactly the kinds of scenes that a puritanical group would want removed, it has a message the same people would be hostile to, and it's increadibly easy to manipulate, by the removal of key scenes (key scenes that by themselves are clearly "removable" according to the group's agenda in that they're violent and involve sexual imagery or nudity), the movie to mean something entirely counter to its original message.
Of course, I know this argument washes over you because you believe it should boil down to the money ("...with regards to what aspect of authors we use in incentivizing them to create, we use their greed.
Copyright is utilitarian; it's economic. It's inappropriate to entertain silly notions of some sort of romanticized kind of authorship.") Like I said, your values are not my values. Which is probably a good thing, because I'd probably do some creative editing on what you've written and attribute it to you, 'cos that's entirely moral innit, I mean, you did write whatever it was I edited, so it's totally fair for me to attribute it to you, right? Not like it costs you money...)
At any rate, it's no more objectionable than any other kind of self-chosen filtering system.
Well, it differs from, say, you hitting the Fast Forward button or Skip Chapter buttons fairly radically I'd say, unless by "self-chosen filtering system" you're refering only to those systems where you apply someone else's edits to a movie you watch, in which case, well, duh! That's what this bill makes explicitly legal!
For example, now we can all filter out Jar-Jar from the Star Wars movies. Try and tell me that that's a bad thing.
And we can prevent Greedo from shooting first. But, as I've said, my objection isn't to someone doing this for themselves, it's when a third party (a party whose agenda is hostile to the artist to begin with!) provides an edit and passes off the edit as a version of the same movie, without the original artist's consent.
Now, the funny thing is, Lucas has always been very open about these things in the past and generally has given consent to all manner of community/non-profit derivations of his work. He's a big fan of fan-fiction and been happy for the stuff to be set in the Star Wars universe. He ended up taking action against The Phantom Edit, but only when it became clear people were downloading the thing in favour of going out and buying copies of the real deal. So Lucas is a poor example for anyone defending this bill to give. Lucas doesn't need to be compelled to consent to most, reasonable, edits.
I'm not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse here. The law that was just passed prevents artists from objecting to just what you describe. Worse, it prevents them from even requiring that they be disassociated with such edits. Previously, at the very least, trademark law would give an artist some recourse, but the law even prevents that. As far as a user of this technology is concerned, they are watching film X, just "a nice clean version". The fact that the entire meaning of the film has been altered isn't something they'll even know.
So asking me what part of law applies and supports my position when I'm arguing against the law because I consider it immoral is absurd. I don't agree with this law. I think an artist should have the absolute right to disassociate his or her work from an edited version. Congress has just passed laws to prevent an artist from exercising that moral right. Fuck 'em and their artist hating apologists, be they religious nuts or members of the "but a talking frog is really cool!" fraternity.
Why is this paranoid? I can't see a movie studio doing it for a film like "Die Hard 78", but something made by someone about an issue important to them who's had experience of "edits" fucking up their message is likely to want to do this kind of thing. And those are the very movies that buck the whole "Who cares? All movies are crap anyway, so it doesn't matter if we edit them, indeed, if the MPAA wants my money they should put on good films rather than force me to pay $90 to watch some piece of crap with a friend and a big box of popcorn when the movie is just yet another Adam Sandler and J. Lo thing and like who cares and the Man just wants our money and I don't see why I shouldn't be able to take my camera into the theatre and record the entire thing and then distribute it on BitTorrent because it's crap anyway and all it is is free advertising and...(continued on page 94.)" argument.
Which is why I used the phrase "better movies" in the comment you responded to.
Actually, long term I suspect they'll just not release these things for DVDs, and get the CSS-equivalent for Blu-ray (or whatever DVDng will be) to include licensing clauses forbidding editing technologies. I'm not sure which I prefer, no DVDs at all or DVDs with no easy way of fast forwarding or skipping bits.
I don't "also argue" you'll not know what removed, that was my argument. All your former examples are things that I've not expressed any objection to you doing.
There's a world of difference between you screwing with something you've bought privately, and someone presenting (and selling) an "edit" to a film, implying the edit leaves you with a version of the original. If it changes the meaning of a film, and it's rare such an edit will not, then the end-user no longer has the same film, and will be attributing things to the artists who made the film that are clearly incorrect.
The two things are not in the same ballpark, it reminds me of the "What's the difference between me playing a CD for a friend and me distributing it on Kazaa" argument.
I'm sorry, but your comments don't actually address the issue. Just because a good filmmaker made a film where something was clearly implied but not shown on screen, someone editing an already made film unconnected with the artist without additional footage will not likely (a) be able to do likewise (b) do so while maintaining the strength of the scene removed and hence its meaning and (c) want to.
If you don't like the words made by these "untalented" artists, don't watch them. And if you're going to watch them and demand laws forcing them to accept third party edits, at least give them a right to have their names removed from such edits.
The difference is you know about the part of the movie you find objectionable in the first case, and are being presented with a "version of" a movie in the second case without knowing what's been removed and how it relates to the rest of the film and what the artist was trying to say.
Slashdot Mirror
Because if that isn't a happy ending, I don't know what is!
Nobody's fixed the price of OpenOffice.org at $0. That's the price Sun charges for downloads from their website. But there are plenty of people willing to sell you a copy for a wide variety of prices.
That said, back in 2000, there was no sign that Caldera was anything but a Linux supporter. And as their management has been replaced since, I think in some ways it's Old SCO, New SCO, and Current SCO, three different entities.
Andrew Orlowski wrote the best coverage I saw of the Microsoft monopoly trial, and pretty much changed my mind from one of "Well, if Microsoft wants to include a browser, then so be it, you can't stop progress" to "Hang the bastards!" (obviously I mean as past tense being "hung" not "hanged", I'm an opponent of the Death Penalty. Ooer, little bit of politics, little bit of politics.)
He's anything but a Microsoft astroturfer.
That's the great thing about democracy: we have a revolution every four or so years, and nobody gets hurt.
I think SCO has generally been incompetent and this guy actually admits so much from the beginning. They tried to blow a "contract violation" up to being a major copyright dispute, arguing for billions of dollars in compensation when the contract dispute itself wouldn't have pulled anything like that. Part of this is possibly SCO realising it has to go for broke because it's up against a company it'll almost certainly lose against, so it needs to find ways of getting that company to settle.
This has backfired. By making it look like they're accusing Linux of being a copy of Unix and containing multiple copyright violations, they've put IBM in a position where, given it's bet the house on GNU and Linux, it has to show it stands by what it's done and that the product it's selling is legal, and at the same time it has to prevent a precedent from being set that encourages everyone to find some minor problem they had with IBM and turn it into a lawsuit.
As for this person's view on the whole thing, I suspect he's just as wrong as the more rabid SCO opponents he chastises. He claims to have no doubt that real Unix code can be found in Linux. I have no doubt this isn't true, because we've seen the best examples of what SCO could find, and we know they're not as represented. Moreover, we have no reason to think it would even be necessary to do this.
But his point of view is interesting, and he gives good reasons to think.
Bummer!
Actually I think he understands that. The issue is that people are under the impression Apple does directly contribute, and so start blaming the KHTML team when WebCore has features that KHTML does not. He's not criticising Apple so much as criticising the massive group of people, including many Slasdotters, who do not understand the issues involved and claim that KHTML is benefiting from Apple's involvement.
And most ricers aren't tricking out a car to turn a sports car into a Sedan.
As far as the constitution goes and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a predominantly US-written document, it's not purely economic. The Constitution doesn't limit the author's rights to those that are economic, and copyright law doesn't generally allow something simply because it doesn't hurt sales and revenue. The UN Declaration of Human Rights goes further and talks explictly about moral rights. So historically, you're talking out of your arse.In any case, despite you appearing to think the contrary, you just agreed with me. You are only interested in the money. You think the only way an artist can be harmed is if their ability to make money from their own works is compromised. You have little understanding of why people produce art, and why they'd want control over how its used in their lifetimes, especially when it's attributed to them.
I fail to see how your view is more "rational" than mine. In your world, artistic integrity doesn't exist. No rational artist would create works of any serious value and merit in a world in which someone with an agenda hostile to their's can take that work and push it as a legitimate version of the original. The bill that's passed is all about that. It explicitly and needlessly allows something to happen that in any other context would result in defamation suits. And why? So that "editors", currently the majority of which sympathetic to the views of the administration, can pass off their works as those of other's.The truth is, you're an extremist. It's one thing to say "You know, people should be able to build upon other's works", it's another to claim that people should have views, works, opinions, et al attributed to them that clearly they wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. You support the latter. Beyond a simple, generic, hatred of artists, something the language you choose more than hints at, I can't see any rationale for your views, and a generic hatred of artists is anything but rational.
This is one of the reasons why the FCC's taking an interest. IIRC, the Texas AG is suing them over precisely this issue.
For those cases where they are in a hotel, and have their laptop with them using the hotel's WLAN, a great option might be for those people to use the hotel phone when calling 911. Likewise, if they're in a coffee shop, or a client's site, and they have an urgent need to call 911, they can use the coffee shop or their client's telephone to make the call.
For those cases where they're running VoIP over, say, a cellphone link, perhaps the best option might be to unplug the cellphone and then call 911 from that. I'm not sure how effective VoIP over GRPS/UMTS/cdma2000 would be anyway, but I'm pretty sure the 911 service built into the phone would work better. And remember folks - for GSM and UMTS, if you're in some obscure part of the world and don't know the local number (911 isn't universal), you can always dial "112." It's standard on all GSM phones. You can use the local emergency number too, it's just 112 works everywhere, unlike 911 which is largely a North American thing.
Am I missing something here? I'm pretty sure I've covered all the bases. Is there some pressing need for a GPS system in every laptop?
Again though, you seem to be doing absolutely everything you can to avoid addressing the point. Nobody here is arguing the terms by which you can view a movie. The problem is you're not viewing a movie, you're viewing an edit of one - someone else's edit - and you're viewing it passed off as a version of the original. You're happy to attribute things to the original artists that clearly were never meant. You're happy for others to do the same thing. You are actively encouraging people to lie, to you, and to others, about what those artists have done.
Why are you so opposed to artists disassociating themselves from edits? Why do you believe a law should be passed preventing artists from requiring this?
Answer the question. Don't give me another half-wit answer about "I can do what I like, if I want to hit fast forward I should be able to", because that has nothing to do with the principle here. I personally consider unauthorized third party edits to be deeply insulting, but this goes beyond that. You've had it explained several times. You keep pretending that I'm talking about your right to skip chapters. Are you just stupid, or is your argument so shallow you're afraid to post it?
In fairness, people who loved Star Wars didn't, generally, like Episodes I and II. (or VI for that matter. EMACS is better.) So it is news that a prominent one likes III.
The movie creator has a moral right to expect to not be deliberately misrepresented. To release "edits" for a movie for others to watch, present those edits as a way of accessing the original work without *insert objectionable content here*, when actually those edits invariably change the entire meaning of the film, and continue to refer to the finished product as being "by" that artist, is grossly unfair, and is misrepresenting them.
It's that simply. You want to release edits for someone else's film? Go right ahead, but do the decent thing and take their name off the film unless they consent to it.
Ah, another advocate of whoredom. Money's everything to you, right? Any friends ever accused you of knowing the price of everything, and value of nothing?All I've asked for is something simple: if you're going to fuck with someone else's work, attributing to it editing, language, contexts, et al, at odds with the original, at least do the decent and honourable thing and don't give it the same name and don't include the original artist's name, unless they specifically want you to.
How hard is that? The only reason I can possibly think of for defending what's happened here is on a "I hate artists. They give me films with stuff I don't like in them. Therefore they're evil" basis. Sorry, I disagree. If you don't like their films, don't watch them. And if you must "edit" them to fit your own views rather than those of the filmmakers, don't insult the people who gave you the material you're working in the first place.
Certainly though, if the movie's available on DVD, just with antiskip turned on, then it's available, it can be watched with all modern DVD players, and it's a PITA. (We're talking about the same technology as is used to prevent you, in most players, from skipping the FBI warning) but it still doesn't impact on whether the movie's any good. The movie being good is independent of whether going to the bathroom means you miss a few minutes.
I quite agree... It does amaze me that the anti-artist lobby hasn't figured that one out.As far as your other comment goes, most people are opposing what I've said, and I'm usually arguing against non-consensual P2P and other piracy mechanisms. Even if I did believe, however, that there was nothing wrong with ripping a song and then distributing it to millions of anonymous strangers without the consent of the artist, that wouldn't necessarily mean I support modifying the song to mean something different and passing it off as something essentially the same as the original, "only cleaner!"
It's a one-two punch. Those supporting both non-consensual file sharing and non-consensual film editing are essentially saying they both want to deprive artists of the ability to make money from music sales, and they want to deprive artists of the ability to have their message heard as they intended if they disagree with that message. While I'm sure there are people with both views, I suspect the only reason someone would fall into both camps would be a hatred of artists.
And, yes, I'm sure DVD releases are more marketable, but there's a difference between something being marketable and something being good. Actually, I think the two concepts rarely co-incide...
If you, to take my example again, remove the rape scene from Monster, you end up with an entirely different film, one that would almost certainly be at odds with what Patty Jenkins was trying to do. A person watching this may be aware that edits have occurred, but they wouldn't know the entire film's message had been changed through the use of such edits. They've taken the effort to get what they believe is a "clean" version of a movie, and ended up with an entirely different movie. A movie that's still almost certainly attributed, thanks to the slimeballs behind this bill, to Ms Jenkins.
Monster is a great example because it contains exactly the kinds of scenes that a puritanical group would want removed, it has a message the same people would be hostile to, and it's increadibly easy to manipulate, by the removal of key scenes (key scenes that by themselves are clearly "removable" according to the group's agenda in that they're violent and involve sexual imagery or nudity), the movie to mean something entirely counter to its original message.
Of course, I know this argument washes over you because you believe it should boil down to the money ("...with regards to what aspect of authors we use in incentivizing them to create, we use their greed. Copyright is utilitarian; it's economic. It's inappropriate to entertain silly notions of some sort of romanticized kind of authorship.") Like I said, your values are not my values. Which is probably a good thing, because I'd probably do some creative editing on what you've written and attribute it to you, 'cos that's entirely moral innit, I mean, you did write whatever it was I edited, so it's totally fair for me to attribute it to you, right? Not like it costs you money...)
Well, it differs from, say, you hitting the Fast Forward button or Skip Chapter buttons fairly radically I'd say, unless by "self-chosen filtering system" you're refering only to those systems where you apply someone else's edits to a movie you watch, in which case, well, duh! That's what this bill makes explicitly legal! And we can prevent Greedo from shooting first. But, as I've said, my objection isn't to someone doing this for themselves, it's when a third party (a party whose agenda is hostile to the artist to begin with!) provides an edit and passes off the edit as a version of the same movie, without the original artist's consent.Now, the funny thing is, Lucas has always been very open about these things in the past and generally has given consent to all manner of community/non-profit derivations of his work. He's a big fan of fan-fiction and been happy for the stuff to be set in the Star Wars universe. He ended up taking action against The Phantom Edit, but only when it became clear people were downloading the thing in favour of going out and buying copies of the real deal. So Lucas is a poor example for anyone defending this bill to give. Lucas doesn't need to be compelled to consent to most, reasonable, edits.
So asking me what part of law applies and supports my position when I'm arguing against the law because I consider it immoral is absurd. I don't agree with this law. I think an artist should have the absolute right to disassociate his or her work from an edited version. Congress has just passed laws to prevent an artist from exercising that moral right. Fuck 'em and their artist hating apologists, be they religious nuts or members of the "but a talking frog is really cool!" fraternity.
Which is why I used the phrase "better movies" in the comment you responded to.
Actually, long term I suspect they'll just not release these things for DVDs, and get the CSS-equivalent for Blu-ray (or whatever DVDng will be) to include licensing clauses forbidding editing technologies. I'm not sure which I prefer, no DVDs at all or DVDs with no easy way of fast forwarding or skipping bits.
There's a world of difference between you screwing with something you've bought privately, and someone presenting (and selling) an "edit" to a film, implying the edit leaves you with a version of the original. If it changes the meaning of a film, and it's rare such an edit will not, then the end-user no longer has the same film, and will be attributing things to the artists who made the film that are clearly incorrect.
The two things are not in the same ballpark, it reminds me of the "What's the difference between me playing a CD for a friend and me distributing it on Kazaa" argument.
If you don't like the words made by these "untalented" artists, don't watch them. And if you're going to watch them and demand laws forcing them to accept third party edits, at least give them a right to have their names removed from such edits.
The difference is you know about the part of the movie you find objectionable in the first case, and are being presented with a "version of" a movie in the second case without knowing what's been removed and how it relates to the rest of the film and what the artist was trying to say.