This is a horrible precedent. Evolution is likely the correct explanation for life on earth, but what happens when science is wrong? (it often is, that's how we learn) Do we then just say "oops, sorry, we didn't mean to legislate teaching you what wasn't known for certain yet."
Find me one piece of credible, scientific evidence for creationism. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I wasn't making an argument for creationism. Re-read my post to see how you misread it.
Politicians should not be involving themselves in science, lest they quickly become little better than a monarchy.
They're not dictating the outcomes of scientific endeavors, they're saying that since there is no credible scientific evidence for creationism -- you can't teach it alongside science as an equally valid view, because there is precisely zero science involved in it.
You've failed to see my point again. I think you got stuck on thinking I hate evolution and just kept writing without thinking.
Ask yourself what happens when a scientific avenue of investigation comes to incorrect conclusions, but oops, legislators have already decreed that it be taught.
Let's suppose that string theory had been legislated to be taught in all physics departments as if it were the ultimate explanation for the universe and its existence. Just suppose that. Now what happens in 2-3 years when we find that only a small tweak to the standard model makes string theory a beautiful but unnecessary mathematical construct for explaining the universe? Do we just say, "Oops, oh well, now we need to change the law that congress passed."
That's RIDICULOUS. Science and Politics NEED TO BE SEPARATE.
The whole point of teaching science is to hope that people will find that things are wrong with it and improve on it.
But without a solid understanding on the scientific method, what we observe now, how we interpret that evidence and why the current body of knowledge is accepted, people cannot possibly understand WHY the science is wrong (when it's wrong) and how to fix it.
No, wrong. The whole point of teaching science is teaching kids the proper way to think and approach problems. The appropriate way to think does not include clinging to one particular viewpoint because it's fashionable, whatever that viewpoint may be.
In my country, it already does. It's called "the national curriculum".
That doesn't mean it's a good idea. A government that controls what you learn is perfectly capable of controlling how you think. If you don't believe me, explain North Korea.
You don't believe in evolution - you accept it, just as you accept the map of the Solar system and the periodic table. There's no place for believing.
There's no place for belief in any scientific endeavor, nor is it appropriate to simply tell kids to "accept this, it is fact." You either have evidence that supports an idea, or you don't. Ideas that have evidence supporting them should not require the preaching you're giving us. No teacher that tells kids "this is fact, accept it" is worth listening to.
Yes, it means you have politicians doing things they shouldn't be.
This is a horrible precedent. Evolution is likely the correct explanation for life on earth, but what happens when science is wrong? (it often is, that's how we learn) Do we then just say "oops, sorry, we didn't mean to legislate teaching you what wasn't known for certain yet."
Politicians should not be involving themselves in science, lest they quickly become little better than a monarchy.
No, you're actually entirely incorrect. It has nothing to do with the ideological stance of the government, it has everything to do with the size of the government. The U.S. Government is quite probably the largest single employer in the world. If not it's definitely in the top 5. When you have a massive system of shitty employees who cannot be fired trying to meet the needs of hundreds of millions of people, you are bound to get absolute sh*t everywhere.
Other governments in other countries are likely much better, especially when compared to Europe, but it's the SIZE that matters, not the ideology. If you want to compare on equal/fair footing, compare the best states in the U.S. with the best countries in Europe.
Well I seem to recall the following things being quite bad when the government does them:
- Phones
- Electricity
- Television/Radio Decency Standards
- Drug enforcement
- Energy planning
- Political News Reporting
- Overall News Reporting
- Responding to Crises (Katrina, Gulf Oil Spill, Sandy)
- Respect for Personal Property
- Crime Investigation
Road Building, Defense, Fire Departments, and health care usually get tonnes of money thrown at them. For the price paid, Government generally does a terrible job on those as well. But because we overspend, it's arguable they do a good job of it. If you want to see government employees disappointing you, go find some area where they're paid badly, or have budgets that are being scaled back regularly.
I remember the days when my friends laughed at me for never starting a facebook page. I kept telling them that what they were doing by putting their entire lives on a single company's database was no different than handing it to any 3-letter agency. They thought I was crazy/paranoid/backwards. Of course they usually thought this as I was fixing their computer for them.
Now the damage is done. It's highly likely that elections are being won with the volunteered information and raw database-crunching power available to various groups now. You may say that there's no obvious problem with this, but I would prefer that politicians dance for the intelligent rather than expertly manipulate the retarded among us.
Unchecked Monopoly
The reason hearing aids are allowed to get so high is that there's no bottom-up challenge. There's no bottom up challenge because entrenched companies have gamed the system.
What is the purpose of copyright? To allow a creator to profit from his or her creativity. What creativity in this case could possibly be profited from?
Fortunately, that's not for you or the United States legal system to decide. If you want to go insane and spend your entire life writing your book and then sell it for one hundred billion dollars per copy, you are more than free to do it. That is a personal freedom that cannot be taken away from an entrepreneur no matter how completely stupid it may sound.
In this internet age you're also free to paint mural a wall and try to charge admission for viewing it 40 years later, but people are generally not stupid enough to try this. We have lots of lawyers trying to maintain their industry size who are very active at trying to convince us that the sky is red, and that any and all media content should result in fees being paid to them to protect it.
Is the publisher actually going to lose money from a small portion of 40 year old book making it into the public domain?
Okay, we're starting to get somewhere. You say "forty years" because of this work. So what you're saying is that everything written over forty years ago is fair game and public domain? So I can make movies out of Sirens of Titan, A Clockwork Orange, To Kill a Mockingbird, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dune, Catch-22, Stranger in a Strangeland, etc and not pay anyone a dime for those rights or royalties? Okay so where do you draw the line on copyright? Give us a proposed length and then we can start discussing this like adults instead of asking stupid vague rhetorical questions about a suicide prevention questionnaire.
Is the creator still profiting from it? If the answer is yes, then perhaps an argument can be made to protect it. If a publisher owns all rights to it and is simply protecting their rights, the enforcement of those rights does nothing to encourage creativity, rather such activity only destroys jobs in other industries. Also, action without PROOF that a creator is being harmed needlessly destroys the profitability of other media companies.
I said no such thing, but you're free to put words in peoples mouths if it gives you a reason to argue over nothing on the internet.
You did effectively say that.
No I didn't, go read the OP and quote where I stated any such thing. You're a writer, certainly you can understand how you misread my intended statement in such a way as to create an argument for you to then write about.
I would however suggest that creating something that is intended to benefit the public health be allowed to benefit public health first, and be used as a mechanism for profit SECOND. But apparently I am to consider myself in the minority in that viewpoint.
So here's another example of you making this a special case. Because this copyrighted work is medically related and might benefit public health, it has some special status that a creative work outside of this domain does not. And that's just laughably insane.
No, it's not a special case. If I design a car, I'm not designing a car because I want to patent the design and sell usage of the design. I design a car because I intend on manufacturing it and providing a tangible good in exchange for profit. My business in such a case is an interaction with a consumer of my goods, not legalized extortion to extract money for intangibles. All legitimate business works this way: you provide benefit to that consumers will pay for first, figure out how to profit second. If the distributors of owned media cannot profit any other way than keeping their product under lock and key, they will find themselves replaced sooner than they might think. This isn't a threat, it's just reality.
How is something you write "inherently communal property"? It's something you wrote! It's yours! It's your idea!
This is where all arguments break down for me. Real ownership of ideas is simply not possible. It is a shoddy political construct that was granted to allow for creators to profit from intangible things. All human minds are essentially equal in capability, all are capable of understanding the same exact concepts. So nothing makes your brain more special for coming up with any particular idea. It is entirely likely that whatever you consider novel was actually thought of hundreds, perhaps thousands of times before in countless minds across humanity and human history. If you want to make your idea special... ACT ON IT. Making something tangible that benefits humanity is the most important thing you could do with your idea. The idea *IS WORTHLESS* by itself. You can't feed any population with thoughts. You can't clothe the masses with patents. You cannot send humans to the moon with only a well-calculated design. Ultimately to have any value you have to do something with your invention/creation that benefits someone else. Human thought should not be protectable by any sort of law or legal leverage, but that's exactly the system we've created and it's biting us in the ass bigtime.
Astonishing but still within the copyright term length. Abhorrent? You bet. But I wouldn't go around attacking publishers and would instead focus on reducing the law that governs said term length.
What is the purpose of copyright? To allow a creator to profit from his or her creativity.
What creativity in this case could possibly be profited from? Is the publisher actually going to lose money from a small portion of 40 year old book making it into the public domain? Are you actually arguing that this is the case?
So what you're saying is that if I want to make money publishing my research, I should stay away from publishing suicide prevention materials since placing a copyright on that is morally reprehensible because if it's public domain it might actually save lives?
I said no such thing, but you're free to put words in peoples mouths if it gives you a reason to argue over nothing on the internet. I would however suggest that creating something that is intended to benefit the public health be allowed to benefit public health first, and be used as a mechanism for profit SECOND. But apparently I am to consider myself in the minority in that viewpoint.
So I'd like to point out that from what I've read they were given 24 hour notice from their provider and they failed to remove the article from their cache (although they did remove it from their site). If you're running a site that costs $6,954.37 just in hosting service per month, I would hope you would be a little more competent about complying with DMCA requests.
And I would hope that someday small internet businesses be freeed from the ridiculous requirement that they respond to such takedown notices before a judge has actually confirmed that someone is losing money from the violation. But I must be some kind of dreamer to hope that small business be allowed to create jobs first, and protect the property of other companies in different industries second, right?
I'm telling you right now, the way you described how horrible this is makes me never want to produce any sort of writing that might be construed as beneficial to society because then I won't be paid for my work or I'll be a monster. If Pearson can't make money off these texts, goodbye Pearson. It's that simple. And yeah, that might be the future with self publishing on the rise but right now they have those texts under laws that are legitimate US Laws.
So, suggesting that a portion of a work that was written 40 years ago might be better in the public domain actually makes you afraid to write? Are you for real?
The offending post was published in 2007, which is true, however the material (questionnaire) that was posted was 38 years old. Worse yet, the questionnaire was a suicide prevention questionnaire, so its existence in the public domain might actually save lives. So a DMCA request pulled down millions of blogs because one page that was originally published nearly 4 decades ago supposedly has some copyright value to someone. These times we live in, they're literally not far off from a lot of books I was encouraged to read in high school, but was told would never actually happen.
Do you live in Europe? If so, remember the cold war and your low military budgets post WW2? I thought you might.
You're asking for arrogance. You post something bashing a country and you expect those who love the country not to respond? You must be about as childish as anyone I've seen. You trolled this entire thread. Nothing about this thread had anything to do with the United States, but your misplaced hatred of a country you probably know a lot less about than you think you do just forced you to say something bad about them. You need to look at yourself and ask yourself just how much you actually hate anything, because you'll probably be surprised at how little you find wrong once you get past the blinders of hatred you've put on.
You have to demonstrate that something being expressed can legally be censured before you can squelch it, as far as I understand the definition of prior restraint. BIANAL. Takedowns of videos are done BEFORE a judge is even involved, meaning no one has proven anything to anyone.
If the law did not work this way, I would imagine a sufficiently skilled/powerful/connected staff of lawyers could simply stop negative news reports before they happened.
Would you say the same thing about government contractors that rip off the government? They obviously are not government, but they receive government money to do work for the government. By your rules, no one should never know what goes on inside them, they should be a complete black box. What a fantasy-land-of-doom you've created in your head.
Furthermore, you do realize you are actually arguing for scientists, who are supposed to be world-standard record-keepers so that their work can be demonstrated to be real through replication, to be allowed to withhold their work from those who have paid for it.
In no research-and-development firm in the world would your boss (those who pay you to do research) allow you to withhold your methods or records. If you are paid to do research, all communication/notebooks/presentations/data are part of the package. That's just the way it's done, unless you live in some kind of fantasyland where scientists (who are trained to work in open environments, with open methods, and requests for replication) can be as secretive as they like, while government uses their results to affect political change.
Slashdot Mirror
Find me one piece of credible, scientific evidence for creationism. Go ahead, I'll wait.
I wasn't making an argument for creationism. Re-read my post to see how you misread it.
They're not dictating the outcomes of scientific endeavors, they're saying that since there is no credible scientific evidence for creationism -- you can't teach it alongside science as an equally valid view, because there is precisely zero science involved in it.
You've failed to see my point again. I think you got stuck on thinking I hate evolution and just kept writing without thinking.
Ask yourself what happens when a scientific avenue of investigation comes to incorrect conclusions, but oops, legislators have already decreed that it be taught.
Let's suppose that string theory had been legislated to be taught in all physics departments as if it were the ultimate explanation for the universe and its existence. Just suppose that. Now what happens in 2-3 years when we find that only a small tweak to the standard model makes string theory a beautiful but unnecessary mathematical construct for explaining the universe? Do we just say, "Oops, oh well, now we need to change the law that congress passed."
That's RIDICULOUS. Science and Politics NEED TO BE SEPARATE.
The whole point of teaching science is to hope that people will find that things are wrong with it and improve on it. But without a solid understanding on the scientific method, what we observe now, how we interpret that evidence and why the current body of knowledge is accepted, people cannot possibly understand WHY the science is wrong (when it's wrong) and how to fix it.
No, wrong. The whole point of teaching science is teaching kids the proper way to think and approach problems. The appropriate way to think does not include clinging to one particular viewpoint because it's fashionable, whatever that viewpoint may be.
In my country, it already does. It's called "the national curriculum".
That doesn't mean it's a good idea. A government that controls what you learn is perfectly capable of controlling how you think. If you don't believe me, explain North Korea.
You don't believe in evolution - you accept it, just as you accept the map of the Solar system and the periodic table. There's no place for believing.
There's no place for belief in any scientific endeavor, nor is it appropriate to simply tell kids to "accept this, it is fact." You either have evidence that supports an idea, or you don't. Ideas that have evidence supporting them should not require the preaching you're giving us. No teacher that tells kids "this is fact, accept it" is worth listening to.
Yes, it means you have politicians doing things they shouldn't be.
This is a horrible precedent. Evolution is likely the correct explanation for life on earth, but what happens when science is wrong? (it often is, that's how we learn) Do we then just say "oops, sorry, we didn't mean to legislate teaching you what wasn't known for certain yet."
Politicians should not be involving themselves in science, lest they quickly become little better than a monarchy.
Oh right, the feds, they're never in their right mind. I shouldn't have asked, dumb question, sorry.
No, you're actually entirely incorrect. It has nothing to do with the ideological stance of the government, it has everything to do with the size of the government. The U.S. Government is quite probably the largest single employer in the world. If not it's definitely in the top 5. When you have a massive system of shitty employees who cannot be fired trying to meet the needs of hundreds of millions of people, you are bound to get absolute sh*t everywhere.
Other governments in other countries are likely much better, especially when compared to Europe, but it's the SIZE that matters, not the ideology. If you want to compare on equal/fair footing, compare the best states in the U.S. with the best countries in Europe.
Well I seem to recall the following things being quite bad when the government does them:
- Phones
- Electricity
- Television/Radio Decency Standards
- Drug enforcement
- Energy planning
- Political News Reporting
- Overall News Reporting
- Responding to Crises (Katrina, Gulf Oil Spill, Sandy)
- Respect for Personal Property
- Crime Investigation
Road Building, Defense, Fire Departments, and health care usually get tonnes of money thrown at them. For the price paid, Government generally does a terrible job on those as well. But because we overspend, it's arguable they do a good job of it. If you want to see government employees disappointing you, go find some area where they're paid badly, or have budgets that are being scaled back regularly.
Thanks to Bush and Obama for their secret interpretations of various parts of FISA + Patriot Act, the answer is likely no.
I remember the days when my friends laughed at me for never starting a facebook page. I kept telling them that what they were doing by putting their entire lives on a single company's database was no different than handing it to any 3-letter agency. They thought I was crazy/paranoid/backwards. Of course they usually thought this as I was fixing their computer for them.
Now the damage is done. It's highly likely that elections are being won with the volunteered information and raw database-crunching power available to various groups now. You may say that there's no obvious problem with this, but I would prefer that politicians dance for the intelligent rather than expertly manipulate the retarded among us.
Ah it seems like the apple fanbois have modded me down harshly. Thanks for your reply.
Samsung actually innovates. They're not the best at it, but at least they do it.
Unchecked Monopoly The reason hearing aids are allowed to get so high is that there's no bottom-up challenge. There's no bottom up challenge because entrenched companies have gamed the system.
I concede you are correct, I misstated it the detriment of my own argument.
What is the purpose of copyright? To allow a creator to profit from his or her creativity. What creativity in this case could possibly be profited from?
Fortunately, that's not for you or the United States legal system to decide. If you want to go insane and spend your entire life writing your book and then sell it for one hundred billion dollars per copy, you are more than free to do it. That is a personal freedom that cannot be taken away from an entrepreneur no matter how completely stupid it may sound.
In this internet age you're also free to paint mural a wall and try to charge admission for viewing it 40 years later, but people are generally not stupid enough to try this. We have lots of lawyers trying to maintain their industry size who are very active at trying to convince us that the sky is red, and that any and all media content should result in fees being paid to them to protect it.
Is the publisher actually going to lose money from a small portion of 40 year old book making it into the public domain?
Okay, we're starting to get somewhere. You say "forty years" because of this work. So what you're saying is that everything written over forty years ago is fair game and public domain? So I can make movies out of Sirens of Titan, A Clockwork Orange, To Kill a Mockingbird, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dune, Catch-22, Stranger in a Strangeland, etc and not pay anyone a dime for those rights or royalties? Okay so where do you draw the line on copyright? Give us a proposed length and then we can start discussing this like adults instead of asking stupid vague rhetorical questions about a suicide prevention questionnaire.
Is the creator still profiting from it? If the answer is yes, then perhaps an argument can be made to protect it. If a publisher owns all rights to it and is simply protecting their rights, the enforcement of those rights does nothing to encourage creativity, rather such activity only destroys jobs in other industries. Also, action without PROOF that a creator is being harmed needlessly destroys the profitability of other media companies.
I said no such thing, but you're free to put words in peoples mouths if it gives you a reason to argue over nothing on the internet.
You did effectively say that.
No I didn't, go read the OP and quote where I stated any such thing. You're a writer, certainly you can understand how you misread my intended statement in such a way as to create an argument for you to then write about.
I would however suggest that creating something that is intended to benefit the public health be allowed to benefit public health first, and be used as a mechanism for profit SECOND. But apparently I am to consider myself in the minority in that viewpoint.
So here's another example of you making this a special case. Because this copyrighted work is medically related and might benefit public health, it has some special status that a creative work outside of this domain does not. And that's just laughably insane.
No, it's not a special case. If I design a car, I'm not designing a car because I want to patent the design and sell usage of the design. I design a car because I intend on manufacturing it and providing a tangible good in exchange for profit. My business in such a case is an interaction with a consumer of my goods, not legalized extortion to extract money for intangibles. All legitimate business works this way: you provide benefit to that consumers will pay for first, figure out how to profit second. If the distributors of owned media cannot profit any other way than keeping their product under lock and key, they will find themselves replaced sooner than they might think. This isn't a threat, it's just reality.
How is something you write "inherently communal property"? It's something you wrote! It's yours! It's your idea!
This is where all arguments break down for me. Real ownership of ideas is simply not possible. It is a shoddy political construct that was granted to allow for creators to profit from intangible things. All human minds are essentially equal in capability, all are capable of understanding the same exact concepts. So nothing makes your brain more special for coming up with any particular idea. It is entirely likely that whatever you consider novel was actually thought of hundreds, perhaps thousands of times before in countless minds across humanity and human history. If you want to make your idea special... ACT ON IT. Making something tangible that benefits humanity is the most important thing you could do with your idea. The idea *IS WORTHLESS* by itself. You can't feed any population with thoughts. You can't clothe the masses with patents. You cannot send humans to the moon with only a well-calculated design. Ultimately to have any value you have to do something with your invention/creation that benefits someone else. Human thought should not be protectable by any sort of law or legal leverage, but that's exactly the system we've created and it's biting us in the ass bigtime.
Astonishing but still within the copyright term length. Abhorrent? You bet. But I wouldn't go around attacking publishers and would instead focus on reducing the law that governs said term length.
What is the purpose of copyright? To allow a creator to profit from his or her creativity.
What creativity in this case could possibly be profited from? Is the publisher actually going to lose money from a small portion of 40 year old book making it into the public domain? Are you actually arguing that this is the case?
So what you're saying is that if I want to make money publishing my research, I should stay away from publishing suicide prevention materials since placing a copyright on that is morally reprehensible because if it's public domain it might actually save lives?
I said no such thing, but you're free to put words in peoples mouths if it gives you a reason to argue over nothing on the internet. I would however suggest that creating something that is intended to benefit the public health be allowed to benefit public health first, and be used as a mechanism for profit SECOND. But apparently I am to consider myself in the minority in that viewpoint.
So I'd like to point out that from what I've read they were given 24 hour notice from their provider and they failed to remove the article from their cache (although they did remove it from their site). If you're running a site that costs $6,954.37 just in hosting service per month, I would hope you would be a little more competent about complying with DMCA requests.
And I would hope that someday small internet businesses be freeed from the ridiculous requirement that they respond to such takedown notices before a judge has actually confirmed that someone is losing money from the violation. But I must be some kind of dreamer to hope that small business be allowed to create jobs first, and protect the property of other companies in different industries second, right?
I'm telling you right now, the way you described how horrible this is makes me never want to produce any sort of writing that might be construed as beneficial to society because then I won't be paid for my work or I'll be a monster. If Pearson can't make money off these texts, goodbye Pearson. It's that simple. And yeah, that might be the future with self publishing on the rise but right now they have those texts under laws that are legitimate US Laws.
So, suggesting that a portion of a work that was written 40 years ago might be better in the public domain actually makes you afraid to write? Are you for real?
I was trying to be vague to avoid any possible DMCA takedown notice, now see what you've done...
The offending post was published in 2007, which is true, however the material (questionnaire) that was posted was 38 years old. Worse yet, the questionnaire was a suicide prevention questionnaire, so its existence in the public domain might actually save lives. So a DMCA request pulled down millions of blogs because one page that was originally published nearly 4 decades ago supposedly has some copyright value to someone. These times we live in, they're literally not far off from a lot of books I was encouraged to read in high school, but was told would never actually happen.
Do you live in Europe? If so, remember the cold war and your low military budgets post WW2? I thought you might.
You're asking for arrogance. You post something bashing a country and you expect those who love the country not to respond? You must be about as childish as anyone I've seen. You trolled this entire thread. Nothing about this thread had anything to do with the United States, but your misplaced hatred of a country you probably know a lot less about than you think you do just forced you to say something bad about them. You need to look at yourself and ask yourself just how much you actually hate anything, because you'll probably be surprised at how little you find wrong once you get past the blinders of hatred you've put on.
I wonder if you realize how awesome the US is in that it protects your speech... hrm...
"The Case For Mars" Robert Zubrin
When humanity stops looking towards a viable future of expansion, it always stagnates. This book puts humanity's future in perspective
You have to demonstrate that something being expressed can legally be censured before you can squelch it, as far as I understand the definition of prior restraint. BIANAL. Takedowns of videos are done BEFORE a judge is even involved, meaning no one has proven anything to anyone.
If the law did not work this way, I would imagine a sufficiently skilled/powerful/connected staff of lawyers could simply stop negative news reports before they happened.
do not constitute prior-restraint when it comes to free speech. Is it because the government isn't doing the takedown?
Welcome to the 21st century. Want to be a part of it? ...then grow the frack up.
Would you say the same thing about government contractors that rip off the government? They obviously are not government, but they receive government money to do work for the government. By your rules, no one should never know what goes on inside them, they should be a complete black box. What a fantasy-land-of-doom you've created in your head.
Furthermore, you do realize you are actually arguing for scientists, who are supposed to be world-standard record-keepers so that their work can be demonstrated to be real through replication, to be allowed to withhold their work from those who have paid for it.
In no research-and-development firm in the world would your boss (those who pay you to do research) allow you to withhold your methods or records. If you are paid to do research, all communication/notebooks/presentations/data are part of the package. That's just the way it's done, unless you live in some kind of fantasyland where scientists (who are trained to work in open environments, with open methods, and requests for replication) can be as secretive as they like, while government uses their results to affect political change.