I don't think he claimed that ideas have no economic value, just that the economics of ideas is fundamentally different from the economics of "stuff." Pretending that they are inherently the same or should be treated as such is insane. Personally, I support the idea of a limited copyright term simply to make the creative expression of ideas a profitable enterprise. However, I strongly oppose the suggestion that a creator has an exclusive right to profit from his creation for the rest of his life.
In my opinion, when you create something and share it, you've given up your exclusive right to it. It "belongs" to society, simply because locking it up requires an unnatural effort to prevent an idea (or information) from being expressed. That's why physical property and intellectual property are just naturally different things. As I said, I'm willing to tolerate an artificial "lending" of that property back to its creator long enough to create an economic incentive to create, but the laws as they stand now are ridiculously imbalanced.
It's kind of an interesting question. What if the image has artistic value and is not a simple representational photograph. It's quite possible to imagine it retaining that artistic value even in its reduced format. It's not a simple matter of "more than X% is infringement, less is fair use." It really depends on what the source material is, what the use is, and on a number of details of how it is used.
Along these lines, it's significant that Google is using it for a search engine only. That bolsters their case for fair use. If they were using the thumbnails as parts of a collage for, say, an advertisement, that'd make it less likely to be fair use (imo). Of course, that raises the question of whether they're effectively using them for advertisements since that's the source of their revenue........ (I don't really buy that, just think it's the case that nothing is ever as simple and obvious as it might seem)
Heh, I once ate about a quarter pound of those things (or whatever was the size of the container I bought) in a sitting... everything got very bright, and I fell asleep. Probably not recommended behavior, though.
I think it's a good ruling. The safe harbor protects groups who clearly have no hand in what information is collected or how it is used. Since this website appears to have a hand in that (at least by gathering potentially discriminatory information), they need to demonstrate that they're using it in a manner consistent with the law. That is best done by letting the case go to the next stage. Note that the court hasn't said that there's anything illegal going on, just that the site doesn't get a free pass out of the court proceedings.
No, but Hal Leonard's letter is simply urging those who own the rights (on "behalf" of the artists, HA) to get in on the fussing. That'd be fine, except that they did this by lying through their teeth. Makes me wonder if MXTabs/Musicnotes would have a case for libel.
Ok, well, I have no way to evaluate your claims about the error rate in the database, but it's really irrelevant to my point. I actually do understand the issue, although it may not be the one you want to talk about. The issue is people getting into trouble by blindly following bad directions from an automated system.
Even for the issue you're focusing on, you're just wrong. A design error like that is a bug, unless you really think the architect sat back, thought a while, and then decided that yes, it would be wise to use dirt roads for interstate travel. It's a lot more likely they didn't consider the classes properly or have some error in determining whether such a road would ever be usable.
Still, it really doesn't matter *why* it's giving bad routes, the fact is that you can't rely 100% on a system like that. If you do, you're going to get into trouble. When you do, it's your own fault because you didn't stop to think about the limitations of your equipment.
Errors in a huge data set like a road navigation database are inevitable and it's simply unrealistic to expect full enough testing to guarantee that there are no bugs like this. That's why every piece of GPS navigation software I've ever seen gives a prominent warning not to use it as your sole source of navigation, and to use common sense before following its instructions. If someone drove down an unmarked dirt road at the suggestion of their GPS unit and gets stuck, it's their own fault.
Plus, most GPS navigators are built on top of a static data set. These data are going to get out of date quickly as construction and floods, etc, occur. There's simply no way to get perfect routes for every circumstance. This is, of course, no different from following an atlas or asking your cousin Jed for directions. They'll all give you a best effort at safe directions, but you still have to evaluate circumstances "in the field" and make the final safety determination yourself.
So, yeah, the manufacturer should fix bugs like these when they come available, but they should not take responsibility for someone doing something stupid.
That is, in my experience, the single best approach to avoiding stupid numerical errors in programming. Brackets are free and remove any ambiguity as to what you mean to either the computer or to a future programmer. Also, it helps in debugging the code later because it very explicitly states the intention of the programmer. If someone wrote "a + (b * c)" you can be pretty sure they really meant to do the multiplication first. If it's "a + b * c" it's a little less clear -- maybe they intended to do the addition first.
It's a little contrived with + and * since the relative precedence of those is so well known. When the precedence is less intuitive, it's even more important. My favorite example is "a + b << c". In C and Python (and possibly others) this does not do what I (or anyone I've asked) expects. Since "<<" in a numerical context feels like multiplication, it seems like that ought to be "a + (b<<c)". It's not, though, it's "(a + b) << c".
Also, I agree with you about the (3==a) stuff. I don't think the benefit (catching a few bugs that wouldn't be caught by a compiler assignment warning) outweighs the cost of less readable code. However, this starts to border on religious warfare, so I won't say anything more.:-)
Ok, well I'm not sure you're following the thread closely then. My post was in response to someone suggesting that a Nazi protesting outside a synagogue violated the rights of the worshipers inside. I think it was pretty clearly disagreeing with that, and I'm not the one who brought up the Nazi example. Anyway, I'm not sure what you're trying to say...
A guy with a Nazi armband and a sign offensive to those in the synagogue does not violate their rights in any way, nor does it prevent them from exercising their religious freedom. They're free to practice their religion, not free not to have to look at a sign they don't agree with, not even free not to be insulted. It's not a matter of balancing rights -- as long as the picketer is behaving in a civil manner and not inciting violence or other criminal behavior, he should be free to express whatever view he likes in any public place.
It's hard to say data "belongs" to anybody to begin with, and if I paid for the DVD on which the data is encrypted I should unquestionably have access to the tools necessary to decrypt it (for fair use backups, for example) regardless of whether I own the data or not. I agre with you, but, unfortunately, this is not an unquestionable right. In fact, the law quite specifically says that you do not have that right. Perhaps the law is wrong and oversteps the Constitution, but I'm actually not tremendously hopeful of that. It's pretty vague about the details of the Copyrights it empowers the government to establish, and IIRC, you'd only have to convince the courts that restricting that would-be right is necessary to further the arts for it to stand up. I fear that in the name of stability they'll allow the law to stand and prop up outdated development and distribution models...
I agree with your sentiment, but think the degree of punishment is reasonable. I wouldn't be at all upset if a murderer was sent to prison for 40 years. I would be upset if an occasional shoplifter was given that same punishment -- not because he'd been punished, but because the punishment was inconsistent with the gravity of the crime. Here, we have 10 years for an economic crime -- for me that's right at the border of justice, though I don't know how serious the economic damage was beyond the always-specious estimate of $50M over the years. Now, add in the fact that he was extradited to be sentenced in a place he'd never even been and treated as though he were somehow subject to the jurisdiction of those laws pushes me past the breaking point. US law does not extend past our borders.
It is, but it sounds much more sanitary and pleasant, almost as though it's a legitimate business method. Fraud is plain, simple, and clear about the illegal nature of the activity it describes. Being specific with language is great, but in this case, I think it masks the meaning for people who are not familiar with the term.
Many laws consider intent. If that numeric sequence happens to appear in a binary file somewhere on an FTP site, that's clearly no problem, even if the DMCA is found to prevent the dissemination of a key like that. No reasonable person would grant blanket ownership of a number to anyone. However, that is very different from ten thousand angry geeks pretending to be posting a random string all over web forums. Their intent is clearly to share that secret. The fact that the number itself is not specifically "owned" does not make it a logical problem to prosecute the intentional distribution of a protected trade secret (or whatever that key would be designated as) while allowing its incidental publication in other contexts.
Not to say I believe it SHOULD be illegal to distribute an encryption key, but it's not quite as ridiculous as many people are making it out to be.
I think it's professional in the sense that a professional engineer is obligated to work within the legal environment pertaining to his line of work. For a civil engineer, this means complying with building codes. For a software engineer, it means working within the copyright/patent laws. In both cases, it might be expedient to ignore the rules -- if they only made the engineer's job easier, they wouldn't have to be legislated. Ignoring the rules for expediency is simply unprofessional.
It is unprofessional even if you have a political or moral reason for the decision. If you can't do a job within the confines of the law, either the job can't be done or the law should be changed. Looking the other way is, again, expedient, but ultimately works to everyone's detriment because the underlying problem never gets fixed.
This isn't really any different from other "crimes" (or violations of school policy). The school's rule is simply that you are not allowed to do certain things on the computers. Some of these things are restricted by their security systems, others are not. Just because you *can* do it, doesn't mean it's within the rules they've established. The students are responsible for their behavior -- it's not the responsibility of the admins to make it impossible for the rules to be violated.
I don't see any problem with punishing students for misuse of its resources, as long as they were given fair warning of those rules (and as long as those rules are consistent with the school's educational mission). A teacher can't prevent students from cheating on exams, but they'll still be punished when they're caught breaking that rule. Why should this be treated differently?
If you were to take a program written in Perl and rewrite it in Fortran, it's an entirely new expression. If you do a straightforward translation, it may actually be considered a derived work rather than a new expression. In that case, even if no line in the whole program is identical, it's still not clear of the original copyright. This is similar to a translation of a book from one language to another -- rote translation is not considered a creative expression.
I agree with you that a researcher/teacher who was caught with a fraudulent application 30 years later should be punished, but IMO it's a matter of ethics rather than qualifications. A PhD is evidence that you're capable of managing a research program, but it's not the only proof of it. Doing the job for 30 years would be ample evidence of that capability and it's kind of a joke to claim that a PhD program is the only way to obtain it. It happens to be the standard route and certainly, if you're not capable of doing one, you're probably not capable of being a successful professor. If you just happen not to have done one, that doesn't tell you anything except perhaps about that person's priorities.
No, the reason that you should be punished and probably fired is that it's simply not ok to use fraudulent materials to get a job. It's unfortunate if a good professor were to be fired in this way, but there really should be no tolerance for lying on an application like that, and there's no other way to reasonably punish a professor commensurate with the gravity of such an ethical lapse.
Also, I don't know that there are many degree-less professors, but I can give you an example of one -- google for the late James Westphal, formerly a professor at Caltech. He had only a BS in Physics but was a very successful professor here. He is evidence that it is possible to do the job without an advanced degree, but it's going to be hard to get anyone to take you seriously.
Being somewhat pedantic here, but I think it's critically important not to cloud issues.
[Because the school is somewhat responsible for the students], I think it's perfectly reasonable to restrict their illegal file sharing. What I think you really mean is it's reasonable to restrict all file sharing on the basis that a substantial portion of it involves copyright infringement.
There are a lot of people (myself included) who would have no problem whatsoever if only infringing P2P traffic were being restricted. The fact that this is impossible leaves us with the all-or-nothing choice we have. It's a lot less clear that it's the right decision to ban all P2P sharing just because some of it infringes. Don't forget that, for all the infringement that it's enabled, P2P technologies have gone a long way to showing the true power of ubiquitous networking.
I dunno, it seems that a lot of life forms reproduce and expand simply because they can. A species that did so on an intergalactic scale would be more likely to have members outside of the uninhabitable zones than one that for whatever reason could not spread over such distances. Over time, looong time, these galactic-scale spreaders would dominate. It doesn't seem that a specific knowledge of the threat is necessary, spatial diversity is a generally useful characteristic so it could plausibly develop to combat a less catastrophic threat.
It seems unlikely that life forms would just happen to do things like travel intergalactically, but this might be a bias due to our particular life span/size/etc. I'm sort of picturing spore-like life forms that "infect" rocks launched out of the galaxy for whatever reason and have the ability to drift the astronomical distances to new galactic habitats... no need for intelligence, merely virulence.
How do you evolve? You don't -- you are what you are and that's that. How does a creature who can survive a meteor impact evolve? Well, if it does, then there probably have to be a lot of populated planets each with different forms of life. Meteors will wipe out life on those who don't happen to have whatever characteristic enables survival of a meteor impact. Those that do have what it takes will continue on. To an observer much later, it will simply look as though this capability was evolved in some sort of smooth way. In the moment, however, it's pretty much just random.
Of course, I suppose this could happen on a single planet that's periodically struck by meteors. It will take longer, but in the end you'll end up with everything that can't survive meteors dying out.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think he claimed that ideas have no economic value, just that the economics of ideas is fundamentally different from the economics of "stuff." Pretending that they are inherently the same or should be treated as such is insane. Personally, I support the idea of a limited copyright term simply to make the creative expression of ideas a profitable enterprise. However, I strongly oppose the suggestion that a creator has an exclusive right to profit from his creation for the rest of his life.
In my opinion, when you create something and share it, you've given up your exclusive right to it. It "belongs" to society, simply because locking it up requires an unnatural effort to prevent an idea (or information) from being expressed. That's why physical property and intellectual property are just naturally different things. As I said, I'm willing to tolerate an artificial "lending" of that property back to its creator long enough to create an economic incentive to create, but the laws as they stand now are ridiculously imbalanced.
It's kind of an interesting question. What if the image has artistic value and is not a simple representational photograph. It's quite possible to imagine it retaining that artistic value even in its reduced format. It's not a simple matter of "more than X% is infringement, less is fair use." It really depends on what the source material is, what the use is, and on a number of details of how it is used.
Along these lines, it's significant that Google is using it for a search engine only. That bolsters their case for fair use. If they were using the thumbnails as parts of a collage for, say, an advertisement, that'd make it less likely to be fair use (imo). Of course, that raises the question of whether they're effectively using them for advertisements since that's the source of their revenue........ (I don't really buy that, just think it's the case that nothing is ever as simple and obvious as it might seem)
Heh, I once ate about a quarter pound of those things (or whatever was the size of the container I bought) in a sitting... everything got very bright, and I fell asleep. Probably not recommended behavior, though.
I think it's a good ruling. The safe harbor protects groups who clearly have no hand in what information is collected or how it is used. Since this website appears to have a hand in that (at least by gathering potentially discriminatory information), they need to demonstrate that they're using it in a manner consistent with the law. That is best done by letting the case go to the next stage. Note that the court hasn't said that there's anything illegal going on, just that the site doesn't get a free pass out of the court proceedings.
No, but Hal Leonard's letter is simply urging those who own the rights (on "behalf" of the artists, HA) to get in on the fussing. That'd be fine, except that they did this by lying through their teeth. Makes me wonder if MXTabs/Musicnotes would have a case for libel.
Ok, well, I have no way to evaluate your claims about the error rate in the database, but it's really irrelevant to my point. I actually do understand the issue, although it may not be the one you want to talk about. The issue is people getting into trouble by blindly following bad directions from an automated system.
Even for the issue you're focusing on, you're just wrong. A design error like that is a bug, unless you really think the architect sat back, thought a while, and then decided that yes, it would be wise to use dirt roads for interstate travel. It's a lot more likely they didn't consider the classes properly or have some error in determining whether such a road would ever be usable.
Still, it really doesn't matter *why* it's giving bad routes, the fact is that you can't rely 100% on a system like that. If you do, you're going to get into trouble. When you do, it's your own fault because you didn't stop to think about the limitations of your equipment.
Errors in a huge data set like a road navigation database are inevitable and it's simply unrealistic to expect full enough testing to guarantee that there are no bugs like this. That's why every piece of GPS navigation software I've ever seen gives a prominent warning not to use it as your sole source of navigation, and to use common sense before following its instructions. If someone drove down an unmarked dirt road at the suggestion of their GPS unit and gets stuck, it's their own fault.
Plus, most GPS navigators are built on top of a static data set. These data are going to get out of date quickly as construction and floods, etc, occur. There's simply no way to get perfect routes for every circumstance. This is, of course, no different from following an atlas or asking your cousin Jed for directions. They'll all give you a best effort at safe directions, but you still have to evaluate circumstances "in the field" and make the final safety determination yourself.
So, yeah, the manufacturer should fix bugs like these when they come available, but they should not take responsibility for someone doing something stupid.
It'll work as long as whoever wrote the expression you're looking at used the same convention.
That is, in my experience, the single best approach to avoiding stupid numerical errors in programming. Brackets are free and remove any ambiguity as to what you mean to either the computer or to a future programmer. Also, it helps in debugging the code later because it very explicitly states the intention of the programmer. If someone wrote "a + (b * c)" you can be pretty sure they really meant to do the multiplication first. If it's "a + b * c" it's a little less clear -- maybe they intended to do the addition first.
:-)
It's a little contrived with + and * since the relative precedence of those is so well known. When the precedence is less intuitive, it's even more important. My favorite example is "a + b << c". In C and Python (and possibly others) this does not do what I (or anyone I've asked) expects. Since "<<" in a numerical context feels like multiplication, it seems like that ought to be "a + (b<<c)". It's not, though, it's "(a + b) << c".
Also, I agree with you about the (3==a) stuff. I don't think the benefit (catching a few bugs that wouldn't be caught by a compiler assignment warning) outweighs the cost of less readable code. However, this starts to border on religious warfare, so I won't say anything more.
Ok, well I'm not sure you're following the thread closely then. My post was in response to someone suggesting that a Nazi protesting outside a synagogue violated the rights of the worshipers inside. I think it was pretty clearly disagreeing with that, and I'm not the one who brought up the Nazi example. Anyway, I'm not sure what you're trying to say...
Did you reply to the right comment? I wasn't trying to flame, merely to disagree, but I didn't think this post would be mistaken for flameage...
A guy with a Nazi armband and a sign offensive to those in the synagogue does not violate their rights in any way, nor does it prevent them from exercising their religious freedom. They're free to practice their religion, not free not to have to look at a sign they don't agree with, not even free not to be insulted. It's not a matter of balancing rights -- as long as the picketer is behaving in a civil manner and not inciting violence or other criminal behavior, he should be free to express whatever view he likes in any public place.
And very few fraudsters are journalists[*]! The circle is now complete!
[*] As a fraction of total fraudsters of all professions.
I agree with your sentiment, but think the degree of punishment is reasonable. I wouldn't be at all upset if a murderer was sent to prison for 40 years. I would be upset if an occasional shoplifter was given that same punishment -- not because he'd been punished, but because the punishment was inconsistent with the gravity of the crime. Here, we have 10 years for an economic crime -- for me that's right at the border of justice, though I don't know how serious the economic damage was beyond the always-specious estimate of $50M over the years. Now, add in the fact that he was extradited to be sentenced in a place he'd never even been and treated as though he were somehow subject to the jurisdiction of those laws pushes me past the breaking point. US law does not extend past our borders.
Not all journalists are paparazzi.
It is, but it sounds much more sanitary and pleasant, almost as though it's a legitimate business method. Fraud is plain, simple, and clear about the illegal nature of the activity it describes. Being specific with language is great, but in this case, I think it masks the meaning for people who are not familiar with the term.
Many laws consider intent. If that numeric sequence happens to appear in a binary file somewhere on an FTP site, that's clearly no problem, even if the DMCA is found to prevent the dissemination of a key like that. No reasonable person would grant blanket ownership of a number to anyone. However, that is very different from ten thousand angry geeks pretending to be posting a random string all over web forums. Their intent is clearly to share that secret. The fact that the number itself is not specifically "owned" does not make it a logical problem to prosecute the intentional distribution of a protected trade secret (or whatever that key would be designated as) while allowing its incidental publication in other contexts.
Not to say I believe it SHOULD be illegal to distribute an encryption key, but it's not quite as ridiculous as many people are making it out to be.
I think it's professional in the sense that a professional engineer is obligated to work within the legal environment pertaining to his line of work. For a civil engineer, this means complying with building codes. For a software engineer, it means working within the copyright/patent laws. In both cases, it might be expedient to ignore the rules -- if they only made the engineer's job easier, they wouldn't have to be legislated. Ignoring the rules for expediency is simply unprofessional.
It is unprofessional even if you have a political or moral reason for the decision. If you can't do a job within the confines of the law, either the job can't be done or the law should be changed. Looking the other way is, again, expedient, but ultimately works to everyone's detriment because the underlying problem never gets fixed.
This isn't really any different from other "crimes" (or violations of school policy). The school's rule is simply that you are not allowed to do certain things on the computers. Some of these things are restricted by their security systems, others are not. Just because you *can* do it, doesn't mean it's within the rules they've established. The students are responsible for their behavior -- it's not the responsibility of the admins to make it impossible for the rules to be violated.
I don't see any problem with punishing students for misuse of its resources, as long as they were given fair warning of those rules (and as long as those rules are consistent with the school's educational mission). A teacher can't prevent students from cheating on exams, but they'll still be punished when they're caught breaking that rule. Why should this be treated differently?
Of course, IANAL...
I agree with you that a researcher/teacher who was caught with a fraudulent application 30 years later should be punished, but IMO it's a matter of ethics rather than qualifications. A PhD is evidence that you're capable of managing a research program, but it's not the only proof of it. Doing the job for 30 years would be ample evidence of that capability and it's kind of a joke to claim that a PhD program is the only way to obtain it. It happens to be the standard route and certainly, if you're not capable of doing one, you're probably not capable of being a successful professor. If you just happen not to have done one, that doesn't tell you anything except perhaps about that person's priorities.
No, the reason that you should be punished and probably fired is that it's simply not ok to use fraudulent materials to get a job. It's unfortunate if a good professor were to be fired in this way, but there really should be no tolerance for lying on an application like that, and there's no other way to reasonably punish a professor commensurate with the gravity of such an ethical lapse.
Also, I don't know that there are many degree-less professors, but I can give you an example of one -- google for the late James Westphal, formerly a professor at Caltech. He had only a BS in Physics but was a very successful professor here. He is evidence that it is possible to do the job without an advanced degree, but it's going to be hard to get anyone to take you seriously.
There are a lot of people (myself included) who would have no problem whatsoever if only infringing P2P traffic were being restricted. The fact that this is impossible leaves us with the all-or-nothing choice we have. It's a lot less clear that it's the right decision to ban all P2P sharing just because some of it infringes. Don't forget that, for all the infringement that it's enabled, P2P technologies have gone a long way to showing the true power of ubiquitous networking.
I dunno, it seems that a lot of life forms reproduce and expand simply because they can. A species that did so on an intergalactic scale would be more likely to have members outside of the uninhabitable zones than one that for whatever reason could not spread over such distances. Over time, looong time, these galactic-scale spreaders would dominate. It doesn't seem that a specific knowledge of the threat is necessary, spatial diversity is a generally useful characteristic so it could plausibly develop to combat a less catastrophic threat.
It seems unlikely that life forms would just happen to do things like travel intergalactically, but this might be a bias due to our particular life span/size/etc. I'm sort of picturing spore-like life forms that "infect" rocks launched out of the galaxy for whatever reason and have the ability to drift the astronomical distances to new galactic habitats... no need for intelligence, merely virulence.
How do you evolve? You don't -- you are what you are and that's that. How does a creature who can survive a meteor impact evolve? Well, if it does, then there probably have to be a lot of populated planets each with different forms of life. Meteors will wipe out life on those who don't happen to have whatever characteristic enables survival of a meteor impact. Those that do have what it takes will continue on. To an observer much later, it will simply look as though this capability was evolved in some sort of smooth way. In the moment, however, it's pretty much just random.
Of course, I suppose this could happen on a single planet that's periodically struck by meteors. It will take longer, but in the end you'll end up with everything that can't survive meteors dying out.