A trillion year copyright would reasonably be called "unlimited". Do you disagree? I think this would be pretty obvious to the average person.
Yes, I disagree. I think you're using the word "unlimited" as a substitute for "too large a limit".
If instead of focusing on limited vs unlimited we interpret "for limited times" as mandating a reasonable upper bound, an argument against a trillion year copyright can surely be made. Then again, an argument against "70 years plus the life of the author" can also be made, yet look at where we stand today. As it is, I just don't know whether we'll ever see Mickey Mouse fall into the public domain.
How could a finite number of years count as "unlimited"?
I just don't see how any finite number of years would count as unlimited under any reasonable definition of the word "unlimited". We could of course argue whether or not a certain number of years constitutes a reasonable limit, but that's a different argument than limited vs unlimited.
If you say X+n years on new works is constitutional then that means X+n years has always been within the definition of "limited times", even if past laws have had shorter protection.
Isn't that what I said? The copyright clause has nothing to do with X years being "limited" and X+n years being "unlimited".
They can change [copyright] within the constitutional bounds and if X+n is within for new works it's within for old works.
If extending copyright on existing works falls within the bounds of the US Constitution, what would you say is the proper limit on the number of years existing works shall be protected?
The whole reductio ad absurdum argument relies on the flawed assumption that if one copyright extension is constitutional, then they are all constitutional thus leading to indefinite copyright.
Where in the US constitution does it say there's a limit on the number of such extensions? If there's no upper bound on the number of term extensions and nothing to say how long an extension is too long, the reductio ad absurdum argument succeeds.
After all it does say limited, that is bounded or confined. It has never said fixed, static or immutable. That is a much stricter requirement than staying within some bound and simply not what it says.
It's just one of the charms of slashdot, at least half the people here think they're ready to be a Supreme Court judge. Particularly when it comes to stretching the constitution so far that they can strike down something Congress did that they disapprove of.
To take one example, what should "limited time" in the copyright clause amount to? 1 year? 10 years? 100 years? 1000 years? There's nothing a court could latch onto and say 49,9 years is limited and 50,1 years is "unlimited". Now, I'm very much for copyright reform but it's Congress that has to pass it, not trying to divine an exact, maximum limit from an extremely vague wording.
If you're going to criticize other people's interpretation of the US Constitution you should at least understand their position before doing so. The case you're thinking of had nothing to do with X years being "limited" and X+n years being "unlimited". Instead, the case had to do with Congress extending the term of copyright not only on new works but on existing works as well. Without this type of retroactive extension, copyrights set to expire after X years would expire after X years. Otherwise, copyrights set to expire after X years could be extended indefinitely through acts of Congress, thus rendering "limited times" a meaningless term.
Now what was that you were saying about the "charms of slashdot"?
According to the above, life has existed for 3.8/4.5 billion years on Earth.
Which is still a great deal less than the "eons" indicated in the post to which I was replying. Contrary to the poster's claim, life has not been "consistent over eons".
It is amazingly robust, self healing, and self preserving and resilient. It is consistent over eons, with constant change within limits based on energy input from the sun.
Most of the universe's environments are hostile to life as we know it, and even on Earth life has only existed for a very short time.
For the short time life on Earth has existed it's actually changed a great deal, with countless species becoming extinct as the conditions necessary for their continued survival have changed. As a member of one of those species that might someday become extinct, I think it is fair to worry about how manmade changes to the environment might precipitate our demise. Life might go on, but humans might not. I think it's that last bit that tends to worry climate scientists.
Nothing "meddlesome man" can do will have as much effect as a 2% change in the sun's output.
I've heard lots about how the Constitution constrains federal law (when it's actually being respected...). But after growing up in the US and paying attention more than many seem to, I confess I'm still quite ignorant about how the Constitution affects lawmaking at the state level -- though I suspect the answer is "not much".
Yes, we should, but I'll be happy to wait until after they've answered the more pressing question about what the hell Homeland Security are doing enforcing copyright claims in the first place.
Fighting terrorism was just the government's way of getting its foot in the door.
I wish more people were outraged by the fact that DHS and ICE are getting away with shutting down websites without any kind of trial or even the promise of a trial. The government's current approach to domain seizures is more the behavior of an unaccountable government than that of a proper democracy. Those who truly stand for Freedom instead of just paying lip service to it should be outraged by this kind of behavior.
I don't see how returning something to protection for a limited time conflicts with the copyright clause, perhaps you could elaborate.
That's a good question. I don't really have an answer except to say that restoring copyright on works for which the term of copyright has already expired makes "limited times" a meaningless concept. I realize that's basically the same line of reasoning used in Eldred, but my hope is that extending copyright on public domain works is outrageous enough that the justices will think straight for a change and recognize this.
As far as I know, copyright on works affected by the Eldred decision had not yet expired. I don't agree with the Eldred decision, but I think there's a big difference between extending the term of protection on copyrighted works and granting copyright on works that have entered the public domain. They're simply different issues.
As for treaties and the US Constitution both being considered "the supreme law of the land", such an observation does nothing to address how conflicts should be resolved when one bit of "supreme" law contradicts another bit of "supreme" law. I don't have much confidence in the US Supreme Court these days, but my hope is that any conflicts shall be resolved in favor of US citizens.
As for counting on some sort of "only the feds can do this stuff" ruling so you can continue to break the law, this gets down to how what the lawyers call a jurisdictional nexus is defined.
The US Supreme Court has already ruled on this. It all boils down to a simple fact: States cannot force companies that don't have a business presence in those states to collect and remit taxes due on sales to the residents of those states.
Last time I checked, you also needed to link against vendor-specific libraries, meaning one library for AMD, one for NVIDIA, and one for Intel. This makes cross-platform OpenCL deployment a bitch. Unless and until these vendors get together and settle on an ICD standard, I don't see OpenCL going mainstream.
Do you honestly believe the government would ever allow the public to purchase computers that easily break public-key encryption? Supercomputers are already classified as munitions by the US government. Tighter restrictions on quantum computers are not at all unreasonable, especially if it turns out they may be used to break public-key encryption schemes.
So, can this thing crack all non-quantum encryption, then? I seem to remember reading about how that would only require 32 qubits or so. And whether it can or can't, if commercial offerings have come this far, how long has the NSA had a version that can crack all encryption?
I don't know the implications of these computers for modern cryptography, but assuming they can trivially break encryption it means the public will never get their hands on them. Governments and big corporations would have them (it's just people's privacy, after all), but regular people would not (it would put countries and big corporations at risk).
Trademark dilution is a trademark law concept giving the owner of a famous trademark standing to forbid others from using that mark in a way that would lessen its uniqueness. In most cases, trademark dilution involves an unauthorized use of another's trademark on products that do not compete with, and have little connection with, those of the trademark owner.
This means you can't have a cleaning company called Microsoft Cleaners despite the fact that a cleaning company does not in any way compete with Microsoft's software business. The use of trademarks by newspapers is something else, as the trademark isn't being used in the name of a product, company or service.
No such thing as free speech laws in the UK. You are liable for your actions/words.
People in the United States are also liable for their actions/words. The difference is in the kinds of words and actions for which people are liable. I'll leave you to decide which particular instances of liability are the least/most fair.
My health insurance company doesn't cover treatments which aren't backed by evidence.
The fact that your insurance company covers chiropractic services does not in any way constitute proof such services are in fact backed by evidence. The only way to tell the validity of chiropractic is to look directly at the alleged evidence.
Once again proving the Obama Administration is very much in the pockets of the entertainment industry, and that the kind of people who become politicians are exactly the kind of people you wouldn't want as politicians.
Bezos is right. Back in the days of catalog sales, the US Supreme Court decided that only those companies with a legal presence in a particular state are required to collect sales tax from the residents of that state. Unless the Federal Government steps in, there's nothing any of the states can do to compel a company to collect sales tax for states where the company has no such presence.
I would, but I lost the name of the website that exposed the goings-on at Wikipedia. The gist is that editors would gather on private forums to coordinate their actions concerning edits and editors they didn't agree with. What the public saw and what the more established editors saw were two different things.
Slashdot Mirror
What's your evidence for such an outlandish claim?
Yes, I disagree. I think you're using the word "unlimited" as a substitute for "too large a limit".
If instead of focusing on limited vs unlimited we interpret "for limited times" as mandating a reasonable upper bound, an argument against a trillion year copyright can surely be made. Then again, an argument against "70 years plus the life of the author" can also be made, yet look at where we stand today. As it is, I just don't know whether we'll ever see Mickey Mouse fall into the public domain.
I just don't see how any finite number of years would count as unlimited under any reasonable definition of the word "unlimited". We could of course argue whether or not a certain number of years constitutes a reasonable limit, but that's a different argument than limited vs unlimited.
Isn't that what I said? The copyright clause has nothing to do with X years being "limited" and X+n years being "unlimited".
If extending copyright on existing works falls within the bounds of the US Constitution, what would you say is the proper limit on the number of years existing works shall be protected?
Where in the US constitution does it say there's a limit on the number of such extensions? If there's no upper bound on the number of term extensions and nothing to say how long an extension is too long, the reductio ad absurdum argument succeeds.
You're just grasping at straws.
If you're going to criticize other people's interpretation of the US Constitution you should at least understand their position before doing so. The case you're thinking of had nothing to do with X years being "limited" and X+n years being "unlimited". Instead, the case had to do with Congress extending the term of copyright not only on new works but on existing works as well. Without this type of retroactive extension, copyrights set to expire after X years would expire after X years. Otherwise, copyrights set to expire after X years could be extended indefinitely through acts of Congress, thus rendering "limited times" a meaningless term.
Now what was that you were saying about the "charms of slashdot"?
Which is still a great deal less than the "eons" indicated in the post to which I was replying. Contrary to the poster's claim, life has not been "consistent over eons".
Most of the universe's environments are hostile to life as we know it, and even on Earth life has only existed for a very short time.
For the short time life on Earth has existed it's actually changed a great deal, with countless species becoming extinct as the conditions necessary for their continued survival have changed. As a member of one of those species that might someday become extinct, I think it is fair to worry about how manmade changes to the environment might precipitate our demise. Life might go on, but humans might not. I think it's that last bit that tends to worry climate scientists.
Wrong.
See Incorporation Doctrine.
Fighting terrorism was just the government's way of getting its foot in the door.
I wish more people were outraged by the fact that DHS and ICE are getting away with shutting down websites without any kind of trial or even the promise of a trial. The government's current approach to domain seizures is more the behavior of an unaccountable government than that of a proper democracy. Those who truly stand for Freedom instead of just paying lip service to it should be outraged by this kind of behavior.
That's a good question. I don't really have an answer except to say that restoring copyright on works for which the term of copyright has already expired makes "limited times" a meaningless concept. I realize that's basically the same line of reasoning used in Eldred, but my hope is that extending copyright on public domain works is outrageous enough that the justices will think straight for a change and recognize this.
As far as I know, copyright on works affected by the Eldred decision had not yet expired. I don't agree with the Eldred decision, but I think there's a big difference between extending the term of protection on copyrighted works and granting copyright on works that have entered the public domain. They're simply different issues.
As for treaties and the US Constitution both being considered "the supreme law of the land", such an observation does nothing to address how conflicts should be resolved when one bit of "supreme" law contradicts another bit of "supreme" law. I don't have much confidence in the US Supreme Court these days, but my hope is that any conflicts shall be resolved in favor of US citizens.
You are absolutely correct. See here.
Exactly. It would be a logistical nightmare for any but the biggest online retailers.
The US Supreme Court has already ruled on this. It all boils down to a simple fact: States cannot force companies that don't have a business presence in those states to collect and remit taxes due on sales to the residents of those states.
Last time I checked, you also needed to link against vendor-specific libraries, meaning one library for AMD, one for NVIDIA, and one for Intel. This makes cross-platform OpenCL deployment a bitch. Unless and until these vendors get together and settle on an ICD standard, I don't see OpenCL going mainstream.
Do you honestly believe the government would ever allow the public to purchase computers that easily break public-key encryption? Supercomputers are already classified as munitions by the US government. Tighter restrictions on quantum computers are not at all unreasonable, especially if it turns out they may be used to break public-key encryption schemes.
I don't know the implications of these computers for modern cryptography, but assuming they can trivially break encryption it means the public will never get their hands on them. Governments and big corporations would have them (it's just people's privacy, after all), but regular people would not (it would put countries and big corporations at risk).
This means you can't have a cleaning company called Microsoft Cleaners despite the fact that a cleaning company does not in any way compete with Microsoft's software business. The use of trademarks by newspapers is something else, as the trademark isn't being used in the name of a product, company or service.
People in the United States are also liable for their actions/words. The difference is in the kinds of words and actions for which people are liable. I'll leave you to decide which particular instances of liability are the least/most fair.
The fact that your insurance company covers chiropractic services does not in any way constitute proof such services are in fact backed by evidence. The only way to tell the validity of chiropractic is to look directly at the alleged evidence.
I was about to make a similar point. The tattoo artist is a hypocrite,
Once again proving the Obama Administration is very much in the pockets of the entertainment industry, and that the kind of people who become politicians are exactly the kind of people you wouldn't want as politicians.
Quill Corp. v. North Dakota
Bezos is right. Back in the days of catalog sales, the US Supreme Court decided that only those companies with a legal presence in a particular state are required to collect sales tax from the residents of that state. Unless the Federal Government steps in, there's nothing any of the states can do to compel a company to collect sales tax for states where the company has no such presence.
I would, but I lost the name of the website that exposed the goings-on at Wikipedia. The gist is that editors would gather on private forums to coordinate their actions concerning edits and editors they didn't agree with. What the public saw and what the more established editors saw were two different things.