Most copyright lawyers will work on a contingency basis. Meaning if your case will possibly win, and is worth the effort, you'll probably find somebody to help you go to court. Therefore, the rights of the poor content creators are protected. I can play my song "Love is a Null Reference" at a coffeehouse with full understanding that, if somebody recorded it without my consent and it went #1, I could get reimbursed.
Now, if I sued you for using the words "Null Reference," claiming they were my own invention, I'd have to pay for my own lawyer. Nobody'd take THAT case on contingency. Similarly, you'd probably be able to find a lawyer for a countersuit fairly easily.
As for the RIAA, they're suing people for allegedly copying their agencies' copyrighted works without consent. Watch the birdy: they're saying the people they're suing infringed on their artists' copyrights by COPYING without the RIGHTS. Most of these people did exactly that, so copyright is working there, too. Just because it's rude and you don't personally like the agency doesn't mean what it is doing isn't perfectly legal and in fact exactly what copyright was MEANT to be used for.
Argue all you want about the cost of CDs and the artist's cut and the deplorable state of the industry and unfairly copy protected CDs, but if you're making the conscious decision to infringe on a copyrighted work, you should be willing to face the consequence of paying for it.
Your associations are still just facts, which would be discoverable by anyone willing to put forth their own resources.
Uh huh. And if they want to do just that, they'd be welcome to. But they better be prepared to prove that they produced their work without stealing it from my database. Which shouldn't be too hard if they didn't...because my database has trick data in it, similar to the nonexistant streets inserted into copyrighted maps to check for infringement.
See, patent law says that you can't create anything new that looks like my product...but copyright law just says they can't take MY database and call it theirs. It's still up to me to prove they're infringing.
This law is giving databases the same rights as all other content. I have no problem with that.
Are you saying that it's ok to prevent me from calculating my own hundred million digits of PI?
Did you "create" the first hundred million digits of Pi?
No, you didn't. Therefore, you can't copyright them any more than you can copyright the works Mozart.
Furthermore, a database is not merely a list of facts. A database is a compilation of facts from different sources. It creates new information in the form of associations, associations that did not exist in the original sources. Your "copyrighting pi" is not creating a database. Besides, copyright violation is a civil matter, meaning that you would have to legally sue for damages. No judge would grant your rights to the digits in pi...just like no judge would allow you to claim copyright on an "A" chord.
Besides, generating your own hundred million digits of pi would be the creating of a new database...and since there's obvious methods for you to come up with Pi without violation the other database's copyright, you'd still be fine.
Trademark isn't copyright. All trademark means is that nobody else in a similar industry can use that color, name, logo, or idea in their marketing, and thus ride your coattails while confusing your customers. Trademark is really to the benefit of consumers -- it clears the marketplace of the sheisty. Copyright is more to the benefit of content creators.
One can copyright a riff. The trick here is that the riff must be central to the piece and sufficiently complex as to convince a jury nobody else could come up with it.
So if you were planning on arguing that people owe you licensing fees for your database of in order prime numbers, you'd be out of luck. No jury would let you get away with it...I hope.
I didn't meant to imply that database creation is creative because it's difficult. I meant that original effort goes into its assembly, and the result of that effort is a often a new creation, even if no visible changes have been made to the original data. It's creative because it takes a basic structure and creates a more complex one with different meaning.
Say I have a list of names , and another list of colours. If I make an association between the names and the colors, I have created something new, even if I didn't create the colors and I didn't create the names. You can now get a list of names that are associated with the color blue. That association is my creation. This new law would say that I own the association. It doesn't say that I own the names and colors.
And as for That said, I think I'd be willing to accept conceptual ownership of data collections provided it came with some responsibilities, mainly, database owners should make (enforceable) promises about the integrity of their data: ownership is not the same as copyright. You don't have to have accurate data to copyright a book...you could copyright a book comprised entirely of lies. Anne Coulter has done it several times. All copyright does is say "I made this. You can make your own, but you can't copy mine unless I say you can." Ownership of data is something completely different...something that's very difficult in a digital environment.
If you randomize the order of notes, you have something totally difference. In the same way, if you randomize the FIELDS in a database -- take a NAME from one record and put it in the ADDRESS of another -- you would come up with a completely different database.
If you "randomize the records in a database," you're not doing the same thing as randomizing notes. You're doing the same thing that hip-hop artists do when they sample...and that activity has been declared by the courts in violation of copyright.
Please. Every time a band plays a song they wrote, it's subtly different. This doesn't mean that a live version of a song has no copyright. Nor does it mean that you can change a few words of a novel and be free of copyright fears.
In fact, I'd say it would be impossible to have copyright at all if your type of definition were essential to copyright law. Luckily, it isn't. In fact, the definition is quite loose and most analysis of derivation is performed by the courts. Database copyright would be the same, but first it has to be declaratively illegal to steal from a database. This requires the law to recognize databases as a copyrightable entity, which is what this is about.
This is actually kind of a dumb, extremist reaction to a very useful idea.
First of all, it's not FACTS that are being copyrighted. It's databases. Yes, a database is a collection of facts -- but it's the concept of collection that's being protected here, not the concept of facts.
Think about it this way: you can copyright a guitar riff, but you obviously can't copyright a note. A note is a basic, concrete thing, you can't CREATE a new note. Does this fact bely the creation of original songs? I don't think so...every time music seems stagnant, somebody finds a new way to make it.
In the same way, you can't copyright a word, but you can copyright a book. You can't copyright red, but you can use it in your painting.
The creative act of assembling a database -- and if you don't think it's creative, you've never done it, it takes a TREMENDOUS effort to assemble and maintain a useful data relation even if you're using publically accessible information -- is something that should be protected. It gives data warehousers the same assurance that other content creators receive, so that they can offer access to their systems without worrying about losing the value...something which in my experience has plagued content creators greatly.
In fact, I see no reason why databases can't be fairly used same as any other created work. For example: let's say I run a sports website. If I wrote an editorial, and you wanted to quote a few lines on your own site, you'd be allowed to. But copy all the text and you're in violation of copyright. It'd be the same with databases. Want to quote a sport score or two? No problem, that's fair. Want to present all of yesterday's results? You'd better ask permission or start compiling them yourself. I don't have a problem with this.
Even if you were, you still wouldn't necessarily know anything about supernovas. Nuclear physicists deal with atomic and subatomic particles and their interactions. Supernovas are generated by stars, which are a bit bigger than atoms. They are studied by astrophysicists.
Have you heard of barratry? In many areas, threatening a frivolous lawsuit solely as a form of harrassment IS illegal, per se, and the recipient of such can usually countersue for some healthy scratch to cover the cost of getting a lawyer to tell you "these guys are nuts!"
Word. WP 5.2 is the pinnacle of software. It starts you out, you start typing three seconds after opening the program, every option is accessible DIRECTLY, no fucking menu, and if you forget how to find it, you press F3 and type the function you want. So if you want to insert a graphic, and forgot how, F3, type G and it'll tell you.
I could get more done in an hour in WP 5.2 than in any other word processor I have ever used ever. 10 pages in an hour was my record for crankining out papers in WP...
I don't work for a competitor. I don't have the time or the resources to manage the CONNECTION side of hosting -- I'd much rather manage the SERVER side, since software is what I do. But I have done a LOT of research into co-locs.
See, a while back I had major trouble with my host. Some hardware failed, some promises broken, and we were suddenly out in the cold with no data. I spent the next month scrambling to put my service back together, during which everything was up in the air including my own email. These guys were one of maybe 50 different lower cost providers I looked at, and they were probably the first eliminated from my list. When I called them, I discovered they were utterly humorless, resistant to explanation and they wanted money for everything. They did not seem to like that I was asking specific questions about their services, and they did not answer many of them. They were also very pushy about contract lengths (which we couldn't take...since we weren't sure if we'd even have an in-the-black business after a week of forced downtime).
Worst of all, their setup fees were higher than the cost of BUYING your own server (which was pretty obviously what THEY were using that money for). That's their accord, of course, but I personally think it's very lame to take somebody's money and buy a server with it. The whole idea of server rentals is that you're basically a tenant of the server...and if you've already paid for the damn thing, you shouldn't be a tenant, you should own it.
Which is exactly what we did...we bought our own server and installed it at a very copacetic co-loc run by very smart guys who have never overcharged us and been very helpful. And no, they don't rent out servers, either.
Not according to every time I've dealt with those assholes. Not according to colleagues in the industry. And not according to the BBB. 34 complaints in the past 12 months. 136 in the past 36. 17 of these are unresolved, not even in good faith. This is compared to one unresolved complaint for fellow Texan hosting company and slashdot advertiser Rackspace.
It doesn't matter how cheap their servers are...any company that's rude to prospective customers and ambivalent towards current customers with problems just seems sleazy to me.
Uh, people loved both GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City because there were constant improvements. Each had its own story, its own gameplay enhancements and above all, both were fun.
In fact, many many video game sequels are of superior quality to the original, and hence they sell very well.
Call it beating a dead horse if you like, but if horse beating is what people want, you'd be crazy not to do it, marketing or no.
And yet, thanks to the Hildebrandt calendars we've gotten over the years, most Tolkein fans already have had their minds "outrun." So this argument is kind of crap. In fact, Jackson seems to have borrowed a lot of Tolkein inspired imagery in his films...they're not all new ideas he's spoiling for the rest of us.
For a while, my alma mater offered a course called "History of the Future," taught by a history professor named Warren Wagar. The whole class was about interpretting "futurable" situations, and ways to predict the future, taught around some great dystopian fiction. Farenheit 451, Brave New World, The Handmaid's Tale, Ecotopia, The Forever War, and films like Blade Runner, Twelve Monkeys and 1984. Topics ranged from social changes to climate change, and was very well presented (e.g. it was more science and less speculation).
The professor (who also taught a very engaging class called "History of War," tracking all the major wars in human history since it was first etched into wet clay) has since retired, so I don't know if it's still being taught, or with such fervor. My only problem was that, after several lectures about the dangers of "future shock" (the concept that awareness of technology without understanding can lead to a fearful reliance), the power went out in the lecture hall and he was unable to bring the class to closure. Shame.
I cheered last time "my" hockey team won a playoff game.
And surely this is an even bigger night for Jackson, who's been working on these films for 5+ years of his life and has yet to receive any industry accolades, than it is for the 'Leafs,' who get a title shot pretty much year.
Inferiority has nothing to do with usability. Incidentally, I find quicktime to be nigh-useless...and on Windows, Nero is so intuitive I've found myself using it instead of iTunes for making mix CDs.
Slashdot Mirror
Most copyright lawyers will work on a contingency basis. Meaning if your case will possibly win, and is worth the effort, you'll probably find somebody to help you go to court. Therefore, the rights of the poor content creators are protected. I can play my song "Love is a Null Reference" at a coffeehouse with full understanding that, if somebody recorded it without my consent and it went #1, I could get reimbursed.
Now, if I sued you for using the words "Null Reference," claiming they were my own invention, I'd have to pay for my own lawyer. Nobody'd take THAT case on contingency. Similarly, you'd probably be able to find a lawyer for a countersuit fairly easily.
As for the RIAA, they're suing people for allegedly copying their agencies' copyrighted works without consent. Watch the birdy: they're saying the people they're suing infringed on their artists' copyrights by COPYING without the RIGHTS. Most of these people did exactly that, so copyright is working there, too. Just because it's rude and you don't personally like the agency doesn't mean what it is doing isn't perfectly legal and in fact exactly what copyright was MEANT to be used for.
Argue all you want about the cost of CDs and the artist's cut and the deplorable state of the industry and unfairly copy protected CDs, but if you're making the conscious decision to infringe on a copyrighted work, you should be willing to face the consequence of paying for it.
Your associations are still just facts, which would be discoverable by anyone willing to put forth their own resources.
Uh huh. And if they want to do just that, they'd be welcome to. But they better be prepared to prove that they produced their work without stealing it from my database. Which shouldn't be too hard if they didn't...because my database has trick data in it, similar to the nonexistant streets inserted into copyrighted maps to check for infringement.
See, patent law says that you can't create anything new that looks like my product...but copyright law just says they can't take MY database and call it theirs. It's still up to me to prove they're infringing.
This law is giving databases the same rights as all other content. I have no problem with that.
What is considered fair is often at the whim of the rights holder
No, fair use is at the whim of the courts. The right to pursue you for possible violations is up to the rights holder.
He's also implying slashdotters should not jump to paranoid extremist conclusions based on Orwellian fancy.
He must be new.
Are you saying that it's ok to prevent me from calculating my own hundred million digits of PI?
Did you "create" the first hundred million digits of Pi?
No, you didn't. Therefore, you can't copyright them any more than you can copyright the works Mozart.
Furthermore, a database is not merely a list of facts. A database is a compilation of facts from different sources. It creates new information in the form of associations, associations that did not exist in the original sources. Your "copyrighting pi" is not creating a database. Besides, copyright violation is a civil matter, meaning that you would have to legally sue for damages. No judge would grant your rights to the digits in pi...just like no judge would allow you to claim copyright on an "A" chord.
Besides, generating your own hundred million digits of pi would be the creating of a new database...and since there's obvious methods for you to come up with Pi without violation the other database's copyright, you'd still be fine.
Trademark isn't copyright. All trademark means is that nobody else in a similar industry can use that color, name, logo, or idea in their marketing, and thus ride your coattails while confusing your customers. Trademark is really to the benefit of consumers -- it clears the marketplace of the sheisty. Copyright is more to the benefit of content creators.
One can copyright a riff. The trick here is that the riff must be central to the piece and sufficiently complex as to convince a jury nobody else could come up with it.
So if you were planning on arguing that people owe you licensing fees for your database of in order prime numbers, you'd be out of luck. No jury would let you get away with it...I hope.
I didn't meant to imply that database creation is creative because it's difficult. I meant that original effort goes into its assembly, and the result of that effort is a often a new creation, even if no visible changes have been made to the original data. It's creative because it takes a basic structure and creates a more complex one with different meaning.
Say I have a list of names , and another list of colours. If I make an association between the names and the colors, I have created something new, even if I didn't create the colors and I didn't create the names. You can now get a list of names that are associated with the color blue. That association is my creation. This new law would say that I own the association. It doesn't say that I own the names and colors.
And as for That said, I think I'd be willing to accept conceptual ownership of data collections provided it came with some responsibilities, mainly, database owners should make (enforceable) promises about the integrity of their data: ownership is not the same as copyright. You don't have to have accurate data to copyright a book...you could copyright a book comprised entirely of lies. Anne Coulter has done it several times. All copyright does is say "I made this. You can make your own, but you can't copy mine unless I say you can." Ownership of data is something completely different...something that's very difficult in a digital environment.
You're not thinking in levels of granularity.
If you randomize the order of notes, you have something totally difference. In the same way, if you randomize the FIELDS in a database -- take a NAME from one record and put it in the ADDRESS of another -- you would come up with a completely different database.
If you "randomize the records in a database," you're not doing the same thing as randomizing notes. You're doing the same thing that hip-hop artists do when they sample...and that activity has been declared by the courts in violation of copyright.
Please. Every time a band plays a song they wrote, it's subtly different. This doesn't mean that a live version of a song has no copyright. Nor does it mean that you can change a few words of a novel and be free of copyright fears.
In fact, I'd say it would be impossible to have copyright at all if your type of definition were essential to copyright law. Luckily, it isn't. In fact, the definition is quite loose and most analysis of derivation is performed by the courts. Database copyright would be the same, but first it has to be declaratively illegal to steal from a database. This requires the law to recognize databases as a copyrightable entity, which is what this is about.
This is actually kind of a dumb, extremist reaction to a very useful idea.
First of all, it's not FACTS that are being copyrighted. It's databases. Yes, a database is a collection of facts -- but it's the concept of collection that's being protected here, not the concept of facts.
Think about it this way: you can copyright a guitar riff, but you obviously can't copyright a note. A note is a basic, concrete thing, you can't CREATE a new note. Does this fact bely the creation of original songs? I don't think so...every time music seems stagnant, somebody finds a new way to make it.
In the same way, you can't copyright a word, but you can copyright a book. You can't copyright red, but you can use it in your painting.
The creative act of assembling a database -- and if you don't think it's creative, you've never done it, it takes a TREMENDOUS effort to assemble and maintain a useful data relation even if you're using publically accessible information -- is something that should be protected. It gives data warehousers the same assurance that other content creators receive, so that they can offer access to their systems without worrying about losing the value...something which in my experience has plagued content creators greatly.
In fact, I see no reason why databases can't be fairly used same as any other created work. For example: let's say I run a sports website. If I wrote an editorial, and you wanted to quote a few lines on your own site, you'd be allowed to. But copy all the text and you're in violation of copyright. It'd be the same with databases. Want to quote a sport score or two? No problem, that's fair. Want to present all of yesterday's results? You'd better ask permission or start compiling them yourself. I don't have a problem with this.
IANANP
Even if you were, you still wouldn't necessarily know anything about supernovas. Nuclear physicists deal with atomic and subatomic particles and their interactions. Supernovas are generated by stars, which are a bit bigger than atoms. They are studied by astrophysicists.
I've also had a bit of experience with somnambulence. One time I woke up in a flower garden!
Cross dressing lawyers?
Have you heard of barratry? In many areas, threatening a frivolous lawsuit solely as a form of harrassment IS illegal, per se, and the recipient of such can usually countersue for some healthy scratch to cover the cost of getting a lawyer to tell you "these guys are nuts!"
Word. WP 5.2 is the pinnacle of software. It starts you out, you start typing three seconds after opening the program, every option is accessible DIRECTLY, no fucking menu, and if you forget how to find it, you press F3 and type the function you want. So if you want to insert a graphic, and forgot how, F3, type G and it'll tell you.
I could get more done in an hour in WP 5.2 than in any other word processor I have ever used ever. 10 pages in an hour was my record for crankining out papers in WP...
No, they want the accurate kind of encyclopedia.
I don't work for a competitor. I don't have the time or the resources to manage the CONNECTION side of hosting -- I'd much rather manage the SERVER side, since software is what I do. But I have done a LOT of research into co-locs.
See, a while back I had major trouble with my host. Some hardware failed, some promises broken, and we were suddenly out in the cold with no data. I spent the next month scrambling to put my service back together, during which everything was up in the air including my own email. These guys were one of maybe 50 different lower cost providers I looked at, and they were probably the first eliminated from my list. When I called them, I discovered they were utterly humorless, resistant to explanation and they wanted money for everything. They did not seem to like that I was asking specific questions about their services, and they did not answer many of them. They were also very pushy about contract lengths (which we couldn't take...since we weren't sure if we'd even have an in-the-black business after a week of forced downtime).
Worst of all, their setup fees were higher than the cost of BUYING your own server (which was pretty obviously what THEY were using that money for). That's their accord, of course, but I personally think it's very lame to take somebody's money and buy a server with it. The whole idea of server rentals is that you're basically a tenant of the server...and if you've already paid for the damn thing, you shouldn't be a tenant, you should own it.
Which is exactly what we did...we bought our own server and installed it at a very copacetic co-loc run by very smart guys who have never overcharged us and been very helpful. And no, they don't rent out servers, either.
Ev1, best in the business?
Not according to every time I've dealt with those assholes. Not according to colleagues in the industry. And not according to the BBB. 34 complaints in the past 12 months. 136 in the past 36. 17 of these are unresolved, not even in good faith. This is compared to one unresolved complaint for fellow Texan hosting company and slashdot advertiser Rackspace.
It doesn't matter how cheap their servers are...any company that's rude to prospective customers and ambivalent towards current customers with problems just seems sleazy to me.
Uh, people loved both GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City because there were constant improvements. Each had its own story, its own gameplay enhancements and above all, both were fun.
In fact, many many video game sequels are of superior quality to the original, and hence they sell very well.
Call it beating a dead horse if you like, but if horse beating is what people want, you'd be crazy not to do it, marketing or no.
And yet, thanks to the Hildebrandt calendars we've gotten over the years, most Tolkein fans already have had their minds "outrun." So this argument is kind of crap. In fact, Jackson seems to have borrowed a lot of Tolkein inspired imagery in his films...they're not all new ideas he's spoiling for the rest of us.
Yes! I know he was mad at the Academy for overlooking Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive!
Not as mad as Rowdy Roddy Piper.
For a while, my alma mater offered a course called "History of the Future," taught by a history professor named Warren Wagar. The whole class was about interpretting "futurable" situations, and ways to predict the future, taught around some great dystopian fiction. Farenheit 451, Brave New World, The Handmaid's Tale, Ecotopia, The Forever War, and films like Blade Runner, Twelve Monkeys and 1984. Topics ranged from social changes to climate change, and was very well presented (e.g. it was more science and less speculation).
The professor (who also taught a very engaging class called "History of War," tracking all the major wars in human history since it was first etched into wet clay) has since retired, so I don't know if it's still being taught, or with such fervor. My only problem was that, after several lectures about the dangers of "future shock" (the concept that awareness of technology without understanding can lead to a fearful reliance), the power went out in the lecture hall and he was unable to bring the class to closure. Shame.
I cheered last time "my" hockey team won a playoff game.
And surely this is an even bigger night for Jackson, who's been working on these films for 5+ years of his life and has yet to receive any industry accolades, than it is for the 'Leafs,' who get a title shot pretty much year.
Why not cheer?
Inferiority has nothing to do with usability. Incidentally, I find quicktime to be nigh-useless...and on Windows, Nero is so intuitive I've found myself using it instead of iTunes for making mix CDs.
Ahead is a REALLY good development house.