It's almost blackmail. "Support me else I shut it down."
That's hardly in the spirit of Free Software.
Since when is the spirit of Free Software doing work that benefits others and expecting nothing in return? What any given author expects in return may vary, but expecting money isn't out of line. The author presumably has expenses related to the project and is well within his rights to state that he will not continue development if he can't find someone to offset those expenses.
Remember, though, that since the project is GPL'd, there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from downloading the source & taking over the maintenance & development for him. That's the spirit of open source.
The problem with learning to program is that unless you can forsee a possible use for it, it's hard to be motivated to follow through with the studies. Your Mom may want to learn programming in the abstract, but the challenge is enough to keep her from following through since she doesn't really know what she'd do with the skills once she's got them.
HTML is the perfect answer to the problem. With even basic HTML she can do something productive. Help her come up with an idea for a web site (Geneaology, recipes, particle physics, whatever interests her...) & put her to work.
Once she has basic HTML, Skip Javascript & go straight to PHP. By the time she's here, she'll probably have some ideas on what she can do with the language, so she'll be more motivated to tackle the (fairly shallow) learning curve.
As far as more traditional programming, I highly recommend Ruby (though the site is down temporarily). It has all the power of a language like Perl or Python, but it's syntax is quite clean and simple, and close enough to natural english that the code quite readable even if you don't know the language. For anyone new to programming who wants to write things that are in the realm of a scripting language, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
I prefer having a steel cage around me should I get into an accident. I've seen too many people turn their bones into dust on motorcycles to EVER ride one.
Motorcycles, because of there exceptional manueverability, braking and acceleration, are quite safe if ridden safely. I road a motorcycle for three years & never had any really close calls, because I was alert & always assumed that the other drivers were trying to kill me. Any time someone came near me, I could easily out-maneuver them & avoid an accident.
People are killed everyday on motorcycles, but in the vast majority of cases, it is largely their own fault. Sure, there are occasional exceptions (people running red lights & such), but those happen whether you're in a car or on a bike. Even then, most exceptions can be avoided by driving defensively. There are numerous reasons why a motorcycle may not be a good replacement for a car, but safety doesn't need to be one of them if you are a safe rider.
MessagEase looks quite cool. It should fix my main gripe about Fitaly, which is that you need to be very careful to get the stamp on straight, or you'll end up with typos. The buttons are also quite small, especially on the smaller Palms such as my old Kyocera Smartphone. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try it out.
These are cool, though I haven't had the chance to actually use one. The biggest drawback that I see to this solution is the special paper that's required. It's quite expensive, & not really in the format that I'd prefer for the purpose. Otherwise, it could be the ideal solution.
Or you can call your own answering machine or voice messaging service. You don't even need to use a cell phone. The phone in your motel or a pay phone can be almost as convenient and you don't need to carry them around.
And how does this help get things transcribed any faster? Remember, the entire point of the post is that he doesn't have time to transcribe the notebook when he gets home, so leaving a voice mail is of no help at all.
I'd second a Zire (or another cheap Palm compatible), but recommend Fitaly over a keyboard. More compact then even the smallest keyboard (since it's software only), and allows extremely fast input. The current record is more then 81 words per minute. Personally, I can input text almost as fast on my Palm as I can on my PC (Granted, I'm a slow typist). Of course, this means that you can't get away from computers completely, but it's cheap, small and flexible.
I'd probably recommend getting one with an expansion slot, so you can back up your notes in case of loss or theft. I'd also recommend you try to find an older black & white one that uses AAA batteries instead of a built-in recharger. Unless you are in extremely remote areas, I'd assume that you'd be able to find replacement batteries, and then you won't need to carry a charger. B&W also means much more life between replacement/charges. And, they're dirt cheap to boot.
Um, all the commonly replaced parts are easy to change.
Maybe you've been lucky, but not all cars are as easy to work on as they should be. In this case, the filter was mounted up behind the engine, in a location that was -just- inaccessible from all angles. Sure, if you're a professional and change them all the time, you'll get quicker. But if you're working on your own car, you'll never get enough practice changing a part every 30,000 miles to get much faster. Simply shifting the position a tiny bit- something that easily could have been done with a bit of thought- would have fixed the problem.
As for other parts, alternators, starters, and the like aren't supposed to be "commonly replaced parts". They're not supposed to fail either! Of course, they do, but the focus isn't on making *those* parts easily accessible for service. Make a choice, with cars getting smaller and requiring more devices (not just to be legally compliant, but also to have decent performance and all the other crap consumers demand), there just isn't nearly as much space under the hood as they're used to be.
But these parts do fail, and a well designed car will make them easy to replace. I don't mind hiring a professional for significant repairs, but when something is only held on by two bolts, it seems a bit silly to need to pay someone $100 bucks for labor. Fortunately, most cars do make these things easy, but every once in a while you'll come across one that seems like they set out at the beginning to make it difficult.
Make cars that are designed to be easily fixed and that last forever(moving parts should be easy to replace). Sure the auto industry won't make billions and employ a few thousand. But the small local garages will have more work to make up for the lost jobs and you won't be using as much power/resources.
This is a somewhat valid complaint, but not as much so as it first seems. True, cars from the early seventies & before were easier to fix when something went wrong. But things went wrong much more often. Many modern cars have a 100,000 mile service interval. There is absolutely no scheduled maintenance for the first 100,000 miles, except fluid changes. In addition, modern cars are more fuel efficient, less polluting, and safer.
Trucks last 30 years because they are diesel. They also have the luxury of weight & size not being a substantial factor, so they can easily substitute a heavy duty part when it will get them extra life.
All that said, I agree wholeheartedly that at the very least, any scheduled maintenance and commonly replaced parts (alternators, starters) should be easily done by a competent consumer. I had to change the fuel pump on my car a few years ago & found it a bit odd that the pump itself (mounted inside the gas tank, but accessible from a hidden door under the easily removed back seat) took about 15 minutes to change, but that the fuel filter (a scheduled maintenance item, I think you're supposed to change it every 30,000 miles) took well over an hour due to it's almost completely inaccessible location. This could easily have been moved just a few inches, and it would have been trivial to change, but as others have pointed out, that would have cut out some of the after sale service revenue...
Everybody keeps saying stuff like this... I really think you guys are assuming that the average computer thief is alot smarter then they really are. I could be wrong, but in my experience, the average thief is one of opportubity-- usually a junkie or kid who sees an opportunity & goes for it. These sorts of people aren't going to think to check for cron jobs, boot sripts, etc. While I'm certain that there are many more organized thiefs out there who would be smart enough to pull the hd & wipe it without booting, I can't imagine that they are not a distinct minority.
How could code that is public domain be included in the kernel. Once said code reverted to public domain it would have to be excised. It can't be 'linked against' GPL'd code otherwise
I don't see why not. Public domain means just that-- any one can do with it as they see fit. While you couldn't enforce the GPL in the event someone used that code fragment only, the "compilation" portions of copyright law would still apply, therefore there would be no problems enforcing the GPL on any larger segment of code.
Regardless, the Kernel already contains public domain code. Some of the code that SCO is claiming copyright on was previously released into the PD by Novell (or another previous owner)(the so called "ancient bsd"). Linus has previously acknowledged the presence of such code.
The GPL itself has absolutely nothing to say on the issue. The only sections that are even partially relevent are sections 2 and 7, neither of which directly deal with the subject. They only deal with the legal obligations necessary to redistribute the code. Since public domain code can be freely distributed, regardless of the GPL, the GPL is not incompatible with a PD code fragment.
I encounter it every time I have a question, whether or not I've "RTFM" as I'm usually greeted with.
Certainly, there are projects & people that can be rude, but overall, the linux community is quite supportive of newbies. But it's important to remember that you are not paying these people to support you. They are doing it out of courtesy, so if you don't show some appreciation for it, you should not expect them to be helpful.
RTFM, search the archives, and search Google before you ask a question. If you are unable to find the answer on your own, then say where you've searched when you post. If you find the answer, but you are confused, post the relevent link, and explain your confusion. Most importantly, ask a detailed question, -use a relevent subject- (there's nothing I find more annoyoing then a mailing list post with a subject like "Help!!!"), and make sure you provide enough ingformation that someone can reasonably answer your question. If you do these things, you will almost never get a rude response to even the most basic questions.
It's also the matter of being associated with a group of people who have shown themselves to be arrogant, condescending, rude, inconsiderate, and otherwise boorish in their conduct. It's not all of them but it sure is the loudest.
This is why my latest experiment has been done with FreeBSD.
This is silly. The VAST majority of Linux users are not "arrogant, condescending, rude, inconsiderate, and otherwise boorish". Percentage wise, I guarantee you that there are just as many asshole BSD users as there are Linux users. I suggest you consider your own attitudes before you blame others for their rudeness.
Whoever said life is fair? And if you truly believe taxes & business fees are fair, you are truly deluded. Besides, restaurants that may have copyrights would need to pay the fee just like any other business, so how would it be unfair?
As I have pointed out repeatedly, this is not a tax. It is a fee for service. You are not required to pay the fee, but failure to do so means you lose copyright protection.
Plus, as I've pointed out, if the fee is based on net income from the copyrighted property, that gives LESS incentive, not more, for copyright owners to open up the vaults and re-issue old work.
It depends on how the law is implemented. As I have suggested, the law would require that an item be available in print for the copyright to be renewed. If an item were to go out of print, you would be allowed one five year renewal at a flat fee. At the end of that term, if the item is still out of print, you would lose the copyright. The law would obviously need to take into account the potential abuses, and define what "in print" is. I'd say something like "commonly available to the general population at a price not more the 20% higher then similar items". A $5000 limited edition of a book would not qualify. Obviously, the specifics would need to be worked out, but it's not insurmountable. Another option would be that while they would not lose their copyright, after five years out of print, there would be a mandatory licensing provision so another publisher could put it out.
Considering that blockbuster movies make "no money" and the whole idea falls apart. Production accountancy is the last, greatest legal lie.
Blockbuster movies make a ton of money. They may not make a profit, however. But the fee that I am endorsing (other may have there own opinions) is a tax on revenue, not profit. The fee is small (I suggested.2% in another post), and the first ten years are free. The purpose of the fee as I am advocating it is not to generate revenue (the whole bit about requiring the government to fight civil lawsuits on behalf of copyright holders is silly to begin with), but to encourage the public domain.
Other then that, I agree with your points, especially the lynching bit...
Taxes & fees have always been different for different sorts of businesses. This is no different. There are currently copyright registration fees, but they are a flat rate (I believe $250), and are long term (95 years). Your reastauraunt doesn't have to pay that fee do they? And since when does a record label need to get a health certificate?
Needless to say, there's already a tax on copyright holders for money that they make off their copyright -- it's called "income tax."
But this isn't a tax, it's a fee. There are no back taxes or penalties if you don't pay, your copyright simply expires. The main purpose of this fee is not to generate revenues, but to force people to actively maintain their copyright.
Bad idea. Disney would just buy a 10,000,000 year copyright on everything they could get their hands on.
Nothing proposed so far means that copyrights would be renewable forever. This has no effect on maximum terms, but just means that copyright holders must actively renew in order to maintain protection up to the statutory maximum. This is certainly better then the current plan, though maximum copyright terms should be shortened as well (I'd say 50 years max).
What a load of garbage: you want to tax people for merely having copyrighted works? Not only would be virtually impossible to implement, but would create a huge disincentive to create copyright works (I'd stop writing informal papers, people would stop creating open source software - all for fear that the tax department levy bills on them).
This isn't a copyright tax, it's a copyright renewal fee. As has already been pointed out, non-payment of the fee simply means your copyright expires. There are no other non-payment penalties.
Your initial copyright term (I'd say ten years for the first term, followed by five year renewal terms) is free. And, as I and probably others, have pointed out, the fee is based on revenue generated, so free software would not require a fee.
Fees don't need to be unreasonable. I'd say about.2% per year, assessed every 5 years. If a product makes $100,000 every year, a fee of $1000 every five years is not unreasonable.
The Kernel is only copyrighted once, so only one renewal is rrequired. Sure, there are multiple contributers, but they do not all hold independent copyrights.
Even in cases where individuals may hold the copyright to a portion of the code, if they failed to renew, all that would happen would be that they would lose copyright protections for that portion of code and it would fall into the public domain. This wouldn't create any problems for the rest of the kernel, but would stop GPL protection for that bit of code.
This is only a good point if the law is implemented poorly. The original poster suggested that the fee should be tied to the revenue generated by the IP. This is a great option, and would solve any problems for GPL'd software. As suggested, the first term would be free, then there would be a sliding scale based on revenue. Freely distributed media (software, books, whatever), since it doesn't generate revenue, would not have a renewal fee, but would require filing a simple renewal form. Out of print items would would require a flat fee, for renewal, but a maximum of one renewal would be allowed. This way publishers couldn't keep items out of print just to keep them out of the publics eye. Tie that with reasonable maximum copyright terms (I'd say 50 years maximum), and this should help prevent the abuses of the copyright law that we've seen over the last few years.
I wonder how effective a lawsuit against slashdot for the bandwidth costs + lost revenue would be.
Not very. The courts have ruled that links are not illegal. If you don't want people to visit your site, your best course of action is not to have a site.
> In the absence of an explicit license, you CANNOT assume the right to redistribute the work. You must assume the opposite. It's as basic as that.
Nice try, but your opinion goes against established legal precedent. I suggest you read something about implied licenses.
Nice try, but I think you're wrong. The copyright act of 1976 changed the law so that any work, once fixed in tangible form, was immediately copyrighted. The absence of a copyright notice has -absolutely no- effect on the copyright status.
Since KDE-look.org distributes the images as desktop images, I think Linspire would have a very tough time arguing that their using them in advertising is within the implied license.
You do have a good point regarding the kde-look website and it's lack of clear licensing terms. Clearly, that's something they will need to address, but I doubt that it's enough to get Linspire off.
And, a couple of hours is too short a time for a company to move on this. You don't even know if anyone there knows about it yet.
But you're still missing the point. And it's a really easy one. Linspire has a legal responsibility to know the origins and copyright status of all materials it publicly distributes. There is no fuzziness involved. There is no point to the argument "we didn't know".
I agree with you to an extent in your feeling that people may be irrationally criticizing Lindows. I doubt that they meant to do anything wrong. But intent here is irrelevent. Whether they were malicious or simply incompetent, they broke the law.
Do they give copies with their products too though?
They're not required to give copies with the products. The GPL expressly states that you can "Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code". In other words, they don't even need to offer the source code for download. Sony is -exceeding- the required terms, not failing them.
The webpage that the parent links to looks says "you expressly assume all risk and liability associated with downloading [my emphasis]". This seems to be adding an additional clause to the GNU GPL as I would interpret that as not just disclaiming their own liability.
The GPL states "BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND..." Therefore, Sony is not adding a term to the GPL, simply restating an existing term in a click through.
Also it says at the bottom of the page that one must enable cookies.
Big fucking deal. Stop whining & go read the GPL before you post again.
The point is that encoding music "right" is an art that's difficult to get right since "one size does not fit all."
I have absolutely no problem with this statement. But the parent poster wasn't saying that mp3 was bad for some uses-- he was saying that it was bad for all uses. In other words, one size fits none. FLAC is great for some purposes (Archival, home use) but it's useless for others (portable & car MP3 players). Ogg may be -slightly- better supported in these areas, but only just.
Not everyone who uses mp3 are audiophiles. And the vast majority of us have better musical taste then to listen to black metal. I'm sure that there are other recordings out there that push the limits, but the vast majority will encode just fine at LAME standard. So, to turn your question around on you, why should I have to go through all those hurdles when I can simply encode my music with LAME standard to get something that sounds about exactly the same-- and I can listen to them wherever I want?
Slashdot Mirror
It's almost blackmail. "Support me else I shut it down."
That's hardly in the spirit of Free Software.
Since when is the spirit of Free Software doing work that benefits others and expecting nothing in return? What any given author expects in return may vary, but expecting money isn't out of line. The author presumably has expenses related to the project and is well within his rights to state that he will not continue development if he can't find someone to offset those expenses.
Remember, though, that since the project is GPL'd, there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from downloading the source & taking over the maintenance & development for him. That's the spirit of open source.
The problem with learning to program is that unless you can forsee a possible use for it, it's hard to be motivated to follow through with the studies. Your Mom may want to learn programming in the abstract, but the challenge is enough to keep her from following through since she doesn't really know what she'd do with the skills once she's got them.
HTML is the perfect answer to the problem. With even basic HTML she can do something productive. Help her come up with an idea for a web site (Geneaology, recipes, particle physics, whatever interests her...) & put her to work.
Once she has basic HTML, Skip Javascript & go straight to PHP. By the time she's here, she'll probably have some ideas on what she can do with the language, so she'll be more motivated to tackle the (fairly shallow) learning curve.
As far as more traditional programming, I highly recommend Ruby (though the site is down temporarily). It has all the power of a language like Perl or Python, but it's syntax is quite clean and simple, and close enough to natural english that the code quite readable even if you don't know the language. For anyone new to programming who wants to write things that are in the realm of a scripting language, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
I prefer having a steel cage around me should I get into an accident. I've seen too many people turn their bones into dust on motorcycles to EVER ride one.
Motorcycles, because of there exceptional manueverability, braking and acceleration, are quite safe if ridden safely. I road a motorcycle for three years & never had any really close calls, because I was alert & always assumed that the other drivers were trying to kill me. Any time someone came near me, I could easily out-maneuver them & avoid an accident.
People are killed everyday on motorcycles, but in the vast majority of cases, it is largely their own fault. Sure, there are occasional exceptions (people running red lights & such), but those happen whether you're in a car or on a bike. Even then, most exceptions can be avoided by driving defensively. There are numerous reasons why a motorcycle may not be a good replacement for a car, but safety doesn't need to be one of them if you are a safe rider.
MessagEase looks quite cool. It should fix my main gripe about Fitaly, which is that you need to be very careful to get the stamp on straight, or you'll end up with typos. The buttons are also quite small, especially on the smaller Palms such as my old Kyocera Smartphone. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try it out.
These are cool, though I haven't had the chance to actually use one. The biggest drawback that I see to this solution is the special paper that's required. It's quite expensive, & not really in the format that I'd prefer for the purpose. Otherwise, it could be the ideal solution.
Or you can call your own answering machine or voice messaging service. You don't even need to use a cell phone. The phone in your motel or a pay phone can be almost as convenient and you don't need to carry them around.
And how does this help get things transcribed any faster? Remember, the entire point of the post is that he doesn't have time to transcribe the notebook when he gets home, so leaving a voice mail is of no help at all.
I'd second a Zire (or another cheap Palm compatible), but recommend Fitaly over a keyboard. More compact then even the smallest keyboard (since it's software only), and allows extremely fast input. The current record is more then 81 words per minute. Personally, I can input text almost as fast on my Palm as I can on my PC (Granted, I'm a slow typist). Of course, this means that you can't get away from computers completely, but it's cheap, small and flexible.
I'd probably recommend getting one with an expansion slot, so you can back up your notes in case of loss or theft. I'd also recommend you try to find an older black & white one that uses AAA batteries instead of a built-in recharger. Unless you are in extremely remote areas, I'd assume that you'd be able to find replacement batteries, and then you won't need to carry a charger. B&W also means much more life between replacement/charges. And, they're dirt cheap to boot.
Um, all the commonly replaced parts are easy to change.
Maybe you've been lucky, but not all cars are as easy to work on as they should be. In this case, the filter was mounted up behind the engine, in a location that was -just- inaccessible from all angles. Sure, if you're a professional and change them all the time, you'll get quicker. But if you're working on your own car, you'll never get enough practice changing a part every 30,000 miles to get much faster. Simply shifting the position a tiny bit- something that easily could have been done with a bit of thought- would have fixed the problem.
As for other parts, alternators, starters, and the like aren't supposed to be "commonly replaced parts". They're not supposed to fail either! Of course, they do, but the focus isn't on making *those* parts easily accessible for service. Make a choice, with cars getting smaller and requiring more devices (not just to be legally compliant, but also to have decent performance and all the other crap consumers demand), there just isn't nearly as much space under the hood as they're used to be.
But these parts do fail, and a well designed car will make them easy to replace. I don't mind hiring a professional for significant repairs, but when something is only held on by two bolts, it seems a bit silly to need to pay someone $100 bucks for labor. Fortunately, most cars do make these things easy, but every once in a while you'll come across one that seems like they set out at the beginning to make it difficult.
Make cars that are designed to be easily fixed and that last forever(moving parts should be easy to replace). Sure the auto industry won't make billions and employ a few thousand. But the small local garages will have more work to make up for the lost jobs and you won't be using as much power/resources.
This is a somewhat valid complaint, but not as much so as it first seems. True, cars from the early seventies & before were easier to fix when something went wrong. But things went wrong much more often. Many modern cars have a 100,000 mile service interval. There is absolutely no scheduled maintenance for the first 100,000 miles, except fluid changes. In addition, modern cars are more fuel efficient, less polluting, and safer.
Trucks last 30 years because they are diesel. They also have the luxury of weight & size not being a substantial factor, so they can easily substitute a heavy duty part when it will get them extra life.
All that said, I agree wholeheartedly that at the very least, any scheduled maintenance and commonly replaced parts (alternators, starters) should be easily done by a competent consumer. I had to change the fuel pump on my car a few years ago & found it a bit odd that the pump itself (mounted inside the gas tank, but accessible from a hidden door under the easily removed back seat) took about 15 minutes to change, but that the fuel filter (a scheduled maintenance item, I think you're supposed to change it every 30,000 miles) took well over an hour due to it's almost completely inaccessible location. This could easily have been moved just a few inches, and it would have been trivial to change, but as others have pointed out, that would have cut out some of the after sale service revenue...
Everybody keeps saying stuff like this... I really think you guys are assuming that the average computer thief is alot smarter then they really are. I could be wrong, but in my experience, the average thief is one of opportubity-- usually a junkie or kid who sees an opportunity & goes for it. These sorts of people aren't going to think to check for cron jobs, boot sripts, etc. While I'm certain that there are many more organized thiefs out there who would be smart enough to pull the hd & wipe it without booting, I can't imagine that they are not a distinct minority.
How could code that is public domain be included in the kernel. Once said code reverted to public domain it would have to be excised. It can't be 'linked against' GPL'd code otherwise
I don't see why not. Public domain means just that-- any one can do with it as they see fit. While you couldn't enforce the GPL in the event someone used that code fragment only, the "compilation" portions of copyright law would still apply, therefore there would be no problems enforcing the GPL on any larger segment of code.
Regardless, the Kernel already contains public domain code. Some of the code that SCO is claiming copyright on was previously released into the PD by Novell (or another previous owner)(the so called "ancient bsd"). Linus has previously acknowledged the presence of such code.
The GPL itself has absolutely nothing to say on the issue. The only sections that are even partially relevent are sections 2 and 7, neither of which directly deal with the subject. They only deal with the legal obligations necessary to redistribute the code. Since public domain code can be freely distributed, regardless of the GPL, the GPL is not incompatible with a PD code fragment.
It's a fine reason.
I encounter it every time I have a question, whether or not I've "RTFM" as I'm usually greeted with.
Certainly, there are projects & people that can be rude, but overall, the linux community is quite supportive of newbies. But it's important to remember that you are not paying these people to support you. They are doing it out of courtesy, so if you don't show some appreciation for it, you should not expect them to be helpful.
RTFM, search the archives, and search Google before you ask a question. If you are unable to find the answer on your own, then say where you've searched when you post. If you find the answer, but you are confused, post the relevent link, and explain your confusion. Most importantly, ask a detailed question, -use a relevent subject- (there's nothing I find more annoyoing then a mailing list post with a subject like "Help!!!"), and make sure you provide enough ingformation that someone can reasonably answer your question. If you do these things, you will almost never get a rude response to even the most basic questions.
It's also the matter of being associated with a group of people who have shown themselves to be arrogant, condescending, rude, inconsiderate, and otherwise boorish in their conduct. It's not all of them but it sure is the loudest.
This is why my latest experiment has been done with FreeBSD.
This is silly. The VAST majority of Linux users are not "arrogant, condescending, rude, inconsiderate, and otherwise boorish". Percentage wise, I guarantee you that there are just as many asshole BSD users as there are Linux users. I suggest you consider your own attitudes before you blame others for their rudeness.
Whoever said life is fair? And if you truly believe taxes & business fees are fair, you are truly deluded. Besides, restaurants that may have copyrights would need to pay the fee just like any other business, so how would it be unfair?
As I have pointed out repeatedly, this is not a tax. It is a fee for service. You are not required to pay the fee, but failure to do so means you lose copyright protection.
Plus, as I've pointed out, if the fee is based on net income from the copyrighted property, that gives LESS incentive, not more, for copyright owners to open up the vaults and re-issue old work.
It depends on how the law is implemented. As I have suggested, the law would require that an item be available in print for the copyright to be renewed. If an item were to go out of print, you would be allowed one five year renewal at a flat fee. At the end of that term, if the item is still out of print, you would lose the copyright. The law would obviously need to take into account the potential abuses, and define what "in print" is. I'd say something like "commonly available to the general population at a price not more the 20% higher then similar items". A $5000 limited edition of a book would not qualify. Obviously, the specifics would need to be worked out, but it's not insurmountable. Another option would be that while they would not lose their copyright, after five years out of print, there would be a mandatory licensing provision so another publisher could put it out.
Considering that blockbuster movies make "no money" and the whole idea falls apart. Production accountancy is the last, greatest legal lie.
.2% in another post), and the first ten years are free. The purpose of the fee as I am advocating it is not to generate revenue (the whole bit about requiring the government to fight civil lawsuits on behalf of copyright holders is silly to begin with), but to encourage the public domain.
Blockbuster movies make a ton of money. They may not make a profit, however. But the fee that I am endorsing (other may have there own opinions) is a tax on revenue, not profit. The fee is small (I suggested
Other then that, I agree with your points, especially the lynching bit...
Taxes & fees have always been different for different sorts of businesses. This is no different. There are currently copyright registration fees, but they are a flat rate (I believe $250), and are long term (95 years). Your reastauraunt doesn't have to pay that fee do they? And since when does a record label need to get a health certificate?
Needless to say, there's already a tax on copyright holders for money that they make off their copyright -- it's called "income tax."
But this isn't a tax, it's a fee. There are no back taxes or penalties if you don't pay, your copyright simply expires. The main purpose of this fee is not to generate revenues, but to force people to actively maintain their copyright.
Bad idea. Disney would just buy a 10,000,000 year copyright on everything they could get their hands on.
Nothing proposed so far means that copyrights would be renewable forever. This has no effect on maximum terms, but just means that copyright holders must actively renew in order to maintain protection up to the statutory maximum. This is certainly better then the current plan, though maximum copyright terms should be shortened as well (I'd say 50 years max).
What a load of garbage: you want to tax people for merely having copyrighted works? Not only would be virtually impossible to implement, but would create a huge disincentive to create copyright works (I'd stop writing informal papers, people would stop creating open source software - all for fear that the tax department levy bills on them).
.2% per year, assessed every 5 years. If a product makes $100,000 every year, a fee of $1000 every five years is not unreasonable.
This isn't a copyright tax, it's a copyright renewal fee. As has already been pointed out, non-payment of the fee simply means your copyright expires. There are no other non-payment penalties.
Your initial copyright term (I'd say ten years for the first term, followed by five year renewal terms) is free. And, as I and probably others, have pointed out, the fee is based on revenue generated, so free software would not require a fee.
Fees don't need to be unreasonable. I'd say about
The Kernel is only copyrighted once, so only one renewal is rrequired. Sure, there are multiple contributers, but they do not all hold independent copyrights.
Even in cases where individuals may hold the copyright to a portion of the code, if they failed to renew, all that would happen would be that they would lose copyright protections for that portion of code and it would fall into the public domain. This wouldn't create any problems for the rest of the kernel, but would stop GPL protection for that bit of code.
Really stupid idea. - Think of GPL'ed software.
This is only a good point if the law is implemented poorly. The original poster suggested that the fee should be tied to the revenue generated by the IP. This is a great option, and would solve any problems for GPL'd software. As suggested, the first term would be free, then there would be a sliding scale based on revenue. Freely distributed media (software, books, whatever), since it doesn't generate revenue, would not have a renewal fee, but would require filing a simple renewal form. Out of print items would would require a flat fee, for renewal, but a maximum of one renewal would be allowed. This way publishers couldn't keep items out of print just to keep them out of the publics eye. Tie that with reasonable maximum copyright terms (I'd say 50 years maximum), and this should help prevent the abuses of the copyright law that we've seen over the last few years.
I wonder how effective a lawsuit against slashdot for the bandwidth costs + lost revenue would be.
Not very. The courts have ruled that links are not illegal. If you don't want people to visit your site, your best course of action is not to have a site.
> In the absence of an explicit license, you CANNOT assume the right to redistribute the work. You must assume the opposite. It's as basic as that.
Nice try, but your opinion goes against established legal precedent. I suggest you read something about implied licenses.
Nice try, but I think you're wrong. The copyright act of 1976 changed the law so that any work, once fixed in tangible form, was immediately copyrighted. The absence of a copyright notice has -absolutely no- effect on the copyright status.
Since KDE-look.org distributes the images as desktop images, I think Linspire would have a very tough time arguing that their using them in advertising is within the implied license.
You do have a good point regarding the kde-look website and it's lack of clear licensing terms. Clearly, that's something they will need to address, but I doubt that it's enough to get Linspire off.
And, a couple of hours is too short a time for a company to move on this. You don't even know if anyone there knows about it yet.
But you're still missing the point. And it's a really easy one. Linspire has a legal responsibility to know the origins and copyright status of all materials it publicly distributes. There is no fuzziness involved. There is no point to the argument "we didn't know".
I agree with you to an extent in your feeling that people may be irrationally criticizing Lindows. I doubt that they meant to do anything wrong. But intent here is irrelevent. Whether they were malicious or simply incompetent, they broke the law.
Do they give copies with their products too though?
They're not required to give copies with the products. The GPL expressly states that you can "Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code". In other words, they don't even need to offer the source code for download. Sony is -exceeding- the required terms, not failing them.
The webpage that the parent links to looks says "you expressly assume all risk and liability associated with downloading [my emphasis]". This seems to be adding an additional clause to the GNU GPL as I would interpret that as not just disclaiming their own liability.
The GPL states "BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND..." Therefore, Sony is not adding a term to the GPL, simply restating an existing term in a click through.
Also it says at the bottom of the page that one must enable cookies.
Big fucking deal. Stop whining & go read the GPL before you post again.
The point is that encoding music "right" is an art that's difficult to get right since "one size does not fit all."
I have absolutely no problem with this statement. But the parent poster wasn't saying that mp3 was bad for some uses-- he was saying that it was bad for all uses. In other words, one size fits none. FLAC is great for some purposes (Archival, home use) but it's useless for others (portable & car MP3 players). Ogg may be -slightly- better supported in these areas, but only just.
Not everyone who uses mp3 are audiophiles. And the vast majority of us have better musical taste then to listen to black metal. I'm sure that there are other recordings out there that push the limits, but the vast majority will encode just fine at LAME standard. So, to turn your question around on you, why should I have to go through all those hurdles when I can simply encode my music with LAME standard to get something that sounds about exactly the same-- and I can listen to them wherever I want?