... especially right now when lots of people all over the industrialised countries are worried about their savings and mortgages.
People don't know and don't care about the DRM. What they care about is that DVD is pretty good and:
DVD player: ~ GBP 20 Blu-ray player: GBP 200
DVD movie: GBP 5-10 (and sometimes real bargains) Blu-ray movie: GBP 15-25 (no good bargains)
Is it any wonder Blu-ray is struggling?
I have a HDTV and I really do fancy a Blu-ray player but I can't justify this cost to the wife at the moment when our cheap mortgage deal is just about to expire and all of our bills have increased.
(i.e: seems odd that McCain recently embraced regulation after spending two decades opposing it)
Not really. There are good and bad reasons to change your position.
First, I'm no fan of McCain and I also do not like politicians that changes their mind with public opinion, it stinks of populism and shows a weak character. This is a bad reason to change your mind.
However, if you do not change your mind when presented with strong evidence against your position, you are not 'principled', you are a 'moron'. Changing your mind when presented with strong evidence opposing your view is a good reason to change your mind.
You can always argue that he if he had shown sufficient judgement he wouldn't have had to change his mind, but everyone makes mistakes.
If you look at the revisions, Obama has shortened some bullet points to make them more readable.
He still lists what he supports, but he does not going into massive detail in each one of them.
For instance, his current stance on network neutrality is now (emphasis mine):
"* Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."
Instead of:
"* # Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet. Users must be free to access content, to use applications, and to attach personal devices. They have a right to receive accurate and honest information about service plans. But these guarantees are not enough to prevent network providers from discriminating in ways that limit the freedom of expression on the Internet. Because most Americans only have a choice of only one or two broadband carriers, carriers are tempted to impose a toll charge on content and services, discriminating against websites that are unwilling to pay for equal treatment. This could create a two-tier Internet in which websites with the best relationships with network providers can get the fastest access to consumers, while all competing websites remain in a slower lane. Such a result would threaten innovation, the open tradition and architecture of the Internet, and competition among content and backbone providers. It would also threaten the equality of speech through which the Internet has begun to transform American political and cultural discourse. Barack Obama supports the basic principle that network providers should not be allowed to charge fees to privilege the content or applications of some web sites and Internet applications over others. This principle will ensure that the new competitors, especially small or non-profit speakers, have the same opportunity as incumbents to innovate on the Internet and to reach large audiences. Obama will protect the Internetâ(TM)s traditional openness to innovation and creativity and ensure that it remains a platform for free speech and innovation that will benefit consumers and our democracy. "
So instead of a massive (and unreadable) paragraph, it is now a very simple bullet point saying that Obama strongly supports network neutrality. How on earth is this "downplaying" network neutrality?
I never said that wasn't the case. The grand parent used examples of the Catholic church's misuse of monopoly power. That hasn't existed for hundreds of years.
Of course Catholicism or $RELIGION is deserving of criticism at the same level as nations or other communities are deserving of criticism. Since the religions claim to be "pure" and "holy" they may deserve more.
Scientology, however, is using techniques to recruit and extract money from people that have been considered unethical, and have been abandoned, by the general population (and most @RELIGIONS) for so long, that we must be able to hold them accountable for it without being seen as hypocrites.
You can't justify the actions of someone in the present by referring to the actions of others in the distant path.
The world has moved on since the time of the Catholic monopoly and so has the Catholic church. Not a single person that existed in the Catholic church 400 years ago are alive today.
It is easy, but bigoted, to claim that the only reason for the change of the Catholic church is that they have lost the power to behave as bad as they did, but this completely discount the fact that all members of the current church have grown up in a different world than that of the old.
If the catholic church criticises Scientology this is not hypocrisy because the Catholic ministers of today are not the same as those of old.
Similarly, it is not my fault that my ancestors, the Vikings, pillaged and raped in England and Ireland. And the atrocities of the Nazis are not the fault of my german friends.
"A packet has to travel over VASTLY LARGER DISTANCES to get from Los Angeles to New York. Plain and Simple. The US could be the leader in the world as far as Mb/s per citizen, but it would cost at least 10x the money than any other country"
Bullshit. American has 80 people per square mile. Norway has 32 people per square mile. I'm originally from Finnmark, Norways northernmost, harshest and sparsest county with 5.2 people per square mile (even Montana and Wyoming are more densily populated).
My home town has less than 3000 inhabitants and it is at least 2.5 hours drive away from any other settlements larger than 1000 inhabitants.
Yet, if I decided to move back I could order 12Megabit ADSL tomorrow.
I know this is unpopular but the source you yourself cite, clearly suggests that the problem isn't necessarily that CCTV is inheritly flawed as a weapon against crime but inefficient use of them.
The problem seems to be that the footage is rarely used by police officers investigating crimes, because they can't be bothered going beyond local councils to retrieve video and because storage and retrieval is awkward and time consuming.
Because the footage is rarely used effectively, criminals are also unlikely to be deterred by them.
Personally I am uneasy about all the CCTV, but I don't think it is fair to argue with blanket statements about their efficiency.
If you can make the risk of other people misusing the data minimal with encryption, the other concern is whether you can reduce the risk of losing access to the data yourself. For this the risk that someone will log in and delete the data is a risk like any other risk concerning data availability.
Compare this to the risk of a) your hard drive failing b) your house burning down c) someone stealing your USB hard drive d) etc.
Each of these risks are fairly small, and they can be combined to reduce the risk of losing the data.
Similarly, the risk of someone deleting your data off an FTP store is a real, although fairly small risk and combining it with any of the above, decreases the chance of you losing your data.
Thus it is not useless, it gives you additional data safety that you would not have if you didn't use this service. Remember: just because someone can sniff the passwords and delete your data, doesn't mean it will happen.
This may well mean that despite whatever you do, encypt etc, someone can sniff the password and then simply come in and delete all your files.
i.e, whatever other steps you take, this is inherently worthless.
Hardly. As long as the data is encrypted well enough to stop people from stealing or modifying the data in ways that could have serious privacy and financial implications this is a net gain in data availability.
Even if the chance of someone doing this was as high as 5% over the period in question, it would still mean that there was 95% chance of you having a good off site backup. That is better than nothing as long as you realise that there is still a 5% risk and don't act like it is totally secure.
As a simplified example; if your PC at home is 95% sure of retaining all of its data in the period and your portable USB hard drive is 95% sure of retaining all of the data, the chance of you losing any data at all is 0.0125%. Even with exaggarated risk factors, this is not bad.
Even in the case of redundancies you can't get rid of the people you dislike under a lot of circumstances, you have to be able to justify why you've got rid of them if they've been there longer than other employees, you have to justify why you got rid of them if they perform better than other employees and so on. In other words you can't get rid of them if they're a good employee and you don't have good reason.
First, I think your post is a good summary of UK employment law (although IANAL). However, you have to be incredibly careful not to provide any cause, if you do not want to be fired by a boss that hates you. Most employees violate some job rule from time to time. Most of the time it doesn't matter, but if someone is actively seeking to get rid of you, they could use them against you.
Also, there are ways to get rid of you without you providing any cause: 1. They can tilt your objectives in such a way that they set you up to fail. This can be hard to realise if you aren't paying attention. 2. Even more devious, in the case of redundancies, they can set up your co-workers to succeed greatly.. thus indirectly undermining you. I.e. "We are trying to save money, and Tim and Alex were massively successful last year while you were only satisfactory". You will have to be incredibly lucky and resourceful to be able to counter this one.
In the end, if your boss really wants to get rid of you and you have any alternative, it is probably best to grab that alternative with both hands.
Remember that redundancies doesn't need any more justification than "it saves us money and increases the profits of the shareholders" and a devious boss can always get rid of you.
Not sure about FedEx, and UPS, but the Post Office isn't so clear cut.
Some friends used to live at the end of Private Road and the USPS would not deliver to the door. They had a mailbox (along with everyone else on the private road), that was at the junction of the private road and the public road. USPS would only deliver to that point.
Just because they may be allowed to walk up to your house to deliver a parcel/letter, doesn't mean they have to. It is considerably quicker and cheaper for postal services to insist on delivering to public areas only.
"Bullpuckey. The crimes were committed in the US, against US property."
Bollocks. He was sitting in Britain using his computer. Because of this Britain should have balls enough to tell the US to sod it and try him in his home country instead of shipping him overseas to a country where he has very limited rights as a non-citizen.
"huh? how is honoring extradition treaties acting as a 'lap dog'?"
I wish people would sometimes read other comments before replying.
The reason for Britain being named a 'lap dog' is that the extradition treaty is one-sided. The US does not have to show probable cause to get Britain to extradite people to the US, but Britain has to for it to happen the other way around.
"Duh. The only reason this topic may recieve negative attention is because its the United States"
No, the reason is that the UK extradites its own citizens to a foreign country for crimes commited in the UK, when it can't be completely sure of its citizen being given a fair trial.
As it stands he is a foreigner in the US in a harsh political climate which makes it quite likely he could get convicted a terrorist even if he is just a "good old" computer criminal. At the very least he will feel forced to plea bargain for a very bad deal.
The extradition treaty is also completely one-sided, in that the US does not need to extradite its own citizens to the UK. The deal is shameful.
"I think the initial investment is less than one month of internet at those prices."
Exactly the GPs point. The initial investment has to be less than a month of Internet, because it will take an enormous amount of time to recoup the investment once the olympics are over. There is simply no way that the enormous infrastructure needed for the olympics are going to be anywhere near affordable for local residents any time soon.
Thus, the prices are jacked up to fully cover the initial investment plus a healthy profit.
Sweeping generalisation of people on the basis of a bad experience with a tiny subset of those people is cretinous at best.
"So am I biased, sure just a bit. Do they all deserve to be called scum, probably not but since that is my experience, that is also my perception. If it hurts well tough."
So you admit you are wrong, but you still do it. I rest my case.
"Actually, I think the point that the GP post was trying to make is that peace officers are obligated to uphold the law, but all too often police misconduct is hidden behind the blue curtain."
Then he should have said so. Instead he classified every single cop out there as scum. The great grandparent found this generalisation offensive, and so do I (and no, I'm not a cop).
I've seen scummy police officers myself, but do I draw sweeping generalisations about them? No. There will always be scummy police, because they are human beings and many human beings are awful people. Police officers are not somehow magically immune to being scum, but they are certainly not ALL scum.
Funnily enough I just read an article about two police officers that genuinely risked their own health by using their own bodies to extinguish a man who had set himself alight after threatening people with a knife.
"Desktop installation of operating systems is not properly ready for the masses."
Now, once you mention "fakeraid" you are no longer part of "the masses"... but I still agree with you, no operating system installs are ready for "the masses". The only thing that works for people is preinstalled operating systems.
Then as someone who was unjustifiable beaten by the cops in their own home I can safely say you hang out with scum who should never have been given authority and the right to hurt another person on a wim and their illustrious word that the perp deserved it.
Great... you can use this method of thinking for absolutely anything. Examples: 1. A police officer does something wrong means they are all scum. 2. One jew does something wrong and this means they are all scum. 3. One child does something wrong and so they are all scum. 4. One human being does something wrong and so they are all scum. 5. One organism does something wrong and so every organism on the Earth is rotten to the core.
See how this works?
Anyone that had an iota of sympathy with you after being unjustifiably beaten would have lost that sympathy halfway into your first sentence, because you are a cretin.
When these works were created, the copyright holders were granted a certain time of exclusivity over this abstract creation. After this period, the exclusitivity would ceise and the public could utilise them as they pleased.
The idea was that this would provide incentive for people to create works of art, literature, music, etc. Many people accepted this idea, knowing that after some years of exclusivity it would again go back to the public, so that they could be enjoyed, reproduced and built upon as anyone saw fit. Without this right people like Shakespeare and Disney would not have been able to produce their works without permission and licensing.
If the period is extended retroactively for works beyond what the original period was, this is essentially taking rights away from the public for no reason other than to line the pockets of the already super wealthy.
Can anyone actually reasonably argue that further incentives in terms of extensions of exclusivity periods would generate better works of art and literature.
"In short, some free software types do not like complete freedom of usage and want to extend copyright laws to enforce more EULA-like provisions."
That is a complete lie. There is no way you could interpret that from what I wrote. No free software types want to stop people from freely using the software.
You started with a straw man and then moved on to pure lies.
Slashdot Mirror
... especially right now when lots of people all over the industrialised countries are worried about their savings and mortgages.
People don't know and don't care about the DRM. What they care about is that DVD is pretty good and:
DVD player: ~ GBP 20
Blu-ray player: GBP 200
DVD movie: GBP 5-10 (and sometimes real bargains)
Blu-ray movie: GBP 15-25 (no good bargains)
Is it any wonder Blu-ray is struggling?
I have a HDTV and I really do fancy a Blu-ray player but I can't justify this cost to the wife at the moment when our cheap mortgage deal is just about to expire and all of our bills have increased.
(i.e: seems odd that McCain recently embraced regulation after spending two decades opposing it)
Not really. There are good and bad reasons to change your position.
First, I'm no fan of McCain and I also do not like politicians that changes their mind with public opinion, it stinks of populism and shows a weak character. This is a bad reason to change your mind.
However, if you do not change your mind when presented with strong evidence against your position, you are not 'principled', you are a 'moron'. Changing your mind when presented with strong evidence opposing your view is a good reason to change your mind.
You can always argue that he if he had shown sufficient judgement he wouldn't have had to change his mind, but everyone makes mistakes.
"Politician changes mind, big whoop."
Except he hasn't changed his mind, he has simply edited several points to make them more readable.
This post is pretty much pure bullshit.
If you look at the revisions, Obama has shortened some bullet points to make them more readable.
He still lists what he supports, but he does not going into massive detail in each one of them.
For instance, his current stance on network neutrality is now (emphasis mine):
"* Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet."
Instead of:
"* # Protect the Openness of the Internet: A key reason the Internet has been such a success is because it is the most open network in history. It needs to stay that way. Barack Obama strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet. Users must be free to access content, to use applications, and to attach personal devices. They have a right to receive accurate and honest information about service plans. But these guarantees are not enough to prevent network providers from discriminating in ways that limit the freedom of expression on the Internet. Because most Americans only have a choice of only one or two broadband carriers, carriers are tempted to impose a toll charge on content and services, discriminating against websites that are unwilling to pay for equal treatment. This could create a two-tier Internet in which websites with the best relationships with network providers can get the fastest access to consumers, while all competing websites remain in a slower lane. Such a result would threaten innovation, the open tradition and architecture of the Internet, and competition among content and backbone providers. It would also threaten the equality of speech through which the Internet has begun to transform American political and cultural discourse. Barack Obama supports the basic principle that network providers should not be allowed to charge fees to privilege the content or applications of some web sites and Internet applications over others. This principle will ensure that the new competitors, especially small or non-profit speakers, have the same opportunity as incumbents to innovate on the Internet and to reach large audiences. Obama will protect the Internetâ(TM)s traditional openness to innovation and creativity and ensure that it remains a platform for free speech and innovation that will benefit consumers and our democracy. "
So instead of a massive (and unreadable) paragraph, it is now a very simple bullet point saying that Obama strongly supports network neutrality. How on earth is this "downplaying" network neutrality?
I never said that wasn't the case. The grand parent used examples of the Catholic church's misuse of monopoly power. That hasn't existed for hundreds of years.
Of course Catholicism or $RELIGION is deserving of criticism at the same level as nations or other communities are deserving of criticism. Since the religions claim to be "pure" and "holy" they may deserve more.
Scientology, however, is using techniques to recruit and extract money from people that have been considered unethical, and have been abandoned, by the general population (and most @RELIGIONS) for so long, that we must be able to hold them accountable for it without being seen as hypocrites.
You can't justify the actions of someone in the present by referring to the actions of others in the distant path.
The world has moved on since the time of the Catholic monopoly and so has the Catholic church. Not a single person that existed in the Catholic church 400 years ago are alive today.
It is easy, but bigoted, to claim that the only reason for the change of the Catholic church is that they have lost the power to behave as bad as they did, but this completely discount the fact that all members of the current church have grown up in a different world than that of the old.
If the catholic church criticises Scientology this is not hypocrisy because the Catholic ministers of today are not the same as those of old.
Similarly, it is not my fault that my ancestors, the Vikings, pillaged and raped in England and Ireland. And the atrocities of the Nazis are not the fault of my german friends.
"A packet has to travel over VASTLY LARGER DISTANCES to get from Los Angeles to New York. Plain and Simple. The US could be the leader in the world as far as Mb/s per citizen, but it would cost at least 10x the money than any other country"
Bullshit. American has 80 people per square mile. Norway has 32 people per square mile. I'm originally from Finnmark, Norways northernmost, harshest and sparsest county with 5.2 people per square mile (even Montana and Wyoming are more densily populated).
My home town has less than 3000 inhabitants and it is at least 2.5 hours drive away from any other settlements larger than 1000 inhabitants.
Yet, if I decided to move back I could order 12Megabit ADSL tomorrow.
I know this is unpopular but the source you yourself cite, clearly suggests that the problem isn't necessarily that CCTV is inheritly flawed as a weapon against crime but inefficient use of them.
The problem seems to be that the footage is rarely used by police officers investigating crimes, because they can't be bothered going beyond local councils to retrieve video and because storage and retrieval is awkward and time consuming.
Because the footage is rarely used effectively, criminals are also unlikely to be deterred by them.
Personally I am uneasy about all the CCTV, but I don't think it is fair to argue with blanket statements about their efficiency.
Apart from the inappropriate use of the 'PC' term, the article doesn't actually state what type of architecture the processor is.
This far more interesting paper on it, states that it has a MIPS processor.
I think you miss the point of my post entirely.
If you can make the risk of other people misusing the data minimal with encryption, the other concern is whether you can reduce the risk of losing access to the data yourself. For this the risk that someone will log in and delete the data is a risk like any other risk concerning data availability.
Compare this to the risk of
a) your hard drive failing
b) your house burning down
c) someone stealing your USB hard drive
d) etc.
Each of these risks are fairly small, and they can be combined to reduce the risk of losing the data.
Similarly, the risk of someone deleting your data off an FTP store is a real, although fairly small risk and combining it with any of the above, decreases the chance of you losing your data.
Thus it is not useless, it gives you additional data safety that you would not have if you didn't use this service. Remember: just because someone can sniff the passwords and delete your data, doesn't mean it will happen.
This may well mean that despite whatever you do, encypt etc, someone can sniff the password and then simply come in and delete all your files.
i.e, whatever other steps you take, this is inherently worthless.
Hardly. As long as the data is encrypted well enough to stop people from stealing or modifying the data in ways that could have serious privacy and financial implications this is a net gain in data availability.
Even if the chance of someone doing this was as high as 5% over the period in question, it would still mean that there was 95% chance of you having a good off site backup. That is better than nothing as long as you realise that there is still a 5% risk and don't act like it is totally secure.
As a simplified example; if your PC at home is 95% sure of retaining all of its data in the period and your portable USB hard drive is 95% sure of retaining all of the data, the chance of you losing any data at all is 0.0125%. Even with exaggarated risk factors, this is not bad.
Even in the case of redundancies you can't get rid of the people you dislike under a lot of circumstances, you have to be able to justify why you've got rid of them if they've been there longer than other employees, you have to justify why you got rid of them if they perform better than other employees and so on. In other words you can't get rid of them if they're a good employee and you don't have good reason.
First, I think your post is a good summary of UK employment law (although IANAL). However, you have to be incredibly careful not to provide any cause, if you do not want to be fired by a boss that hates you. Most employees violate some job rule from time to time. Most of the time it doesn't matter, but if someone is actively seeking to get rid of you, they could use them against you.
Also, there are ways to get rid of you without you providing any cause:
1. They can tilt your objectives in such a way that they set you up to fail. This can be hard to realise if you aren't paying attention.
2. Even more devious, in the case of redundancies, they can set up your co-workers to succeed greatly.. thus indirectly undermining you. I.e. "We are trying to save money, and Tim and Alex were massively successful last year while you were only satisfactory". You will have to be incredibly lucky and resourceful to be able to counter this one.
In the end, if your boss really wants to get rid of you and you have any alternative, it is probably best to grab that alternative with both hands.
Remember that redundancies doesn't need any more justification than "it saves us money and increases the profits of the shareholders" and a devious boss can always get rid of you.
You mean like this?
Not sure about FedEx, and UPS, but the Post Office isn't so clear cut.
Some friends used to live at the end of Private Road and the USPS would not deliver to the door. They had a mailbox (along with everyone else on the private road), that was at the junction of the private road and the public road. USPS would only deliver to that point.
Just because they may be allowed to walk up to your house to deliver a parcel/letter, doesn't mean they have to. It is considerably quicker and cheaper for postal services to insist on delivering to public areas only.
"Bullpuckey. The crimes were committed in the US, against US property."
Bollocks. He was sitting in Britain using his computer. Because of this Britain should have balls enough to tell the US to sod it and try him in his home country instead of shipping him overseas to a country where he has very limited rights as a non-citizen.
"huh? how is honoring extradition treaties acting as a 'lap dog'?"
I wish people would sometimes read other comments before replying.
The reason for Britain being named a 'lap dog' is that the extradition treaty is one-sided. The US does not have to show probable cause to get Britain to extradite people to the US, but Britain has to for it to happen the other way around.
"Duh. The only reason this topic may recieve negative attention is because its the United States"
No, the reason is that the UK extradites its own citizens to a foreign country for crimes commited in the UK, when it can't be completely sure of its citizen being given a fair trial.
As it stands he is a foreigner in the US in a harsh political climate which makes it quite likely he could get convicted a terrorist even if he is just a "good old" computer criminal. At the very least he will feel forced to plea bargain for a very bad deal.
The extradition treaty is also completely one-sided, in that the US does not need to extradite its own citizens to the UK. The deal is shameful.
"I think the initial investment is less than one month of internet at those prices."
Exactly the GPs point. The initial investment has to be less than a month of Internet, because it will take an enormous amount of time to recoup the investment once the olympics are over. There is simply no way that the enormous infrastructure needed for the olympics are going to be anywhere near affordable for local residents any time soon.
Thus, the prices are jacked up to fully cover the initial investment plus a healthy profit.
"what did my post point hit to close to home?"
Sweeping generalisation of people on the basis of a bad experience with a tiny subset of those people is cretinous at best.
"So am I biased, sure just a bit. Do they all deserve to be called scum, probably not but since that is my experience, that is also my perception. If it hurts well tough."
So you admit you are wrong, but you still do it. I rest my case.
"Actually, I think the point that the GP post was trying to make is that peace officers are obligated to uphold the law, but all too often police misconduct is hidden behind the blue curtain."
Then he should have said so. Instead he classified every single cop out there as scum. The great grandparent found this generalisation offensive, and so do I (and no, I'm not a cop).
I've seen scummy police officers myself, but do I draw sweeping generalisations about them? No. There will always be scummy police, because they are human beings and many human beings are awful people. Police officers are not somehow magically immune to being scum, but they are certainly not ALL scum.
Funnily enough I just read an article about two police officers that genuinely risked their own health by using their own bodies to extinguish a man who had set himself alight after threatening people with a knife.
"jews are human beings"
So are police officers and children. I don't think you quite understood my post.
"Desktop installation of operating systems is not properly ready for the masses."
Now, once you mention "fakeraid" you are no longer part of "the masses"... but I still agree with you, no operating system installs are ready for "the masses". The only thing that works for people is preinstalled operating systems.
Then as someone who was unjustifiable beaten by the cops in their own home I can safely say you hang out with scum who should never have been given authority and the right to hurt another person on a wim and their illustrious word that the perp deserved it.
Great... you can use this method of thinking for absolutely anything. Examples:
1. A police officer does something wrong means they are all scum.
2. One jew does something wrong and this means they are all scum.
3. One child does something wrong and so they are all scum.
4. One human being does something wrong and so they are all scum.
5. One organism does something wrong and so every organism on the Earth is rotten to the core.
See how this works?
Anyone that had an iota of sympathy with you after being unjustifiably beaten would have lost that sympathy halfway into your first sentence, because you are a cretin.
When these works were created, the copyright holders were granted a certain time of exclusivity over this abstract creation. After this period, the exclusitivity would ceise and the public could utilise them as they pleased.
The idea was that this would provide incentive for people to create works of art, literature, music, etc. Many people accepted this idea, knowing that after some years of exclusivity it would again go back to the public, so that they could be enjoyed, reproduced and built upon as anyone saw fit. Without this right people like Shakespeare and Disney would not have been able to produce their works without permission and licensing.
If the period is extended retroactively for works beyond what the original period was, this is essentially taking rights away from the public for no reason other than to line the pockets of the already super wealthy.
Can anyone actually reasonably argue that further incentives in terms of extensions of exclusivity periods would generate better works of art and literature.
"In short, some free software types do not like complete freedom of usage and want to extend copyright laws to enforce more EULA-like provisions."
That is a complete lie. There is no way you could interpret that from what I wrote. No free software types want to stop people from freely using the software.
You started with a straw man and then moved on to pure lies.