All that's required is that "society" invent an alternative format.
Not true at this point. There are many alternative formats to Word, but you cannot exchange data with a company that uses Word reliably. Since Word has a virtual monopoly the only alternatives are for a huge sea change where a majority of companies, government offices and individuals who use Word to switch to a different format and/or abandon Word or to be stuck with Word. The same is true of Excel and a number of other programs.
Word comes with various data export formats, and you or anybody else can convert all of your Word files to plain text, HTML, or several other data formats *right now*.
I suppose this may be true if you're talking about text information only. You cannot reliably export tables, formatting and other information. Since I consider formatting part of my data, your argument fails. In fact, you really can't reliably export to any of these formats if your document is very complicated. Again, as I mentioned earlier, even this is moot if Microsoft successfully switches to a subscription model where Word won't even start up if you're not currently subscribing.
Even if you could reliably convert all your information to another format, if 80% of the market is using a proprietary format that you cannot access without Word, you're pretty much up shit creek if you don't use Word, aren't you? If you're a supplier that wants to sell to Chrysler, and they want your pricing in Excel format - guess what? You've got to buck up for Excel. If a government office standardizes on a proprietary format, every supplier has to have that program. For my home use, I'm not locked in to Word or any proprietary program at all - until I want to write a book for a company like Osborne/McGraw-Hill that requires Word docs, or submit a resume to recruiters that are requiring Word docs. The features in Word aren't what keep people locked in to it - it's the file formats. I haven't met many people who actually like Word or any of the Office programs, they use them because the file formats are dominant and because Microsoft obfuscates the formats so much that it's virtually impossible for any other company to completely decipher the format so their program can reliably import and export the program.
I didn't invest 10 years of my life on a project just to have governmnet rip it away from me and say "Sorry pal, we're forcing that into the public domain."
The question, though, is whether your right to profit outweighs society's interest in being able to exchange data without paying outrageous prices for software, the most obvious example being Word doc files. The proprietary file format is what keeps people locked into Word, and it costs our government, businesses, schools and individuals billions of dollars annually. All that for the profit of one company.
You might spend 10 years creating a file format, but the bottom line is that to make money off of it, it has to be used with some program that customers use to store, create or manipulate data that they own - they should not be restricted in ways that they can access that data, which is the upshot of a proprietary file format. I agree that people should have the right to profit from their inventions, but not in a situation that puts the majority of society at a severe disadvantage.
Also - many people would argue that putting file formats in the public domain would have a "chilling effect" on the development of new file formats. I heartily disagree with that. We've already seen a number of file formats developed for Open Source / Free Software programs, or developed by consortiums where many universities and businesses sponsor the development of standards for their mutual interest. This is far preferable to the development of formats by companies that then try to monopolize a market and charge outrageous prices for their software. Yes, it might slow down development, but is that a bad thing? I think not. The cost of upgrading software to keep up with software upgrades that are driven by profit motives instead of actual technological necessity is draining the budgets of schools, businesses and individuals who have to keep up with this endless cycle. Something that would slow this cycle would be of enormous benefit to the vast majority of society - it would be harmful only to those companies like Microsoft that depend on perpetual upgrades for revenue. I can't say I'd weep for them.
This discussion is particularly timely now that Microsoft is trying to pioneer subscription software. If you can't buy the program outright, and a company can shut off your access to data you own at any time, the format should be open to allow people access to their data through other means. I can easily see a scenario with Microsoft holding businesses hostage and raising their subscription prices every six months.
Even 5 years is too long to wait to be able to get at your own data.
Re:Yet Another Linux Distribution
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United Linux is Here
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The US may think of themselves as the center of the world, but sometimes that just boils down to ignorance (or arrogance;-)...
What you perceive as arrogance or ignorance is neither, usually. Many times people in the U.S. fail to take a world view of things like this because it doesn't matter. SuSE may be very, very popular in Europe - but it's a bit player here. It really doesn't matter one damn bit to someone in St. Louis or Seattle how popular a brand is in Berlin or Tokyo if it's marginal here.
The same goes for Windows vs Linux. Unfortunately the U.S. is far behind other contries in adopting Linux. The unfortunate reality in the U.S. is that if you're looking for a job or planning an IT strategy Microsoft products are going to be a large part of that compared to a business in Europe that might be able to ignore Microsoft completely. That doesn't mean someone's ignorant of the situation in Europe - it simply doesn't matter to someone in the U.S. because it's not the situation here. Unless it applies to you, it's basically just useless abstract knowledge.
I'm not saying that the average person in the U.S. couldn't stand to know a bit more about the rest of the world, but you're just pursuing a personal bias here.
That ALL costs money, and lots of it. So much, in fact, that if a particular artist doesn't make it BIG most record labels lose their pants.
Yes, it all costs money. But, the costs don't add up to $18 per CD. The markup on CDs is tremendous - the record companies are making huge profits. They revert most of their costs back to the artist, so if an album does sell, all of their costs end up coming out of the artist's pocket - not the label's.
There's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes with the money that you're paying.
Damn straight. The record companies use their profits to pay payola to big conglomerates like Clear Channel and to MTV to get their poster-boys played in prime time. The RIAA uses it to buy congresscritters so they can pass the next version of the DMCA or CBDTPA and further harm their customers. They pay Mariah Carey $30 million to dump her from the label. Now, if they'd paid that to keep her from recording again, they'd have gotten their money's worth... but just to dump her from the label? Don't try to convince me that the record companies are hurting, okay? It isn't going to fly.
In all seriousness - yes, the recording business is costly. Some artists that are established do make some unusual and costly demands. (The new guys rarely get to.) There are a lot of behind the scenes costs even for little labels that are nice to their customers like Alternative Tentacles - but the fact is that they still make a huge profit margin on CDs when they charge $18 a pop for them. It's a gamble, of course. Major labels lose money on some albums and make money on others. If you wanted to look at it on a per-album basis there's just no justification for charging $18 for "Dark Side of the Moon" since they've covered all of the costs associated with that album long, long ago. On the other hand, if a CD bombs, they may actually lose money on that particular album even at $50 a pop. But that's not how it breaks down at the end of the fiscal year - though that's how they decide to cut artists.
It's also a fact that they would probably do a better job of promoting artists and selling music if they charged less per CD and sold more CDs. Yes, their per CD profit margin would go down, but I guarantee that if they were selling CDs at $9.99 a pop instead of $18 they'd make even more money in the long run - and everyone would be happier. The customers would be able to buy more music to make them happy, and more artists would sell records.
Ever heard of a record label that doesn't have a big name artist signed?
I guess that depends on your definition of "big name artist." Alternative Tentacles comes to mind, but they don't have any top forty groups on their label. Another label is Omnium, "Boiled in Lead" is on that one - though I'd hardly call them "big name" even if they deserve to be.
Re:Decrease length of time copyright applies
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Fair IP Laws?
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People who write books, etc, are paid differently than most folks - generally an author is awarded a small advance on a book and hopes to do well on royalties. A small percentage of authors get large advances and a fairly decent amount in royalties, but they're the exception. It's assumed, however, that an author isn't really being paid completely up-front for their work. So, removing copyright protection after the death of the author could be perceived as a disincentive for someone to take up a career as an author.
For example, if I spend two years working on a book that will probably sell well over a period of time the advance money I get will probably be much less than I could earn in the same period of time working another job. When normal people work a regular job for two years, they get all of the earnings that they created during those two years (minus taxes, of course - and authors aren't exempt there). There's no logical reason why an author or their family shouldn't get the same benefit for that work.
Of course, a professional author should also carry life insurance as well - there's no guarantee that their work will sell, but if it does, their family should get the benefit of it. If a person makes their living by investing in real estate, no realist would suggest that as soon as they die their property should be turned over to the public domain instead of to their family. What an author creates is not tangible, but they should have control over it for a certain period of time. If that period of time happens to be longer than their lifespan, then they should be able to pass it on to their family just as they would material goods. Perhaps it should be subject to the same taxes as real estate and so forth - but dumping it in the public domain instantly is not an equitable answer.
Re:Veto power over derivative works
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Fair IP Laws?
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Because he can VETO derivative works. The VETO power over derivative works is the biggest problem with copyright.
First, I believe we're talking about two different things here. I'm talking about a copyright on a recording, I think that you're thinking of the rights to the music and lyrics. Generally artists do not forbid other musicians the rights to perform their songs, although there is a fee attached. Having the power to veto the use of a specific recording, I don't see that as a problem. For example, I'm GLAD that someone can deny Nike the right to use a Dead Kennedys song in their advertising. They can probably easily negotiate the rights to the music and lyrics, but they can't use the original recording. This is a GOOD thing.
Once copyright expires, he can profit off it. His label may still own the trademark on WINGS(TM). Besides, nothing in the United States Constitution gives authors and inventors a right to their creations.
Nothing in the constitution forbids murder, either. Copyright law is going to go beyond what's in the constitution no matter how you slice it. If copyright and patent law were actually reformed, it should be assumed that trademark law would also be looked at similarly. Besides, there are many, many ways around trademarks.
Many, many books aren't made into movies ever because the author's estate, even sixty years after the author has died, refuses to negotiate a licence.
First, an author should have the right to forbid a movie to be made from their book during their lifetime. Second, in my original post, I proposed a limit of 50 years or death of the author - whichever comes last. So, if I publish a book tomorrow and live 51 years the book would instantly become public domain the moment I expire. So, this would not happen under my proposal. I agree that it's ridiculous for someone to write a book, live fifty years and then extend the copyright an additional 60 years past their death.
This will happen with any copyright term. The Walt Disney Company often sits on a book and releases its derivative work within six months after the copyright has expired worldwide. Examples include Pinocchio and The Jungle Book.
True - but if people were clamoring for the right to use Pinocchio then someone would have offered the copyright holder a deal before that. If a big company like Disney is willing to wait 50+ years, okay. If it's a hot property, someone will make me a deal before that. Ten years is too short, though. Hell, take Spider-Man for example. Even with the rights, it took more than a decade to get the film into production and made. Had Spider-Man been under a ten-year copyright, Marvel would never have seen any proceeds from the film because their copyright would have expired before the film was ever made. Sony would still have made a killing, but Marvel would have been screwed. (I don't actually know what the deal between Marvel and Sony is - Marvel may have gotten screwed anyway but they at least have the potential to get royalties here...)
If so, the right to veto should expire before the right to royalty expires. Even then, it's not even necessary because trademarks on the characters' names can achieve the same effect.
Not exactly true. Copyright gives control over derivative works, whereas Trademark is more specific. Using the Spider-Man example, Spider-Man is copyrighted as a character and trademarked as a name and indica. No copyright control? Fine, I'll make a movie about Arachnid-Guy, and he'll have a costume with a spider, but the spider will look just slightly different than the spider on Spider-Man's costume. Also, it's easy to trademark "Spider-Man" or "Wolverine" as a character - harder to trademark "Owen Meany" or "Huck Finn" when there are probably dozens if not hundreds of Owen Meanys running around. The names in novels would have to be damn bizarre to allow for trademark protection.
Again, I don't think that an artist should ever lose control over their creation during their lifetime - unless of course they sign it away of their own free will. I say this in part because I value the work of many authors and would hate to see what would happen if anyone could produce a knock-off work using exactly the same characters and so forth. I also do not believe that it would prove a horrible imposition on society not to be able to use those characters for that period of time.
However, I would support an "amateur" clause that allows for things like Internet fan fiction. I think that it's disgusting for someone like Lucas to crack down on a short story that takes place in the Star Wars universe when it's not being produced for profit and it does not harm the franchise directly.
Re:Decrease length of time copyright applies
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Fair IP Laws?
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Code is functional, music is art. Some code may be artistically done - but its primary function is to be useful, which means that people need access to code in a way that they don't need access to music.
And why on earth would an author's offspring have any rights to their parents work?
Because the assumption is that if I write a book, I'm using that money to support myself and family if I have one. If I should die prematurely, that work can still support my family. The idea of a copyright outliving the author isn't so much for the children of the author as for the author themselves - I want the piece of mind that my heirs will be taken care of if something happens to me. I don't think that this is unfair so long as there are limits. For example, if I were married or had a family and I wrote a best-selling classic literary work to be published in 2003 - then I died in 2033 my wife and family would still have twenty years of royalties to look forward to under my plan. I think this is fair.
Logic, unfortunately, does not override the law.
Re:Decrease length of time copyright applies
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Fair IP Laws?
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Why should you be able to make money on a work that you created more than 10 years ago?
Why shouldn't I? I don't see how it harms society for, say, Paul McCartney to retain the rights to his work for his life span. He created his work (in conjunction with others, in some cases) and he should get the benefit from it. The benefit to society, should his work become public domain in ten years, is negligible because more than likely they'll pay almost the same price for a Wings album royalties or no. The mark-up for royalties is negligible. In a scenario where McCartney's work falls into public domain in a decade, the only person being cut out of the process will be McCartney and the label that signed him. The distributor, music store and so forth still get their pound of flesh - and they didn't deal with the risk of financing the album's production or create the material. So it offends common sense to say that they should be able to profit from his work, but he cannot. However, at some point you have to say "okay, the artist is dead and it's been 50 years since the record was created. The label has long since recouped their investment and the family of the artist is living in Tahiti off of the collected royalties. Society has done right by these people, now it's time for them to do right by society."
What is the benefit to society (which is the primary purpose of copyright) in allowing you to be the sole benefactor of creating a work for such a long period of time?
As mentioned in my previous post, the benefit is that it will continue to support some musicians or artists so that they can keep creating. Sometimes an author or musician creates one really popular work and they're never commercially popular again - but it doesn't mean that they don't continue to produce valuable work. Sometimes an author writes a book that gathers dust for years and then suddenly becomes popular. If they're dead before that happens, well, that's too bad - no amount of legislation can solve that problem... but if they are alive to see it, then they should be able to make some money off their work. Many, many books aren't made into movies until after they've been out for ten years. If you write in that kind of hard limit, I can easily see studios just sitting on a book until 10 years have passed and then making the movie, just to avoid paying for the rights to the movie - or using the 10 year rule to hard-nose negotiations. "Well, we'll pay you $10,000 for this script that we would have paid $100,000 for two years ago. But if you're not willing to accept $10K, we'll just sit on it and wait for the copyright to expire. We're going to pay the star of the movie $10mil, but you just wrote the story so screw you."
The same with optioned scripts, plays and whatever. TV shows would no longer go into syndication soon after their run - they'd just wait ten years to screw the creators of the series and then run them into the ground.
The problems with copyright aren't that a person can make a profit off of their work for life - it's that large corporations are basically turning copyright into an infinite thing - so that works NEVER fall into the public domain. That's wrong. At some point a work should become public domain, but I don't think it should be before the artist has passed on - unless they choose to put a work in the public domain, of course.
Take Mickey Mouse, for example. For the character of Mickey Mouse to be perpetually owned by Disney does harm the society eventually because the character has become a cultural icon. At some point, he should become free game for everyone. Certainly, Walt Disney and the Disney corporation have made their money off of Mickey by now and they've done so in part thanks to copyright protection. Now, it's time to give something back to the society that protected the work for so many years. The original creator is dead, the character has made them millions if not billions of dollars by now - and in the process he's become more than just a cartoon character, he's a part of our culture.
Oh, one other issue, and that's creative control. Forget about profit for a minute - let's look at the pure artistic side for a moment. A book or a recording should remain fairly static even after passing into the public domain - but fictional characters can be reused in a variety of works. I think that the original artist should have the say-so how that character is used as long as they live. No one should have to see their creation abused by someone else if they do not wish it. Gene Roddenberry should be able to deny another party the right to use Star Trek characters as long as he lives. Eventually, though, those characters should become public domain.
Re:Decrease length of time copyright applies
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Fair IP Laws?
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Music and software are hardly the same thing. Literary works, music and other purely creative works should at least receive protection for the life of the creator or 50 years, whichever comes last. Music doesn't lose its functionality after a few years, and I think an artist should be able to profit from their work longer than five years. In some cases, an artist may only create one or two hit singles or records - they can keep recording and creating if they can continue to collect royalties off of the popular albums, but if they lose that, then they might not be able to keep working as musicians.
So, if I write a best-seller and die after it's been published, my heirs should be able to benefit from it for a limited period of time - that would protect my spouse and children, if I had any. But I don't think that it's necessary to also take care of my grandchildren and their children off the proceeds of my work - so 50 years sounds about right to me. Non-renewable, of course.
5 years for a patent, software or other, 7 years copyright for code - with a requirement that the code be turned over to a government trust that will release it after 7 years or in the event that the company goes out of business or discontinues the product. For example, Microsoft should have to give away the code to MS-DOS and Windows 95 and earlier if they're unwilling to support or continue development on those products. I still have a copy of QuarkXPress from 1995 that I use occasionally to do my resume and such - but it's not supported by them, and I have no idea if it would even run on versions of Windows newer than 98. I don't think it will run on NT/2000, so the odds don't look good for XP. Putting the code out when a product goes obsolete would protect customers who don't see a need to upgrade.
Re:As far as patents are concerned
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Fair IP Laws?
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Ever heard of "patent pending"? Many companies release products before the technologies are actually granted a patent. Since companies are often awarded damages when a product or whatever infringes on their patent, there's no reason why a company couldn't get damages if a company steals an idea from a patent application if that patent is eventually approved.
I think the peer-review / public comment idea has some serious merit. It could potentially be abused, but the current system is already being horribly abused. At least this gives the public a chance to say "hey, this isn't worthy of a patent" or "hey, this has been done already." Remember, patents and IP protection are not divine rights, they're tools our society invented to promote creativity. Right now, they stifle it instead. Society has the right to change the system to best benefit society as a whole overall. In this case, patent and IP law has become skewed in favor of large corporations and is damaging the rights and interests of the majority of society (even if they don't really realize it...). It's time for a drastic change.
If in Intel wins, it will set a precedent that should make it very easy to sue spammers. On the other hand, this is an example of a large company throwing a tantrum, and they shouldn't be rewarded.
If they win, I'd be willing to bet it will eventually come back to bite them in the ass.
Standing orders sounds more like something you'd want for a professional finance application, not a personal finance app. I'm not an accountant, so I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that when you say "direct debit" you're not referring to a debit card transaction or whatever, since I believe most personal apps do handle now - which leads me to believe this is also a feature for a professional/business app, not a personal finance application.
I know that there are at least one or two professional finance apps for Linux, but off the top of my head I don't recall what they are - I certainly don't have a need for such things.
if you would have specified what it is that Gnucash won't do that Quicken does. "Isn't up to par..." doesn't really cut it. I've used Gnucash a little bit, and it seems to have everything that I would want - but my personal finances aren't so complicated that I can't manage them in my check register and savings book. I'm not really disciplined enough to enter every little thing into Gnucash often enough to make it worthwhile. My personal theory of finance is to earn way more money than I spend and always have enough in the bank to cover purchases, and not to have to rely on credit cards.
If there are specific features you're looking for, you should have mentioned them. Right now this is just another in a series of useless "Ask Slashdot" questions that indicate the poster didn't do any footwork on their own or even think very hard about the question.
Don't you people think that stealing from the DVD playback machine makers' is also illegal?
Excuse me? Where the hell do you get this? Using DeCSS to play a DVD on Linux isn't stealing from anyone. If I have a computer with a DVD drive and I want to play a DVD under Linux it doesn't harm anyone.
Can you back this up? I've never heard of an employer getting back wages from someone who lied on an application. Can you get fired for it? Sure. Is it fraud? Maybe, but I've never heard of anyone having to give up past wages and I've certainly never heard of anyone going to jail for such a thing. If you can show some evidence of this claim, I'd really like to see it.
Give in? No, they're going to put enough companies at odds with their position that they'll be legislated into licensing the music.
The RIAA is somewhat powerful, politically and financially - but going up against the computer (hardware and software) industry, ISPs, the artists themselves and basically everyone who listens to music is a losing battle. They're making a lot of enemies and no allies - politicians are getting heat for siding with the RIAA. The RIAA is completely unnecessary - and by making so much noise, they're causing a lot of people to ask why they exist and why so much money should be being diverted to the RIAA's coffers. It's my prediction that Hilary Rosen is going to be looking for a new job in a few years, because the RIAA is going to go the way of Enron and Andersen. This particular idea may or may not work out, but they're making it clear to everyone that the continued existence of the RIAA is not in the best interest of the artists, the customers or other companies that deal with music in some way.
About seven years ago I started classes at North East Missouri State, now Truman University, and we were tagged with random email/usernames like "T867" and "S996" - I worked at a college later that gave faculty and staff firstname+last initial email addresses like "joeb" and so forth - but the students got first initial, student ID, last initial or something like that. I believe the admin had whipped up a script to create usernames and such from a list of students, and they'd do a batch the first week of classes.
You could easily look up email addresses by name using a Web directory, but you couldn't just guess what another student's email address would be.
Applications, hell. They should just stick with hardware. They make fine keyboards and mice (though Logitech also makes some nice input devices) but they suck at software. They'd be happier with hardware anyway, no "piracy" to worry about.
So don't use Red Hat. You can get a workable install with X and a few apps with Debian, Slackware or any number of other distros. (Maybe you can with RH as well, but I don't use it so I can't really say one way or another.) You could also go the *BSD route - I expect you can get a fairly slim install with X and a few apps with one of the BSDs.
Generally speaking, having the default install consume 1 or 2 GB isn't really a problem for me - I don't have any systems with a disk smaller than 6.4GB up and running, with the exception of a floppy-based firewall. I don't really think that Red Hat is focusing on the slim install user - but other distros do.
Sure, some of Microsoft's competitors are using this as a way to harm Microsoft. This is the first time Microsoft has been even slightly vulnerable since Windows 95 has been released. Sorry, but I don't buy the whole "oh, they couldn't make it in the marketplace" argument. Admittedly, some companies that have complained about Microsoft may have failed eventually - but Oracle and Sun are not amongst them.
If you're one of those idiots who think there should be no rules in business then let's take that to the logical conclusion. If someone gets in my way in business, I have every right to have a guy named Vinnie show up on their doorstep and put a moon roof in their skull. If you don't like that option, then get real and admit that business is legislated and Microsoft has broken a quite a few rules in doing business. I'd be happy to play it either way, though.
The court has already decided that Microsoft broke the law - now is the time to decide what the just punishment is and what will prevent future abuses. It is fully acceptible that the punishment should harm Microsoft's business and benefit their competitors - it is the level of harm that needs to be decided.
When a person is convicted of a crime - as Microsoft has been - the court has a responsibility to mete out punishment that will deter the criminal from doing so again, protect society from that criminal and set an example for anyone else who might consider breaking the law. Therefore Microsoft should receive a punishment that is stiff enough to make Bill and company think twice before abusing their position, protect their competitors and the public to a reasonable extent and make it unattractive for other companies that hold monopolies now or in the future to follow Microsoft's example.
You have a point, but at least we'd know approximately how many people went to see a movie instead of the dollar figure. My point is that it's entirely likely that more people actually turned out to see The Empire Strikes Back than Spider-Man, but ticket prices were way cheaper when Empire was in theatres.
I'd rather see information on how many tickets were sold than how many dollars a film grosses.
Sure, the studio cares about the money - but ticket sales aren't a good benchmark of how many people went to see Spider-Man vs how many people went to see ET or even The Phantom Menace. The ticket prices have gone up drastically since ET was released, and slightly since TPM (and possibly even Harry Potter). That being the case, the dollar figure doesn't allow a fair comparison between movies. Maybe movies that open the same weekend, but not movies that open years apart.
Also, I doubt that AoTC will be a three-day opener. Don't the Star Wars films always open on Wednesday? So, comparing those films opening gross will be apples to oranges as well...
masses of people would be thrown into poverty whenever a corporation collapses
A lot of people are thrown into poverty, or near it, when a corporation collapses. It's just the wrong people. Ken Lay is still sitting pretty while thousands of former Enron employees are looking at missing house payments. If the system worked, the executives who stand to gain obscene amounts of wealth when stock prices are high should also bear the burden when the company goes down the drain. There are plenty of incentives for CEOs and such these days, but damn few disincentives.
I understand the original intent of the law - to protect a business owner who invests money into a business from losing his house if the business fails. But there are some consequences that individuals should not be shielded from. When an executive deliberately manipulates earnings statements to drive the price of a stock up so he can sell his stock at a higher price, he should be held fiscally and legally responsible. All to often it's the corporation and the grunts who take the hit, not the asshole who scoops up $10 mil from selling inflated stock.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true at this point. There are many alternative formats to Word, but you cannot exchange data with a company that uses Word reliably. Since Word has a virtual monopoly the only alternatives are for a huge sea change where a majority of companies, government offices and individuals who use Word to switch to a different format and/or abandon Word or to be stuck with Word. The same is true of Excel and a number of other programs.
Word comes with various data export formats, and you or anybody else can convert all of your Word files to plain text, HTML, or several other data formats *right now*.
I suppose this may be true if you're talking about text information only. You cannot reliably export tables, formatting and other information. Since I consider formatting part of my data, your argument fails. In fact, you really can't reliably export to any of these formats if your document is very complicated. Again, as I mentioned earlier, even this is moot if Microsoft successfully switches to a subscription model where Word won't even start up if you're not currently subscribing.
Even if you could reliably convert all your information to another format, if 80% of the market is using a proprietary format that you cannot access without Word, you're pretty much up shit creek if you don't use Word, aren't you? If you're a supplier that wants to sell to Chrysler, and they want your pricing in Excel format - guess what? You've got to buck up for Excel. If a government office standardizes on a proprietary format, every supplier has to have that program. For my home use, I'm not locked in to Word or any proprietary program at all - until I want to write a book for a company like Osborne/McGraw-Hill that requires Word docs, or submit a resume to recruiters that are requiring Word docs. The features in Word aren't what keep people locked in to it - it's the file formats. I haven't met many people who actually like Word or any of the Office programs, they use them because the file formats are dominant and because Microsoft obfuscates the formats so much that it's virtually impossible for any other company to completely decipher the format so their program can reliably import and export the program.
I didn't invest 10 years of my life on a project just to have governmnet rip it away from me and say "Sorry pal, we're forcing that into the public domain."
The question, though, is whether your right to profit outweighs society's interest in being able to exchange data without paying outrageous prices for software, the most obvious example being Word doc files. The proprietary file format is what keeps people locked into Word, and it costs our government, businesses, schools and individuals billions of dollars annually. All that for the profit of one company.
You might spend 10 years creating a file format, but the bottom line is that to make money off of it, it has to be used with some program that customers use to store, create or manipulate data that they own - they should not be restricted in ways that they can access that data, which is the upshot of a proprietary file format. I agree that people should have the right to profit from their inventions, but not in a situation that puts the majority of society at a severe disadvantage.
Also - many people would argue that putting file formats in the public domain would have a "chilling effect" on the development of new file formats. I heartily disagree with that. We've already seen a number of file formats developed for Open Source / Free Software programs, or developed by consortiums where many universities and businesses sponsor the development of standards for their mutual interest. This is far preferable to the development of formats by companies that then try to monopolize a market and charge outrageous prices for their software. Yes, it might slow down development, but is that a bad thing? I think not. The cost of upgrading software to keep up with software upgrades that are driven by profit motives instead of actual technological necessity is draining the budgets of schools, businesses and individuals who have to keep up with this endless cycle. Something that would slow this cycle would be of enormous benefit to the vast majority of society - it would be harmful only to those companies like Microsoft that depend on perpetual upgrades for revenue. I can't say I'd weep for them.
This discussion is particularly timely now that Microsoft is trying to pioneer subscription software. If you can't buy the program outright, and a company can shut off your access to data you own at any time, the format should be open to allow people access to their data through other means. I can easily see a scenario with Microsoft holding businesses hostage and raising their subscription prices every six months.
Even 5 years is too long to wait to be able to get at your own data.
The US may think of themselves as the center of the world, but sometimes that just boils down to ignorance (or arrogance ;-)...
What you perceive as arrogance or ignorance is neither, usually. Many times people in the U.S. fail to take a world view of things like this because it doesn't matter. SuSE may be very, very popular in Europe - but it's a bit player here. It really doesn't matter one damn bit to someone in St. Louis or Seattle how popular a brand is in Berlin or Tokyo if it's marginal here.
The same goes for Windows vs Linux. Unfortunately the U.S. is far behind other contries in adopting Linux. The unfortunate reality in the U.S. is that if you're looking for a job or planning an IT strategy Microsoft products are going to be a large part of that compared to a business in Europe that might be able to ignore Microsoft completely. That doesn't mean someone's ignorant of the situation in Europe - it simply doesn't matter to someone in the U.S. because it's not the situation here. Unless it applies to you, it's basically just useless abstract knowledge.
I'm not saying that the average person in the U.S. couldn't stand to know a bit more about the rest of the world, but you're just pursuing a personal bias here.
That ALL costs money, and lots of it. So much, in fact, that if a particular artist doesn't make it BIG most record labels lose their pants.
Yes, it all costs money. But, the costs don't add up to $18 per CD. The markup on CDs is tremendous - the record companies are making huge profits. They revert most of their costs back to the artist, so if an album does sell, all of their costs end up coming out of the artist's pocket - not the label's.
There's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes with the money that you're paying.
Damn straight. The record companies use their profits to pay payola to big conglomerates like Clear Channel and to MTV to get their poster-boys played in prime time. The RIAA uses it to buy congresscritters so they can pass the next version of the DMCA or CBDTPA and further harm their customers. They pay Mariah Carey $30 million to dump her from the label. Now, if they'd paid that to keep her from recording again, they'd have gotten their money's worth... but just to dump her from the label? Don't try to convince me that the record companies are hurting, okay? It isn't going to fly.
In all seriousness - yes, the recording business is costly. Some artists that are established do make some unusual and costly demands. (The new guys rarely get to.) There are a lot of behind the scenes costs even for little labels that are nice to their customers like Alternative Tentacles - but the fact is that they still make a huge profit margin on CDs when they charge $18 a pop for them. It's a gamble, of course. Major labels lose money on some albums and make money on others. If you wanted to look at it on a per-album basis there's just no justification for charging $18 for "Dark Side of the Moon" since they've covered all of the costs associated with that album long, long ago. On the other hand, if a CD bombs, they may actually lose money on that particular album even at $50 a pop. But that's not how it breaks down at the end of the fiscal year - though that's how they decide to cut artists.
It's also a fact that they would probably do a better job of promoting artists and selling music if they charged less per CD and sold more CDs. Yes, their per CD profit margin would go down, but I guarantee that if they were selling CDs at $9.99 a pop instead of $18 they'd make even more money in the long run - and everyone would be happier. The customers would be able to buy more music to make them happy, and more artists would sell records.
Ever heard of a record label that doesn't have a big name artist signed?
I guess that depends on your definition of "big name artist." Alternative Tentacles comes to mind, but they don't have any top forty groups on their label. Another label is Omnium, "Boiled in Lead" is on that one - though I'd hardly call them "big name" even if they deserve to be.
People who write books, etc, are paid differently than most folks - generally an author is awarded a small advance on a book and hopes to do well on royalties. A small percentage of authors get large advances and a fairly decent amount in royalties, but they're the exception. It's assumed, however, that an author isn't really being paid completely up-front for their work. So, removing copyright protection after the death of the author could be perceived as a disincentive for someone to take up a career as an author.
For example, if I spend two years working on a book that will probably sell well over a period of time the advance money I get will probably be much less than I could earn in the same period of time working another job. When normal people work a regular job for two years, they get all of the earnings that they created during those two years (minus taxes, of course - and authors aren't exempt there). There's no logical reason why an author or their family shouldn't get the same benefit for that work.
Of course, a professional author should also carry life insurance as well - there's no guarantee that their work will sell, but if it does, their family should get the benefit of it. If a person makes their living by investing in real estate, no realist would suggest that as soon as they die their property should be turned over to the public domain instead of to their family. What an author creates is not tangible, but they should have control over it for a certain period of time. If that period of time happens to be longer than their lifespan, then they should be able to pass it on to their family just as they would material goods. Perhaps it should be subject to the same taxes as real estate and so forth - but dumping it in the public domain instantly is not an equitable answer.
Because he can VETO derivative works. The VETO power over derivative works is the biggest problem with copyright.
First, I believe we're talking about two different things here. I'm talking about a copyright on a recording, I think that you're thinking of the rights to the music and lyrics. Generally artists do not forbid other musicians the rights to perform their songs, although there is a fee attached. Having the power to veto the use of a specific recording, I don't see that as a problem. For example, I'm GLAD that someone can deny Nike the right to use a Dead Kennedys song in their advertising. They can probably easily negotiate the rights to the music and lyrics, but they can't use the original recording. This is a GOOD thing.
Once copyright expires, he can profit off it. His label may still own the trademark on WINGS(TM). Besides, nothing in the United States Constitution gives authors and inventors a right to their creations.
Nothing in the constitution forbids murder, either. Copyright law is going to go beyond what's in the constitution no matter how you slice it. If copyright and patent law were actually reformed, it should be assumed that trademark law would also be looked at similarly. Besides, there are many, many ways around trademarks.
Many, many books aren't made into movies ever because the author's estate, even sixty years after the author has died, refuses to negotiate a licence.
First, an author should have the right to forbid a movie to be made from their book during their lifetime. Second, in my original post, I proposed a limit of 50 years or death of the author - whichever comes last. So, if I publish a book tomorrow and live 51 years the book would instantly become public domain the moment I expire. So, this would not happen under my proposal. I agree that it's ridiculous for someone to write a book, live fifty years and then extend the copyright an additional 60 years past their death.
This will happen with any copyright term. The Walt Disney Company often sits on a book and releases its derivative work within six months after the copyright has expired worldwide. Examples include Pinocchio and The Jungle Book.
True - but if people were clamoring for the right to use Pinocchio then someone would have offered the copyright holder a deal before that. If a big company like Disney is willing to wait 50+ years, okay. If it's a hot property, someone will make me a deal before that. Ten years is too short, though. Hell, take Spider-Man for example. Even with the rights, it took more than a decade to get the film into production and made. Had Spider-Man been under a ten-year copyright, Marvel would never have seen any proceeds from the film because their copyright would have expired before the film was ever made. Sony would still have made a killing, but Marvel would have been screwed. (I don't actually know what the deal between Marvel and Sony is - Marvel may have gotten screwed anyway but they at least have the potential to get royalties here...)
If so, the right to veto should expire before the right to royalty expires. Even then, it's not even necessary because trademarks on the characters' names can achieve the same effect.
Not exactly true. Copyright gives control over derivative works, whereas Trademark is more specific. Using the Spider-Man example, Spider-Man is copyrighted as a character and trademarked as a name and indica. No copyright control? Fine, I'll make a movie about Arachnid-Guy, and he'll have a costume with a spider, but the spider will look just slightly different than the spider on Spider-Man's costume. Also, it's easy to trademark "Spider-Man" or "Wolverine" as a character - harder to trademark "Owen Meany" or "Huck Finn" when there are probably dozens if not hundreds of Owen Meanys running around. The names in novels would have to be damn bizarre to allow for trademark protection.
Again, I don't think that an artist should ever lose control over their creation during their lifetime - unless of course they sign it away of their own free will. I say this in part because I value the work of many authors and would hate to see what would happen if anyone could produce a knock-off work using exactly the same characters and so forth. I also do not believe that it would prove a horrible imposition on society not to be able to use those characters for that period of time.
However, I would support an "amateur" clause that allows for things like Internet fan fiction. I think that it's disgusting for someone like Lucas to crack down on a short story that takes place in the Star Wars universe when it's not being produced for profit and it does not harm the franchise directly.
Code is functional, music is art. Some code may be artistically done - but its primary function is to be useful, which means that people need access to code in a way that they don't need access to music.
And why on earth would an author's offspring have any rights to their parents work?
Because the assumption is that if I write a book, I'm using that money to support myself and family if I have one. If I should die prematurely, that work can still support my family. The idea of a copyright outliving the author isn't so much for the children of the author as for the author themselves - I want the piece of mind that my heirs will be taken care of if something happens to me. I don't think that this is unfair so long as there are limits. For example, if I were married or had a family and I wrote a best-selling classic literary work to be published in 2003 - then I died in 2033 my wife and family would still have twenty years of royalties to look forward to under my plan. I think this is fair.
Logic, unfortunately, does not override the law.
Why should you be able to make money on a work that you created more than 10 years ago?
Why shouldn't I? I don't see how it harms society for, say, Paul McCartney to retain the rights to his work for his life span. He created his work (in conjunction with others, in some cases) and he should get the benefit from it. The benefit to society, should his work become public domain in ten years, is negligible because more than likely they'll pay almost the same price for a Wings album royalties or no. The mark-up for royalties is negligible. In a scenario where McCartney's work falls into public domain in a decade, the only person being cut out of the process will be McCartney and the label that signed him. The distributor, music store and so forth still get their pound of flesh - and they didn't deal with the risk of financing the album's production or create the material. So it offends common sense to say that they should be able to profit from his work, but he cannot. However, at some point you have to say "okay, the artist is dead and it's been 50 years since the record was created. The label has long since recouped their investment and the family of the artist is living in Tahiti off of the collected royalties. Society has done right by these people, now it's time for them to do right by society."
What is the benefit to society (which is the primary purpose of copyright) in allowing you to be the sole benefactor of creating a work for such a long period of time?
As mentioned in my previous post, the benefit is that it will continue to support some musicians or artists so that they can keep creating. Sometimes an author or musician creates one really popular work and they're never commercially popular again - but it doesn't mean that they don't continue to produce valuable work. Sometimes an author writes a book that gathers dust for years and then suddenly becomes popular. If they're dead before that happens, well, that's too bad - no amount of legislation can solve that problem... but if they are alive to see it, then they should be able to make some money off their work. Many, many books aren't made into movies until after they've been out for ten years. If you write in that kind of hard limit, I can easily see studios just sitting on a book until 10 years have passed and then making the movie, just to avoid paying for the rights to the movie - or using the 10 year rule to hard-nose negotiations. "Well, we'll pay you $10,000 for this script that we would have paid $100,000 for two years ago. But if you're not willing to accept $10K, we'll just sit on it and wait for the copyright to expire. We're going to pay the star of the movie $10mil, but you just wrote the story so screw you."
The same with optioned scripts, plays and whatever. TV shows would no longer go into syndication soon after their run - they'd just wait ten years to screw the creators of the series and then run them into the ground.
The problems with copyright aren't that a person can make a profit off of their work for life - it's that large corporations are basically turning copyright into an infinite thing - so that works NEVER fall into the public domain. That's wrong. At some point a work should become public domain, but I don't think it should be before the artist has passed on - unless they choose to put a work in the public domain, of course.
Take Mickey Mouse, for example. For the character of Mickey Mouse to be perpetually owned by Disney does harm the society eventually because the character has become a cultural icon. At some point, he should become free game for everyone. Certainly, Walt Disney and the Disney corporation have made their money off of Mickey by now and they've done so in part thanks to copyright protection. Now, it's time to give something back to the society that protected the work for so many years. The original creator is dead, the character has made them millions if not billions of dollars by now - and in the process he's become more than just a cartoon character, he's a part of our culture.
Oh, one other issue, and that's creative control. Forget about profit for a minute - let's look at the pure artistic side for a moment. A book or a recording should remain fairly static even after passing into the public domain - but fictional characters can be reused in a variety of works. I think that the original artist should have the say-so how that character is used as long as they live. No one should have to see their creation abused by someone else if they do not wish it. Gene Roddenberry should be able to deny another party the right to use Star Trek characters as long as he lives. Eventually, though, those characters should become public domain.
Music and software are hardly the same thing. Literary works, music and other purely creative works should at least receive protection for the life of the creator or 50 years, whichever comes last. Music doesn't lose its functionality after a few years, and I think an artist should be able to profit from their work longer than five years. In some cases, an artist may only create one or two hit singles or records - they can keep recording and creating if they can continue to collect royalties off of the popular albums, but if they lose that, then they might not be able to keep working as musicians.
So, if I write a best-seller and die after it's been published, my heirs should be able to benefit from it for a limited period of time - that would protect my spouse and children, if I had any. But I don't think that it's necessary to also take care of my grandchildren and their children off the proceeds of my work - so 50 years sounds about right to me. Non-renewable, of course.
5 years for a patent, software or other, 7 years copyright for code - with a requirement that the code be turned over to a government trust that will release it after 7 years or in the event that the company goes out of business or discontinues the product. For example, Microsoft should have to give away the code to MS-DOS and Windows 95 and earlier if they're unwilling to support or continue development on those products. I still have a copy of QuarkXPress from 1995 that I use occasionally to do my resume and such - but it's not supported by them, and I have no idea if it would even run on versions of Windows newer than 98. I don't think it will run on NT/2000, so the odds don't look good for XP. Putting the code out when a product goes obsolete would protect customers who don't see a need to upgrade.
Ever heard of "patent pending"? Many companies release products before the technologies are actually granted a patent. Since companies are often awarded damages when a product or whatever infringes on their patent, there's no reason why a company couldn't get damages if a company steals an idea from a patent application if that patent is eventually approved.
I think the peer-review / public comment idea has some serious merit. It could potentially be abused, but the current system is already being horribly abused. At least this gives the public a chance to say "hey, this isn't worthy of a patent" or "hey, this has been done already." Remember, patents and IP protection are not divine rights, they're tools our society invented to promote creativity. Right now, they stifle it instead. Society has the right to change the system to best benefit society as a whole overall. In this case, patent and IP law has become skewed in favor of large corporations and is damaging the rights and interests of the majority of society (even if they don't really realize it...). It's time for a drastic change.
If in Intel wins, it will set a precedent that should make it very easy to sue spammers. On the other hand, this is an example of a large company throwing a tantrum, and they shouldn't be rewarded.
If they win, I'd be willing to bet it will eventually come back to bite them in the ass.
Standing orders sounds more like something you'd want for a professional finance application, not a personal finance app. I'm not an accountant, so I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that when you say "direct debit" you're not referring to a debit card transaction or whatever, since I believe most personal apps do handle now - which leads me to believe this is also a feature for a professional/business app, not a personal finance application.
I know that there are at least one or two professional finance apps for Linux, but off the top of my head I don't recall what they are - I certainly don't have a need for such things.
if you would have specified what it is that Gnucash won't do that Quicken does. "Isn't up to par..." doesn't really cut it. I've used Gnucash a little bit, and it seems to have everything that I would want - but my personal finances aren't so complicated that I can't manage them in my check register and savings book. I'm not really disciplined enough to enter every little thing into Gnucash often enough to make it worthwhile. My personal theory of finance is to earn way more money than I spend and always have enough in the bank to cover purchases, and not to have to rely on credit cards.
If there are specific features you're looking for, you should have mentioned them. Right now this is just another in a series of useless "Ask Slashdot" questions that indicate the poster didn't do any footwork on their own or even think very hard about the question.
Don't you people think that stealing from the DVD playback machine makers' is also illegal?
Excuse me? Where the hell do you get this? Using DeCSS to play a DVD on Linux isn't stealing from anyone. If I have a computer with a DVD drive and I want to play a DVD under Linux it doesn't harm anyone.
Wal-Mart? If you tell them you used to make $7.15 an hour, they'll offer $6.50.
Can you back this up? I've never heard of an employer getting back wages from someone who lied on an application. Can you get fired for it? Sure. Is it fraud? Maybe, but I've never heard of anyone having to give up past wages and I've certainly never heard of anyone going to jail for such a thing. If you can show some evidence of this claim, I'd really like to see it.
Give in? No, they're going to put enough companies at odds with their position that they'll be legislated into licensing the music.
The RIAA is somewhat powerful, politically and financially - but going up against the computer (hardware and software) industry, ISPs, the artists themselves and basically everyone who listens to music is a losing battle. They're making a lot of enemies and no allies - politicians are getting heat for siding with the RIAA. The RIAA is completely unnecessary - and by making so much noise, they're causing a lot of people to ask why they exist and why so much money should be being diverted to the RIAA's coffers. It's my prediction that Hilary Rosen is going to be looking for a new job in a few years, because the RIAA is going to go the way of Enron and Andersen. This particular idea may or may not work out, but they're making it clear to everyone that the continued existence of the RIAA is not in the best interest of the artists, the customers or other companies that deal with music in some way.
About seven years ago I started classes at North East Missouri State, now Truman University, and we were tagged with random email/usernames like "T867" and "S996" - I worked at a college later that gave faculty and staff firstname+last initial email addresses like "joeb" and so forth - but the students got first initial, student ID, last initial or something like that. I believe the admin had whipped up a script to create usernames and such from a list of students, and they'd do a batch the first week of classes.
You could easily look up email addresses by name using a Web directory, but you couldn't just guess what another student's email address would be.
Like it's that difficult??? I've already got tickets, no sweat required. Sheesh.
Applications, hell. They should just stick with hardware. They make fine keyboards and mice (though Logitech also makes some nice input devices) but they suck at software. They'd be happier with hardware anyway, no "piracy" to worry about.
So don't use Red Hat. You can get a workable install with X and a few apps with Debian, Slackware or any number of other distros. (Maybe you can with RH as well, but I don't use it so I can't really say one way or another.) You could also go the *BSD route - I expect you can get a fairly slim install with X and a few apps with one of the BSDs.
Generally speaking, having the default install consume 1 or 2 GB isn't really a problem for me - I don't have any systems with a disk smaller than 6.4GB up and running, with the exception of a floppy-based firewall. I don't really think that Red Hat is focusing on the slim install user - but other distros do.
Sure, some of Microsoft's competitors are using this as a way to harm Microsoft. This is the first time Microsoft has been even slightly vulnerable since Windows 95 has been released. Sorry, but I don't buy the whole "oh, they couldn't make it in the marketplace" argument. Admittedly, some companies that have complained about Microsoft may have failed eventually - but Oracle and Sun are not amongst them.
If you're one of those idiots who think there should be no rules in business then let's take that to the logical conclusion. If someone gets in my way in business, I have every right to have a guy named Vinnie show up on their doorstep and put a moon roof in their skull. If you don't like that option, then get real and admit that business is legislated and Microsoft has broken a quite a few rules in doing business. I'd be happy to play it either way, though.
The court has already decided that Microsoft broke the law - now is the time to decide what the just punishment is and what will prevent future abuses. It is fully acceptible that the punishment should harm Microsoft's business and benefit their competitors - it is the level of harm that needs to be decided.
When a person is convicted of a crime - as Microsoft has been - the court has a responsibility to mete out punishment that will deter the criminal from doing so again, protect society from that criminal and set an example for anyone else who might consider breaking the law. Therefore Microsoft should receive a punishment that is stiff enough to make Bill and company think twice before abusing their position, protect their competitors and the public to a reasonable extent and make it unattractive for other companies that hold monopolies now or in the future to follow Microsoft's example.
You have a point, but at least we'd know approximately how many people went to see a movie instead of the dollar figure. My point is that it's entirely likely that more people actually turned out to see The Empire Strikes Back than Spider-Man, but ticket prices were way cheaper when Empire was in theatres.
I'd rather see information on how many tickets were sold than how many dollars a film grosses.
Sure, the studio cares about the money - but ticket sales aren't a good benchmark of how many people went to see Spider-Man vs how many people went to see ET or even The Phantom Menace. The ticket prices have gone up drastically since ET was released, and slightly since TPM (and possibly even Harry Potter). That being the case, the dollar figure doesn't allow a fair comparison between movies. Maybe movies that open the same weekend, but not movies that open years apart.
Also, I doubt that AoTC will be a three-day opener. Don't the Star Wars films always open on Wednesday? So, comparing those films opening gross will be apples to oranges as well...
masses of people would be thrown into poverty whenever a corporation collapses
A lot of people are thrown into poverty, or near it, when a corporation collapses. It's just the wrong people. Ken Lay is still sitting pretty while thousands of former Enron employees are looking at missing house payments. If the system worked, the executives who stand to gain obscene amounts of wealth when stock prices are high should also bear the burden when the company goes down the drain. There are plenty of incentives for CEOs and such these days, but damn few disincentives.
I understand the original intent of the law - to protect a business owner who invests money into a business from losing his house if the business fails. But there are some consequences that individuals should not be shielded from. When an executive deliberately manipulates earnings statements to drive the price of a stock up so he can sell his stock at a higher price, he should be held fiscally and legally responsible. All to often it's the corporation and the grunts who take the hit, not the asshole who scoops up $10 mil from selling inflated stock.