But yeah, I'd agree that once the copyright is sold, the lifetime of the artist should no longer be a consideration.
Then everyone who can will sell all their copyrights before they die, so for most copyrights, the lifetime won't be a consideration.
Similarly, any work-for-hire agreement or the sale of the copyright is going to produce a one-time check that'll have the same figure on it regardless of the age or health of the artist.
That's true if the copyright duration is independent of the life of the artist, as you propose above. I think it would be simpler to make that the rule in all cases, not just those where you sell your rights.
ELF is not like Microsoft's DLLs. ELF is a binary executable format, and is comparable to Microsoft's PE executable format (am i correct on that?) used in their EXE files.
to encourage writers to write by providing them with the exclusive opportunity to profit from their work. This opportunity is for a limited time in order to provide an incentive to write more works.
That reason doesn't apply to your money or your home. Nor does it apply to intellectual property after the creator dies.
That's nonsense. One way I might choose to profit from my work is to sell the rights to it. If those rights become worthless when I die, then they'll be less valuable to sell, and I benefit less from them.
Since copying my work doesn't take anything material from me, regular property laws aren't sufficient, so copyright creates this new thing that we now call "intellectual property", and gives it to me to reward me for publishing. It's an abstract form of property, but like real property I can buy it or sell it. (We have other kinds of abstract property, like stock options.)
Copyright should have a limited term (because we want to encourage publishing, but not at any price; because after too much time has passed it becomes too hard to find the copyright owner; etc.), but tying that term to the creator's lifetime is just an unnecessary complication. It rewards healthy creators more than sick ones, young creators more than old ones. Why would we want to do that? We don't do it with stock options.
Could one of you please explain to me why you think the lifetime of the author should play any part at all?
Why should it not? After his death, the author can no longer benefit from any rights associated with his work.
After you die, you'll no longer be able to benefit from your money, or your home, or any other possession. So don't bother with a will, we'll just claim all of your possessions as public property.
Okay, if I've been following everything, your suggestion is that copyright lasts for
min( max( life, 50), 15) years
although you aren't tied to those particular numbers. My proposal was just plain 50 years, though like you, I'm not sure the number is right: but I like the principle of a fixed term.
We also heard life + 50.
The reason I like a fixed term is because it doesn't make sense to me that the life of the author should play a part. There are enough imponderables in trying to value a copyright (how popular will the song be next year, etc.); why add another one, namely the lifetime of the author?
Could one of you please explain to me why you think the lifetime of the author should play any part at all?
This loss of income is exactly what happens to the families of waiters, doctors, engineers, train drivers and arctic explorers when they die. If the author is concerned about his family's financial well being after his death then he needs to use some of his royalties to buy life assurance. You know, like the rest of us do?
That's exactly my thought. And as I mentioned earlier, the heirs would still free to market the work in question. It's not as if the expiration of the copyright cuts them off from doing anything with it.
The expiration of the copyright cuts them off from their right to claim royalties.
The difference between this case and that of waiters, doctors, etc., is that in this case the work was produced before death, but the full value has not yet been collected. The artist hasn't got the money yet to buy his life insurance. In the extreme example of dying just after recording the song, he may have collected nothing at all.
Shortening copyright because the creator dies is a form of inheritance tax. Inheritance taxes are fine, but I don't think they should be 100% (as they would be if copyright ended with the death of the author). And why should royalties be subject to a different form of inheritance tax than anything else in the estate?
Yes, you said that already. I was asking you to justify it in some way. Why should an artist's family receive less benefit from his work if he's dead than if he's alive???
For example, a 20 year old musician records a song.
Case A: he dies the next day. He and his family get 50 years of copyright under your scheme.
Case B: he lives to 90. He and his family get 120 years of copyright under your scheme.
Not really. Too long maybe, but I think it's better than a strict number of years.
But then you didn't give any argument in favour of this.
One makes a top1 single and dies next week. Should the estate have the right to deside what happens to the track (licensing to compilations etc) or should it be public domain?
The estate should have the rights, because the copyright should be for a strict number of years, regardless of whether the artist is alive or not. His estate would have 50 years to make money from it (unless the artist had sold the rights before he died, of course).
Lifetime plus 50 years sounds reasonable to me.
So in your example, it's no different from a fixed 50 year period, but in the case of a 20 year old who records a song, then lives to 90, the copyright term is 120 years. Why????
Anybody know a good way to generate bounce messages in this kind of situation?
Don't send bounces unless you know a way to be certain that the bounce is going to the actual sender, not to a forged address. Bounces are a huge source of annoying mail. Don't contribute to it.
If you really care that a message gets through, ask for confirmation, don't rely on getting a bounce if it fails.
When is your next scheduled fan replacement in your PC? You do have a schedule to replace it before it fails, don't you?
In my experience, most fans outlast the useful life of the PC, so I don't bother to replace them unless they die. But if they do die, there's a pretty good chance something is going to overheat and be damaged.
Similarly, the most common bulk storage methods today are the CD-R and the DVD+/-R (tape backups are practically obsolete). Now the standard for data storage on CD and DVD is, well, *standard*. So if in 200 years time someone wants to read one back, they could build a CD player from first principles.
Neither tape nor the organic dyes on CD-Rs are nearly as long lasting as acid-free paper. I've read 200 year old books, but reading a 200 year old tape or a 200 year old CD-R would require *much* more effort than constructing a reader like the ones we use today, if it was even possible.
In a capitalist economy open source software would cause the collapse of the programming industry if it became popular. The only thing saving us now is the fact that Open Source sucks and few people are willing to use an inferior product, even for free.
The only industry that would collapse because of competition from open source would be the shrinkwrapped software industry, and it's basically dead anyway, except for Microsoft. How many programmers does anyone but Microsoft employ writing word processors or spreadsheets? It's greater than zero, but I bet a much smaller number than it was 10 years ago. The shrinkwrapped software industry was never a stable industry, because once you have Office 97 (or whatever), why would you need to buy another word processor?
On the other hand, most programmers spend most of their time working on in-house software. Open source isn't really different from shrinkwrapped software for that. If you're writing a database with an open source back end, you'll do more or less the same amount of work as if you were using commercial closed source software.
Excuse my ignorance, but I thought there was no sound in space?
That's just because people always wear spacesuits that block the sound. This is an unmanned probe, so the sound can come through without a problem. You'd hear the same thing if you took off your helmet while you were out there.
You see this all the time in movies: the cameras are usually outside the suits, so they can hear the whoosh of the spaceships and the zapping sounds of the lasers.
"They were told that if they remained quiet, nobody would be hurt--and with most previous hijackers, that would have been true."
You'd take the word of someone willing to take over an airplane? And that word 'most' there would fill me with confidence.
Well, I can't think of any earlier examples of hijackings where that wouldn't have been the best thing to do. I know of cases where the hijackers killed individual passengers who didn't fight back, but I don't know of any where the hijackers committed suicide by destroying the plane and all the passengers in it.
It's pointless to debate this after the fact.
I don't see how we could have debated it before the fact.
As I see it, you have some anti-government point you're trying to make, and to make it you don't care if you imply that a couple of hundred people died because they were cowards or dupes. That's disgraceful.
How am I blaming the passengers? At no point did I state they were to blame for what happened. Anyone who thinks that is a fool.
You didn't say it in so many words, but you did say this:
You mean to tell me a whole airliner full of people couldn't stop a couple of guys with razor-blades?
and then went on to try to explain their inaction as the result of conditioning by the government. That is tremendously disrespectful of them. In hindsight we can see that they should have fought back, but they didn't have the benefit of this knowledge. They were told that if they remained quiet, nobody would be hurt--and with most previous hijackers, that would have been true.
You are blaming the passengers, and like secondsun, I think that's disgraceful. The passengers were acting the way they did because that was the rational way to act with non-suicidal hijackers (like most previous hijackers in history).
The fact that there haven't been any similar hijackings since 9/11 is due to the fact that the 9/11 passengers were the last ones to think that a hijacker who has control of a plane is going to land it safely.
of course people are much less likely to target these vulnerabilities, because a much larger percentage of people currently use IE than firefox, not to mention that those who do use firefox are more likely to be at least slightly more savvy web users that their IE using conterparts.
You seem to be making lots of assumptions about the motivation for writing the exploit. If you are a spammer trying to create a million zombies, then you'll target the high market share IE. But if you're doing it just to score points, you'll target Firefox: because none of your friends have done that yet. (Or maybe because your friends all use Firefox, and go around claiming that that prevents them from being at risk. Imagine the look on their faces when you change all their porn to goatse.cx pictures!)
The Slashdot community is hopelessly stupid and hypocritical in terms of their complaints about copyright... copyright is the only thing keeping the GPL from having any meaning whatsoever and copyright is the only thing preventing a company like Microsoft from trolling a site like Sourceforge and stealing gigabytes of the crappy code that's usually posted there.
??? What does this have to do with anything we were talking about ???
Are you talking about backup copies of something you already own? The Canadian law allows more than that: I don't need to already own a copy in order to legally make another one for personal use.
If you are claiming that Americans also have the right to make personal copies, then what's the basis for the demonization of Kazaa? It's just a way to allow people to make their copies more easily.
Terry A. Welch, "A Technique for High Performance Data Compression", IEEE Computer, Vol. 17, No. 6, 1984, pp. 8-19.
If you don't want to go to a library and look that up, then Google will find you about 12000 hits on "Welch LZW", and the first few all seem to be exactly what you want.
But its already illegal to trade in copyrighted material without the copyright holders consent
In your country.
(as it should be).
I don't think so. There are many legitimate uses of copyright material that don't need the copyright holder's consent: I can borrow a book from the library. I can photocopy parts of it. I can quote parts of it in my own work.
This is a *much* better system than the "no copying without consent" system you have. Yes, it's unfair to the people who use recording media for other purposes: but it doesn't criminalize the reasonable practice of making a copy of a recording.
You'd be very amazed at just how far people will go to get over on you for as little as a dollar. Its shameful.
You should read some of the other posts. It's amazing just how far some big companies will go to bully their employees into trying to sell you some overpriced extended warranty, or to deny you a promised rebate, or to change the terms of a special offer after the sale has gone through.
Slashdot Mirror
They'd make sure that the boof! also wiped out the book:
Hey, a new Tom Clancy book! Here's $9.95.
boof!
Hey, a new Tom Clancy book! Here's $9.95.
boof!
But yeah, I'd agree that once the copyright is sold, the lifetime of the artist should no longer be a consideration.
Then everyone who can will sell all their copyrights before they die, so for most copyrights, the lifetime won't be a consideration.
Similarly, any work-for-hire agreement or the sale of the copyright is going to produce a one-time check that'll have the same figure on it regardless of the age or health of the artist.
That's true if the copyright duration is independent of the life of the artist, as you propose above. I think it would be simpler to make that the rule in all cases, not just those where you sell your rights.
ELF is not like Microsoft's DLLs. ELF is a binary executable format, and is comparable to Microsoft's PE executable format (am i correct on that?) used in their EXE files.
DLLs and EXEs both use the same PE format.
to encourage writers to write by providing them with the exclusive opportunity to profit from their work. This opportunity is for a limited time in order to provide an incentive to write more works.
That reason doesn't apply to your money or your home. Nor does it apply to intellectual property after the creator dies.
That's nonsense. One way I might choose to profit from my work is to sell the rights to it. If those rights become worthless when I die, then they'll be less valuable to sell, and I benefit less from them.
Since copying my work doesn't take anything material from me, regular property laws aren't sufficient, so copyright creates this new thing that we now call "intellectual property", and gives it to me to reward me for publishing. It's an abstract form of property, but like real property I can buy it or sell it. (We have other kinds of abstract property, like stock options.)
Copyright should have a limited term (because we want to encourage publishing, but not at any price; because after too much time has passed it becomes too hard to find the copyright owner; etc.), but tying that term to the creator's lifetime is just an unnecessary complication. It rewards healthy creators more than sick ones, young creators more than old ones. Why would we want to do that? We don't do it with stock options.
Could one of you please explain to me why you think the lifetime of the author should play any part at all?
Why should it not? After his death, the author can no longer benefit from any rights associated with his work.
After you die, you'll no longer be able to benefit from your money, or your home, or any other possession. So don't bother with a will, we'll just claim all of your possessions as public property.
Okay, if I've been following everything, your suggestion is that copyright lasts for
min( max( life, 50), 15) years
although you aren't tied to those particular numbers. My proposal was just plain 50 years, though like you, I'm not sure the number is right: but I like the principle of a fixed term.
We also heard life + 50.
The reason I like a fixed term is because it doesn't make sense to me that the life of the author should play a part. There are enough imponderables in trying to value a copyright (how popular will the song be next year, etc.); why add another one, namely the lifetime of the author?
Could one of you please explain to me why you think the lifetime of the author should play any part at all?
This loss of income is exactly what happens to the families of waiters, doctors, engineers, train drivers and arctic explorers when they die. If the author is concerned about his family's financial well being after his death then he needs to use some of his royalties to buy life assurance. You know, like the rest of us do?
That's exactly my thought. And as I mentioned earlier, the heirs would still free to market the work in question. It's not as if the expiration of the copyright cuts them off from doing anything with it.
The expiration of the copyright cuts them off from their right to claim royalties.
The difference between this case and that of waiters, doctors, etc., is that in this case the work was produced before death, but the full value has not yet been collected. The artist hasn't got the money yet to buy his life insurance. In the extreme example of dying just after recording the song, he may have collected nothing at all.
Shortening copyright because the creator dies is a form of inheritance tax. Inheritance taxes are fine, but I don't think they should be 100% (as they would be if copyright ended with the death of the author). And why should royalties be subject to a different form of inheritance tax than anything else in the estate?
What feels right about it? Why should someone get more royalties because they live longer?
Then go for something like a term of either "the lifetime of the artist" or 50 years, whichever is shorter.
Surely you mean "whichever is longer"? It seems awfully unfair to the family to cut off the royalties when the creator dies.
Yes, you said that already. I was asking you to justify it in some way. Why should an artist's family receive less benefit from his work if he's dead than if he's alive???
For example, a 20 year old musician records a song.
Case A: he dies the next day. He and his family get 50 years of copyright under your scheme.
Case B: he lives to 90. He and his family get 120 years of copyright under your scheme.
This makes no sense.
You said
Not really. Too long maybe, but I think it's better than a strict number of years.
But then you didn't give any argument in favour of this.
One makes a top1 single and dies next week. Should the estate have the right to deside what happens to the track (licensing to compilations etc) or should it be public domain?
The estate should have the rights, because the copyright should be for a strict number of years, regardless of whether the artist is alive or not. His estate would have 50 years to make money from it (unless the artist had sold the rights before he died, of course).
Lifetime plus 50 years sounds reasonable to me.
So in your example, it's no different from a fixed 50 year period, but in the case of a 20 year old who records a song, then lives to 90, the copyright term is 120 years. Why????
Anybody know a good way to generate bounce messages in this kind of situation?
Don't send bounces unless you know a way to be certain that the bounce is going to the actual sender, not to a forged address. Bounces are a huge source of annoying mail. Don't contribute to it.
If you really care that a message gets through, ask for confirmation, don't rely on getting a bounce if it fails.
When is your next scheduled fan replacement in your PC? You do have a schedule to replace it before it fails, don't you?
In my experience, most fans outlast the useful life of the PC, so I don't bother to replace them unless they die. But if they do die, there's a pretty good chance something is going to overheat and be damaged.
Similarly, the most common bulk storage methods today are the CD-R and the DVD+/-R (tape backups are practically obsolete). Now the standard for data storage on CD and DVD is, well, *standard*. So if in 200 years time someone wants to read one back, they could build a CD player from first principles.
Neither tape nor the organic dyes on CD-Rs are nearly as long lasting as acid-free paper. I've read 200 year old books, but reading a 200 year old tape or a 200 year old CD-R would require *much* more effort than constructing a reader like the ones we use today, if it was even possible.
In a capitalist economy open source software would cause the collapse of the programming industry if it became popular. The only thing saving us now is the fact that Open Source sucks and few people are willing to use an inferior product, even for free.
The only industry that would collapse because of competition from open source would be the shrinkwrapped software industry, and it's basically dead anyway, except for Microsoft. How many programmers does anyone but Microsoft employ writing word processors or spreadsheets? It's greater than zero, but I bet a much smaller number than it was 10 years ago. The shrinkwrapped software industry was never a stable industry, because once you have Office 97 (or whatever), why would you need to buy another word processor?
On the other hand, most programmers spend most of their time working on in-house software. Open source isn't really different from shrinkwrapped software for that. If you're writing a database with an open source back end, you'll do more or less the same amount of work as if you were using commercial closed source software.
Excuse my ignorance, but I thought there was no sound in space?
That's just because people always wear spacesuits that block the sound. This is an unmanned probe, so the sound can come through without a problem. You'd hear the same thing if you took off your helmet while you were out there.
You see this all the time in movies: the cameras are usually outside the suits, so they can hear the whoosh of the spaceships and the zapping sounds of the lasers.
"They were told that if they remained quiet, nobody would be hurt--and with most previous hijackers, that would have been true."
You'd take the word of someone willing to take over an airplane? And that word 'most' there would fill me with confidence.
Well, I can't think of any earlier examples of hijackings where that wouldn't have been the best thing to do. I know of cases where the hijackers killed individual passengers who didn't fight back, but I don't know of any where the hijackers committed suicide by destroying the plane and all the passengers in it.
It's pointless to debate this after the fact.
I don't see how we could have debated it before the fact.
As I see it, you have some anti-government point you're trying to make, and to make it you don't care if you imply that a couple of hundred people died because they were cowards or dupes. That's disgraceful.
How am I blaming the passengers? At no point did I state they were to blame for what happened. Anyone who thinks that is a fool.
You didn't say it in so many words, but you did say this:
You mean to tell me a whole airliner full of people couldn't stop a couple of guys with razor-blades?
and then went on to try to explain their inaction as the result of conditioning by the government. That is tremendously disrespectful of them. In hindsight we can see that they should have fought back, but they didn't have the benefit of this knowledge. They were told that if they remained quiet, nobody would be hurt--and with most previous hijackers, that would have been true.
You are blaming the passengers, and like secondsun, I think that's disgraceful. The passengers were acting the way they did because that was the rational way to act with non-suicidal hijackers (like most previous hijackers in history).
The fact that there haven't been any similar hijackings since 9/11 is due to the fact that the 9/11 passengers were the last ones to think that a hijacker who has control of a plane is going to land it safely.
of course people are much less likely to target these vulnerabilities, because a much larger percentage of people currently use IE than firefox, not to mention that those who do use firefox are more likely to be at least slightly more savvy web users that their IE using conterparts.
You seem to be making lots of assumptions about the motivation for writing the exploit. If you are a spammer trying to create a million zombies, then you'll target the high market share IE. But if you're doing it just to score points, you'll target Firefox: because none of your friends have done that yet. (Or maybe because your friends all use Firefox, and go around claiming that that prevents them from being at risk. Imagine the look on their faces when you change all their porn to goatse.cx pictures!)
The Slashdot community is hopelessly stupid and hypocritical in terms of their complaints about copyright... copyright is the only thing keeping the GPL from having any meaning whatsoever and copyright is the only thing preventing a company like Microsoft from trolling a site like Sourceforge and stealing gigabytes of the crappy code that's usually posted there.
??? What does this have to do with anything we were talking about ???
Are you talking about backup copies of something you already own? The Canadian law allows more than that: I don't need to already own a copy in order to legally make another one for personal use.
If you are claiming that Americans also have the right to make personal copies, then what's the basis for the demonization of Kazaa? It's just a way to allow people to make their copies more easily.
The original Welch paper is pretty readable:
Terry A. Welch, "A Technique for High Performance Data Compression", IEEE Computer, Vol. 17, No. 6, 1984, pp. 8-19.
If you don't want to go to a library and look that up, then Google will find you about 12000 hits on "Welch LZW", and the first few all seem to be exactly what you want.
But its already illegal to trade in copyrighted material without the copyright holders consent
In your country.
(as it should be).
I don't think so. There are many legitimate uses of copyright material that don't need the copyright holder's consent: I can borrow a book from the library. I can photocopy parts of it. I can quote parts of it in my own work.
In Canada, I can make a complete copy of a music recording for my own use. This is as it should be, because I pay a levy on recording media which goes to the recording industry.
This is a *much* better system than the "no copying without consent" system you have. Yes, it's unfair to the people who use recording media for other purposes: but it doesn't criminalize the reasonable practice of making a copy of a recording.
You'd be very amazed at just how far people will go to get over on you for as little as a dollar. Its shameful.
You should read some of the other posts. It's amazing just how far some big companies will go to bully their employees into trying to sell you some overpriced extended warranty, or to deny you a promised rebate, or to change the terms of a special offer after the sale has gone through.
*That's* shameful.