Getting out of bed isn't rewarded because it's a completely self-beneficial task. It's not compensated because it lends no benefit to others. It's the gateway to a person achieving further useful work and collecting another paycheck doing their actual work, so people do it, but the act itself creates nothing.
If a creation is valuable then there is by definition an incentive for somebody to pay for it, if that's the only way they could come into possession of the creation.
There is an incentive, and the only legal way to come into possession of a copy is to pay the owner. Just as property law, trespassing law, all those other laws put legal restriction of rights of non "owner" parties. The restriction acts as a reasonable alternative to stifling patronage or the poverty of swindled creators.
As for the rest of your argument, you're confusing content for presentation. Although use of content may be somewhat more affected in fields such as patent law (although people are still free to learn from filed patents and patented objects), copyright, the other big affront, primarily protects the specific and unique presentational elements, while allowing-- via Fair Use and First Amendment rights-- the right to retransmit valuable information.
An idea need not be copied verbatim in a given form of expression in order to be propagated. To say it must be is just the laziness of someone unwilling to do the legwork of polishing their own presentation, and unwilling to compensate someone who can. A person can discuss meaningful content-- the lyrical style of a musical artist, for instance-- while respecting the presentation-- by playing or reciting only as many representational snippets as are required. A person can discuss a scientific discovery or theory by paraphrasing, excerpting, and summarizing. A person can discuss books, movies, or music by merely giving a synapsis, a review, and excerpts to make their points. Copyright and fair use balance do well to protect the right to talk about all things under the sun, while respecting the talent and work that goes into presentation and composition, by either requiring a party interested in re-presenting to either seek rights from the creator or create their own unique presentation. Aside from perhaps the shortest snippets of poetry (which could even qualify for whole reproduction under Fair Use), I would challenge you to find a handful of forms of expression that cannot be adequately stripped to their facts and discussed while keeping within the confines of Fair Use.
To be entertained in a specific fashion, or to experience a specific eloquent rendition, is not a purpose of free speech. If you need the facts, you can have the facts. The style, however, is less important to the social dialog, and can reasonably lack absolute protection.
The problem I have with that stance, though, it that unless you're flat broke, you're still pirating something you "could pay for". Considering that music is by no means near essential to human life, just suck it up and go without until you can afford it, just as you would for a luxury item that's less easily piratable.
The article didn't give the details, I would imagine that those other developers could still also sue. Those people settled regarding their own rights, but other grievances may exist.
Then again, I'm no lawyer, and I'm talking out of my ass, so take with salt.
I suppose I'd give them credit, if nothing else but for the initiative. A commonly-desired behavior isn't much of a "feature" if you have to dig around raw un-user-documented prefs to activate it.
Well, if it was absolutely locked down, about the worst an attacker could do would be to create a lookalike phishing site on the same host. Unfortunately, properly locking that sort of thing down may need to go as far as disallowing off-site IMG tag references, as well as JavaScript and the like.
The point is that if we really were such clever tool-wielding mammals, then we wouldn't (for example) gamble with highly unpredictable and potentially catastrophic climate change, because of a need to temporarily satiate ourselves.
People are free-thinking creatures, drawing from different experience, and just because some of them see more merit in more urgent satiation is no reason to call the race as a whole stupid. Perhaps some, by way of different information or experiences, are calculating the odds differently and "gambling" accordingly. Although the idea is relatively well wrapped up, there are still some difference in opinions as to the extent, effects, and human coping ability regarding climate change-- if not even in the scientific community, at least in the greater mass of people--and their everyday lives are a primary change agent.
I get plenty of junk mail addressed to "Rudy Fleminger, Master of All He Surveys", and "Destroyer of Worlds, Creator of Design", after signing onto something or other with those "company names". Mostly American Express business credit offers.
I personally liked "Rudy Fleminger: NEVER EAT THIS!", but those tapered off pretty quickly.
I don't know how common it is, but I personally maintain a rather complete mental separation between my online and offline names-- I've used FLEB openly and most everywhere for the last 10-15 years, so it's about as descriptive as anyone else's real name (not to mention that it's easily correlated to my real name with a couple Google searches), so it's not like I'm hiding anything or trying to stay anonymous, but I still get edgy about people who converse with real names online (there're a couple forums I frequent that tend toward that), as well as people calling me my screen-name in real life.
That reminds me of the (not-as-old) IRC days. Our local ISP gave you the full name of the account-holder by Fingering the email address (that or the individual IP/DNS address-- which makes more sense, come to think about it), and we'd get people all edgy by running a reverse-lookup and rattling off all their personal info on IRC.
(Hey, a lot of people were dumb, 15, and on the Internet once. Don't look so smug.)
Bingo. Although I don't think there's a solidly backable one-way-or-the-other legal or ethical stance on this (realistically, it's not much of a "privacy violation" at all), I just can't see it being an effective method of advertising. It just creeps a person out when someone they don't know jumps in and starts acting like an old chum, especially when it's clear that they know nothing about you except your name off a list.
I disagree. I'd say that the "k" in America is much more likely to be put there by someone who isn't really concerned-- or able-- to violate privacy by culling personal information. Look at their lack of data accuracy, for instance. Anyone with any sort of purpose, be it nefarious or otherwise, would at least be able to spell-check their way through "America". Do you think these type of people could even pronounce your name correctly?
Blurting names also confirms the name of a mark who conscientiously and carefully LIED to her follower about her name, only to be f*scked over by her emerging stalker.
This is why honesty is the best policy. That, or a unified and vigilant front of deception. Oh-- and avoiding wildly improbable scenarios. That too.
Would this be something similar to vector-autotracing, perhaps with the ability to recognize a set of graphic elements-- noise, gradients, repeating patterns. It's not so much "apple", "tree", as curve and point information, (as that's more what computers would "know"), but it's still abstracting raster data into a description with fewer described attributes (essentially, an abstraction).
As for your question, I think the creative element is still well in play, it's just not in an existing conventional expression. The vision is still there, it's just the craft and expression that changes. Instead of being expressed by a pen against paper, the vision of the artist is expressed by explicit instructions to a computer. Perhaps it's less "right brain" than other creative arts, but that aspect is often more about the ability to reproduce forms than creativity-- the ability to generate ideas.
But it's not at our behest. I never asked Britney Spears to record "...Baby One More Time"! Why should I have any obligation to pay her for it?
You shouldn't, unless you wish to own a copy. In which case, you are wanting the recording made, and are wanting a "piece" of that action-- it's after the fact, but desired nonetheless....
The shoveling analogy might be appropriate if the artist themselves (or an authorized agent of the artist) just gave you a disc without saying a word otherwise, but by downloading from illegitimate sources, you're simply circumventing the creator's ability to enter into a contract with you. Okay, so you're not breaking an agreement, but you're just short-circuiting the process of agreement by refusing to make one, reaping the rewards anyway.
Why should the "contract" when wanting an intellectual work be any different than the "contract" when wanting a service? Because it's subdivided into (affordable) reproduced units? Because the process is easier to subvert and harder to catch?
Sneaking into a concert or show is wrong because space inside the venue is a limited resource, and as such the owner of the venue has the right to decide who he wants to allow inside. I may not be imposing a burden on the players, but I'm making it slightly more crowded inside, putting slightly more burden on the HVAC system, and preventing the owner of the venue from using that space for a different purpose, should he so choose.
These concerns are a tangent to the real reason people pay to get in. It's access control exerted by the (property) rights holder in order to profit from a unique situation they created. As for the trivial matters of space or HVAC... no one's coming for the great HVAC system or the spacious seating-- I don't think I've ever paid a cover charge for an empty bar. The reason people are paying and the thing people are charging for is the experience.
You could apply the "standing outside" argument if a digital (or even recent-gen analog) copy suffered a degradation of experience akin to that of being outside versus inside an auditorium. The loitering-outside market, however, has neither the appeal nor the impact that the piracy market does.
You shouldn't pick on the 12-year-olds. Just because you just turned 13, it doesn't necessarily mean you're any better at reading comprehension than any of them, especially when you go and prove it with a stunningly brilliant foot-in-mouth rant like that.
The "wireless" was referring to the tap that the attackers attached to the network, not to an existing wireless connection. You'd still have to tap into the rest of the bank's network somewhere. It's doubtful they'd have an RJ45 socket hanging around in the ceiling above the bathroom, so you'd probably end up cutting the wire, putting plugs on the ends, and splicing in the wireless unit. Then you'd use that wireless connection, which you control, as a remote entry point into the network.
Doing all the work up front for free, and then begging/threatening people to pay you for it later, is not a business model that makes sense.
Have you heard of the concept of "billing"? Go to a restaurant, get a subscription to something, have work done, sign up for a service. Quite often, work is done before payment is rendered. It's the concepts of physical property and work for compensation that make skipping out on the commitment wrong (and illegal).
Well, some of us believe it's impossible for an act to be immoral if it doesn't harm anyone, and that the potential loss of potential revenue from copying doesn't qualify as harm (since that potential revenue was never really yours to begin with, and since there are many other actions that can cause it to be lost but which no one considers harmful).
How was the potential revenue never the artist's to begin with? Although the legal rights to control the fruits of intellectual work may be newer and more complex than simple property or work-for-hire concepts, when examining the idea, it still boils down to the same of respect for the value of work.
The justification for the benefits owed to intellectual practitioners is not much different than the benefits given to other workers. The nature of intellectual practice demands that the method of the transaction be more roundabout than simple hired work, but the principles are the same. A person is expending effort for our benefit, and at our behest, and as such should be able to command a payment for that effort, should they choose.
Consider the right to payment* for a conventional service. A person is not deprived of property they own, if I stiff them on the bill for a service they gave me. However, it is generally considered wrong to partake of someone else's work while circumventing their terms for performing it. You might say that the person is deprived of something, albeit intangible: time and effort. However, consider the case of sneaking into a concert or show. Short of some space, no one on the site is deprived of any more effort or property than they would have had the person not sneaked in. Although the method of enforcement is trespassing law, the core issue is less "being where you shouldn't be" than theft of services. The fact that you were not imposing further burden upon the players is irrelevant to the fact that the players have a right to demand a share from every person benifiting from their work.
The easy ability to mass-copy, and the lack of a natural enforcement of creator's rights (physicality for objects, proximity for live shows) mean that further artificial restrictions must be placed on recorded work in order to enforce a creator's right to demand compensation-- the same right afforded to all other creators. If the right to compensation is tied to the creator's effort and the receiver's benefit (as it is for all other forms of the right), than the creator should still retain that right for every copy of a work that exists: They expended effort, and the receiver is gaining benefit, even if that effort is subdivided and time-shifted by way of recording and duplication. Although no further effort was needed on the part of the creator to make more copies, this does mean that the copy does not, in part, reflect the initial effort and create benefit from it.
* The right to payment is, more accurately, a right to control. A person may, of course, choose to let people partake of their property or services for free, or choose to restrict all access to their work, or to restrict their giving in many ways in between. I'm just making my example the most common transaction, where payment is expected for work done.
The openness is there so if Microsoft wants to add a feature to the site that might use the content in a different way, or bring on a subcontractor to handle a technical-end issue, they can, without having to deal with changing the ToS and either having to enact a "change at any time", having the headache of segmenting off submissions into pre- and post-change, or people whining about technicalities or mistaken intentions.
It's not like they're getting an exclusive right to distribute, or that the information submitted would be considered non-public. People are submitting things to a public site. This just solidifies that fact, and prevents any arguments down the line about what the implications of that submittal were. You're not even really "giving away" any rights... you still have the right to separately publish, and to restrict other people from publishing (short of MS et. al.). You're just granting MS the right to publish what you gave them.
That's pretty boilerplate stuff. Many public-submission sites-- or at least the ones where the owners do their legal homework-- have a clause similar to this. Some rare ones are more restricted, and some less scrupulous ones will claim exclusive rights, but this is the standard all-purpose CYA. Without this, a person's submissions might not technically be able to be posted to public areas of the site, as the creator gave no explicit permission to do so. It grants MS, the owner of the site, an explicit nonexclusive right to actually use the and publicly display submitted content... which the user probably does want "used and displayed", considering that they're posting it onto a public forum.
Well, to be fair, throwing in the 2nd Amendment alone as an argument for could be seen as a form of either circular reference or depending on the infallibility of tradition, simply because it exists. Just because the 2nd Amendment exists doesn't mean that it's good or necessary.
Personally, I'm for it, as I understand the need for the populace to have the right to self-protection, should the shit hit the fan, and even to instigate such shit/fan interaction against a tyrannical government if need be. Do I see government overthrow realistically happening? Not really likely, without some external agent getting the ball rolling first. Perhaps if the power went out. I agree with the statement (although I'm admittedly flimsy on backing) that much of the "gun violence problem" could be helped with a more universal right to well-trained and respectful gun carrying.
So far we have mindless underreaction and senseless overreaction. Any chance of getting a #3, "Measured reaction taken in a logical and pointed manner"?
"Yee-haw! Bomb the crap out of everybody!" is a reaction dubiously preferable to none at all, even assuming you happen to bomb the crap out of the right people in the process.
Hijacking a plane is not an ordinary occurance, and it's not as if terrorist groups are running through hijackers so fast that they can't be picky. It's also not as if a terrorist organization has to send a representative majority of its people onto a flight in order to do some damage. Although the majority of the threat could come from middle-eastern Muslims, all it takes is one sympathetic Swede, Canadian, American, or Finn, if everyone knows that those folks can dance right through the line. Plus, it's not like middle-eastern Muslims, or any one group, has a complete monopoly on terrorism.
Profiling can't help you find what you're looking for if you're not absolutely sure what you're looking for (and what you're looking for knows you're looking for it).
Goddammit, I fed the trolls. But I spent all this time typing. Might as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay... that "getting out of bed" thing. What?
.sig here].
Getting out of bed isn't rewarded because it's a completely self-beneficial task. It's not compensated because it lends no benefit to others. It's the gateway to a person achieving further useful work and collecting another paycheck doing their actual work, so people do it, but the act itself creates nothing.
If a creation is valuable then there is by definition an incentive for somebody to pay for it, if that's the only way they could come into possession of the creation.
There is an incentive, and the only legal way to come into possession of a copy is to pay the owner. Just as property law, trespassing law, all those other laws put legal restriction of rights of non "owner" parties. The restriction acts as a reasonable alternative to stifling patronage or the poverty of swindled creators.
As for the rest of your argument, you're confusing content for presentation. Although use of content may be somewhat more affected in fields such as patent law (although people are still free to learn from filed patents and patented objects), copyright, the other big affront, primarily protects the specific and unique presentational elements, while allowing-- via Fair Use and First Amendment rights-- the right to retransmit valuable information.
An idea need not be copied verbatim in a given form of expression in order to be propagated. To say it must be is just the laziness of someone unwilling to do the legwork of polishing their own presentation, and unwilling to compensate someone who can. A person can discuss meaningful content-- the lyrical style of a musical artist, for instance-- while respecting the presentation-- by playing or reciting only as many representational snippets as are required. A person can discuss a scientific discovery or theory by paraphrasing, excerpting, and summarizing. A person can discuss books, movies, or music by merely giving a synapsis, a review, and excerpts to make their points. Copyright and fair use balance do well to protect the right to talk about all things under the sun, while respecting the talent and work that goes into presentation and composition, by either requiring a party interested in re-presenting to either seek rights from the creator or create their own unique presentation. Aside from perhaps the shortest snippets of poetry (which could even qualify for whole reproduction under Fair Use), I would challenge you to find a handful of forms of expression that cannot be adequately stripped to their facts and discussed while keeping within the confines of Fair Use.
To be entertained in a specific fashion, or to experience a specific eloquent rendition, is not a purpose of free speech. If you need the facts, you can have the facts. The style, however, is less important to the social dialog, and can reasonably lack absolute protection.
In short, [insert my
The problem I have with that stance, though, it that unless you're flat broke, you're still pirating something you "could pay for". Considering that music is by no means near essential to human life, just suck it up and go without until you can afford it, just as you would for a luxury item that's less easily piratable.
The article didn't give the details, I would imagine that those other developers could still also sue. Those people settled regarding their own rights, but other grievances may exist.
Then again, I'm no lawyer, and I'm talking out of my ass, so take with salt.
I suppose I'd give them credit, if nothing else but for the initiative. A commonly-desired behavior isn't much of a "feature" if you have to dig around raw un-user-documented prefs to activate it.
Well, if it was absolutely locked down, about the worst an attacker could do would be to create a lookalike phishing site on the same host. Unfortunately, properly locking that sort of thing down may need to go as far as disallowing off-site IMG tag references, as well as JavaScript and the like.
The point is that if we really were such clever tool-wielding mammals, then we wouldn't (for example) gamble with highly unpredictable and potentially catastrophic climate change, because of a need to temporarily satiate ourselves.
People are free-thinking creatures, drawing from different experience, and just because some of them see more merit in more urgent satiation is no reason to call the race as a whole stupid. Perhaps some, by way of different information or experiences, are calculating the odds differently and "gambling" accordingly. Although the idea is relatively well wrapped up, there are still some difference in opinions as to the extent, effects, and human coping ability regarding climate change-- if not even in the scientific community, at least in the greater mass of people--and their everyday lives are a primary change agent.
I get plenty of junk mail addressed to "Rudy Fleminger, Master of All He Surveys", and "Destroyer of Worlds, Creator of Design", after signing onto something or other with those "company names". Mostly American Express business credit offers.
I personally liked "Rudy Fleminger: NEVER EAT THIS!", but those tapered off pretty quickly.
I don't know how common it is, but I personally maintain a rather complete mental separation between my online and offline names-- I've used FLEB openly and most everywhere for the last 10-15 years, so it's about as descriptive as anyone else's real name (not to mention that it's easily correlated to my real name with a couple Google searches), so it's not like I'm hiding anything or trying to stay anonymous, but I still get edgy about people who converse with real names online (there're a couple forums I frequent that tend toward that), as well as people calling me my screen-name in real life.
That reminds me of the (not-as-old) IRC days. Our local ISP gave you the full name of the account-holder by Fingering the email address (that or the individual IP/DNS address-- which makes more sense, come to think about it), and we'd get people all edgy by running a reverse-lookup and rattling off all their personal info on IRC.
(Hey, a lot of people were dumb, 15, and on the Internet once. Don't look so smug.)
Bingo. Although I don't think there's a solidly backable one-way-or-the-other legal or ethical stance on this (realistically, it's not much of a "privacy violation" at all), I just can't see it being an effective method of advertising. It just creeps a person out when someone they don't know jumps in and starts acting like an old chum, especially when it's clear that they know nothing about you except your name off a list.
Yeah, but they're both dead. See where that gets you?
Those who don't put the "k" in America.
I disagree. I'd say that the "k" in America is much more likely to be put there by someone who isn't really concerned-- or able-- to violate privacy by culling personal information. Look at their lack of data accuracy, for instance. Anyone with any sort of purpose, be it nefarious or otherwise, would at least be able to spell-check their way through "America". Do you think these type of people could even pronounce your name correctly?
Blurting names also confirms the name of a mark who conscientiously and carefully LIED to her follower about her name, only to be f*scked over by her emerging stalker.
This is why honesty is the best policy. That, or a unified and vigilant front of deception. Oh-- and avoiding wildly improbable scenarios. That too.
Why are you even going to sites you don't like?
Would this be something similar to vector-autotracing, perhaps with the ability to recognize a set of graphic elements-- noise, gradients, repeating patterns. It's not so much "apple", "tree", as curve and point information, (as that's more what computers would "know"), but it's still abstracting raster data into a description with fewer described attributes (essentially, an abstraction).
As for your question, I think the creative element is still well in play, it's just not in an existing conventional expression. The vision is still there, it's just the craft and expression that changes. Instead of being expressed by a pen against paper, the vision of the artist is expressed by explicit instructions to a computer. Perhaps it's less "right brain" than other creative arts, but that aspect is often more about the ability to reproduce forms than creativity-- the ability to generate ideas.
But it's not at our behest. I never asked Britney Spears to record "...Baby One More Time"! Why should I have any obligation to pay her for it?
...
You shouldn't, unless you wish to own a copy. In which case, you are wanting the recording made, and are wanting a "piece" of that action-- it's after the fact, but desired nonetheless.
The shoveling analogy might be appropriate if the artist themselves (or an authorized agent of the artist) just gave you a disc without saying a word otherwise, but by downloading from illegitimate sources, you're simply circumventing the creator's ability to enter into a contract with you. Okay, so you're not breaking an agreement, but you're just short-circuiting the process of agreement by refusing to make one, reaping the rewards anyway.
Why should the "contract" when wanting an intellectual work be any different than the "contract" when wanting a service? Because it's subdivided into (affordable) reproduced units? Because the process is easier to subvert and harder to catch?
Sneaking into a concert or show is wrong because space inside the venue is a limited resource, and as such the owner of the venue has the right to decide who he wants to allow inside. I may not be imposing a burden on the players, but I'm making it slightly more crowded inside, putting slightly more burden on the HVAC system, and preventing the owner of the venue from using that space for a different purpose, should he so choose.
These concerns are a tangent to the real reason people pay to get in. It's access control exerted by the (property) rights holder in order to profit from a unique situation they created. As for the trivial matters of space or HVAC... no one's coming for the great HVAC system or the spacious seating-- I don't think I've ever paid a cover charge for an empty bar. The reason people are paying and the thing people are charging for is the experience.
You could apply the "standing outside" argument if a digital (or even recent-gen analog) copy suffered a degradation of experience akin to that of being outside versus inside an auditorium. The loitering-outside market, however, has neither the appeal nor the impact that the piracy market does.
You shouldn't pick on the 12-year-olds. Just because you just turned 13, it doesn't necessarily mean you're any better at reading comprehension than any of them, especially when you go and prove it with a stunningly brilliant foot-in-mouth rant like that.
The "wireless" was referring to the tap that the attackers attached to the network, not to an existing wireless connection. You'd still have to tap into the rest of the bank's network somewhere. It's doubtful they'd have an RJ45 socket hanging around in the ceiling above the bathroom, so you'd probably end up cutting the wire, putting plugs on the ends, and splicing in the wireless unit. Then you'd use that wireless connection, which you control, as a remote entry point into the network.
Doing all the work up front for free, and then begging/threatening people to pay you for it later, is not a business model that makes sense.
Have you heard of the concept of "billing"? Go to a restaurant, get a subscription to something, have work done, sign up for a service. Quite often, work is done before payment is rendered. It's the concepts of physical property and work for compensation that make skipping out on the commitment wrong (and illegal).
Well, some of us believe it's impossible for an act to be immoral if it doesn't harm anyone, and that the potential loss of potential revenue from copying doesn't qualify as harm (since that potential revenue was never really yours to begin with, and since there are many other actions that can cause it to be lost but which no one considers harmful).
How was the potential revenue never the artist's to begin with? Although the legal rights to control the fruits of intellectual work may be newer and more complex than simple property or work-for-hire concepts, when examining the idea, it still boils down to the same of respect for the value of work.
The justification for the benefits owed to intellectual practitioners is not much different than the benefits given to other workers. The nature of intellectual practice demands that the method of the transaction be more roundabout than simple hired work, but the principles are the same. A person is expending effort for our benefit, and at our behest, and as such should be able to command a payment for that effort, should they choose.
Consider the right to payment* for a conventional service. A person is not deprived of property they own, if I stiff them on the bill for a service they gave me. However, it is generally considered wrong to partake of someone else's work while circumventing their terms for performing it. You might say that the person is deprived of something, albeit intangible: time and effort. However, consider the case of sneaking into a concert or show. Short of some space, no one on the site is deprived of any more effort or property than they would have had the person not sneaked in. Although the method of enforcement is trespassing law, the core issue is less "being where you shouldn't be" than theft of services. The fact that you were not imposing further burden upon the players is irrelevant to the fact that the players have a right to demand a share from every person benifiting from their work.
The easy ability to mass-copy, and the lack of a natural enforcement of creator's rights (physicality for objects, proximity for live shows) mean that further artificial restrictions must be placed on recorded work in order to enforce a creator's right to demand compensation-- the same right afforded to all other creators. If the right to compensation is tied to the creator's effort and the receiver's benefit (as it is for all other forms of the right), than the creator should still retain that right for every copy of a work that exists: They expended effort, and the receiver is gaining benefit, even if that effort is subdivided and time-shifted by way of recording and duplication. Although no further effort was needed on the part of the creator to make more copies, this does mean that the copy does not, in part, reflect the initial effort and create benefit from it.
* The right to payment is, more accurately, a right to control. A person may, of course, choose to let people partake of their property or services for free, or choose to restrict all access to their work, or to restrict their giving in many ways in between. I'm just making my example the most common transaction, where payment is expected for work done.
The openness is there so if Microsoft wants to add a feature to the site that might use the content in a different way, or bring on a subcontractor to handle a technical-end issue, they can, without having to deal with changing the ToS and either having to enact a "change at any time", having the headache of segmenting off submissions into pre- and post-change, or people whining about technicalities or mistaken intentions.
It's not like they're getting an exclusive right to distribute, or that the information submitted would be considered non-public. People are submitting things to a public site. This just solidifies that fact, and prevents any arguments down the line about what the implications of that submittal were. You're not even really "giving away" any rights... you still have the right to separately publish, and to restrict other people from publishing (short of MS et. al.). You're just granting MS the right to publish what you gave them.
That's pretty boilerplate stuff. Many public-submission sites-- or at least the ones where the owners do their legal homework-- have a clause similar to this. Some rare ones are more restricted, and some less scrupulous ones will claim exclusive rights, but this is the standard all-purpose CYA. Without this, a person's submissions might not technically be able to be posted to public areas of the site, as the creator gave no explicit permission to do so. It grants MS, the owner of the site, an explicit nonexclusive right to actually use the and publicly display submitted content... which the user probably does want "used and displayed", considering that they're posting it onto a public forum.
You know, that makes me want to do "Checkpoint! The Musical" next time I'm at the airport.
Just curious, what forms are you planning to sell photos in? Prints? Stock licensing? A portfolio for selling further services?
Well, to be fair, throwing in the 2nd Amendment alone as an argument for could be seen as a form of either circular reference or depending on the infallibility of tradition, simply because it exists. Just because the 2nd Amendment exists doesn't mean that it's good or necessary.
Personally, I'm for it, as I understand the need for the populace to have the right to self-protection, should the shit hit the fan, and even to instigate such shit/fan interaction against a tyrannical government if need be. Do I see government overthrow realistically happening? Not really likely, without some external agent getting the ball rolling first. Perhaps if the power went out. I agree with the statement (although I'm admittedly flimsy on backing) that much of the "gun violence problem" could be helped with a more universal right to well-trained and respectful gun carrying.
So far we have mindless underreaction and senseless overreaction. Any chance of getting a #3, "Measured reaction taken in a logical and pointed manner"?
"Yee-haw! Bomb the crap out of everybody!" is a reaction dubiously preferable to none at all, even assuming you happen to bomb the crap out of the right people in the process.
Hijacking a plane is not an ordinary occurance, and it's not as if terrorist groups are running through hijackers so fast that they can't be picky. It's also not as if a terrorist organization has to send a representative majority of its people onto a flight in order to do some damage. Although the majority of the threat could come from middle-eastern Muslims, all it takes is one sympathetic Swede, Canadian, American, or Finn, if everyone knows that those folks can dance right through the line. Plus, it's not like middle-eastern Muslims, or any one group, has a complete monopoly on terrorism.
Profiling can't help you find what you're looking for if you're not absolutely sure what you're looking for (and what you're looking for knows you're looking for it).
Goddammit, I fed the trolls. But I spent all this time typing. Might as well.
It's for enhanced stability, like the toothpick through the center of a sandwich.