This doesn't really mean anything. Is a RAM chip a medium? How about a traveling EM wave? What about punchcards? But regardless of that question, a copy is made when a copy is made. "This tape will self-destruct in 30seconds" does not mean that it is somehow magically not a copy.
Actually, there are probably several copies made during the course of the network transfer of a file, from the original disk to network buffers, from router to router, back into memory and then onto disk. Most of those copies are transient. It's possible they're not sufficiently "fixed" that the law might consider them ephemeral.
The point is that a copy is made, by you, at the endpoint. When you save a song to disk, a copy is made. The number of copies that were made to get it to you is totally irrelevant to that fact.
This just doesn't work. Simple logic tells us that if the copy is being made here, then the posession of the original must be transferred here, leaving the sender without a copy. This isn't happening. When I send you a file, I'm sending you a COPY, not the original.
What you're sending isn't a copy, but you're correct it's not the original.
You are ignoring the statutory definition of a copy, and substituting it with your own. That's fine, for the purposes of philosophy, but we are discussing what is and isn't legal.
You cannot send someone a copy, by definition, unless you are sending them a physical thing: like a CD or a disk or a book or a painting. If you read someone a book over the phone, you're not "sending them a copy," you're performing the work.
A copy is a tangible, actual object. It is not a stream of bits flowing over a network. Or words flowing across the air. It is not an electromagnetic wave. The statute is exceedingly clear on what constitutes a "copy."
The copy is made when it is made material, when it is fixed in a medium sufficiently that it can be perceived, on its own, or with the aid of a machine. The copy is made where you write down the story I tell you. Or where you record the sounds you hear. Or where you save to disk the bits that you receive.
You could argue that "archival" is being done on the US side, but the copying is definately being done on the other side of the ocean.
There's no such thing as "archival" at copyright law. The thing you call "archival" is what the law calls "copying." Take it for what you will.
Actually, it seems pretty obvious that both reproduction and importation have happened.
Even if importation happens, it is still not excused by 602. 602(a)(2) does not save you from 602(b).
If you decided that the server is doing the copying, which technically it is, then it's being reproduced in russia, then imported to the US.
No, the copy is made when the work is fixed in a medium. This clearly happens when the bits are written from the network to your disk. If you and your disk are in the US, the copy is made in the US, by you, a person subject to US law. The bits in transit are ephemeral and not a copy.
Forget the internet for a minute: what happens when you tape a song off the radio? The radio station did not make a copy and send it to you. The broadcast -- a transmission of the music -- is not a copy. Instead, it is clear you recorded the broadcast to tape. In doing so, you fixed the work in a medium, and created a copy.
Unfortunately AFAIK, some brain dead judges seems to think the RECEIVER is actually the one doing the reproduction.
That's because they are. You can't ignore the definition of what constitutes a copy. Unless you actually believe downloading is teleportation, it's clear there are (at least) two copies involved, not one being transported.
Downloading music (from anywhere, foreign or domestic) isn't importation, so 602 does not apply. Even if 602 did apply, you would not have an exemption under 602(a)(2) because of 602(b).
Importation is the act of taking copies or phonorecords across a border. Look at the definitions of "copy" and "phonorecord" in section 101. Copies are "material objects [...] in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." Copies are real, physical things. Copies are not broadcasts or transmissions. When you have a song on a CD, the CD is the copy. When you have a song on a hard drive, or in RAM, the hard drive (or the RAM) is the copy.
When you download from allofmp3.com, or anywhere else, you're not transporting an actual copy, in tact. This is obvious because the copy is a physical thing: the copy of the song is the disk on which allofmp3 stores it. They didn't send you their disk. So, what happened? You made a copy of the song, and the new copy is the song fixed in your disk.
So you didn't import the song. You reproduced it. Reproducing a copyrighted song without permission of the copyright holder, or an applicable exemption, infringes the copyright holder's reproduction rights. Just because allofmp3 has the right to make those songs available to you under Russian law, does not mean you are authorized under US law to make your own copies, which is what you're doing when you download music from them.
For instance, let's say that merely "making available" does not infringe copyright. So, I put up a directory on a public webserver filled with music I bought from emusic.com or somewhere else. I may have a perfect legal right to place those songs online, merely doing so isn't distributing them for instance, but you still don't have a legal right to download them. It is no different with allofmp3.
Now, in Canada, in constrast, it is probably legal to use allofmp3.com. The private copying provisions of the Copyright Act do not not require that private copies be made from legitimate or authorized sources, merely that they are made for personal use and that they are made onto a recording medium that isn't prescribed.
Unless you and I are very different, as a fluent reader of English, you don't read word-by-word, seeing only one word at a time. Nor do you see each word letter-by-letter, just one at a time. Your brain perceives what you read at more abstract level. Read a sentence with all the vowels removed, for instance. It's not merely possible, it's in most cases trivial.
The errors that the OP was discussing (viz., famously misspelled homonyms) are both very common usages and strictly orthographical. They are common enough that they're basically alternate (if irregular) spellings, which any competent reader of English would recognize. A sentence which is otherwise correct, yet marred only by an error or two of this sort, isn't cause for most people to do a double take, or do much extra "work" of any sort, IMHO.
Look, I'm not trying to excuse lazy writing. I edit a lot of other people's writing. I do my share of wincing, let me assure you. And, I don't think that having the/. editors pay more attention to simple matters of spelling and grammar would destroy or impair the casual tenor of the site, as has been suggested.
But, a lot of this pedantry stinks of thinly veiled elitism. And, as far as I'm concerned, that's a lot more irritating than poorly spelled words.
You actually have to stop and re-read the sentence to understand it?
People misspell lose as loose (and you're as your and it's as its and to as too, and so on) often enough that if you can't tell what somebody means by the context, I can only shake my head at you.
Given that those words are homonyms, how are you able to tell what people mean when they speak to you out loud?
Don't get me wrong: I am as pedantic as the next guy when it comes to matters of spelling, grammar and style, but I've rarely misunderstood anyone -- certainly not to the point of having to stop and manually parse a sentence -- based only on these very common errors.
Unless you're an inexperienced speaker of the language, or are otherwise unable to comprehend alternate or irregular spelling, I have a hard time believing this trips you up as much as you say.
So in other words, the court is not forcing the asshole Novak to reveal his sources, but this has nothing to do with the notion that courts should think twice about forcing journalist's to compromise their sources?
No, in other words, we don't know (as in, you don't know, and I don't know). You're drawing conclusions about the temperament of the courts based on the fact that Robert Novak is free. That's mistaken, it's unnuanced, and that's the only point of yours I wanted to address.
Obviously, courts in the US have considered that protecting the confidentiality of sources is important to the work of journalists and that the function of the press is essential to the function of democratic society. Two of the appeals court judges in this very case have said there could be a common law privilege regarding protection of sources in other circumstances (though, not in the context of Valerie Plame). So, I have no trouble recognizing there's a "notion" as you put it.
What you said, at the outset, however, is that reluctance of the courts is the reason why Robert Novak hasn't been held to account. There's no proof of that.
In other words, the asshole who outed Valerie Plame isn't in jail? That doesn't bode well for your claim.
No, no, no. You said, that's why said asshole's not in jail. "That" being the squeamishness of US courts in jailing members of the press. That's not why. Novak is free for reasons that are at this stage indeterminate. Other people have been ordered jailed for failing to tell what he certainly also knows.
You're making the mistake of treating the issue as though it has to be absolutely a First Amendment guaranteed right, or not considered in the courts at all.
I'm not saying that at all. My point in responding to you was to address the misconception, which has been raised around here before, that because Novak appears to be getting away with it means that all journalists enjoy some blanket immunity against prosecution for keeping sources confidential. They don't.
It was Novak who publicly outed Valerie Plame, but because the courts don't feel comfortable forcing journalists to talk if there's an alternative.
The "courts" don't have anything to do with it, yet. It's the special prosecutor who's decided who to question and what to do about the level of co-operation of witnesses. Patrick Fitzgerald might not feel comfortable forcing Robert Novak to do something, but that's neither here nor there.
US courts do indeed recognize the notion that a journalist has the right to refuse to disclose a confidential source. That's why the asshole who outed Valerie Plame isn't in jail.
That's false. Two journalists, Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, have been held in contempt and ordered jailed for refusing to disclose their sources in the Valerie Plame matter. A federal appeals court recently upheld those rulings, on the basis that there is no First Amendment protection for journalists "to conceal the criminal conduct of his source."
Robert Novak has not been jailed, but that's not because he's legally immune. As it stands, it isn't yet clear whether he's testified or even been subpoenaed in the case (and if he has, what he said). Neither he nor the prosecutor will say.
Now, in terms of Apple's case against AppleInsider and PowerPage, we're talking about a California court in the context of a California Shield Law that specifically protects journalists from being held in contempt for refusing to disclose sources and notes (whether published or not).
There may be no constitutional basis for the blanket protection of a journalist's sources, but in the case at hand we're talking state law.
As far as consideration, you are giving up some rights that you have as part of the agreement, so that's satisfie
Look at it this way:
I bought a copy of Microsoft Word from Best Buy. I paid Best Buy for a bona fide copy of the actual software. So, now I have a right to run the program. (Or a right to use the CD media as a coaster, or whatever I want, since it's now mine). Copyright law says I can't make or distribute copies, but it (nor any other law) doesn't say I need any other permission to run the program (in fact, there's an explicit permission in the Copyright Act that says no copyright action arises out of running software that you own).
In terms of an EULA, some third party (remember, I bought the program from Best Buy, not from Microsoft) is offering me the right to run a program. But, if I already have that right, then what am I really getting? If the answer is "you're getting nothing you didn't already have" then there is no consideration. Period.
It's like me going to your house and telling you that: "If you want to leave your house, you'll have to agree to wear a red hat." You agree, because you're retarded. We still have no contract. You got nothing in the exchange, you already had the right to leave your house without wearing the hat, and I had no basis in law to stop you.
Patents are supposed to cover actual working implementations of novel inventions. They're not supposed to include mathematical formulas, nebulous "business methods," "one click shopping" and so on.
Patents cover, for instance, a novel implementation of a mousetrap, but, not all things that trap mice.
In exchange for the exclusive right to develop and manufacture your mousetrap, you also agree to make the details and specification of your invention public, to enrich the public good and to encourage others to build on what you've created.
Once the period of your patent is up, anybody with the wits can look up your patent and build his own copy of your mousetrap. Even while the patent is in force, he can take your idea, improve upon the design, and make his own, different -- maybe better -- mousetrap.
So how does this apply to software?
The implementation of software is its source code. Conveniently source code is also the best specification of software -- it's a functional description of the underlying invention, from which the invention itself is derived.
So if the patent can only cover implementation, it should only cover exact replicas of some source code. Just like my mousetrap -- which only covers the exact mousetrap for which I've submitted blueprints and specifications -- the patent on my software only covers my implementation: not my implementation translated from C into Lisp, or my implementation changed or improved upon so that it functions differently, nor someone else's software that does the exact same thing but written from scratch and whose source is utterly unrelated.
Now, not only is the patent limited to the original working source -- in contrast with the "1 Click" patent for instance -- but since the source is the thing under patent, it is obviously publically available.
All (patented) software becomes free software.
Contrast that scenario with the present regime of software copyright. The GPL goes a long way to turn copyright against itself and secure free software rights for users, but, wouldn't it be better if those rights were universal to all software?
If patents are done right, it balances the rights of developers against the public good much more carefully, co-operatively, and thoughtfully.
Patents are universally loathed at places like Slashdot because the patent office is abused with nonsense patents. Cure that, and, software patents start to look quite attractive.
When you move to unionized protection for the workforce, you are essentially mandating compensation for producers to be normalized.
If you don't want to mandate "normalized compensation" for you and your co-workers, then don't. You get to decide what the union will bargain for, because the union is just you and your co-workers.
I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. What basis in law do you use to arrive at your conclusions?
When you buy shrinkwrapped software, you're buying a copy of the underlying work. You do, in fact, own the copy. This is explicily set out in 17 USC 202:
Ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, is distinct from ownership of any material object in which the work is embodied.
So, to your disingenuous example: if you give me a license to access your couch, it's true that you haven't given me the couch. What you're talking about is basically buying a ticket on an amusement ride: clearly, it does not confer ownership of the ride. However, buying permission to sit on someone's couch or to sit in someone's theatre isn't even remotely analogous to the purchase of shrinkwrapped software.
When I buy software, I have -- in both law and in fact -- purchased a copy of the actual software program, which, I do -- in both law and fact -- own. (Incidentally, I can legally resell that copy, even after I've used the program.)
So, then, on what basis do I need a license from you or anyone else to put that software to a legal use? Your ownership of a copyright gives you the right to restrict reproduction, distribution, public performance and the making of derivative works. It doesn't give you any right to dictate terms of other uses.
This is the problem with nebulous terms like "intellectual property." Owners and cheerleaders of such "property" try to conflate the term to mean that they "own" the underlying work, which they do not. They own a copyright in the work, which empowers them with particular and limited rights over how the work may be used.
None of those rights form the basis for requiring a license for "mere use," use outside the scope of reproduction, distribution, or public performance.
If a license is indeed necessary, it must rise from some other basis. But, I see no compelling case that such a basis arises out of they way software is typically purchased and put to use by end users.
You have purchased something. A license to play the game on the terms and conditions that are told to you by the company.
Woah, hold on a second. Putting aside, for the moment, whether you bought a game or a license: why would you need a license to play the game in the first place?
A license is just a permission from some competent authority to do some otherwise prohibited act. So, the question becomes: what (law, contract or custom) prohibits you from playing the game in the first place? And, what authorizes Valve to then permit you to act?
The game in question is software protected by copyright, yes, but copyright law in the US and in Canada, does not, to my knowledge, prohibit the use of copyrighted software in general, nor does it grant to copyright holders the right to restrict the general use of software (at least, as I say, in the general case, as the use of some software -- probably not games -- is or has been prohibited on other grounds: eg. software implementing strong cryptography or software that circumvents copyright protection apparatus).
In fact, copyright establishes for copyright holders only a few specific rights: to reproduce, to derive, to distribute and to publically perform the protected work. Copyright holders are not empowered, at least by virtue of copyright, to restrict the use of software (or other works) except insofar as reproduction, distribution, derivation and public performance are concerned.
So, on what basis does the need for permission to play the game arise?
If it is private contract, and not by virtue of copyright, at what point was this contract formed? Between what parties and with what consideration?
It certainly wasn't done at the time of sale (and not with Valve!), since that contract was between the retailer and the purchaser for the sale of some tangible good. It could possibly be done during the "EULA interaction" on running the software for the first time, but what possible consideration could arise from that encounter?
The consideration can't be an agreement to be bound by the EULA in exchange for permission to run the program, since, we've just established no such permission is necessary. It'd be a strange leap of logic to suggest that the act the license purports to authorize was prohibited by a contract entered into whose consideration is a grant of that very (and very worthless) license. Sounds more like protection money, to me;)
So, anyway... Maybe you're right (though, I doubt it very much) that you're buying a license and not the game. But if, that's true, you really have bought nothing: just permission to do what you already had permission to do.
Well, the point is that it won't be as simple to register a.post as it has been to register a.com.
This is already the case with several gTLDs, such as.coop and.pro (namespaces for co-operatives and "professionals", respectively).
For instance, in order to qualify for a.coop, registrants have to submit to a lengthy verification process to ensure that they are, in fact, eligible co-operatives or co-operative service organizations. Similar restrictions exist for.pro and.museum.
Unlike.biz, for instance, these new specialty TLDs probably won't lead to a rush of companies registering yet another foomatic.* for their DNS warchests, as happens with.com/.net/.org, if for no other reason than most of those companies (including, thankfully, professional domain squatters) are generally ineligible for registration in the specialty TLDs anyway.
(Actually, maybe such a mad rush didn't happen for.biz, either, but that's less due to the fact that anyone could register in it -- which has lead to squatting in.biz -- and more due to the fact that it's retarded. IMHO.;))
More importantly, specialty TLDs provide an opportunity for eligible individuals and organizations to actually use their own name. An accounting firm by the name of McDonald & McDonald, for instance, might actually get to use mcdonalds.pro;)
Done right, these new TLDs are part of the solution to the artificial scarcity of the.com/net/org namespace. I don't see how they add to the problem.
Quit saying you can't vote for whatever candidate that you want, and just do it.
The issue isn't whether or not it's physically possible to mark a ballot for a third party. Such thinking is a deceitful red herring.
For chrissakes, fifty years ago Maurice Duverger showed that elections conducted by"first-past-the-post" principles tend -- by their very mechanics -- toward a political system that's perpetually dominated by two political parties.
Alternatives exist, to be sure. But it's more than disingenuous to suggest that malcontent against an artificial two-party state is somehow attributable purely to apathy and not also to what's nearly a mathematical certainty.
The system is rigged. (And not just for this reason and in this way.) What motivation have the presentsetofplayers to change it of their own volution?
What you describe as "libertarianism" is more properly American libertarianism (which, elsewhere, is oxymoronically called "anarcho-capitalism")
It is a political philosophy that asserts that the fundamental human right is the right to property. Everything else in American libertarian philosophy (and economic thinking) flows from this absurd premise.
Historically, "libertarianism" has meant anarchism, which is a political philosophy that rejects the heirarchical organization of society. The rejection of heirarchy means many things:
politically, it means a rejection of the state and of class society
economically, it means a rejection of private property and wage labour
culurally, it means a rejection of racism, patriarchy, the work ethic, and of "organized" religion
It surely is the antithesis of so-called Libertarianism, but it's none of the things you ascribe to Noam Chomsky.
Better yet, since members of the legislative assembly of the Australian Capital Territory are chosen using Hare-Clark, the ACT electoral commssion has contracted a company to build free softwareelectronic voting and counting systems to conduct elections using the method.
PR systems like Hare-Clark are somewhat difficult to count by hand, and the most accurate algorithms, such as Meek's Method must be done by computer.
Incidentally, complexity is one of the major problems facing adoption of proportional representation schemes... the mechanics are somewhat difficult to explain to nontechnical voters, and thus debates on the issue lend themselves easily to spin and misrepresentation.
(The other major issue, of course, being that PR tends to threaten established politicians and other elites... here is an interesting site, for instance, that discusses the impact of PR in New York after communists and blacks were elected using the method back in the 1940s).
Well, the evidence against IBM is more substantial than simply the fact that IBM Hollerith machines were used. It's that IBM engineers collaborated with Nazi officials in designing, building and subsequently leasing the machines to Germany with a full appreciation of their intended use.
Regardless of whether or not you buy Black's entire argument, it is clear that IBM is not completely innocent. In contrast, the worst that SCO can be implicated in is spouting lies and stock mischief. The two are incomparable, IMHO.
My first -1, however, so that must count for something;)
Let me get this straight--according to ESR, SCO has become "a nest of liars and thieves compared to which IBM at its historic worst looked positively angelic."
Which IBM is that? You mean, the IBM that built and supplied the technologies enabling Hitler's Germany to systematically slaughter six million innocent human beings?
This is IBM's angelic history compared to SCO's devilry? I think ESR needs to reconsider his priorities.
Right--and Slashdot is just so free of trolls;) You could serve dinner on a -1 threshold.
IMC newswires are largely unmoderated. People are as free to post filth as they are to post insight. Some editorial groups will hide (though not delete) obvious trolls, hate speech, and the like... but other editorial groups don't.
The software that operates the vast majority of the IMC sites (variants of Active and dadaIMC) has no concept of "community moderation" -- so most of the moderation that happens is done by a small group of volunteers, according to the local collective's (usually quite permissive) editorial policy.
IMC is no more to blame for the behaviour of its trolls than Slashdot is to blame for its own.
As far as I'm concerned, there are significant problems with the organization of many indymedia centres -- including the global network -- that it slowing the work toward pervasive, free media. Ultimately, however, the IMC -- which in 4 or 5 years has grown from a single issue weblog (Seattle) to a global network of free media activists -- has done an excellent job in providing a forum for alternative voice.
To think that what a few trolls post to an open forum somehow reflects on the activists who make IMC happen, and the authors who bring insightful commentary to the public debate, is indirection at best and deception at worst.
Slashdot Mirror
This doesn't really mean anything. Is a RAM chip a medium? How about a traveling EM wave? What about punchcards?
But regardless of that question, a copy is made when a copy is made. "This tape will self-destruct in 30seconds" does not mean that it is somehow magically not a copy.
Actually, there are probably several copies made during the course of the network transfer of a file, from the original disk to network buffers, from router to router, back into memory and then onto disk. Most of those copies are transient. It's possible they're not sufficiently "fixed" that the law might consider them ephemeral.
The point is that a copy is made, by you, at the endpoint. When you save a song to disk, a copy is made. The number of copies that were made to get it to you is totally irrelevant to that fact.
This just doesn't work. Simple logic tells us that if the copy is being made here, then the posession of the original must be transferred here, leaving the sender without a copy. This isn't happening. When I send you a file, I'm sending you a COPY, not the original.
What you're sending isn't a copy, but you're correct it's not the original.
You are ignoring the statutory definition of a copy, and substituting it with your own. That's fine, for the purposes of philosophy, but we are discussing what is and isn't legal.
You cannot send someone a copy, by definition, unless you are sending them a physical thing: like a CD or a disk or a book or a painting. If you read someone a book over the phone, you're not "sending them a copy," you're performing the work.
A copy is a tangible, actual object. It is not a stream of bits flowing over a network. Or words flowing across the air. It is not an electromagnetic wave. The statute is exceedingly clear on what constitutes a "copy."
The copy is made when it is made material, when it is fixed in a medium sufficiently that it can be perceived, on its own, or with the aid of a machine. The copy is made where you write down the story I tell you. Or where you record the sounds you hear. Or where you save to disk the bits that you receive.
You could argue that "archival" is being done on the US side, but the copying is definately being done on the other side of the ocean.
There's no such thing as "archival" at copyright law. The thing you call "archival" is what the law calls "copying." Take it for what you will.
Actually, it seems pretty obvious that both reproduction and importation have happened.
Even if importation happens, it is still not excused by 602. 602(a)(2) does not save you from 602(b).
If you decided that the server is doing the copying, which technically it is, then it's being reproduced in russia, then imported to the US.
No, the copy is made when the work is fixed in a medium. This clearly happens when the bits are written from the network to your disk. If you and your disk are in the US, the copy is made in the US, by you, a person subject to US law. The bits in transit are ephemeral and not a copy.
Forget the internet for a minute: what happens when you tape a song off the radio? The radio station did not make a copy and send it to you. The broadcast -- a transmission of the music -- is not a copy. Instead, it is clear you recorded the broadcast to tape. In doing so, you fixed the work in a medium, and created a copy.
Unfortunately AFAIK, some brain dead judges seems to think the RECEIVER is actually the one doing the reproduction.
That's because they are. You can't ignore the definition of what constitutes a copy. Unless you actually believe downloading is teleportation, it's clear there are (at least) two copies involved, not one being transported.
Downloading music (from anywhere, foreign or domestic) isn't importation, so 602 does not apply. Even if 602 did apply, you would not have an exemption under 602(a)(2) because of 602(b).
Importation is the act of taking copies or phonorecords across a border. Look at the definitions of "copy" and "phonorecord" in section 101. Copies are "material objects [...] in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." Copies are real, physical things. Copies are not broadcasts or transmissions. When you have a song on a CD, the CD is the copy. When you have a song on a hard drive, or in RAM, the hard drive (or the RAM) is the copy.
When you download from allofmp3.com, or anywhere else, you're not transporting an actual copy, in tact. This is obvious because the copy is a physical thing: the copy of the song is the disk on which allofmp3 stores it. They didn't send you their disk. So, what happened? You made a copy of the song, and the new copy is the song fixed in your disk.
So you didn't import the song. You reproduced it. Reproducing a copyrighted song without permission of the copyright holder, or an applicable exemption, infringes the copyright holder's reproduction rights. Just because allofmp3 has the right to make those songs available to you under Russian law, does not mean you are authorized under US law to make your own copies, which is what you're doing when you download music from them.
For instance, let's say that merely "making available" does not infringe copyright. So, I put up a directory on a public webserver filled with music I bought from emusic.com or somewhere else. I may have a perfect legal right to place those songs online, merely doing so isn't distributing them for instance, but you still don't have a legal right to download them. It is no different with allofmp3.
Now, in Canada, in constrast, it is probably legal to use allofmp3.com. The private copying provisions of the Copyright Act do not not require that private copies be made from legitimate or authorized sources, merely that they are made for personal use and that they are made onto a recording medium that isn't prescribed.
Unless you and I are very different, as a fluent reader of English, you don't read word-by-word, seeing only one word at a time. Nor do you see each word letter-by-letter, just one at a time. Your brain perceives what you read at more abstract level. Read a sentence with all the vowels removed, for instance. It's not merely possible, it's in most cases trivial.
/. editors pay more attention to simple matters of spelling and grammar would destroy or impair the casual tenor of the site, as has been suggested.
The errors that the OP was discussing (viz., famously misspelled homonyms) are both very common usages and strictly orthographical. They are common enough that they're basically alternate (if irregular) spellings, which any competent reader of English would recognize. A sentence which is otherwise correct, yet marred only by an error or two of this sort, isn't cause for most people to do a double take, or do much extra "work" of any sort, IMHO.
Look, I'm not trying to excuse lazy writing. I edit a lot of other people's writing. I do my share of wincing, let me assure you. And, I don't think that having the
But, a lot of this pedantry stinks of thinly veiled elitism. And, as far as I'm concerned, that's a lot more irritating than poorly spelled words.
You actually have to stop and re-read the sentence to understand it?
People misspell lose as loose (and you're as your and it's as its and to as too, and so on) often enough that if you can't tell what somebody means by the context, I can only shake my head at you.
Given that those words are homonyms, how are you able to tell what people mean when they speak to you out loud?
Don't get me wrong: I am as pedantic as the next guy when it comes to matters of spelling, grammar and style, but I've rarely misunderstood anyone -- certainly not to the point of having to stop and manually parse a sentence -- based only on these very common errors.
Unless you're an inexperienced speaker of the language, or are otherwise unable to comprehend alternate or irregular spelling, I have a hard time believing this trips you up as much as you say.
So in other words, the court is not forcing the asshole Novak to reveal his sources, but this has nothing to do with the notion that courts should think twice about forcing journalist's to compromise their sources?
No, in other words, we don't know (as in, you don't know, and I don't know). You're drawing conclusions about the temperament of the courts based on the fact that Robert Novak is free. That's mistaken, it's unnuanced, and that's the only point of yours I wanted to address.
Obviously, courts in the US have considered that protecting the confidentiality of sources is important to the work of journalists and that the function of the press is essential to the function of democratic society. Two of the appeals court judges in this very case have said there could be a common law privilege regarding protection of sources in other circumstances (though, not in the context of Valerie Plame). So, I have no trouble recognizing there's a "notion" as you put it.
What you said, at the outset, however, is that reluctance of the courts is the reason why Robert Novak hasn't been held to account. There's no proof of that.
In other words, the asshole who outed Valerie Plame isn't in jail? That doesn't bode well for your claim.
No, no, no. You said, that's why said asshole's not in jail. "That" being the squeamishness of US courts in jailing members of the press. That's not why. Novak is free for reasons that are at this stage indeterminate. Other people have been ordered jailed for failing to tell what he certainly also knows.
You're making the mistake of treating the issue as though it has to be absolutely a First Amendment guaranteed right, or not considered in the courts at all.
I'm not saying that at all. My point in responding to you was to address the misconception, which has been raised around here before, that because Novak appears to be getting away with it means that all journalists enjoy some blanket immunity against prosecution for keeping sources confidential. They don't.
It was Novak who publicly outed Valerie Plame, but because the courts don't feel comfortable forcing journalists to talk if there's an alternative.
The "courts" don't have anything to do with it, yet. It's the special prosecutor who's decided who to question and what to do about the level of co-operation of witnesses. Patrick Fitzgerald might not feel comfortable forcing Robert Novak to do something, but that's neither here nor there.
US courts do indeed recognize the notion that a journalist has the right to refuse to disclose a confidential source. That's why the asshole who outed Valerie Plame isn't in jail.
That's false. Two journalists, Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, have been held in contempt and ordered jailed for refusing to disclose their sources in the Valerie Plame matter. A federal appeals court recently upheld those rulings, on the basis that there is no First Amendment protection for journalists "to conceal the criminal conduct of his source."
Robert Novak has not been jailed, but that's not because he's legally immune. As it stands, it isn't yet clear whether he's testified or even been subpoenaed in the case (and if he has, what he said). Neither he nor the prosecutor will say.
Now, in terms of Apple's case against AppleInsider and PowerPage, we're talking about a California court in the context of a California Shield Law that specifically protects journalists from being held in contempt for refusing to disclose sources and notes (whether published or not).
There may be no constitutional basis for the blanket protection of a journalist's sources, but in the case at hand we're talking state law.
As far as consideration, you are giving up some rights that you have as part of the agreement, so that's satisfie
Look at it this way:
I bought a copy of Microsoft Word from Best Buy. I paid Best Buy for a bona fide copy of the actual software. So, now I have a right to run the program. (Or a right to use the CD media as a coaster, or whatever I want, since it's now mine). Copyright law says I can't make or distribute copies, but it (nor any other law) doesn't say I need any other permission to run the program (in fact, there's an explicit permission in the Copyright Act that says no copyright action arises out of running software that you own).
In terms of an EULA, some third party (remember, I bought the program from Best Buy, not from Microsoft) is offering me the right to run a program. But, if I already have that right, then what am I really getting? If the answer is "you're getting nothing you didn't already have" then there is no consideration. Period.
It's like me going to your house and telling you that: "If you want to leave your house, you'll have to agree to wear a red hat." You agree, because you're retarded. We still have no contract. You got nothing in the exchange, you already had the right to leave your house without wearing the hat, and I had no basis in law to stop you.
QED.
Patents are supposed to cover actual working implementations of novel inventions. They're not supposed to include mathematical formulas, nebulous "business methods," "one click shopping" and so on.
Patents cover, for instance, a novel implementation of a mousetrap, but, not all things that trap mice.
In exchange for the exclusive right to develop and manufacture your mousetrap, you also agree to make the details and specification of your invention public, to enrich the public good and to encourage others to build on what you've created.
Once the period of your patent is up, anybody with the wits can look up your patent and build his own copy of your mousetrap. Even while the patent is in force, he can take your idea, improve upon the design, and make his own, different -- maybe better -- mousetrap.
So how does this apply to software?
The implementation of software is its source code. Conveniently source code is also the best specification of software -- it's a functional description of the underlying invention, from which the invention itself is derived.
So if the patent can only cover implementation, it should only cover exact replicas of some source code. Just like my mousetrap -- which only covers the exact mousetrap for which I've submitted blueprints and specifications -- the patent on my software only covers my implementation: not my implementation translated from C into Lisp, or my implementation changed or improved upon so that it functions differently, nor someone else's software that does the exact same thing but written from scratch and whose source is utterly unrelated.
Now, not only is the patent limited to the original working source -- in contrast with the "1 Click" patent for instance -- but since the source is the thing under patent, it is obviously publically available.
All (patented) software becomes free software.
Contrast that scenario with the present regime of software copyright. The GPL goes a long way to turn copyright against itself and secure free software rights for users, but, wouldn't it be better if those rights were universal to all software?
If patents are done right, it balances the rights of developers against the public good much more carefully, co-operatively, and thoughtfully.
Patents are universally loathed at places like Slashdot because the patent office is abused with nonsense patents. Cure that, and, software patents start to look quite attractive.
When you move to unionized protection for the workforce, you are essentially mandating compensation for producers to be normalized.
If you don't want to mandate "normalized compensation" for you and your co-workers, then don't. You get to decide what the union will bargain for, because the union is just you and your co-workers.
When you buy shrinkwrapped software, you're buying a copy of the underlying work. You do, in fact, own the copy. This is explicily set out in 17 USC 202:
So, to your disingenuous example: if you give me a license to access your couch, it's true that you haven't given me the couch. What you're talking about is basically buying a ticket on an amusement ride: clearly, it does not confer ownership of the ride. However, buying permission to sit on someone's couch or to sit in someone's theatre isn't even remotely analogous to the purchase of shrinkwrapped software.
When I buy software, I have -- in both law and in fact -- purchased a copy of the actual software program, which, I do -- in both law and fact -- own. (Incidentally, I can legally resell that copy, even after I've used the program.)
So, then, on what basis do I need a license from you or anyone else to put that software to a legal use? Your ownership of a copyright gives you the right to restrict reproduction, distribution, public performance and the making of derivative works. It doesn't give you any right to dictate terms of other uses.
This is the problem with nebulous terms like "intellectual property." Owners and cheerleaders of such "property" try to conflate the term to mean that they "own" the underlying work, which they do not. They own a copyright in the work, which empowers them with particular and limited rights over how the work may be used.
None of those rights form the basis for requiring a license for "mere use," use outside the scope of reproduction, distribution, or public performance.
If a license is indeed necessary, it must rise from some other basis. But, I see no compelling case that such a basis arises out of they way software is typically purchased and put to use by end users.
You have purchased something. A license to play the game on the terms and conditions that are told to you by the company.
;)
Woah, hold on a second. Putting aside, for the moment, whether you bought a game or a license: why would you need a license to play the game in the first place?
A license is just a permission from some competent authority to do some otherwise prohibited act. So, the question becomes: what (law, contract or custom) prohibits you from playing the game in the first place? And, what authorizes Valve to then permit you to act?
The game in question is software protected by copyright, yes, but copyright law in the US and in Canada, does not, to my knowledge, prohibit the use of copyrighted software in general, nor does it grant to copyright holders the right to restrict the general use of software (at least, as I say, in the general case, as the use of some software -- probably not games -- is or has been prohibited on other grounds: eg. software implementing strong cryptography or software that circumvents copyright protection apparatus).
In fact, copyright establishes for copyright holders only a few specific rights: to reproduce, to derive, to distribute and to publically perform the protected work. Copyright holders are not empowered, at least by virtue of copyright, to restrict the use of software (or other works) except insofar as reproduction, distribution, derivation and public performance are concerned.
So, on what basis does the need for permission to play the game arise?
If it is private contract, and not by virtue of copyright, at what point was this contract formed? Between what parties and with what consideration?
It certainly wasn't done at the time of sale (and not with Valve!), since that contract was between the retailer and the purchaser for the sale of some tangible good. It could possibly be done during the "EULA interaction" on running the software for the first time, but what possible consideration could arise from that encounter?
The consideration can't be an agreement to be bound by the EULA in exchange for permission to run the program, since, we've just established no such permission is necessary. It'd be a strange leap of logic to suggest that the act the license purports to authorize was prohibited by a contract entered into whose consideration is a grant of that very (and very worthless) license. Sounds more like protection money, to me
So, anyway... Maybe you're right (though, I doubt it very much) that you're buying a license and not the game. But if, that's true, you really have bought nothing: just permission to do what you already had permission to do.
Well, the point is that it won't be as simple to register a .post as it has been to register a .com.
.coop and .pro (namespaces for co-operatives and "professionals", respectively).
.coop, registrants have to submit to a lengthy verification process to ensure that they are, in fact, eligible co-operatives or co-operative service organizations. Similar restrictions exist for .pro and .museum.
.biz, for instance, these new specialty TLDs probably won't lead to a rush of companies registering yet another foomatic.* for their DNS warchests, as happens with .com/.net/.org, if for no other reason than most of those companies (including, thankfully, professional domain squatters) are generally ineligible for registration in the specialty TLDs anyway.
.biz, either, but that's less due to the fact that anyone could register in it -- which has lead to squatting in .biz -- and more due to the fact that it's retarded. IMHO. ;))
;)
.com/net/org namespace. I don't see how they add to the problem.
This is already the case with several gTLDs, such as
For instance, in order to qualify for a
Unlike
(Actually, maybe such a mad rush didn't happen for
More importantly, specialty TLDs provide an opportunity for eligible individuals and organizations to actually use their own name. An accounting firm by the name of McDonald & McDonald, for instance, might actually get to use mcdonalds.pro
Done right, these new TLDs are part of the solution to the artificial scarcity of the
The issue isn't whether or not it's physically possible to mark a ballot for a third party. Such thinking is a deceitful red herring.
For chrissakes, fifty years ago Maurice Duverger showed that elections conducted by"first-past-the-post" principles tend -- by their very mechanics -- toward a political system that's perpetually dominated by two political parties.
Alternatives exist, to be sure. But it's more than disingenuous to suggest that malcontent against an artificial two-party state is somehow attributable purely to apathy and not also to what's nearly a mathematical certainty.
The system is rigged. (And not just for this reason and in this way.) What motivation have the present set of players to change it of their own volution?
What you describe as "libertarianism" is more properly American libertarianism (which, elsewhere, is oxymoronically called "anarcho-capitalism")
It is a political philosophy that asserts that the fundamental human right is the right to property. Everything else in American libertarian philosophy (and economic thinking) flows from this absurd premise.
Historically, "libertarianism" has meant anarchism, which is a political philosophy that rejects the heirarchical organization of society. The rejection of heirarchy means many things:
It surely is the antithesis of so-called Libertarianism, but it's none of the things you ascribe to Noam Chomsky.
No, that's the definition of "proprietary."
Democrats, Republicans, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks.
I hate to break it to you, but, the Democrats and the Republicans are little more than the two wings of the Capitalist Party.
The USA is no more a plural democracy than the USSR, in that regard.
No, seriously. It is.
Do you even know what socialist means?
bacchusrx.
Better yet, since members of the legislative assembly of the Australian Capital Territory are chosen using Hare-Clark, the ACT electoral commssion has contracted a company to build free software electronic voting and counting systems to conduct elections using the method.
PR systems like Hare-Clark are somewhat difficult to count by hand, and the most accurate algorithms, such as Meek's Method must be done by computer.
Incidentally, complexity is one of the major problems facing adoption of proportional representation schemes... the mechanics are somewhat difficult to explain to nontechnical voters, and thus debates on the issue lend themselves easily to spin and misrepresentation.
(The other major issue, of course, being that PR tends to threaten established politicians and other elites... here is an interesting site, for instance, that discusses the impact of PR in New York after communists and blacks were elected using the method back in the 1940s).
Bravo!
The war you talk about is class war, of course. It has a solution, therein.
Well, the evidence against IBM is more substantial than simply the fact that IBM Hollerith machines were used. It's that IBM engineers collaborated with Nazi officials in designing, building and subsequently leasing the machines to Germany with a full appreciation of their intended use.
;)
Regardless of whether or not you buy Black's entire argument, it is clear that IBM is not completely innocent. In contrast, the worst that SCO can be implicated in is spouting lies and stock mischief. The two are incomparable, IMHO.
My first -1, however, so that must count for something
Let me get this straight--according to ESR, SCO has become "a nest of liars and thieves compared to which IBM at its historic worst looked positively angelic."
Which IBM is that? You mean, the IBM that built and supplied the technologies enabling Hitler's Germany to systematically slaughter six million innocent human beings?
This is IBM's angelic history compared to SCO's devilry? I think ESR needs to reconsider his priorities.
Right--and Slashdot is just so free of trolls ;) You could serve dinner on a -1 threshold.
IMC newswires are largely unmoderated. People are as free to post filth as they are to post insight. Some editorial groups will hide (though not delete) obvious trolls, hate speech, and the like... but other editorial groups don't.
The software that operates the vast majority of the IMC sites (variants of Active and dadaIMC) has no concept of "community moderation" -- so most of the moderation that happens is done by a small group of volunteers, according to the local collective's (usually quite permissive) editorial policy.
IMC is no more to blame for the behaviour of its trolls than Slashdot is to blame for its own.
As far as I'm concerned, there are significant problems with the organization of many indymedia centres -- including the global network -- that it slowing the work toward pervasive, free media. Ultimately, however, the IMC -- which in 4 or 5 years has grown from a single issue weblog (Seattle) to a global network of free media activists -- has done an excellent job in providing a forum for alternative voice.
To think that what a few trolls post to an open forum somehow reflects on the activists who make IMC happen, and the authors who bring insightful commentary to the public debate, is indirection at best and deception at worst.
You might be interested in a couple of articles that appeared in Murdoch University's December 1998 Electronic Journal of Law:
Justice or Money? How to Save the Law from Contempt
Common v. Continental: A Reaction to Mr. Evan Whitton's 1998 Murdoch Law School Address
The former is an indictment of English common law (and its descendants). The latter is an introduction to the legal systems of continental Europe.
bacchusrx.