Now, maybe the guy that wrote the text on the box made a stupid mistake, but regardless of what the box said, words (even neologisms) cannot be copyrighted.
No. Names are not protected by copyright law. Some names may be protected under trademark law. Contact the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, 800-786-9199, for further information.
How do I copyright a name, title, slogan or logo?
Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases. In some cases, these things may be protected as trademarks. Contact the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, 800-786-9199, for further information. However, copyright protection may be available for logo artwork that contains sufficient authorship. In some circumstances, an artistic logo may also be protected as a trademark.
I don't think that we're in disagreement on one point: current copyright law is a damn shame. In particular, copyright lasts too damn long at present.
The question is whether lifespans of the creator should be part of the consideration for copyright term. I don't see why it should be. I'd much prefer a return to fixed durations, just like corporations have.
I think there are valid legal reasons for making the maximum copyright term equal to the life of the author plus (either) eighteen or twenty-one years.
I personally don't see any reason why the creation of a 78-year-old should be worth less to him and his heirs than the creation of a 21-year-old. Lifespan seems utterly irrelevant to the concept of promoting the creative arts via copyright.
Why not return to a fixed duration for copyright? This works for corporate-owned copyrights.
In fact, every copyright had a fixed duration until 1976. For most of that time, it was fourteen year duration, renewable once (for a maximum of twenty-eight years protection).
We can quibble about how long is long enough, but I just don't see why lifespan should be relevant for the value of one's intellectual creations.
Caveat: Actually, there's a pretty good reason we can't easily return to fixed durations for copyright. In 1988, the US became a Berne convention signatory. As a result, copyright has to be at least life + 50 years. Nonetheless, I don't think this is a reasonable way to calculate copyright duration.
Note also that life + 21 years, as the parent advocates, would fall afoul of the Berne convention too.
If I want to make it illegal for people to remove cement blocks from their lawnmowers, or to sell lawnmowers which do not contain cement blocks, or to distribute bolt-cutters, I should be executed for treason.
It is that black-and-white.
Er, perhaps you should learn what treason is. You don't commit treason by wanting particular laws. In fact, I can't imagine committing treason by introducing bills to the legislature.
Especially hard if the bills are about lawnmowers and cement blocks.
You'll sue MS for billions? If they change a setting on your box without permission?
Good luck with that. Let's assume you show they had no right to do so. That's a big assumption, given the relative legal resources of you and MS, but let's grant it.
How will you justify billions? Certainly not in terms of damages, so you must think that punitive considerations justify it. But I doubt that a judge will agree that MS's offense in changing a setting on your box is so egregious that they should pay billions. And even if the jury says so, a judge has the right to overturn over-sized awards.
I'm pretty sure your Slashdot threat won't alter MS's behavior here, but again, good luck.
so yes, I expect Vista to run in classic windows mode on a 1ghz AMD w/ a GForce 5600 graphics card. It won't be blazing fast, but it should run basic apps (office/web browser/email) with out a problem.
That's nice. But you said that W2k users shouldn't have to upgrade their hardware to run Vista in classic mode. But Windows 2000 required only 64 meg ram (according to http://www.dewassoc.com/support/win2000/require.ht m), not 512 meg, like you just quoted for Vista.
Now, I'm sure that most W2k users have more than 64 meg. Some might even have 512 meg. But nonetheless, it's misleading to say that W2k users won't need to upgrade. Those of us that don't upgrade very often are likely to have machines that run dog-slow for Vista or not at all.
Say, this mirroring raises an interesting question: Is mirroring an article a fair use right?
Now, clearly you have been granted the right to mirror in this case (by the Creative Commons license on the inside cover of the comic book). But what about in general?
My guess is that mirroring in general counts as re-distributing without permission. But has anyone seen any argument for or against my guess?
Royalties don't give IP value, which is what the original poster said was $5.
Royalties say how much the publisher is willing to pay per CD and how much the artist (and others) agreed to accept. I wouldn't call that "IP value".
I am also not sure where the figure of $5 per CD for royalties comes from. Maybe it's pretty close, maybe not, but I'd like some hint of how it was calculated or where it was published.
No reason to read all 22 words in a post before replying, eh? The first three should give the gist of it.
Some people think that it's bad to repeat the joke of the parent as if it's new. But if the parent was so clever, he would've stuck the punchline in the first sentence. That's what I say.
"They didn't come after any of these people, they're just singling us out because we're more profitable" becomes a defense.
How could that be a defense? Copyright isn't like trademark: a holder can selectively enforce his copyright if he chooses.
Besides, I believe that a number of GPL infringements were stopped by the threat of lawsuit. So, at least certain would-be defendants wanted to avoid court.
Anybody can have their cake and then eat it, the real trick is to eat your cake and then have it.
Sometimes, in plain English, "and" is not commutative. It has temporal features. "Eat your cake and have it too" is intended to mean "first eat and then have".
I suppose that if you can't understand this, you have real problems following directions. How can anyone "take the second right and go straight until the McDonald's" all at once?
If they keep doing this, one of two things will happen.
[Summarizing here]
1) 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Brazil will be retroactively moved to non-fiction -or- 2) MLB and its minions will be ousted, freedom will reign and every day will be Christmas.
That's illogical. First, calling millions and millions of people "idiots" speaks for itself.
Are you kidding? Millions of idiots has to be a massive underestimate.
There are six billion people in this world. Now, if we extrapolate from my daily idiot to non-idiot ratios, I conservatively estimate 4.5 billion idiots.
Also, again extrapolating from my daily experience, 3 billion of these are in my family and hundreds of millions of them are me. There may be weaknesses in my methodology and we call for further research, blah blah blah...
OK, I admit that was a little too easy, sorry. Any constructive and specific suggestions?
Oh. Uh. Golly. I didn't expect that response. I was kinda expecting mindless flamage signifying nothing but over-inflated egos and desperate need for attention.
This is Slashdot, right?
Honestly, I don't know what to do about electronic voting concerns aside from what you've suggested: support the candidates and elected officials that share our concern. Also, to discuss the issue with our friends and family unacquainted with the controversy. But both of these suggestions have fairly limited returns.
Can we get back to the brainless sniping? That's a heck of a lot easier.
That's right, you didn't say "all slashdotters". Nonetheless, effective newsbreakers choose venues where the news isn't widely known. That, or they just don't toot their own horn so ineffectively.
Sorry to break the news to the "true believers" that remain among my fellow Americans, but firing Walden W. O'Dell will not automagically bring back integrity to the voting system here in the U.S. Most slashdotters are savvy enough to know that paperless voting using secret, proprietary code can be easily manipulated.
Er, it doesn't seem like you've broken any news at all. You just said that the "true believers" aren't slashdotters, so if you want to disabuse them of their fantasies, maybe you should choose some other forum.
It's possible that you are thinking of the legal system as a mechanism that is not intelligent, and can be gotten around through cleverness. That is not the case.
Really? I thought that assumption was exactly why lawyers get the big bucks. They have the cleverness (and know-how) to get around the legal system.
Nah, I'm not really this cynical about law and lawyers, but I could use the ill-gotten karma. Reward me for cheap shots! Please!
3) This is a free service, and it's theirs. You have absolutely NO right to complain about their business practices. If it bothers you, don't use AIM or their servers.
Huh?
On the contrary, of course users have a right to complain. Why wouldn't they?
Perhaps they have no reasonable expectation that AOL will respond to complaints from users of a gratis service, but they sure have the right to complain, bitch, whine, kvetch and holler.
I got bitten by the awstats bug last February and a rootkit was installed before I knew it. In fact, two kits were installed when I figured out something funny was going on (two unexpected reboots in a month).
It's not Windows, but if you're not on top of things, you sure as heck can get rooted via a web exploit. The fact that Apache runs as nobody doesn't help if your installation has a privilege escalation vulnerability.
Slashdot Mirror
Then the box was lying to you.
l :
The word "Porsche" cannot be copyrighted.
Now, maybe the guy that wrote the text on the box made a stupid mistake, but regardless of what the box said, words (even neologisms) cannot be copyrighted.
From http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.htm
Can I copyright the name of my band?
No. Names are not protected by copyright law. Some names may be protected under trademark law. Contact the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, 800-786-9199, for further information.
How do I copyright a name, title, slogan or logo?
Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases. In some cases, these things may be protected as trademarks. Contact the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, 800-786-9199, for further information. However, copyright protection may be available for logo artwork that contains sufficient authorship. In some circumstances, an artistic logo may also be protected as a trademark.
I don't think that we're in disagreement on one point: current copyright law is a damn shame. In particular, copyright lasts too damn long at present.
The question is whether lifespans of the creator should be part of the consideration for copyright term. I don't see why it should be. I'd much prefer a return to fixed durations, just like corporations have.
...it said that the name Porsche, the horse logo, and "the distinctive design" of their cars are copyright of Porsche.
You sure that wasn't trademark?
Certainly, one cannot copyright a single word (like the name "Porsche") but one can trademark it.
I think there are valid legal reasons for making the maximum copyright term equal to the life of the author plus (either) eighteen or twenty-one years.
I personally don't see any reason why the creation of a 78-year-old should be worth less to him and his heirs than the creation of a 21-year-old. Lifespan seems utterly irrelevant to the concept of promoting the creative arts via copyright.
Why not return to a fixed duration for copyright? This works for corporate-owned copyrights.
In fact, every copyright had a fixed duration until 1976. For most of that time, it was fourteen year duration, renewable once (for a maximum of twenty-eight years protection).
We can quibble about how long is long enough, but I just don't see why lifespan should be relevant for the value of one's intellectual creations.
Caveat: Actually, there's a pretty good reason we can't easily return to fixed durations for copyright. In 1988, the US became a Berne convention signatory. As a result, copyright has to be at least life + 50 years. Nonetheless, I don't think this is a reasonable way to calculate copyright duration.
Note also that life + 21 years, as the parent advocates, would fall afoul of the Berne convention too.
Where are the Tuttle jokes? What's happened with Slashdot? The story mentions Oklahoma, people! Let's get on the ball!
You know, maybe they can reverse that city manager's cell division! Ha ha!
No, wait, let me try again.
In Tuttle, Oklahoma, the cells divide you!
Okay. Maybe there's a reason no one's done a Tuttle joke yet. Although "unfunny" doesn't usually count as a reason on Slashdot.
If I want to make it illegal for people to remove cement blocks from their lawnmowers, or to sell lawnmowers which do not contain cement blocks, or to distribute bolt-cutters, I should be executed for treason.
It is that black-and-white.
Er, perhaps you should learn what treason is. You don't commit treason by wanting particular laws. In fact, I can't imagine committing treason by introducing bills to the legislature.
Especially hard if the bills are about lawnmowers and cement blocks.
You'll sue MS for billions? If they change a setting on your box without permission?
Good luck with that. Let's assume you show they had no right to do so. That's a big assumption, given the relative legal resources of you and MS, but let's grant it.
How will you justify billions? Certainly not in terms of damages, so you must think that punitive considerations justify it. But I doubt that a judge will agree that MS's offense in changing a setting on your box is so egregious that they should pay billions. And even if the jury says so, a judge has the right to overturn over-sized awards.
I'm pretty sure your Slashdot threat won't alter MS's behavior here, but again, good luck.
so yes, I expect Vista to run in classic windows mode on a 1ghz AMD w/ a GForce 5600 graphics card. It won't be blazing fast, but it should run basic apps (office/web browser/email) with out a problem.
t m), not 512 meg, like you just quoted for Vista.
That's nice. But you said that W2k users shouldn't have to upgrade their hardware to run Vista in classic mode. But Windows 2000 required only 64 meg ram (according to http://www.dewassoc.com/support/win2000/require.h
Now, I'm sure that most W2k users have more than 64 meg. Some might even have 512 meg. But nonetheless, it's misleading to say that W2k users won't need to upgrade. Those of us that don't upgrade very often are likely to have machines that run dog-slow for Vista or not at all.
So while a 2k user may want to buy a copy of Vista for security concerns, they should not have to upgrade their hardware in order to do so.
Are you seriously suggesting that Vista will run on five-year-old hardware, just so long as you use the right graphical interface?
Or maybe two-year-old hardware?
Really?
Say, this mirroring raises an interesting question: Is mirroring an article a fair use right?
Now, clearly you have been granted the right to mirror in this case (by the Creative Commons license on the inside cover of the comic book). But what about in general?
My guess is that mirroring in general counts as re-distributing without permission. But has anyone seen any argument for or against my guess?
Royalties don't give IP value, which is what the original poster said was $5.
Royalties say how much the publisher is willing to pay per CD and how much the artist (and others) agreed to accept. I wouldn't call that "IP value".
I am also not sure where the figure of $5 per CD for royalties comes from. Maybe it's pretty close, maybe not, but I'd like some hint of how it was calculated or where it was published.
The IP value of a CD (performer + composer + producer) is about $5...
Fascinating. Now, how did you calculate that?
"A single language makes each developer easily replacable."
-- Dream on! At Wells Fargo, they have a bunch of hackers that have no concept of design.
Ah, computer programming: One of those rare jobs where incompetence means job security.
If you can write really unreadable code, then your bosses won't have the nerve to fire you!
But if you write sensible, understandable and well-documented code, well, then your replacement can easily pick up where you leave off.
No reason to read all 22 words in a post before replying, eh? The first three should give the gist of it.
Some people think that it's bad to repeat the joke of the parent as if it's new. But if the parent was so clever, he would've stuck the punchline in the first sentence. That's what I say.
"They didn't come after any of these people, they're just singling us out because we're more profitable" becomes a defense.
How could that be a defense? Copyright isn't like trademark: a holder can selectively enforce his copyright if he chooses.
Besides, I believe that a number of GPL infringements were stopped by the threat of lawsuit. So, at least certain would-be defendants wanted to avoid court.
D'oh! I don't know why I was thinking of the damn cliche backwards when writing my response.
Well, at least everyone ignores my posts already.
Anybody can have their cake and then eat it, the real trick is to eat your cake and then have it.
Sometimes, in plain English, "and" is not commutative. It has temporal features. "Eat your cake and have it too" is intended to mean "first eat and then have".
I suppose that if you can't understand this, you have real problems following directions. How can anyone "take the second right and go straight until the McDonald's" all at once?
If they keep doing this, one of two things will happen.
[Summarizing here]
1) 1984, Fahrenheit 451 and Brazil will be retroactively moved to non-fiction -or-
2) MLB and its minions will be ousted, freedom will reign and every day will be Christmas.
Wow. How did you narrow it to those two?
That's illogical. First, calling millions and millions of people "idiots" speaks for itself.
Are you kidding? Millions of idiots has to be a massive underestimate.
There are six billion people in this world. Now, if we extrapolate from my daily idiot to non-idiot ratios, I conservatively estimate 4.5 billion idiots.
Also, again extrapolating from my daily experience, 3 billion of these are in my family and hundreds of millions of them are me. There may be weaknesses in my methodology and we call for further research, blah blah blah...
OK, I admit that was a little too easy, sorry. Any constructive and specific suggestions?
Oh. Uh. Golly. I didn't expect that response. I was kinda expecting mindless flamage signifying nothing but over-inflated egos and desperate need for attention.
This is Slashdot, right?
Honestly, I don't know what to do about electronic voting concerns aside from what you've suggested: support the candidates and elected officials that share our concern. Also, to discuss the issue with our friends and family unacquainted with the controversy. But both of these suggestions have fairly limited returns.
Can we get back to the brainless sniping? That's a heck of a lot easier.
That's right, you didn't say "all slashdotters". Nonetheless, effective newsbreakers choose venues where the news isn't widely known. That, or they just don't toot their own horn so ineffectively.
t e_Logic/The_Predicate_Language
You may want to review the laws of formal logic regarding quantifiers. Try http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Formal_Logic/Predica
You're just an adorable li'l imp, ain't you?
Anyway, thanks much. I'll be sure to brush up on them, whaddya call'em, "quantifiers".
Sorry to break the news to the "true believers" that remain among my fellow Americans, but firing Walden W. O'Dell will not automagically bring back integrity to the voting system here in the U.S. Most slashdotters are savvy enough to know that paperless voting using secret, proprietary code can be easily manipulated.
Er, it doesn't seem like you've broken any news at all. You just said that the "true believers" aren't slashdotters, so if you want to disabuse them of their fantasies, maybe you should choose some other forum.
Just a thought.
It's possible that you are thinking of the legal system as a mechanism that is not intelligent, and can be gotten around through cleverness. That is not the case.
Really? I thought that assumption was exactly why lawyers get the big bucks. They have the cleverness (and know-how) to get around the legal system.
Nah, I'm not really this cynical about law and lawyers, but I could use the ill-gotten karma. Reward me for cheap shots! Please!
3) This is a free service, and it's theirs. You have absolutely NO right to complain about their business practices. If it bothers you, don't use AIM or their servers.
Huh?
On the contrary, of course users have a right to complain. Why wouldn't they?
Perhaps they have no reasonable expectation that AOL will respond to complaints from users of a gratis service, but they sure have the right to complain, bitch, whine, kvetch and holler.
What, Linux has no privilege escalation problems?
I got bitten by the awstats bug last February and a rootkit was installed before I knew it. In fact, two kits were installed when I figured out something funny was going on (two unexpected reboots in a month).
It's not Windows, but if you're not on top of things, you sure as heck can get rooted via a web exploit. The fact that Apache runs as nobody doesn't help if your installation has a privilege escalation vulnerability.