If a small company or lone inventor comes up with a stunning new product they potentially don't have the capital to get it to market. To get the capital they need to shop the invention around venture capitalists. Once they've made the idea somewhat public (in the shopping around phase) a large company with lots of resources could easily duplicate, produce, and market said invention before the inventor can manage to raise the capital and get production underway. In principal the patent would help alleviate this because the invention could be openly published, but there would still be a window of time for the inventor to raise funds and get his product to market before anyone else was allowed to join in.
Of course if the inventor dosn't have enough money to bring their product to market it's also unlikely that they have enough money to defend their patent(s) through the courts either...
Re:How many of us could actually mount a defense?
on
The Basics of EULAs
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· Score: 1
Depends on the state, but in some of them they can get hit with fines in addition to having to pay the defendants full legal costs for filing a SLAPP lawsuit. (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) Mattel found this out the hard way when they sued that artist using Barbie dolls in his art. Mattel didn't like the way he used them and sued. A judge threw it out, fined Mattel a large amount and made them pay the guy's full legal fees.
The problem is that this senario only works if the defendent has deep enough pockets to actually get the case to court.
I figured that my demand was coming from my wish to watch those shows without having to wait several years for them to be shown on TV.
Probably anything longer that a few days is enough to create such a demand. Things have been "interesting" recently because for the first time viewers in the US are being kept waiting for months.
I don't care for subtitles in my native language, I can understand English just fine, so that works for me, I also like to watch them when I want, not when they happen to be on TV.
It isn't even about language, it can take a long time for things to get broadcast even on English language channels. Quite a few complaints about this from Australians...
If there is so much demand for being able to download movies/tv episodes, then why the hell don't the distribution companies take advantage of it and let poeple downlaod things legally at a fair price?
I suspect a lot of the demand comes from people who cannot yet watch the whatever. But the distribution companies' business models are not set up to deal with a global market. Possibly they do not want to deal with a global market anyway.
the car makers bought laws to make it illegal to import that car into the US.. the cars are THE SAME DAMN CAR DESIGN. and same smog and safety features.
An idea which worked so well that the drug companies adopted a similar policy. Look at all the fuss which has been made about the idea of importing drugs into the US. (From countries which have regulation mechanisms at least as good as the US...)
is that theres something wrong with society when society is breaking laws at such an extent that it requires an automated process to identify and punish those offenders.
This "something" may well be the law itself. Especially when dealing with laws which are recent in origin.
But then again, why should it be costly for the 'victim' in these cases to bring offenders to justice?
Maybe because this so called "victim" was active in lobbying for the laws in the first place...
Copyright Law exists, and it exists for a reason.
That dosn't mean that these reasons are good. Or that the laws actually square with their justification. Which in the case of the US are specifically enumerated...
Well considering the only problem here is abuse of the DMCA by BayTSP, I don't really see the problem.
I think you will find that "the problem" is rather more widespread than one piece of legislation.
Fix the DMCA, but stop giving them excuses to have laws like it passed.
The latter is the real problem. A legislation system where tiny minorities write complex laws which are effectivly "rubber stamped" by legislators is fairly seriously broken.
that the cost of threatening legal action without any basis whatsoever is too low for these big corporations.
I wonder how often they actually follow up of these threats. Sending out a form letter is fairly cheap to them. Probably considerably cheaper than actually initiating legal action.
The legal system has become a way for big corporations to push individuals and small companies around and basically create a parallel state were the punishment for any behavior big corporations doesn't like is litigation.
No doubt they would claim that threatening litigation is not actually using the legal system. Part of the technique here appears to be to actually avoid things actually comming before a judge.
I suspect they have a private copy of the copyrighted file which they do not offer for download, but simply compare against the file offered for distribution.
Which a machine can only do if the files are identical. To find out if the file is infringing content takes a human being. Even if people were uploading the entire contents of a DVD it would be fairly trivial to scramble the content in ways which would not affect use, but would make any file comparison fail. A machine to spot copyright infringement soon runs into similar issues that a machine to spot pornography. To do the job requires the kind of AI which dosn't exist outside of science fiction. Even if you could build one that last thing you'd want, to do, would be to give it access to the Internet and lawyers. The MPAA would probably get very upset when their machine repeatedly quoted the 14th ammendment to the US Constitution though:)
Evolution is also a fact. It is the observed change in allele frequencies over time. We've observed species adapting to new situations, and we've observed new species evolving from older ones. Natural selection is our best current theory for how explaining how evolution works.
Remembering that "natural selection" can easily include human activities. Both as a side effect, e.g. large populations of antibiotic resistant bacteria and as deliberate action. The latter applying to just about every (non GM) domesticated plant and animal species.
Except that there are a significant number of people who do not believe in evolution. The number in the millions. The members of the Flat Earth Society (who actually believe the Earth to be flat, as opposed to those members who joined as a joke) number in the low dozens.
Just because a large number of people believe in something does not make it fact. Plenty of people, especially in the USA, believe in Iraqi WMDs. Similarly lots of people believe that UFOs are alien spacecraft.
Thankfully you got tired of typing, otherwise you would have continued with all the half assed alleged "holes" in evolutionary theory.
The stickers are about playing political word games to mislead due to popular misunderstanding of what the word "theory" means in the context of science. The point about a "theory" in science is that it is a logically consistent explanation of as many observations as possible. Observations which do not fit existing theories either result in a revised theories or completly new theories. There is nothing especially special about the theory of evolution within science.
As time passes those "holes" are firmly closed, but there will always be people too blinded to accept scientific gained knowledge if it contradicts the teachings given down to them by Asian sheep or camel herders....
It's not as if all Jews, Christians and Muslims make a fuss about this anyway.
Seeing as how "dumb" knives are freely available and virtually unregulated, I wonder how long it will be before knife weapons attract the same attention
As well as "dumb" clubs. Anyway the kind of machine most likely to kill people in most parts of the world (including the USA) is the motor car.
The Social Security number is being used for things it was not intended to be used for.
Hardly unique here. Much the same problem applies to documents originally intended to demonstrate that the holder was competent to drive a motor vehicle on the public road.
I learned my lesson a few years ago that almost no shareware or freeware can be trusted. This makes Windows a lot less useful and is one of the many reasons why I usually run linux on my desktop.
Another problem with Windows is that often shareware or programs containing spyware are described as "freeware". In many cases the only "freeware" Windows programs are actually multi-platform OSS.
Yes, I've seen obvious vandalism--and I mean obvious--on articles ranging from black hole theory to obscure Norwegian towns. Until I'd come along, they'd typically gone unreverted for weeks or more. And yes, I did revert them, but once you've read that a world-renowned figure skater was a member of GNAA, how can you trust anything you read on that site--especially when vandalism isn't always quite so obvious?
This isn't just a problem with Wikipedia. How can you be sure that there isn't the equivalent in printed encyclopedias? You certainly can't rely on mainstream "news" media not to tell lies (or present government sponsored conspiracy theories as "fact".)
If we're going to talk about fallacies, however, it should also be acknowledged that pointing out a fallacy doesn't exactly disprove the recording industry's claim that it's making less money than it should be in a fair market.
Do the RIAA members want a "fair market" in the first place:)
What do you want? A detailed, line item breakdown of what they did and sent? This was merely a blurb on their website.
Intended to make them look good, which is meaningless.
I'm sure if you wrote to their PR dept, they could tell you that.
As if they are going to give an accurate assessment of what they sent which was useful, what was useless and what was junk which got in the way... They will claim that it was all valuable stuff. The point is that just because companies (,governments and individuals) trumpet how generous they are does not mean that they are. It's perfectly possible that such companies are donating what amounts to commercial waste.
The tilt. As the Earth goes around the sun, the tilt means that the sun's light is coming in at a different angle in November than it is in May. When your part of the world is tilted away you're getting less of a direct hit, so it's colder.
Not only does the sunlight come at a different angle the ratio of day to night differs.
Slashdot Mirror
If a small company or lone inventor comes up with a stunning new product they potentially don't have the capital to get it to market. To get the capital they need to shop the invention around venture capitalists. Once they've made the idea somewhat public (in the shopping around phase) a large company with lots of resources could easily duplicate, produce, and market said invention before the inventor can manage to raise the capital and get production underway. In principal the patent would help alleviate this because the invention could be openly published, but there would still be a window of time for the inventor to raise funds and get his product to market before anyone else was allowed to join in.
Of course if the inventor dosn't have enough money to bring their product to market it's also unlikely that they have enough money to defend their patent(s) through the courts either...
Depends on the state, but in some of them they can get hit with fines in addition to having to pay the defendants full legal costs for filing a SLAPP lawsuit. (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) Mattel found this out the hard way when they sued that artist using Barbie dolls in his art. Mattel didn't like the way he used them and sued. A judge threw it out, fined Mattel a large amount and made them pay the guy's full legal fees.
The problem is that this senario only works if the defendent has deep enough pockets to actually get the case to court.
I figured that my demand was coming from my wish to watch those shows without having to wait several years for them to be shown on TV.
Probably anything longer that a few days is enough to create such a demand.
Things have been "interesting" recently because for the first time viewers in the US are being kept waiting for months.
I don't care for subtitles in my native language, I can understand English just fine, so that works for me, I also like to watch them when I want, not when they happen to be on TV.
It isn't even about language, it can take a long time for things to get broadcast even on English language channels. Quite a few complaints about this from Australians...
If there is so much demand for being able to download movies/tv episodes, then why the hell don't the distribution companies take advantage of it and let poeple downlaod things legally at a fair price?
I suspect a lot of the demand comes from people who cannot yet watch the whatever. But the distribution companies' business models are not set up to deal with a global market. Possibly they do not want to deal with a global market anyway.
the car makers bought laws to make it illegal to import that car into the US.. the cars are THE SAME DAMN CAR DESIGN. and same smog and safety features.
An idea which worked so well that the drug companies adopted a similar policy. Look at all the fuss which has been made about the idea of importing drugs into the US. (From countries which have regulation mechanisms at least as good as the US...)
I've never understood why this isn't illegal.
Because those who wrote/bought the laws didn't want it to be.
To me, 'free trade' should work both ways, that is, no descrimination by countries, no descrimination by companies.
Effectivly "free trade" and "globalization" do not always mean what their dictionary definition implies.
Why an international edition for a book can be sold at 20% of the US versions textbook price, I haven't a clue.
Presumably that is after accounting for the weakness of the US Doller.
is that theres something wrong with society when society is breaking laws at such an extent that it requires an automated process to identify and punish those offenders.
This "something" may well be the law itself. Especially when dealing with laws which are recent in origin.
But then again, why should it be costly for the 'victim' in these cases to bring offenders to justice?
Maybe because this so called "victim" was active in lobbying for the laws in the first place...
Copyright Law exists, and it exists for a reason.
That dosn't mean that these reasons are good. Or that the laws actually square with their justification. Which in the case of the US are specifically enumerated...
Well considering the only problem here is abuse of the DMCA by BayTSP, I don't really see the problem.
I think you will find that "the problem" is rather more widespread than one piece of legislation.
Fix the DMCA, but stop giving them excuses to have laws like it passed.
The latter is the real problem. A legislation system where tiny minorities write complex laws which are effectivly "rubber stamped" by legislators is fairly seriously broken.
that the cost of threatening legal action without any basis whatsoever is too low for these big corporations.
I wonder how often they actually follow up of these threats. Sending out a form letter is fairly cheap to them. Probably considerably cheaper than actually initiating legal action.
The legal system has become a way for big corporations to push individuals and small companies around and basically create a parallel state were the punishment for any behavior big corporations doesn't like is litigation.
No doubt they would claim that threatening litigation is not actually using the legal system.
Part of the technique here appears to be to actually avoid things actually comming before a judge.
I suspect they have a private copy of the copyrighted file which they do not offer for download, but simply compare against the file offered for distribution.
:)
Which a machine can only do if the files are identical. To find out if the file is infringing content takes a human being. Even if people were uploading the entire contents of a DVD it would be fairly trivial to scramble the content in ways which would not affect use, but would make any file comparison fail.
A machine to spot copyright infringement soon runs into similar issues that a machine to spot pornography. To do the job requires the kind of AI which dosn't exist outside of science fiction. Even if you could build one that last thing you'd want, to do, would be to give it access to the Internet and lawyers. The MPAA would probably get very upset when their machine repeatedly quoted the 14th ammendment to the US Constitution though
Evolution is also a fact. It is the observed change in allele frequencies over time. We've observed species adapting to new situations, and we've observed new species evolving from older ones. Natural selection is our best current theory for how explaining how evolution works.
Remembering that "natural selection" can easily include human activities. Both as a side effect, e.g. large populations of antibiotic resistant bacteria and as deliberate action. The latter applying to just about every (non GM) domesticated plant and animal species.
When the unwashed, sweaty cows hear the word "theory," they believe the speaker is really saying, "guess," which is incorrect.
Similar things happen with the term "conspiracy theory".
Except that there are a significant number of people who do not believe in evolution. The number in the millions. The members of the Flat Earth Society (who actually believe the Earth to be flat, as opposed to those members who joined as a joke) number in the low dozens.
Just because a large number of people believe in something does not make it fact. Plenty of people, especially in the USA, believe in Iraqi WMDs. Similarly lots of people believe that UFOs are alien spacecraft.
Be that as it may, creationists are the nearest thing to flat earth types we have in this modern day and age.
:)
That would be a flat fixed Earth around which the universe orbits
Thankfully you got tired of typing, otherwise you would have continued with all the half assed alleged "holes" in evolutionary theory.
The stickers are about playing political word games to mislead due to popular misunderstanding of what the word "theory" means in the context of science. The point about a "theory" in science is that it is a logically consistent explanation of as many observations as possible. Observations which do not fit existing theories either result in a revised theories or completly new theories.
There is nothing especially special about the theory of evolution within science.
As time passes those "holes" are firmly closed, but there will always be people too blinded to accept scientific gained knowledge if it contradicts the teachings given down to them by Asian sheep or camel herders....
It's not as if all Jews, Christians and Muslims make a fuss about this anyway.
Seeing as how "dumb" knives are freely available and virtually unregulated, I wonder how long it will be before knife weapons attract the same attention
As well as "dumb" clubs. Anyway the kind of machine most likely to kill people in most parts of the world (including the USA) is the motor car.
I think the problem is that there is a general belief that SSN is a secure identifer.
In effect it's government assigned name. Most of the problem is idiots treating it as though it is a "secret".
The Social Security number is being used for things it was not intended to be used for.
Hardly unique here. Much the same problem applies to documents originally intended to demonstrate that the holder was competent to drive a motor vehicle on the public road.
I learned my lesson a few years ago that almost no shareware or freeware can be trusted. This makes Windows a lot less useful and is one of the many reasons why I usually run linux on my desktop.
Another problem with Windows is that often shareware or programs containing spyware are described as "freeware". In many cases the only "freeware" Windows programs are actually multi-platform OSS.
Yes, I've seen obvious vandalism--and I mean obvious--on articles ranging from black hole theory to obscure Norwegian towns. Until I'd come along, they'd typically gone unreverted for weeks or more. And yes, I did revert them, but once you've read that a world-renowned figure skater was a member of GNAA, how can you trust anything you read on that site--especially when vandalism isn't always quite so obvious?
This isn't just a problem with Wikipedia. How can you be sure that there isn't the equivalent in printed encyclopedias? You certainly can't rely on mainstream "news" media not to tell lies (or present government sponsored conspiracy theories as "fact".)
If we're going to talk about fallacies, however, it should also be acknowledged that pointing out a fallacy doesn't exactly disprove the recording industry's claim that it's making less money than it should be in a fair market.
:)
Do the RIAA members want a "fair market" in the first place
1000 crew changes a day might be crazy or it might not--it depends at least partially on the size of the operation.
What was the size of the operation 15 years ago? Maybe in 1989 it would have been impossible to get that many crew changes in a day.
so.. they had a lot of pork during the filming, or what did they do with the obsolote pigs?
Depends how true the stereotype of lots of people in Hollywood being Jewish is...
What do you want? A detailed, line item breakdown of what they did and sent? This was merely a blurb on their website.
Intended to make them look good, which is meaningless.
I'm sure if you wrote to their PR dept, they could tell you that.
As if they are going to give an accurate assessment of what they sent which was useful, what was useless and what was junk which got in the way... They will claim that it was all valuable stuff.
The point is that just because companies (,governments and individuals) trumpet how generous they are does not mean that they are. It's perfectly possible that such companies are donating what amounts to commercial waste.
The tilt. As the Earth goes around the sun, the tilt means that the sun's light is coming in at a different angle in November than it is in May. When your part of the world is tilted away you're getting less of a direct hit, so it's colder.
Not only does the sunlight come at a different angle the ratio of day to night differs.