There is a problem with the scheme however. It's the Berne Convention.
Of course governments, especially the US government, never break treaties...
What's to prevent an author from publishing his or her work in a nation that doesn't have a copyright tax?
If they wanted their works imported into a country which had such a scheme they would have to pay import duties. Or maybe such a country would simply consider all their works public domain.
The founders original term of 14 years plus an opportunity to renew for a 14 year extension would be ample for this purpose especially in today's world of "internet time" and "just-in-time" business practices.
There's a decent argument that modern business practices mean that 14 years is excessive. What publisher would continue to attempt to publish something which gave little or no return for 13 years 11 months?
Why not have a short copyright term as the standard (say life + 10 years).
Why have copyright linked to the author's lifespan in the first place? Does anyone know how copyright came to be author's life plus X years in the first place?
People keep mentioning the fact that you can make coppies of information cheaply and easily as if that were bad.
Thing is that the existing publishing and distribution companies want to in effect have their cake and eat it". They want to be able to use advances in technology to increase their profit margins, whilst producing something which emulates the difficulty of copying of older media.
Copyright and patent laws exist to further the useful arts and the public domain. They do so by prohibiting others from exploiting work for a period of years, then 14 for copyright. At that time publishing was much more expensive, yet 14 years of exclusivity was seen as adequate incentive for publishers. So now that anyone can share information and publish, why do we need exclusivity?
Possibly the real question is "do we still need third party publishers?" even if we do do we need the same ones we have now?
So that Disney can keep Mickey Mouse movies to themselves? Much more important works will rot in obscurity while Mickey generates cash for amusement park owners.
For books we have "copyright libraries" who's original purpose was to hold every book published, so that when copyrights expired you could be sure that there was at least one place you could find a copy. These libraries now have a problem that they simply cannot store books currently being published for up to a century and a half. Even though with such long copyright terms it's more important, for future generations, that they do. Such archiving only applies to books (possibly some other printed documents) not to music recordings, film, television, computer programs, etc. (even though some of these may be more important to future historians than books).
What if the library could insure that only one active copy could be in use at a time, with active copies set to expire within a period of time.
This sounds like trying to make "ebooks" emulate the limitations of physical books. Something like being always able to issue time limited copies of a book at all times would make more sense. No need to handle returns or reservations, since the book is always available. Together with the "master copy" being protected against being misshelved, mutilated or stolen.
At least in the US, copyright is an artifice created by govenment. The government gives you a monopoly on distribution of you books under the assumption that it is in the public interest for you to have that monopoly.
The original idea was to encourage writing and publication. Rather than to provide lifelong income, pension and even life insurance.
Should the government wish to modify the terms of that monopoly, or eliminate it entirely, it is certainly within the powers granted to the Congress to do so, so long as the public interest is served.
The US Constitution empowers the US Congress to pass legislation for copyrights, patents and similar. But it does not oblige such legislation. Whilst the US may have treaty obligations with the rest of the world concerning copyright the US government breaks treaties for reasons considerably more trivial than conflicting with the US Consitution.
The only purpose for copyright law is to serve the public interest by promoting the "useful arts and sciences." That you can also use it to make money is a side effect.
The possibility of making money is held out as an incentive to encourage people to write and publish. Regardless of the kind of work or the media involved.
The assumption that the side effect is the purpose seems to me to be "selfish and poorly thought out."
First of all, if you don't allow your employees to d/l and install garbage software from the net, and don't give them access to tweak and mess with drivers, you usually don't have trouble with 'tech support headaches'.
Assuming you don't run anything which requires special privileges to use. Since many Windows programmers simply don't understand the concept of user privileges and do all their work logged in as "administrator" this is a common problem. There can also be issues where software has some kind of online update procedure, which includes Windows update.
One of the wonderful things about Unix boxes is that you can allow employees to download garbage software relatively safely.
"click and run" either of programs on websites or attached to emails simply dosn't tend to be supported with unix type systems.
People get nailed all the time by NT problems and as a result the "lock down" solutions which make administration with reasonable help desk::employee ratios possible kill user freedom.
Or they try do to this, but then discover that this breaks badly written pieces of software, thus can wind up having to give users all sorts of extra privileges...
Yes, but any government of the corporations, for the corporations, by the corporations not using an OS of the corporations, for the corporations, by the corporations should similarly be ashamed of itself.
Except that Microsoft are only one corporation. Who have proven themselves able to bully other corporations.
So let me get this straight: I'm supposed to tell my father, who flunked a simple PDP-8 programming class back when the PDP-8 was cutting edge and ended up starting his own small non-IT business, to waste hours of time (and thus loads of money) writing his own spreadsheets to do his accounting instead of using QuickBooks? And then waste hours of my time (and thus loads of my money) fixing them for him? No thanks, I'd rather have him buy something pre-packaged that he can blame if any of the math goes wrong (preferably not QuickBooks, which I will urge him to jump off at the earliest opportunity.)
If he gets accused of fraud or tax evasion blaming some piece of proprietary software is unlikely to do much good anyway.
Yes, business is all addition and subtraction, but that simplicity might deceive you. What works for personal finance, that might work for a small family business or even a 2-partner law firm, will not work for a construction company, a factory, a gas well completion contractor, a hospital, or a casino.
There is also the issue that accounting and taxation laws are specific to geography. With things getting especially complex where a transnational plays games to avoid taxation.
It was strategic pricing information NOT AVAILABLE to the PUBLIC or COMPETITORS. That future pricing was secret.
It self evidently wasn't secret, because FatWallet got hold of it. No doubt their competitors could get hold of the information even more easily, but they wouldn't tell anyone.
Take a look at iptables. Very few people understand how to configure it for practical purposes. The documentation by the coder is specific on granular details, but completely misses the question of how do you put together a set of options that meet a particular threat.
Thing is that this dosn't really have much to do if the program in question is open or closed source. Much the same could be said about the Windows program "Poledit", where the documentation very well describes the example.ADM file, but is little help on exactly how.ADM files work... At least with an open source program you can look at the code.
Let's see about web servers, 60% of all of them use. But how many people administer these servers? Does it means just because a few use it's usable? Granted, Apache is easy to install on every Windows plataform, but for example, it is not easy to download.
There appear to be quite a few people who can't get it into their heads that administering and installing software is NOT using software. Any more than servicing a car is "driving" or replacing a component in a TV is "watching television". Bluring the distinction thus creating the "power user" is a major part of the reason Windows is such a big headache both in terms of support and virus spreading. Trying to make complex machines which are "user servicable" simply dosn't work. Indeed true "usability" would include the equivalent of "no user servicable parts"...
There's some darn fine software out there (Apache comes to mind) but where is the demand for good documentation, design, art, QA people in the open source world?
Well the instructions for using a webserver are best summed up as "point a web browser at it":)
No, what open source is ultimately about is, if your program is pretty good but had one really annoying (to me) feature, I can change my copy for my use, to be what I want it to be.
But different people might want to do different things with the program in order to make it better for their usage. This can even include taking away functionality or configuration options, especially when the program is intended to perform real work.
If I were to write a program and supply the source code on my website, it would be an open source program, even if I were to completely ignore any and all suggustions and input from other people.
Assuming you have published it under some kind of open source licence.
Actually, it is less bad than you make it sound. Configuration files are fine, perfectly usable by anyone that can read text and type on a keyboard.
Note that there is also a difference between configuring a program and using a program. The former may well be done by a different person from the latter. Indeed the end user may be restricted, either by file permissions or corporate policy as to how they can or can't alter configuration settings.
Well-done configuration files are often much better than navigating through one hundred options distributed in a dozen different tabs (even see the 'option' multi-tab dialog of Word?).
Another bad thing MS Word does is to have a section to change both the default save location and where office looks for various components alterable in the same place. Without it being obvious that changing the latter is likely to break the program.
I just noted in the article headline, in focus on the "despicable conduct" of a Disney lawyer. Why is this any different that most other lawyers? Admittedly, the lawyers working for the EFF and ACLU are attempting to further human and consumer rights, but the lawyers of the companies are merely working to increase the power of the companies.
The difference is that those working for the EFF and ACLU are up front with who they represent. This lawyers is "astroturfing", with the added twist of calling any contrary opinion "astroturf".
Similarly, in the corporate world, if some leaks confidential company information to the press, publication of that information does not make the newspaper or magazine legally liable. Again, the publisher is fulfilling a civic duty to inform the public. If a newspaper published a report stating that an automaker refused to intiate a recall even after it baame apparent that a recall was warranted, the comapny's only recourse is to find out who the offending employee was and deal with that person (or possibly to accuse the publisher of libel, which is quite serious). Again, there is no talk of taking legal action against the publisher for publishing true information.
Possibly because with traditional print and broadcast media there tends to be a reasonably large corporation doing the publishing. A website can be run by an individual or a small corporation. So there might well be an issue of not wanting to pick on someone their own size involved.
However a lot of people, and I suspect a large portion of the audience for a site like FatWallet, don't shop that way anymore. If they have 5 items on their shopping list, they go to 5 different retailers if that gives them the best deal. At each retailer they only buy the one loss-leader and nothing that yields any profit. For example, my last new computer came from a half dozen or so different retailers.
People have been doing this for a long time, known as "shopping around". The only difference with services like "FatWallet" is that the customer does not need to physically visit each store to check the prices. If stores have a problem with this then they need to find a different business model.
If MS has proven anything in the many years of settlements with the DOJ over breaking the law, it's that a settlement with them is as worthless as one with Saddam.
That is insulting, to the Iraqi leader. No real sanctions have been applied to Microsoft, no demands that they submit to inspections or bombings either.
The costs involved in manufacturing hardware are very different from the costs in manufacturing software.
In order to build a processor, be it a CPU or a graphics processor, you need to design both the chip itself and a facility to manufacture it.
Considering how much more complexity and how many more features operating systems have than they did in the past (browsers, media players, TCP/IP stacks, etc. all used to be separate purchases),
Slashdot Mirror
There is a problem with the scheme however. It's the Berne Convention.
Of course governments, especially the US government, never break treaties...
What's to prevent an author from publishing his or her work in a nation that doesn't have a copyright tax?
If they wanted their works imported into a country which had such a scheme they would have to pay import duties. Or maybe such a country would simply consider all their works public domain.
The founders original term of 14 years plus an opportunity to renew for a 14 year extension would be ample for this purpose especially in today's world of "internet time" and "just-in-time" business practices.
There's a decent argument that modern business practices mean that 14 years is excessive. What publisher would continue to attempt to publish something which gave little or no return for 13 years 11 months?
Why not have a short copyright term as the standard (say life + 10 years).
Why have copyright linked to the author's lifespan in the first place? Does anyone know how copyright came to be author's life plus X years in the first place?
People keep mentioning the fact that you can make coppies of information cheaply and easily as if that were bad.
Thing is that the existing publishing and distribution companies want to in effect have their cake and eat it". They want to be able to use advances in technology to increase their profit margins, whilst producing something which emulates the difficulty of copying of older media.
Copyright and patent laws exist to further the useful arts and the public domain. They do so by prohibiting others from exploiting work for a period of years, then 14 for copyright. At that time publishing was much more expensive, yet 14 years of exclusivity was seen as adequate incentive for publishers. So now that anyone can share information and publish, why do we need exclusivity?
Possibly the real question is "do we still need third party publishers?" even if we do do we need the same ones we have now?
So that Disney can keep Mickey Mouse movies to themselves? Much more important works will rot in obscurity while Mickey generates cash for amusement park owners.
For books we have "copyright libraries" who's original purpose was to hold every book published, so that when copyrights expired you could be sure that there was at least one place you could find a copy. These libraries now have a problem that they simply cannot store books currently being published for up to a century and a half. Even though with such long copyright terms it's more important, for future generations, that they do. Such archiving only applies to books (possibly some other printed documents) not to music recordings, film, television, computer programs, etc. (even though some of these may be more important to future historians than books).
What if the library could insure that only one active copy could be in use at a time, with active copies set to expire within a period of time.
This sounds like trying to make "ebooks" emulate the limitations of physical books.
Something like being always able to issue time limited copies of a book at all times would make more sense. No need to handle returns or reservations, since the book is always available. Together with the "master copy" being protected against being misshelved, mutilated or stolen.
At least in the US, copyright is an artifice created by govenment. The government gives you a monopoly on distribution of you books under the assumption that it is in the public interest for you to have that monopoly.
The original idea was to encourage writing and publication. Rather than to provide lifelong income, pension and even life insurance.
Should the government wish to modify the terms of that monopoly, or eliminate it entirely, it is certainly within the powers granted to the Congress to do so, so long as the public interest is served.
The US Constitution empowers the US Congress to pass legislation for copyrights, patents and similar. But it does not oblige such legislation. Whilst the US may have treaty obligations with the rest of the world concerning copyright the US government breaks treaties for reasons considerably more trivial than conflicting with the US Consitution.
The only purpose for copyright law is to serve the public interest by promoting the "useful arts and sciences." That you can also use it to make money is a side effect.
The possibility of making money is held out as an incentive to encourage people to write and publish. Regardless of the kind of work or the media involved.
The assumption that the side effect is the purpose seems to me to be "selfish and poorly thought out."
It's also a "radical interpretation of the text".
First of all, if you don't allow your employees to d/l and install garbage software from the net, and don't give them access to tweak and mess with drivers, you usually don't have trouble with 'tech support headaches'.
Assuming you don't run anything which requires special privileges to use. Since many Windows programmers simply don't understand the concept of user privileges and do all their work logged in as "administrator" this is a common problem.
There can also be issues where software has some kind of online update procedure, which includes Windows update.
One of the wonderful things about Unix boxes is that you can allow employees to download garbage software relatively safely.
"click and run" either of programs on websites or attached to emails simply dosn't tend to be supported with unix type systems.
People get nailed all the time by NT problems and as a result the "lock down" solutions which make administration with reasonable help desk::employee ratios possible kill user freedom.
Or they try do to this, but then discover that this breaks badly written pieces of software, thus can wind up having to give users all sorts of extra privileges...
Yes, but any government of the corporations, for the corporations, by the corporations not using an OS of the corporations, for the corporations, by the corporations should similarly be ashamed of itself.
Except that Microsoft are only one corporation. Who have proven themselves able to bully other corporations.
So let me get this straight: I'm supposed to tell my father, who flunked a simple PDP-8 programming class back when the PDP-8 was cutting edge and ended up starting his own small non-IT business, to waste hours of time (and thus loads of money) writing his own spreadsheets to do his accounting instead of using QuickBooks? And then waste hours of my time (and thus loads of my money) fixing them for him? No thanks, I'd rather have him buy something pre-packaged that he can blame if any of the math goes wrong (preferably not QuickBooks, which I will urge him to jump off at the earliest opportunity.)
If he gets accused of fraud or tax evasion blaming some piece of proprietary software is unlikely to do much good anyway.
Yes, business is all addition and subtraction, but that simplicity might deceive you. What works for personal finance, that might work for a small family business or even a 2-partner law firm, will not work for a construction company, a factory, a gas well completion contractor, a hospital, or a casino.
There is also the issue that accounting and taxation laws are specific to geography. With things getting especially complex where a transnational plays games to avoid taxation.
It was strategic pricing information NOT AVAILABLE to the PUBLIC or COMPETITORS. That future pricing was secret.
It self evidently wasn't secret, because FatWallet got hold of it. No doubt their competitors could get hold of the information even more easily, but they wouldn't tell anyone.
Take a look at iptables. Very few people understand how to configure it for practical purposes. The documentation by the coder is specific on granular details, but completely misses the question of how do you put together a set of options that meet a particular threat.
.ADM file, but is little help on exactly how .ADM files work...
Thing is that this dosn't really have much to do if the program in question is open or closed source. Much the same could be said about the Windows program "Poledit", where the documentation very well describes the example
At least with an open source program you can look at the code.
Let's see about web servers, 60% of all of them use. But how many people administer these servers? Does it means just because a few use it's usable? Granted, Apache is easy to install on every Windows plataform, but for example, it is not easy to download.
There appear to be quite a few people who can't get it into their heads that administering and installing software is NOT using software. Any more than servicing a car is "driving" or replacing a component in a TV is "watching television".
Bluring the distinction thus creating the "power user" is a major part of the reason Windows is such a big headache both in terms of support and virus spreading.
Trying to make complex machines which are "user servicable" simply dosn't work. Indeed true "usability" would include the equivalent of "no user servicable parts"...
For starters, this is wrong. Several projects are in fact heavily-used by a range of user classes.
Without quite a few open source programs there would be no Internet.
There's some darn fine software out there (Apache comes to mind) but where is the demand for good documentation, design, art, QA people in the open source world?
:)
Well the instructions for using a webserver are best summed up as "point a web browser at it"
No, what open source is ultimately about is, if your program is pretty good but had one really annoying (to me) feature, I can change my copy for my use, to be what I want it to be.
But different people might want to do different things with the program in order to make it better for their usage.
This can even include taking away functionality or configuration options, especially when the program is intended to perform real work.
If I were to write a program and supply the source code on my website, it would be an open source program, even if I were to completely ignore any and all suggustions and input from other people.
Assuming you have published it under some kind of open source licence.
Actually, it is less bad than you make it sound. Configuration files are fine, perfectly usable by anyone that can read text and type on a keyboard.
Note that there is also a difference between configuring a program and using a program. The former may well be done by a different person from the latter. Indeed the end user may be restricted, either by file permissions or corporate policy as to how they can or can't alter configuration settings.
Well-done configuration files are often much better than navigating through one hundred options distributed in a dozen different tabs (even see the 'option' multi-tab dialog of Word?).
Another bad thing MS Word does is to have a section to change both the default save location and where office looks for various components alterable in the same place. Without it being obvious that changing the latter is likely to break the program.
I just noted in the article headline, in focus on the "despicable conduct" of a Disney lawyer. Why is this any different that most other lawyers? Admittedly, the lawyers working for the EFF and ACLU are attempting to further human and consumer rights, but the lawyers of the companies are merely working to increase the power of the companies.
The difference is that those working for the EFF and ACLU are up front with who they represent.
This lawyers is "astroturfing", with the added twist of calling any contrary opinion "astroturf".
Similarly, in the corporate world, if some leaks confidential company information to the press, publication of that information does not make the newspaper or magazine legally liable. Again, the publisher is fulfilling a civic duty to inform the public. If a newspaper published a report stating that an automaker refused to intiate a recall even after it baame apparent that a recall was warranted, the comapny's only recourse is to find out who the offending employee was and deal with that person (or possibly to accuse the publisher of libel, which is quite serious). Again, there is no talk of taking legal action against the publisher for publishing true information.
Possibly because with traditional print and broadcast media there tends to be a reasonably large corporation doing the publishing. A website can be run by an individual or a small corporation.
So there might well be an issue of not wanting to pick on someone their own size involved.
But they are NOT right in publishing stolen, unpublished trade secret information.
If the information was in actual fact unpublished then it must have been leaked by store employees.
However a lot of people, and I suspect a large portion of the audience for a site like FatWallet, don't shop that way anymore. If they have 5 items on their shopping list, they go to 5 different retailers if that gives them the best deal. At each retailer they only buy the one loss-leader and nothing that yields any profit. For example, my last new computer came from a half dozen or so different retailers.
People have been doing this for a long time, known as "shopping around". The only difference with services like "FatWallet" is that the customer does not need to physically visit each store to check the prices. If stores have a problem with this then they need to find a different business model.
If MS has proven anything in the many years of settlements with the DOJ over breaking the law, it's that a settlement with them is as worthless as one with Saddam.
That is insulting, to the Iraqi leader. No real sanctions have been applied to Microsoft, no demands that they submit to inspections or bombings either.
The manufacture of software is much more than just pressing a CD. Programmers aren't cheap
Engineers who can design chips and fabs arn't cheap either
and, thanks to ongoing support and development, keeping a piece of software up-to-date remains expensive.
Assuming they don't simply EoL the software after a few years.
The costs involved in manufacturing hardware are very different from the costs in manufacturing software.
In order to build a processor, be it a CPU or a graphics processor, you need to design both the chip itself and a facility to manufacture it.
Considering how much more complexity and how many more features operating systems have than they did in the past (browsers, media players, TCP/IP stacks, etc. all used to be separate purchases),
None of these are new.