The polar ice caps melting means the sea level rises and we lose land, and not gain any.
Actually it depends if the ice is covering land or sea. If the ice is on land then it's melting can raise sea level, if the ice is already floating then it dosn't make much difference.
Over the internet it is often impossible to view without copying something. Generally, if you can see it you can keep it, and that's what get's the holders of copyrights so upset.
A few hundred years ago it was considered a good idea to pretend that ideas were like physical property. At the time the only way to effectivly diseminate ideas was by attaching them to a real object. An industry has grown very rich on this idea...
Do you think libraries would work if there was no difference between lending out books and giving them away?
Libraries lend books because they are a physical resource. If they could give away a book (many times) and still have it available they'd do that. No need to handle returns, reservations, fines, etc... Really can't see much chance of opposition from librarians here:)
I was under the impression that this was how MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This" was not only possible but inpsired (it's ripped from that "Superfreak" song, the name of the artist escapes me at the moment), as well as many works by Weird Al Yankovic.
Sampling is treated differently from creating a parody.
The difference, economically speaking, between Land and IP is that Land--by definition--exists independently of human effort. (If someone made it, economists don't consider it Land.)
Wonder how Japanese and Dutch economists cope with this concept. Can you confuse and economist simply by flying them to Kansi airport?
IP on the other hand, is not scarce. If I use an idea you originally came up with, it does not exclude you from also using that same idea in your own way.
In the past IP was often part of a piece of MP (Material Property) e.g. a book. The cost of the media, be it a book, video tape, CD or even broadcast transmitter. Ment that copying and distributing was expensive. Especially for a "one off"... However the cost of media has been falling, to the point where it is possible to make a one off copy cheaply. This was first the case with cassette tapes, then after that CD's. What we now have is a situation where there is effectivly no media involved. For the first time in history we have IP in it's most pure form. We don't, yet, have Star Trek style replicators which would make physical items trivial to clone and transport.
Creativity, on the other hand, need not involve tired, old rehashes of somebody else's material -- and when reuse is necessary, you can always ask first.
Actually a lot of creative works involve taking existing material and rehasing it. The example in the article was rap music, which quite obviously does this. Popular music even coined the term "cover version" for taking an old song and rehasing it. Similarly Disney frequently takes existing stories and makes animated movies out of them. Shakesphere used existing stories and turned them into plays. There are modern rehashes of his plays, "Forbidden Planet" and "West Side Story" being amongst the more well known.
However, I think that he envisions a society where such a right to profit from the idea may or may not exist. We (the liberal democratic west) have come from a background where such a right is presumed.
In actual fact it isn't a right so much as an opportunity. In any remotly capitalist society there is no such thing as the right to make money (let alone a profit).
This idea of lighting the darkness is behind the original copyright laws. To get the most light we want as many books as possible. Copyright was an answer to how do we get the next Ulysses or Connecticut Yankee or A Brief History of Time.
Thing is 2-300 years ago printing and distributing books was a major and expensive undertaking. Thus you had a need for a specific industry to handle it. Right now it would be perfectly possible for an author to simply put their writings on a web page. Similarly up until recently the an effective way to distribute video drama was through broadcast television. We a just about at the point where you could viably have whole programmes downloadable or supplied on media sent through the post. The only problem is a method to handle the production costs. With the physical media some kind of paid subscription, quite possibly with advertising included in either paper or video form, is a possible business model. Extra content like scripts, unused footage, etc costs little to add, but can increase the price people are prepared to pay. You also have a virtually ready made fan club. Indeed combining this kind of distribution with a fan club means that there is a benefit, to the viewer,from dealing with the official distributor.
Copyright is now being used to maximize the profit to be made from the latest J'Lo single or Pokemon episode.
A process of trying to get the last possible doller/pound/euro/yen/peso/rand/etc out of every work probably means that effort is taken away from creating new works.
The real problem is that the courts and law-makers have forgotten (or never knew or were paid to forget) that Copyright is about lighting the darkness, about lighting the most tapers,
A good analogy, since lit tapers burn for a finite time. To keep the darkness lit they need replacing
not about making the person who invents a new source of fire filthy, stinkin' rich.
Or setting up someone for life on the basis of a "one hit wonder".
First, that was a great post. Second, part of the problem we're facing today is that unauthorized viewing, when the internet is involved, is often the same as unauthorized copying.
The issue is more that there is a basis for their having authority to control copying, but there is little or no basis for authority over viewing. Basically they have been working hard over the last 20-30 years to blur the distinction in peoples' (especially judges and legislators) minds.
Or at least indistinguishable from it.
So enforcement is difficult, tough. The US Supreme Court recently threw out a similar argument over simulated child porn, something of far greater importance than some corporation's profits.
Also, when numerous people can simultaneously, and convieniently, view one thing at any time then copying becomes unnecessary.
What do they want next, cameras in peoples' houses in case they invite friends around to watch a rented video/DVD?
Please explain how the hell copyright has anything to do with censorship?
It was originally a right to copy granted by and subject to the whim of the state. Specifically the British monarch. This kind of copyright never existed in the USA, because by the time the USA came into existance copyright in Britain had been changed. It was this later version which was written into the US constitution.
You have never been required to register copyrights in this country,
Assuming "this country" is the USA then copyright registration existed up until the 1970's, IIRC.
The DMCA may go too far in the extention on contributory infringement, but WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CENSORSHIP?
I will not speak for whatever crazy notions the British have of copyright
The point of various treaties and "harmonization" is to make copyright laws around the world similar (if not the same). With the result that current UK copyright law is similar to US copyright law than it was a few decades ago.
but in the US at least I feel the constitutional principle of copyright is sound.
Most of the principles in the US constitution are very sound. The problem is having them followed...
* The constitution confers copyrights and patents to authors and inventors, not to publishers and record labels and employers.
This is a consequence of copyright being seen as "property". Rather than an intrinsic right of the author which stays with them no matter who they may appoint to act as their proxy.
The original concept of copyright was based on the notion that by producing creative works, authors benefit society, and so were entitled to make a living from a time-limited legal monopoly on the reproduction and distribution of their creations -- which would otherwise be technically easy for anyone to do, if the law didn't forbid it.
Actually it's more the right to persue making a profit. In a free market economy no entity has any right to make a living from any commercial enterprise.
As long as the creator (or other owner of copyright) had that control, everything else was basically OK.
Problems arise when copyright is most often held by publishers and distributers. Which is why copyright law was deliberatly changed a few hundred years ago to assign copyright to authors.
There was a clear and logical distinction between copying a book and reading it, and nobody was interested in preventing someone from reading, only in preventing someone from unauthorized printing.
With books there is a distinction made between copying to create a copy and copying which is incidental to normal use. Reading a book, including reading it aloud would never be considered copyright infringment. Also copying a book, by hand, photocopier, even scanning and OCRing it probably just isn't worth it. (Unless the book is out of print.)
The new notion of copyright seems to be based on a cyptographically and legally enforced "secure pipeline" from the content creator to each individually authorized end user.
"Content creator" being a codeword for "major corporate publisher". Since none of these schemes would do anything much to protect the likes of "garage bands", independant video producers, etc.
All new developments trend towards this end. Unauthorized viewing is as serious as unauthorized copying, in fact the distinction often disappears.
In some cases the lack of a distinction between copying to copy and copying as part if the process of using is made explicit in statute or case laws, which major corporate publishing has lobbied hard for.
The right to make a living from printing and selling a creative work has been replaced by the right to control how a creative work is used, and to be compensated for each use, every step of the way.
Another thing has changed, works are now easily copiable. What prevented copying was more that it was was difficult, time consuming and expensive. Now we have a situtation where machines which can do easy copying, be they 20 year old double cassette tape units or personal computers are easily affordable. The practical barriers to easy duplication have gone.
Imagine if advertisers simply paid for the Friends cast to drink Coke, eat Wheaties and wear Gap jeans. Logos everywhere...storylines about brands by name.
Problem with product placement is that it can be highly limiting. Viewers certainly will notice if a New York cab company suddenly appears in Sunnydale. Or question how so many 21st century US brandnames could survive a major war in order to get on the starship Enterprise. Usually such product placement is a little more subtle. Consider also what would happen if every Star Trek ship was plastered in Pan Am and Enron logos...
The BBC is currently showing a US-made television drama called '24', shown in 24 episodes each of which supposedly encapsulates an hour of the day. This is screamingly announced as 'real time television', but each episode, as screened by the BBC, lasts only 45 minutes... so presumably you guys watched one minute of advertising for every three minutes of content.
In US television terms "one hour" equates to around 43 minutes. (With one notable exception.) AFAIK this hasn't changed much in a long time.
The simple solution to keeping people from skipping commercials is to make them worth watching.
Also avoid repeating them too often. Other possibilities would be commercials which solicit viewer input (but these are obviously not much use if not watched "live".)
One of the more recent decisions, involving a video store in Utah making edited copies of the movie Titanic with scenes involving nudity removed, even held that you could legally have someone make those copies for you.
This ruling probably protects broadcasters. Otherwise any TV station which made cuts, for either content or time, could find themselves in court PDQ.
Yes, the judge will almost certainly try to treat the PVR differently, but IMHO SonicBlue and the others should continue harping on the similarities. Movies didn't cease to be movies just because they were recorded on iron oxide instead of celluloid. VCRs don't cease to be VCRs just because they store video on silicon instead of iron oxide and can send what they've recorded from the living-room set to the bedroom set without you needing to take the tape out and put it back in the other machine.
It isn't so much the judge as the plaintiff trying to persuade the judge that the fiddling details of the technology make a difference. Also it would be perfectly possible to do things like a 30 second skip function with video tape. Anyway the major storage media for these devices is ferromagnetic material. Only real difference is the details of the substrate which carries it. Metal platters vs plastic tape.
They have other tools, they just don't make good sound bytes for campain speeches. I guess more acurately it's the same tool used differently. Rather than pass laws, they can block the passage of bad laws that will either make matters worse, or restrict our rights while not addressing the problem.
They also have the power to repeal existing laws.
It should be a significant concern to people that their elected representatives aren't interested in undrestanding the problem, just having a special interest group tell them what to do.
In the worst case senario the special interest group is the only entity giving any input into the issue (quite likely trying hard to prevent any other possibly interested party from even making an observartion). The utterly worst case senario is where the special interest group actually writes the legislation.
The best solution to this problem is the same solution parents have been using in the physical world for many years. Teach your children to be warry of strangers. Teach them not to give out personal information to strangers.
Problem is that most abused children are abused by people they already know, including parents. If someone can get a child to trust them once then they are no longer a "stranger"...
There are two types of potential: real and theoretical potential. There is of course great theoretical potential for harm. The important question is how much real potential for harm is there. That dictates how much action should be taken.
There is also the perception potential for harm. Which has no relationship to real risk what so ever. But is often the metric by which policys are made.
This is ridiculous. You can't ignore the problem simply because the percentage of child molesters in society is below a certain percent!
There is a risk that concentrating on an unlikely danger means that far more likely dangers get overlooked. Both in the sense of someone being so paranoid about being followed that they walk into things or "crying wolf" so often that by the time a real "wolf" does come along everyone had lost interest. There are cases where paranoia can actually make people more vulnerable, both by making them stand out and leading to a sort of binary either trust someone not at all or trust them totally.
Street players used to pass the hat; then tent performers sold tickets; and soon bands with streaming file servers will sell their own songs over the net. The only reason the existing artists aren't doing it already is because they are still locked into the old system.
Also they see doing things the old way as being the only route to sucess. Which may be about perception, no doubt there are plenty of bands, musicians and singers who could have a great many potential fans, if anyone got to hear their music.
As the new digital-age artists come along, unbeholden to the old RIAA/ASCAP gatekeepers, the new, net-based way will prevail. The middleman WILL disappear, simply because he's no longer necessary. Don't expect them to go quietly. They will be kicking and screaming, especially after the whoever first makes their name over the new media starts touring.
Some "hand sanitizers" say their active ingredient is the alcohol (don't ask me whether something can become resistant to that)
Humans of European ancestory tend to be resistant to alcohol. That is because for a long time the prefered method of dealing with harmful bacteria in drinking water was by making beer.
Ehh... bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics(penicilin).. not antiseptics. A chemical garunteed to kill life(such as sulfuric acid) will pretty much continue killing until bacteria make an extremely drastic adaptation(something that takes millions of years to do).
The problem is that anything utterly guarenteed to kill all bacteria would at best make people seriously ill, by killing symbiotic bacteria. Let alone doing in mammalian cells as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, but even in the northern hemisphere you have ice that will cause sea level rises when it melts. Think only of Greenland.
Greenland isn't actually that big. You really need to check on a globe, not a Mercator projection map.
I don't think that the southern ice cap melting would have much/any effect. Doesn't the vast majority of that ice already float on the water?
More of the North ice cap is floating, the Southern ice cap has the continent of Antartica underneath, but plenty of floating ice around it's outside.
The polar ice caps melting means the sea level rises and we lose land, and not gain any.
Actually it depends if the ice is covering land or sea. If the ice is on land then it's melting can raise sea level, if the ice is already floating then it dosn't make much difference.
Over the internet it is often impossible to view without copying something. Generally, if you can see it you can keep it, and that's what get's the holders of copyrights so upset.
:)
A few hundred years ago it was considered a good idea to pretend that ideas were like physical property. At the time the only way to effectivly diseminate ideas was by attaching them to a real object. An industry has grown very rich on this idea...
Do you think libraries would work if there was no difference between lending out books and giving them away?
Libraries lend books because they are a physical resource. If they could give away a book (many times) and still have it available they'd do that. No need to handle returns, reservations, fines, etc...
Really can't see much chance of opposition from librarians here
I was under the impression that this was how MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This" was not only possible but inpsired (it's ripped from that "Superfreak" song, the name of the artist escapes me at the moment), as well as many works by Weird Al Yankovic.
Sampling is treated differently from creating a parody.
The difference, economically speaking, between Land and IP is that Land--by definition--exists independently of human effort. (If someone made it, economists don't consider it Land.)
Wonder how Japanese and Dutch economists cope with this concept. Can you confuse and economist simply by flying them to Kansi airport?
IP on the other hand, is not scarce. If I use an idea you originally came up with, it does not exclude you from also using that same idea in your own way.
In the past IP was often part of a piece of MP (Material Property) e.g. a book. The cost of the media, be it a book, video tape, CD or even broadcast transmitter. Ment that copying and distributing was expensive. Especially for a "one off"... However the cost of media has been falling, to the point where it is possible to make a one off copy cheaply. This was first the case with cassette tapes, then after that CD's.
What we now have is a situation where there is effectivly no media involved. For the first time in history we have IP in it's most pure form.
We don't, yet, have Star Trek style replicators which would make physical items trivial to clone and transport.
Creativity, on the other hand, need not involve tired, old rehashes of somebody else's material -- and when reuse is necessary, you can always ask first.
Actually a lot of creative works involve taking existing material and rehasing it. The example in the article was rap music, which quite obviously does this. Popular music even coined the term "cover version" for taking an old song and rehasing it. Similarly Disney frequently takes existing stories and makes animated movies out of them. Shakesphere used existing stories and turned them into plays. There are modern rehashes of his plays, "Forbidden Planet" and "West Side Story" being amongst the more well known.
However, I think that he envisions a society where such a right to profit from the idea may or may not exist. We (the liberal democratic west) have come from a background where such a right is presumed.
In actual fact it isn't a right so much as an opportunity. In any remotly capitalist society there is no such thing as the right to make money (let alone a profit).
This idea of lighting the darkness is behind the original copyright laws. To get the most light we want as many books as possible. Copyright was an answer to how do we get the next Ulysses or Connecticut Yankee or A Brief History of Time.
Thing is 2-300 years ago printing and distributing books was a major and expensive undertaking. Thus you had a need for a specific industry to handle it. Right now it would be perfectly possible for an author to simply put their writings on a web page.
Similarly up until recently the an effective way to distribute video drama was through broadcast television. We a just about at the point where you could viably have whole programmes downloadable or supplied on media sent through the post.
The only problem is a method to handle the production costs. With the physical media some kind of paid subscription, quite possibly with advertising included in either paper or video form, is a possible business model. Extra content like scripts, unused footage, etc costs little to add, but can increase the price people are prepared to pay. You also have a virtually ready made fan club. Indeed combining this kind of distribution with a fan club means that there is a benefit, to the viewer,from dealing with the official distributor.
Copyright is now being used to maximize the profit to be made from the latest J'Lo single or Pokemon episode.
A process of trying to get the last possible doller/pound/euro/yen/peso/rand/etc out of every work probably means that effort is taken away from creating new works.
The real problem is that the courts and law-makers have forgotten (or never knew or were paid to forget) that Copyright is about lighting the darkness, about lighting the most tapers,
A good analogy, since lit tapers burn for a finite time. To keep the darkness lit they need replacing
not about making the person who invents a new source of fire filthy, stinkin' rich.
Or setting up someone for life on the basis of a "one hit wonder".
First, that was a great post. Second, part of the problem we're facing today is that unauthorized viewing, when the internet is involved, is often the same as unauthorized copying.
The issue is more that there is a basis for their having authority to control copying, but there is little or no basis for authority over viewing. Basically they have been working hard over the last 20-30 years to blur the distinction in peoples' (especially judges and legislators) minds.
Or at least indistinguishable from it.
So enforcement is difficult, tough. The US Supreme Court recently threw out a similar argument over simulated child porn, something of far greater importance than some corporation's profits.
Also, when numerous people can simultaneously, and convieniently, view one thing at any time then copying becomes unnecessary.
What do they want next, cameras in peoples' houses in case they invite friends around to watch a rented video/DVD?
Please explain how the hell copyright has anything to do with censorship?
It was originally a right to copy granted by and subject to the whim of the state. Specifically the British monarch. This kind of copyright never existed in the USA, because by the time the USA came into existance copyright in Britain had been changed. It was this later version which was written into the US constitution.
You have never been required to register copyrights in this country,
Assuming "this country" is the USA then copyright registration existed up until the 1970's, IIRC.
The DMCA may go too far in the extention on contributory infringement, but WHAT DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CENSORSHIP?
It's called "history"...
I will not speak for whatever crazy notions the British have of copyright
The point of various treaties and "harmonization" is to make copyright laws around the world similar (if not the same). With the result that current UK copyright law is similar to US copyright law than it was a few decades ago.
but in the US at least I feel the constitutional principle of copyright is sound.
Most of the principles in the US constitution are very sound. The problem is having them followed...
* The constitution confers copyrights and patents to authors and inventors, not to publishers and record labels and employers.
This is a consequence of copyright being seen as "property". Rather than an intrinsic right of the author which stays with them no matter who they may appoint to act as their proxy.
The original concept of copyright was based on the notion that by producing creative works, authors benefit society, and so were entitled to make a living from a time-limited legal monopoly on the reproduction and distribution of their creations -- which would otherwise be technically easy for anyone to do, if the law didn't forbid it.
Actually it's more the right to persue making a profit. In a free market economy no entity has any right to make a living from any commercial enterprise.
As long as the creator (or other owner of copyright) had that control, everything else was basically OK.
Problems arise when copyright is most often held by publishers and distributers. Which is why copyright law was deliberatly changed a few hundred years ago to assign copyright to authors.
There was a clear and logical distinction between copying a book and reading it, and nobody was interested in preventing someone from reading, only in preventing someone from unauthorized printing.
With books there is a distinction made between copying to create a copy and copying which is incidental to normal use. Reading a book, including reading it aloud would never be considered copyright infringment. Also copying a book, by hand, photocopier, even scanning and OCRing it probably just isn't worth it. (Unless the book is out of print.)
The new notion of copyright seems to be based on a cyptographically and legally enforced "secure pipeline" from the content creator to each individually authorized end user.
"Content creator" being a codeword for "major corporate publisher". Since none of these schemes would do anything much to protect the likes of "garage bands", independant video producers, etc.
All new developments trend towards this end. Unauthorized viewing is as serious as unauthorized copying, in fact the distinction often disappears.
In some cases the lack of a distinction between copying to copy and copying as part if the process of using is made explicit in statute or case laws, which major corporate publishing has lobbied hard for.
The right to make a living from printing and selling a creative work has been replaced by the right to control how a creative work is used, and to be compensated for each use, every step of the way.
Another thing has changed, works are now easily copiable. What prevented copying was more that it was was difficult, time consuming and expensive. Now we have a situtation where machines which can do easy copying, be they 20 year old double cassette tape units or personal computers are easily affordable. The practical barriers to easy duplication have gone.
Imagine if advertisers simply paid for the Friends cast to drink Coke, eat Wheaties and wear Gap jeans. Logos everywhere...storylines about brands by name.
Problem with product placement is that it can be highly limiting. Viewers certainly will notice if a New York cab company suddenly appears in Sunnydale. Or question how so many 21st century US brandnames could survive a major war in order to get on the starship Enterprise. Usually such product placement is a little more subtle.
Consider also what would happen if every Star Trek ship was plastered in Pan Am and Enron logos...
The BBC is currently showing a US-made television drama called '24', shown in 24 episodes each of which supposedly encapsulates an hour of the day. This is screamingly announced as 'real time television', but each episode, as screened by the BBC, lasts only 45 minutes... so presumably you guys watched one minute of advertising for every three minutes of content.
In US television terms "one hour" equates to around 43 minutes. (With one notable exception.) AFAIK this hasn't changed much in a long time.
The simple solution to keeping people from skipping commercials is to make them worth watching.
Also avoid repeating them too often. Other possibilities would be commercials which solicit viewer input (but these are obviously not much use if not watched "live".)
One of the more recent decisions, involving a video store in Utah making edited copies of the movie Titanic with scenes involving nudity removed, even held that you could legally have someone make those copies for you.
This ruling probably protects broadcasters. Otherwise any TV station which made cuts, for either content or time, could find themselves in court PDQ.
Yes, the judge will almost certainly try to treat the PVR differently, but IMHO SonicBlue and the others should continue harping on the similarities. Movies didn't cease to be movies just because they were recorded on iron oxide instead of celluloid. VCRs don't cease to be VCRs just because they store video on silicon instead of iron oxide and can send what they've recorded from the living-room set to the bedroom set without you needing to take the tape out and put it back in the other machine.
It isn't so much the judge as the plaintiff trying to persuade the judge that the fiddling details of the technology make a difference. Also it would be perfectly possible to do things like a 30 second skip function with video tape. Anyway the major storage media for these devices is ferromagnetic material. Only real difference is the details of the substrate which carries it. Metal platters vs plastic tape.
They have other tools, they just don't make good sound bytes for campain speeches. I guess more acurately it's the same tool used differently. Rather than pass laws, they can block the passage of bad laws that will either make matters worse, or restrict our rights while not addressing the problem.
They also have the power to repeal existing laws.
It should be a significant concern to people that their elected representatives aren't interested in undrestanding the problem, just having a special interest group tell them what to do.
In the worst case senario the special interest group is the only entity giving any input into the issue (quite likely trying hard to prevent any other possibly interested party from even making an observartion). The utterly worst case senario is where the special interest group actually writes the legislation.
The best solution to this problem is the same solution parents have been using in the physical world for many years. Teach your children to be warry of strangers. Teach them not to give out personal information to strangers.
Problem is that most abused children are abused by people they already know, including parents. If someone can get a child to trust them once then they are no longer a "stranger"...
There are two types of potential: real and theoretical potential. There is of course great theoretical potential for harm. The important question is how much real potential for harm is there. That dictates how much action should be taken.
There is also the perception potential for harm. Which has no relationship to real risk what so ever. But is often the metric by which policys are made.
This is ridiculous. You can't ignore the problem simply because the percentage of child molesters in society is below a certain percent!
There is a risk that concentrating on an unlikely danger means that far more likely dangers get overlooked. Both in the sense of someone being so paranoid about being followed that they walk into things or "crying wolf" so often that by the time a real "wolf" does come along everyone had lost interest.
There are cases where paranoia can actually make people more vulnerable, both by making them stand out and leading to a sort of binary either trust someone not at all or trust them totally.
Street players used to pass the hat; then tent performers sold tickets; and soon bands with streaming file servers will sell their own songs over the net. The only reason the existing artists aren't doing it already is because they are still locked into the old system.
Also they see doing things the old way as being the only route to sucess. Which may be about perception, no doubt there are plenty of bands, musicians and singers who could have a great many potential fans, if anyone got to hear their music.
As the new digital-age artists come along, unbeholden to the old RIAA/ASCAP gatekeepers, the new, net-based way will prevail. The middleman WILL disappear, simply because he's no longer necessary.
Don't expect them to go quietly. They will be kicking and screaming, especially after the whoever first makes their name over the new media starts touring.
But how can you pay the artists directly if they have signed away all their rights to their label?
Which is why you'd need legislation. Since a statute would trump any contractual obligation.
Some "hand sanitizers" say their active ingredient is the alcohol (don't ask me whether something can become resistant to that)
Humans of European ancestory tend to be resistant to alcohol. That is because for a long time the prefered method of dealing with harmful bacteria in drinking water was by making beer.
Ehh... bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics(penicilin).. not antiseptics. A chemical garunteed to kill life(such as sulfuric acid) will pretty much continue killing until bacteria make an extremely drastic adaptation(something that takes millions of years to do).
The problem is that anything utterly guarenteed to kill all bacteria would at best make people seriously ill, by killing symbiotic bacteria. Let alone doing in mammalian cells as well.