If i take a song, represent it in binary (create a file out of it), and then just call it a number, can't i tell the court that all i was doing was sending a number to my friend?
Well, do you think that anyone in the world is actually that stupid? I mean, I know you think you're clever, despite the evidence to the contrary, but obviously even you wouldn't be fooled by it.
Why can I check out an album or movie at the library and watch/listen without paying, but not download it off the internet?
When you borrow a book -- or whatever -- from the library, it is an instance of a lawful copy of the work being distributed. While this could be illegal per 17 USC 106, it is not when you take into consideration the exception in 109. 109 basically says that it's okay to distribute lawful copies of works, if your posession of them is lawful. Or, more simply, if a copy was bought from the copyright holder, it can be resold, lent out, and otherwise redistributed to people.
OTOH, when you download the text of a book, you are creating a new copy, and that does violate 17 USC 106. As there's typically no applicable exception to it that could protect you, you're hosed.
Will video games, or other pieces of software ever be legal to borrow from the local library?
The trick with this is that when you run or install software, copies are typically made in the process. There is an exception at 117, but the way it's written doesn't make it very applicable to that situation. Plus of course, there are numerous questions regarding EULAs that altogether make things too hairy for libraries to risk it.
Are libaries legal only if run by the government?
No -- there are numerous private libraries, some of great distinction.
Are only non-profit libraries legal?
No, but it helps to be a non-profit library. For-profit libraries don't receive the benefit of some exemptions to the law. But they do exist. Movie rental stores are probably the most well known example.
Could I open my OWN library and let people borrow my CDs and books?
Books, yes. CDs, it might depend, when you get into the guts of 109.
Because some of us think that the people being sued are not doing anything wrong.
Imagine if someone claimed to own sunlight, or air, or the pleasant odor from their kitchen, and sued people for partaking in those things.
Even if the law was on their side, it would still be reasonable to say that the law had gone too far -- that those things ought to be unencumbered. That it should be not just legal, but desirable to bask in sunlight that's passed over someone else's land, or breathe the air from someone else's plants, or delight in the smell of someone else's baking bread from someone else's kitchen.
So basically, some of the people here think that artists shouldn't have rights pertaining to their works. Others, such as myself, think that while some rights are okay, too much of a good thing is not, and simply want to see artists' rights scaled back to a reasonable level that, as it happens, would moot most of these lawsuits.
You don't have to agree with either stance, but you should recognize that it's not necessarily crazy moon talk.
It's not legal for people in the US to download from there.
If it is downloading, then that means that a new copy is being created in the US, and that's infringing. Even if it were construed as importation (which it is not) then it is still infringing as it is pretty damn likely a piratical copy by US standards, regardless of the situation in Russia. Take a look at 17 USC 106, 602, the MAI v. Peak case, and the Quality King case.
The bottom line is, you cannot expect foreign legal standards to apply within the US. It's like arguing that the US' First Amendment protects foreigners from foreign governments.
Not really. Even if you're first to market, if you don't have the backing to cover the market, then any two-bit competitor *with* backing can take your idea and beat you over the head with it, grabbing up market share by producing in volume and killing you on the price point.
Yes -- but it'll take time. I didn't say that being first to market was perfect, just that you can still do well. Just as patents expire, and you end up with your competitors eating into your market, so too does your lead time if there's no patent.
And of course, one should consider the size of the market. Most businesses don't rely on copyrights, patents, or trade secrets, but since there are lots of niches for small businesses that large businesses can't or won't fill, it's not a big deal. So if you don't have your heart set on monopolizing the market, it won't be so apt to be broken.
You need patents to protect you from this type of scenario so that when they go and sell your idea at a better price than you, you still get something out of it.
That might be why inventors like patents. But it has fuck all to do with why the public should tolerate patents -- and that's a more interesting issue.
Hm, not really. Raskin, and some others at Apple, were already pretty familiar with Xerox's work. But Jobs kept interfering with their projects. So they arranged for him and other influential people at Apple to take tours of PARC so that they would see that things like the Macintosh project were actually worthwhile.
For a good history of Apple, I'd suggest "Infinite Loop" by Malone, IIRC.
I know that there are "NO first amendment rights to advertise" as I am an educated USAian.
I don't think you're even slightly well-educated:
"The First Amendment, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, protects commercial speech from unwarranted governmental regulation." Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557 (1980).
However when you say "if it's not expressly forbidden, it's ok to do it" sounds more like Amsterdam to be honest.
This is, of course, true, but it could be argued that all of the things you listed are forms (or aspects in the case of reproduction) of distribution.
No, it absolutely cannot be. 106 reads as follows:
Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission
If all of those were forms of distribution, they would not be listed seperately, and coequal with distribution, which is merely ONE of the MANY rights comprising copyright. No court will ever agree with you unless there were to be a total sea change in the statutes, and pretty certainly not even then. You're just wrong.
The GP argued that Apple could revoke your rights to listen to the song and so you would be ingaging in copyright violation. I was saying that copyright laws do not apply since you are not reproducing, distributing, deriving, or publicly performing the work.
Well, you're close to being right, but you're still wrong. To merely listen to music, without engaging in other prohibited behavior, is never a copyright infringement. Copyright does not include the right to prevent others from listening.
BUT if you look at the seminal MAI v. Peak decision, you will find that whenever anything is copied in the normal operation of a computer -- copies to hard disk, copies to RAM, copies to caches, etc. -- it is considered reproduction, and it is generally infringing, barring permission to do so.
So if you have copies of music from iTMS that you are no longer authorized to make fixed, though short-lived, copies of, then you cannot in practice listen to it, since that would require some copying. I know this is a case worth bitching about, but before you do, you really ought to read the case so that at least you can make a decent argument.
Contractually? I believe that it's a "license agreement" not a contract. That's a big difference.
Actually, there is basically no difference.
And these licenses haven't yet been tried by a court.
Yes, actually they have, and they're often upheld. ProCD is the leading case.
License are intended for copyright - how I can distribute the program.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
If I pay for something, I own it, and nobody but the government can legally tell me what I can and can't do with it.
So when you pay to rent your apartment, you own it? No -- payment isn't enough to get ownership. And in case you hadn't noticed, the government is really firmly not on your side in this issue, and they are happy to screw you.
There's this other law called Copyright which gives you (the consumer) certain RIGHTS to COPY creative works under certain limited circumstances (collectively referred to as FAIR USE).
Wow, you are fucking stupid.
First, copyright doesn't give anyone the right to copy anything. What it does is, it gives the copyright holder the right to exclude other people from copying things. That doesn't mean it's legal for the copyright holder himself to copy it, even. It might be libelous, or fraudulent, or a national secret, or something. It is analagous to a negative easement in real property law.
Second, copyright doesn't give non-copyright holders dick. Rather, having granted various broad rights of exclusion to the copyright holder, it then shrinks those rights in specific ways. So for example, it still doesn't make it legal for you to copy something that's libelous. OTOH, the various exemptions in the law do take away the right of the copyright holder to exclude you from making copies, in some circumstances.
Third, only the fair use exemption is fair use. All the rest are a divers bunch of statutory exemptions that really have little or no relation with one another.
IANAL, but it's my present understanding that any clause in a contract which attempts to deprive you of your fair use rights would be found unenforcable.
Fourth, no, such a contract would be perfectly well and dandy most likely. You are perfectly free to go to Central Park and walk around. You can agree to a contract that says you won't ever go there again. That would be a legal contract.
Of course, people don't really get punished for breaking contracts. But they do have to pay the penalty for their actual breech. If there was a million dollars in the park, and the penalty for breech would be a hundred dollars, you'd be stupid to not break the contract. You'll still come out ahead, and no one has a problem with that. You just owe the other guy the cash.
The trick is, if you contract such that you're being specifically allowed to do something that's otherwise illegal, breech will be bad because then you're also breaking the law, and that is further punishable.
And as previous posters have mentioned, no one's even really tested click-wrap in court, so it's hardly a given than any part of the EULA is binding.
No, stupid. The ProCD case is by far the most well known instance of a EULA being upheld in court, and it's been somewhat influential. There is a lot of dispute about the issue, but they HAVE stood up in court before, and they're likely to again before things are resolved.
Format shifting is considered fair use.
No. SOME format shifting MIGHT be fair use. Other format shifting might NOT be fair use.
In each case where fair use is alleged, you have to conduct the fair use test (see 17 USC 107) with regards to the specific circumstances involved. Change the circumstances, and the outcome of the test can easily change. In fact, format shifting is really on rather shakey ground!
Format shifting includes taping CD's to play in your car.
OTOH, no court will ever bother conducting a fair use test for that, since there's a seperate statutory exemption (17 USC 1008 -- not applicable for computers, however) that covers some taping.
While I'm not aware of any legal tests at this point, I see no reason why format shifting should not also include transcoding / decrypting digital content to play on devices which you own which would otherwise be incapable of playing the content.
See the Diamond v. RIAA case -- where wonder of wonders, the fair use analysis was performed.
But circumvention runs into 17 USC 1201, and since violations of 1201 are technically not copyright violations, there's an argument that fair use doesn't pertain, being solely a copyright defense.
What your parent is saying is that copyright law is a misnomer: it should be called distribution law. Sure, copying a file from one place to another, including with this program, is copying. However, it isn't distributing it, and thus title 17 has nothing to say about the actual copying (though the DRM removal would be a sticky issue).
Whether this is true or not, who knows.
I know. It's not true. Copyright law deals with copying AND distribution AND lots of other stuff besides.
Copying a file as you describe is copying, and is perfectly capable of being illegal all by itself per 17 USC 106. Title 17 discusses copying quite a lot, in fact.
Nonsense. It deals with all aspects of the rights of the creator of a work.
That's a bizarre way of putting that -- copyrights are the rights of a creator of a work, basically. But they aren't all-encompassing. Copyrights are enumerated -- anything not specifically given over to the artist isn't covered by copyright.
Copyright deals with half an assload of different things. Distribution is one of them, but only one of them.
The biggies are reproduction, creation of derivatives, distribution, and certain public performances or displays. Read 17 USC 106.
You may also want to read MAI v. Peak, and Utah Lighthouse v. Intellectual Reserve, which go into some detail as to how things already on your computer can be copied illegally without leaving.
You may be forgetting all the civil and criminal facilitation laws.
Well, with regards to copyright infringement (can't speak as to hacking) you may be forgetting that they're pretty basic. The DMCA safe harbor works for this guy. The law is okay with people looking the other way -- hell, deliberately opening up -- in some cases.
As far as it matters for this issue, you do what the guy in the article does. Check out 17 USC 512(a). I don't think it'll help him -- it's still not hard to show that he is doing the downloading himself -- but at least he's off the hook with regards to others.
Comcast is protected by "Common Carrier" provisions -- "the law". You and I are not.
How does 17 USC 512(a) not apply to him?
I think that he's SOL, but I don't think he'll be liable for what other people do. I think that if he ends up in court, it's likely that a jury won't think that other people were involved at all; that he was himself infringing. There's a difference, though.
No, not really. First, no one needs to be certain that he was infringing for him to be liable; mere probability is enough. Second, he seems to be acting in a slimy manner. Courts don't like to be generous in equity to people who have unclean hands, and they don't have to respond to defendants' chutzpah.
Do you mean the 1976 Copyright Act that was signed into law on October 19, 1976, by President Gerald Ford? I don't remember anything noteworthy in 1978, other than that being the year that the law actually came into effect, though already enacted.
Well, that's why it was never designed to be the primary method of ejecting a disk. If you go back and look at the original System, dragging a disk to the trash doesn't even eject it. You have to use the Eject command in the File menu or O/S dialogs.
Dragging a disk to the Trash to eject it didn't appear until System 2, and even then, it was not intended to be the primary method of doing so. The proper method was still to use the Eject command.
However, it turned out to be such an amazingly convenient shortcut that it became commonplace. And frankly, I never saw one person that found it confusing when someone told them that they could do it.
But with Job's fantasy that two buttons are too difficult to grasp
That was Jef Raskin. And given the way that people had struggled with the three button mice of the Alto, he wasn't far off. Certainly the idea of contextual menus hadn't arisen at that time AFAIK. So what would you have wanted him to do with the extra button? It didn't even have any real purpose in Windows until 1995, IIRC.
Wait, another great idea that came out of Apple, lets drag disks to the trash to eject them. I'm so happy that other GUIs have copied that too. Wait, they haven't because it's rediculously insane.
Slashdot Mirror
If i take a song, represent it in binary (create a file out of it), and then just call it a number, can't i tell the court that all i was doing was sending a number to my friend?
Well, do you think that anyone in the world is actually that stupid? I mean, I know you think you're clever, despite the evidence to the contrary, but obviously even you wouldn't be fooled by it.
Why can I check out an album or movie at the library and watch/listen without paying, but not download it off the internet?
When you borrow a book -- or whatever -- from the library, it is an instance of a lawful copy of the work being distributed. While this could be illegal per 17 USC 106, it is not when you take into consideration the exception in 109. 109 basically says that it's okay to distribute lawful copies of works, if your posession of them is lawful. Or, more simply, if a copy was bought from the copyright holder, it can be resold, lent out, and otherwise redistributed to people.
OTOH, when you download the text of a book, you are creating a new copy, and that does violate 17 USC 106. As there's typically no applicable exception to it that could protect you, you're hosed.
Will video games, or other pieces of software ever be legal to borrow from the local library?
The trick with this is that when you run or install software, copies are typically made in the process. There is an exception at 117, but the way it's written doesn't make it very applicable to that situation. Plus of course, there are numerous questions regarding EULAs that altogether make things too hairy for libraries to risk it.
Are libaries legal only if run by the government?
No -- there are numerous private libraries, some of great distinction.
Are only non-profit libraries legal?
No, but it helps to be a non-profit library. For-profit libraries don't receive the benefit of some exemptions to the law. But they do exist. Movie rental stores are probably the most well known example.
Could I open my OWN library and let people borrow my CDs and books?
Books, yes. CDs, it might depend, when you get into the guts of 109.
Because some of us think that the people being sued are not doing anything wrong.
Imagine if someone claimed to own sunlight, or air, or the pleasant odor from their kitchen, and sued people for partaking in those things.
Even if the law was on their side, it would still be reasonable to say that the law had gone too far -- that those things ought to be unencumbered. That it should be not just legal, but desirable to bask in sunlight that's passed over someone else's land, or breathe the air from someone else's plants, or delight in the smell of someone else's baking bread from someone else's kitchen.
So basically, some of the people here think that artists shouldn't have rights pertaining to their works. Others, such as myself, think that while some rights are okay, too much of a good thing is not, and simply want to see artists' rights scaled back to a reasonable level that, as it happens, would moot most of these lawsuits.
You don't have to agree with either stance, but you should recognize that it's not necessarily crazy moon talk.
It's not legal for people in the US to download from there.
If it is downloading, then that means that a new copy is being created in the US, and that's infringing. Even if it were construed as importation (which it is not) then it is still infringing as it is pretty damn likely a piratical copy by US standards, regardless of the situation in Russia. Take a look at 17 USC 106, 602, the MAI v. Peak case, and the Quality King case.
The bottom line is, you cannot expect foreign legal standards to apply within the US. It's like arguing that the US' First Amendment protects foreigners from foreign governments.
as we all know you're allowed one backup copy of almost anything.
No you're not.
If you can't afford a lawyer then what do you do?
You represent yourself, you find a lawyer that will work pro bono, you settle, or you admit liability.
Not really. Even if you're first to market, if you don't have the backing to cover the market, then any two-bit competitor *with* backing can take your idea and beat you over the head with it, grabbing up market share by producing in volume and killing you on the price point.
Yes -- but it'll take time. I didn't say that being first to market was perfect, just that you can still do well. Just as patents expire, and you end up with your competitors eating into your market, so too does your lead time if there's no patent.
And of course, one should consider the size of the market. Most businesses don't rely on copyrights, patents, or trade secrets, but since there are lots of niches for small businesses that large businesses can't or won't fill, it's not a big deal. So if you don't have your heart set on monopolizing the market, it won't be so apt to be broken.
You need patents to protect you from this type of scenario so that when they go and sell your idea at a better price than you, you still get something out of it.
That might be why inventors like patents. But it has fuck all to do with why the public should tolerate patents -- and that's a more interesting issue.
Hm, not really. Raskin, and some others at Apple, were already pretty familiar with Xerox's work. But Jobs kept interfering with their projects. So they arranged for him and other influential people at Apple to take tours of PARC so that they would see that things like the Macintosh project were actually worthwhile.
For a good history of Apple, I'd suggest "Infinite Loop" by Malone, IIRC.
Innovators Rule - Provided there is a system of patent law, copyright law, and trade secrets law to protect their innovations.
Naw. Even without those, you can get far merely by being first to market.
I know that there are "NO first amendment rights to advertise" as I am an educated USAian.
I don't think you're even slightly well-educated:
"The First Amendment, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, protects commercial speech from unwarranted governmental regulation." Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission of New York, 447 U.S. 557 (1980).
However when you say "if it's not expressly forbidden, it's ok to do it" sounds more like Amsterdam to be honest.
Nope -- that's the English tradition.
No, it absolutely cannot be. 106 reads as follows:
If all of those were forms of distribution, they would not be listed seperately, and coequal with distribution, which is merely ONE of the MANY rights comprising copyright. No court will ever agree with you unless there were to be a total sea change in the statutes, and pretty certainly not even then. You're just wrong.
The GP argued that Apple could revoke your rights to listen to the song and so you would be ingaging in copyright violation. I was saying that copyright laws do not apply since you are not reproducing, distributing, deriving, or publicly performing the work.
Well, you're close to being right, but you're still wrong. To merely listen to music, without engaging in other prohibited behavior, is never a copyright infringement. Copyright does not include the right to prevent others from listening.
BUT if you look at the seminal MAI v. Peak decision, you will find that whenever anything is copied in the normal operation of a computer -- copies to hard disk, copies to RAM, copies to caches, etc. -- it is considered reproduction, and it is generally infringing, barring permission to do so.
So if you have copies of music from iTMS that you are no longer authorized to make fixed, though short-lived, copies of, then you cannot in practice listen to it, since that would require some copying. I know this is a case worth bitching about, but before you do, you really ought to read the case so that at least you can make a decent argument.
Contractually? I believe that it's a "license agreement" not a contract. That's a big difference.
Actually, there is basically no difference.
And these licenses haven't yet been tried by a court.
Yes, actually they have, and they're often upheld. ProCD is the leading case.
License are intended for copyright - how I can distribute the program.
That makes no sense whatsoever.
If I pay for something, I own it, and nobody but the government can legally tell me what I can and can't do with it.
So when you pay to rent your apartment, you own it? No -- payment isn't enough to get ownership. And in case you hadn't noticed, the government is really firmly not on your side in this issue, and they are happy to screw you.
make backup copies of it
That's very arguably illegal, actually.
There's this other law called Copyright which gives you (the consumer) certain RIGHTS to COPY creative works under certain limited circumstances (collectively referred to as FAIR USE).
Wow, you are fucking stupid.
First, copyright doesn't give anyone the right to copy anything. What it does is, it gives the copyright holder the right to exclude other people from copying things. That doesn't mean it's legal for the copyright holder himself to copy it, even. It might be libelous, or fraudulent, or a national secret, or something. It is analagous to a negative easement in real property law.
Second, copyright doesn't give non-copyright holders dick. Rather, having granted various broad rights of exclusion to the copyright holder, it then shrinks those rights in specific ways. So for example, it still doesn't make it legal for you to copy something that's libelous. OTOH, the various exemptions in the law do take away the right of the copyright holder to exclude you from making copies, in some circumstances.
Third, only the fair use exemption is fair use. All the rest are a divers bunch of statutory exemptions that really have little or no relation with one another.
IANAL, but it's my present understanding that any clause in a contract which attempts to deprive you of your fair use rights would be found unenforcable.
Fourth, no, such a contract would be perfectly well and dandy most likely. You are perfectly free to go to Central Park and walk around. You can agree to a contract that says you won't ever go there again. That would be a legal contract.
Of course, people don't really get punished for breaking contracts. But they do have to pay the penalty for their actual breech. If there was a million dollars in the park, and the penalty for breech would be a hundred dollars, you'd be stupid to not break the contract. You'll still come out ahead, and no one has a problem with that. You just owe the other guy the cash.
The trick is, if you contract such that you're being specifically allowed to do something that's otherwise illegal, breech will be bad because then you're also breaking the law, and that is further punishable.
And as previous posters have mentioned, no one's even really tested click-wrap in court, so it's hardly a given than any part of the EULA is binding.
No, stupid. The ProCD case is by far the most well known instance of a EULA being upheld in court, and it's been somewhat influential. There is a lot of dispute about the issue, but they HAVE stood up in court before, and they're likely to again before things are resolved.
Format shifting is considered fair use.
No. SOME format shifting MIGHT be fair use. Other format shifting might NOT be fair use.
In each case where fair use is alleged, you have to conduct the fair use test (see 17 USC 107) with regards to the specific circumstances involved. Change the circumstances, and the outcome of the test can easily change. In fact, format shifting is really on rather shakey ground!
Format shifting includes taping CD's to play in your car.
OTOH, no court will ever bother conducting a fair use test for that, since there's a seperate statutory exemption (17 USC 1008 -- not applicable for computers, however) that covers some taping.
While I'm not aware of any legal tests at this point, I see no reason why format shifting should not also include transcoding / decrypting digital content to play on devices which you own which would otherwise be incapable of playing the content.
See the Diamond v. RIAA case -- where wonder of wonders, the fair use analysis was performed.
But circumvention runs into 17 USC 1201, and since violations of 1201 are technically not copyright violations, there's an argument that fair use doesn't pertain, being solely a copyright defense.
What your parent is saying is that copyright law is a misnomer: it should be called distribution law. Sure, copying a file from one place to another, including with this program, is copying. However, it isn't distributing it, and thus title 17 has nothing to say about the actual copying (though the DRM removal would be a sticky issue).
Whether this is true or not, who knows.
I know. It's not true. Copyright law deals with copying AND distribution AND lots of other stuff besides.
Copying a file as you describe is copying, and is perfectly capable of being illegal all by itself per 17 USC 106. Title 17 discusses copying quite a lot, in fact.
No, it's public performance.
Nonsense. It deals with all aspects of the rights of the creator of a work.
That's a bizarre way of putting that -- copyrights are the rights of a creator of a work, basically. But they aren't all-encompassing. Copyrights are enumerated -- anything not specifically given over to the artist isn't covered by copyright.
Copyright only deals with distribution.
No.
Copyright deals with half an assload of different things. Distribution is one of them, but only one of them.
The biggies are reproduction, creation of derivatives, distribution, and certain public performances or displays. Read 17 USC 106.
You may also want to read MAI v. Peak, and Utah Lighthouse v. Intellectual Reserve, which go into some detail as to how things already on your computer can be copied illegally without leaving.
You may be forgetting all the civil and criminal facilitation laws.
Well, with regards to copyright infringement (can't speak as to hacking) you may be forgetting that they're pretty basic. The DMCA safe harbor works for this guy. The law is okay with people looking the other way -- hell, deliberately opening up -- in some cases.
What does it take to get common carrier status?
As far as it matters for this issue, you do what the guy in the article does. Check out 17 USC 512(a). I don't think it'll help him -- it's still not hard to show that he is doing the downloading himself -- but at least he's off the hook with regards to others.
Comcast is protected by "Common Carrier" provisions -- "the law". You and I are not.
How does 17 USC 512(a) not apply to him?
I think that he's SOL, but I don't think he'll be liable for what other people do. I think that if he ends up in court, it's likely that a jury won't think that other people were involved at all; that he was himself infringing. There's a difference, though.
This guy is behaving just like Comcast.
No, not really. First, no one needs to be certain that he was infringing for him to be liable; mere probability is enough. Second, he seems to be acting in a slimy manner. Courts don't like to be generous in equity to people who have unclean hands, and they don't have to respond to defendants' chutzpah.
will police get all over you just for not slamming on your brakes when a light turns red?
No, they'll get all over you for being black.
the Carter-signed 1978 Copyright Act
Do you mean the 1976 Copyright Act that was signed into law on October 19, 1976, by President Gerald Ford? I don't remember anything noteworthy in 1978, other than that being the year that the law actually came into effect, though already enacted.
Well, that's why it was never designed to be the primary method of ejecting a disk. If you go back and look at the original System, dragging a disk to the trash doesn't even eject it. You have to use the Eject command in the File menu or O/S dialogs.
Dragging a disk to the Trash to eject it didn't appear until System 2, and even then, it was not intended to be the primary method of doing so. The proper method was still to use the Eject command.
However, it turned out to be such an amazingly convenient shortcut that it became commonplace. And frankly, I never saw one person that found it confusing when someone told them that they could do it.
But with Job's fantasy that two buttons are too difficult to grasp
That was Jef Raskin. And given the way that people had struggled with the three button mice of the Alto, he wasn't far off. Certainly the idea of contextual menus hadn't arisen at that time AFAIK. So what would you have wanted him to do with the extra button? It didn't even have any real purpose in Windows until 1995, IIRC.
Wait, another great idea that came out of Apple, lets drag disks to the trash to eject them. I'm so happy that other GUIs have copied that too. Wait, they haven't because it's rediculously insane.
What's insane about it?