I'm not sure what you mean by serious kinetic kill weapons
Well, there's little point in using them against fighters, but then fighters are unlikely to provide a good defense against one.
Basically if you have a decently large ship like a Battlestar, it can only accellerate so much, which limits its range of possible vectors. So you have a pretty good idea of where it's going to be in the near future, since it would take so long to make significant course changes.
Thus, you want to send something to ram into it. The weapon should be as fast and as massive as possible. It's basically just an engine, and whatever fuel it needs. It needn't explode, since the idea is to hit the target directly. It adjusts its vector somewhat so as to stay on target, and the closer it gets, the more accurately it will be able to predict the target's location. It'll break apart at the last second to cover a slightly wider area, and to avoid the possibility of blow-through.
Since relative velocities in space can easily be tremendous, by the time it gets anywhere near the target, it'll hit in moments. Fighters couldn't provide an effective defense. Instead you want to get anything you can in between it and you so that it'll hit the other thing first.
Of course, KKVs basically depend on velocity; they don't have to be all that advanced. Sand, or BBs or such can work just fine. Aiming them is the tricky part, and of course, should something match the velocity of the weapon, it's useless. But this is precisely why space debris is dangerous -- remember the Space Shuttle window that has a gouge in it caused by a fleck of paint that was only 0.2mm in diameter?
the big weapons are all nuclear
Nukes aren't really that useful in space, IIRC. There's no air, so you don't get a shockwave. It's just a release of light and radiation and neutrons. Since a spaceship is going to have decent radiation shielding anyway, I don't think it'll accomplish much unless it's so close that the flash can melt the ship's hull. Might be useful for blinding sensors, or killing the crews of insufficiently shielded ships.
Anyway, my point is that space combat is going to be very different from anything else we've done so far. Fighters will probably not be part of the picture, and are probably only there because of the romantic view people have of air combat.
no major laws of physics were broken except maybe FTL travel
I admit that I haven't seen it. Basically due to not having cable (or even a fast 'net connection), or time.
But my understanding is that they've still got space fighters. If that's so, and no one's thought to use serious kinetic kill weapons, I suspect that there's some laws of physics being broken somewhere.
It would be unsolicited commercial email that is in no way fraudulent or deceptive nor pertains to illegal activities. Think of most telemarketing calls or junk mail (where illegitimate advertising is rarer).
It means you know who sent it to you, that it's a real, honest, offer, and that there's someone you can complain to so as to get stricken from their lists in the future. It also would mean that they'd presumably obey requests in advance (e.g. the FTC's DNC list) to not send things to you.
Just because it's commercial and unsolicited doesn't mean it's bad. Most spam is bad because it's fraudulent.
if you don't actively defend a tradmark it gets deluded
Man, that's hilarious.
The word you were looking for, however, is 'diluted.' And that's not really the result of failing to actively defend a mark.
A mark must inform consumers as to the source of goods or services. E.g. everything with 'Slurm' on it must be coming from the same basic source, regardless of what (or who) that source is. If it doesn't, THEN there's no mark at all.
Infringement is basically when someone else uses your mark on his own goods, therefore causing customer confusion as to whether he or you is the source of marked goods.
Dilution is only available for very famous marks, basically so that people can't make 'Slurm' brand internal combustion engines (which no one would confuse with Slurm, the beverage, so couldn't be infringing) in an attempt to somehow profit off of the great effort Slurm has made in making its name known. You don't lose your mark if it's been diluted, however.
In the case of copyright there is no such provisions which is how thing like the.gif and (potentially) the SCO debacle can happen years after the (supposed) infringements
There sort of are.
Three year statute of limitations on civil copyright actions. If you don't act on a SPECIFIC infringement fast enough, you'll never get to at all.
More recent infringements of course might still be within the time limit. And some jurisdictions might have a discovery rule such that the clock doesn't start running until the copyright holder knew or reasonably should have known, about the infringement.
Also the thing with LZW compression and GIFs had to do with a patent -- not a copyright.
IIRC, Crimson Skies is based on the presumption the Great Depression, an even worse repeat of the Flu Epidemic of 1918, American isolationist policies, and internal regional conflicts, the US broke apart by 1930. There seem to have been other changes elsewhere as well (e.g. Hawaii as a British protectorate)
But the game takes place during the 30's, so there hasn't been a chance for everyone to lose WW2 yet.
However, I think the whole 117 section is unnecessary.
Then you won't be happy to remember that one of the primary rules of reading statutes is that courts will go to great lengths to avoid having to ever say that Congress passed a superfluous law. All laws are assumed to be good for something; why would Congress ever go through the trouble of legislating if they didn't have to.
So no court will ever read 117 as unnecessary.
The foundation of First Sale Doctrine makes it legal to use a copyrighted work you legally have access to.
No it does not; it makes it legal to distribute a copy of a work you legally own.
Copyright does not encompass use -- never having been reserved to the copyright holder, it doesn't need to be excluded from their power. Rather, the legal right to use copies of works is part of owning copies; i.e. property law.
The fact is, First Sale Doctrine was set forth a long time ago because of the fact that a combination of businesses and lawyers were trying to do the same nature of warped wording to illegalize usage of a work in a fashion to require perpetual, high cost buying of the work to ever really touch/use it.
No, the First Sale Doctrine appeared in the Bobbs-Merrill case, IIRC, and concerned a book publisher trying to prevent used book sales from cannibalizing new book sales by requiring that owners of copies sell them for no less than a particular minimum price. There's nothing to indicate that they cared what people did with the used copies. They just didn't want to be undercut by them.
copyright is about the right to copy (duplicate) for distribution only (be it performance or media). Maybe it should be called distriburight?
No, there's nothing that actually says that copyright has to be about the right to exclude others from reproducing or distributing a work.
Congress is merely permitted to, at its convenience, promote the progress of science. Should it opt to do so, it's only able to by the means of a system of exclusive rights, but no one ever said what those rights had to be.
Congress could, in its infinite wisdom, permit wholesale copying and reproduction of works while providing artists with some other exclusive right in the works, such as the right to make derivatives.
First, register your software's copyright, and include a full and complete copy of the source, sufficiently well-commented that once the copyright expires, people will be able to make reasonable use of it. (not to mention learn from it whilst still copyrighted)
Second, don't use adhesive use contracts e.g. EULAs. There's nothing wrong with just outright selling software instead of making dubious claims of licensing it, and it doesn't leave you unprotected to do so. The last book you bought at Amazon didn't have a EULA -- why should your software?
No. 117(c) fixes MAI on a very very narrow grounds.
The problem with MAI is that in order to legally make adaptations of software so as to run it (e.g. copies of the software into RAM) 1) it must be software, which excludes all other sorts of creative works from the exception, and 2) the person making the adaptation must own the copy, which seems to not happen if you're licensing the software per a EULA.
These are big problems.
I strongly suggest looking at the Utah Lighthouse case (wherein web browsing was held infringement) for just how bad the MAI line of cases can get.
There's no such thing as a valid patent. The best you can possibly say for a patent is that it hasn't been adjudged to be invalid yet.
For a patent to be valid, it would necessarily have to be proven to stand up against all possible challenges, and that's simply not possible. So it's either invalid, or not invalid; never valid.
So far this one has been influential however; besides, I know the 9th's reputation, but that's still not a reason to ignore what's happening over there.
Furthermore, precedent sets that the patent power is limited only for the purpose of the "progress of science"
They really said 'science?'
That's weird. See, the term 'science' as used in the Constitution means general knowledge, and is intended to be promoted through copyrights. Patents are intented to promote the progress of the useful arts, by which are meant useful technologies. (see, e.g. 'state of the art,' 'prior art,' 'a person having ordinary skill in the art' etc. all being terms of art, ha ha, in the realm of patents)
The syntax of the clause bears this out:
Science and the useful Arts Authors and Inventors Writings and Discoveries
In all cases, the term associated with copyrights is first, and the term associated with patents is second.
Consulting the OED reveals that the terms didn't effectively switch meanings, with science being limited to natural philosphy, and art chiefly dealing with the fine arts, until very well into the 19th century.
So the Court should've said that the patent power is limited only for the purposes of the 'progress of the useful arts.'
You should probably read the MAI v. Peak case from the 9th Circuit. Although it's a stupid decision, and there are indications that it's incorrect, it does significantly limit the application of 117. It gets worse if you read the Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse case that followed it.
Nevertheless, there is little need in the US for EULAs.
Well, the authoritative source is usually the OED. It has a reference from a work called "Brook's String of Pearls" that someone by the name of J. Hancock wrote in 1668: Some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies.
Copyright didn't appear on the scene until the Statute of Anne in 1710. There was of course the Stationer's Copyright that was established by Queen Mary, but that was basically a vehicle for official censorship and isn't really relevant to any discussions of copyright.
Of course, if the term didn't exist, and the RIAA, MPAA, et al were casting about for some modern word to use to villify infringers and the like, I think they would probably call them terrorists.
Actually the original meaning was to publish material without legal authority; the term piracy as applied to a publisher predates copyright by several decades.
Copyright only prevents the consumer from copying the entire work and renting, selling them.
This is not true.
Video stores pay extra to be able to have permissions to produce X nbr of copies to rent.
This seems untrue as well. You don't have to pay extra to rent movies; if you own one, you can rent it to people. The DVDs you got from the Best Buy -- you can rent those yourself if you have a mind to.
And AFAIK video stores don't do their own duplication, though for that they'd need to make a deal with the studios. More typically the stores just buy in bulk from the studios. Since they want to rent the videos from the first day that they possibly can, they might pay extra for the copies (e.g. if you wanted the first PS2 off the truck, it cost more than if you waited a few years, purely due to how soon you wanted it driving you to pay a certain amount) but they're still just buying them, and you probably could too.
When you buy a book, you own it. You can do whatever you want to that book, including being able to read the last page first!... There is no law that says I *must* watch every bit of that show. Nothing in the copyright law prevents me from skipping parts of a work, cutting a work up, burning it reading aloud, lending it or giving it away.
For the first depends -- regarding cutting a copy up (you couldn't cut up a work if you tried) -- 17 USC 106A might apply, and I guess there could be a 106 derivative argument (and I've seen that before) but it's amazingly weak.
For the second depends -- regarding burning a copy -- again 106A might apply.
For the third depends -- regarding reading aloud -- it might be limited if you did so publicly.
And for the fourth depends -- regarding lending copies out -- see the exceptions buried in 109 for the two classes of works you're not allowed to lend (though perhaps noncommercial lending of those works is not encompassed in the relevant parts of 109, or is allowed under 107).
Copyrights are created by law, not by a contract, which is all that a typical license is. The law in the US creating copyrights is located at 17 USC, most particularly 17 USC 106. Copyright law does, or does not apply, when the law says it does or does not apply.
To alter that -- either lessening the effect of copyright, or imposing artifical parallel restrictions (which still wouldn't be copyrights, just highly limited workalikes) -- would require a contract.
As for your comments related to 17 USC 1201 (a brief primer: the US Code is made up of roughly 50 titles, each of which is comprised of innumerable sections -- the copyright title is title 17, and it's generally handy to note at least once what title you're talking about so that the actual section can be looked up) you said You might own the DVD (polycarbonate substance), but not the content burned on it.
This is and is not true.
You do own a copy of the work fixed within the DVD. You don't own the work itself, but then no one does since a work isn't ownable.
The studios claim that not being able to skip is their right to force you to watch commercials and if you try to circumvent that your are breaking the law.
No, they have no right to force people to watch commercials certainly. That's NOT one of the rights granted to the copyright holder in title 17. What they're actually saying is that they can prevent people from making tools which can be used to avoid the commercials, if they incidentally do some other things, like decrypt the work unauthorizedly.
Again though, this isn't via a license -- they're relying on the law.
The problem is that you DON'T OWN IT. The content creator is licensing it to you. By opening the shrink wrap you agree to that. I don't agree with it, but that is how it is and your argument about owning it is not really accurate.
I think I own the DVDs I've bought.
I tell you what. You're saying that there is a license. A license is a contract -- meaning that there is either a written express contract, an oral express contract, or an implied contract with some facts to support the implication.
In all cases, there should be some indication that there is a contract. If you're saying that there is a contract, SHOW ME what things are indicating that there is one. This is comparatively easy with, say, a EULA. But you I fear are going to have a harder time of it.
But, legally, do you *have* to watch the FBI warning at the beginning of the movie?
Of course not. You can always get up, watch something else, avert the old eyes, or whatever.
I think that what you mean though, is are you allowed to build a DVD player that can skip the FBI warning even if the copyright holder of the movie wants you to watch it.
Well, it's just that the Gazebo story is real, but it happened long enough ago, and was funny enough to spread greatly.
The original story, at leat as I've seen it, goes like so:
Let us cast our minds back to the early days of fantasy role-playing... In the early '70s, Ed Whitechurch ran 'his game,' and one of the participants was Eric Sorenson, a veritable giant of a man. This story is essentially true: I knew both Ed and Eric, and neither denies it (although Eric, for reasons that will become apparent, never repeats it). The gist of it is that Eric... well, you need a bit more about Eric. Eric comes quite close to being a computer. When he games, he methodically considers each possibility before choosing his preferred option. If given time, he will invariably pick the optimum solution. It has been known to take weeks. He is otherwise in all respects a superior gamer, and I've spent many happy hours competing with and against him, as long as he is given enough time. So... Eric was playing a neutral paladin (Why should only lawful, good religions get to have holy warriors? was the rationale) in Ed's game. He even had a holy sword, which fought well and did all those things holy swords are supposed to do, including good or evil (by random die roll). He was on some lord's lands when the following exchange occurred: ED: You see a well-groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you
see a gazebo. ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it? ED: (Pause) It's white, Eric. ERIC: How far away is it? ED: About 50 yards. ERIC: How big is it? ED: (Pause) It's about 30 feet across, 15 feet high, with a pointed top. ERIC: I use my sword to detect whether it's good. ED: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo! ERIC: (Pause) I call out to it. ED: It won't answer. It's a gazebo! ERIC: (Pause) I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it
respond in any way? ED: No, Eric. It's a gazebo! ERIC: I shoot it with my bow (rolls to hit). What happened? ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it. ERIC: (Pause) Wasn't it wounded? ED: Of course not, Eric! It's a gazebo! ERIC: (Whimper) But that was a plus-three arrow! ED: It's a gazebo, Eric, a gazebo! If you really want to try to
destroy it, you could try to chop it wih an axe, I suppose, or you
could try to burn it, but I don't know why anybody would even try.
It's a @#%$*& gazebo! ERIC: (Long pause - he has no axe or fire spells) I run away. ED: (Thoroughly frustrated) It's too late. You've awakened the gazebo,
and it catches you and eats you. ERIC: (Reaching for his dice) Maybe I'll roll up a fire-using mage so
I can avenge my paladin... At this point, the increasingly amused fellow party members restored a modicum of order by explaining what a gazebo is. This is solely an afterthought, of course, but Eric is doubly lucky that the gazebo was not situated on a grassy knoll.
Imagine how carefully you would have to pick up the end of an extension cable if your house had male jacks on the wall.
I dunno about that -- I'm almost certain I've seen some foreign AC wall jacks that included a male end. Possibly though we could just have that be the ground?
Wierdness in connectors might just be a feature protecting against some possible danger. On the other hand, it could just be crappy design.
True -- I'm mostly thinking of external data cables. SCSI, USB, Firewire, serial, and the like.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure what you mean by serious kinetic kill weapons
Well, there's little point in using them against fighters, but then fighters are unlikely to provide a good defense against one.
Basically if you have a decently large ship like a Battlestar, it can only accellerate so much, which limits its range of possible vectors. So you have a pretty good idea of where it's going to be in the near future, since it would take so long to make significant course changes.
Thus, you want to send something to ram into it. The weapon should be as fast and as massive as possible. It's basically just an engine, and whatever fuel it needs. It needn't explode, since the idea is to hit the target directly. It adjusts its vector somewhat so as to stay on target, and the closer it gets, the more accurately it will be able to predict the target's location. It'll break apart at the last second to cover a slightly wider area, and to avoid the possibility of blow-through.
Since relative velocities in space can easily be tremendous, by the time it gets anywhere near the target, it'll hit in moments. Fighters couldn't provide an effective defense. Instead you want to get anything you can in between it and you so that it'll hit the other thing first.
Of course, KKVs basically depend on velocity; they don't have to be all that advanced. Sand, or BBs or such can work just fine. Aiming them is the tricky part, and of course, should something match the velocity of the weapon, it's useless. But this is precisely why space debris is dangerous -- remember the Space Shuttle window that has a gouge in it caused by a fleck of paint that was only 0.2mm in diameter?
the big weapons are all nuclear
Nukes aren't really that useful in space, IIRC. There's no air, so you don't get a shockwave. It's just a release of light and radiation and neutrons. Since a spaceship is going to have decent radiation shielding anyway, I don't think it'll accomplish much unless it's so close that the flash can melt the ship's hull. Might be useful for blinding sensors, or killing the crews of insufficiently shielded ships.
Anyway, my point is that space combat is going to be very different from anything else we've done so far. Fighters will probably not be part of the picture, and are probably only there because of the romantic view people have of air combat.
no major laws of physics were broken except maybe FTL travel
I admit that I haven't seen it. Basically due to not having cable (or even a fast 'net connection), or time.
But my understanding is that they've still got space fighters. If that's so, and no one's thought to use serious kinetic kill weapons, I suspect that there's some laws of physics being broken somewhere.
It would be unsolicited commercial email that is in no way fraudulent or deceptive nor pertains to illegal activities. Think of most telemarketing calls or junk mail (where illegitimate advertising is rarer).
It means you know who sent it to you, that it's a real, honest, offer, and that there's someone you can complain to so as to get stricken from their lists in the future. It also would mean that they'd presumably obey requests in advance (e.g. the FTC's DNC list) to not send things to you.
Just because it's commercial and unsolicited doesn't mean it's bad. Most spam is bad because it's fraudulent.
While I realize it's a proper name, I'm surprised you forgot 'Iraq.'
if you don't actively defend a tradmark it gets deluded
.gif and (potentially) the SCO debacle can happen years after the (supposed) infringements
Man, that's hilarious.
The word you were looking for, however, is 'diluted.' And that's not really the result of failing to actively defend a mark.
A mark must inform consumers as to the source of goods or services. E.g. everything with 'Slurm' on it must be coming from the same basic source, regardless of what (or who) that source is. If it doesn't, THEN there's no mark at all.
Infringement is basically when someone else uses your mark on his own goods, therefore causing customer confusion as to whether he or you is the source of marked goods.
Dilution is only available for very famous marks, basically so that people can't make 'Slurm' brand internal combustion engines (which no one would confuse with Slurm, the beverage, so couldn't be infringing) in an attempt to somehow profit off of the great effort Slurm has made in making its name known. You don't lose your mark if it's been diluted, however.
In the case of copyright there is no such provisions which is how thing like the
There sort of are.
Three year statute of limitations on civil copyright actions. If you don't act on a SPECIFIC infringement fast enough, you'll never get to at all.
More recent infringements of course might still be within the time limit. And some jurisdictions might have a discovery rule such that the clock doesn't start running until the copyright holder knew or reasonably should have known, about the infringement.
Also the thing with LZW compression and GIFs had to do with a patent -- not a copyright.
IIRC, Crimson Skies is based on the presumption the Great Depression, an even worse repeat of the Flu Epidemic of 1918, American isolationist policies, and internal regional conflicts, the US broke apart by 1930. There seem to have been other changes elsewhere as well (e.g. Hawaii as a British protectorate)
But the game takes place during the 30's, so there hasn't been a chance for everyone to lose WW2 yet.
you name it, I've pirated it
Sculpture? Architecture? Chip masks? Boat hull designs?
However, I think the whole 117 section is unnecessary.
Then you won't be happy to remember that one of the primary rules of reading statutes is that courts will go to great lengths to avoid having to ever say that Congress passed a superfluous law. All laws are assumed to be good for something; why would Congress ever go through the trouble of legislating if they didn't have to.
So no court will ever read 117 as unnecessary.
The foundation of First Sale Doctrine makes it legal to use a copyrighted work you legally have access to.
No it does not; it makes it legal to distribute a copy of a work you legally own.
Copyright does not encompass use -- never having been reserved to the copyright holder, it doesn't need to be excluded from their power. Rather, the legal right to use copies of works is part of owning copies; i.e. property law.
The fact is, First Sale Doctrine was set forth a long time ago because of the fact that a combination of businesses and lawyers were trying to do the same nature of warped wording to illegalize usage of a work in a fashion to require perpetual, high cost buying of the work to ever really touch/use it.
No, the First Sale Doctrine appeared in the Bobbs-Merrill case, IIRC, and concerned a book publisher trying to prevent used book sales from cannibalizing new book sales by requiring that owners of copies sell them for no less than a particular minimum price. There's nothing to indicate that they cared what people did with the used copies. They just didn't want to be undercut by them.
copyright is about the right to copy (duplicate) for distribution only (be it performance or media). Maybe it should be called distriburight?
No, there's nothing that actually says that copyright has to be about the right to exclude others from reproducing or distributing a work.
Congress is merely permitted to, at its convenience, promote the progress of science. Should it opt to do so, it's only able to by the means of a system of exclusive rights, but no one ever said what those rights had to be.
Congress could, in its infinite wisdom, permit wholesale copying and reproduction of works while providing artists with some other exclusive right in the works, such as the right to make derivatives.
Maybe, but that's how things actually are.
Well, two things come to mind instantly.
First, register your software's copyright, and include a full and complete copy of the source, sufficiently well-commented that once the copyright expires, people will be able to make reasonable use of it. (not to mention learn from it whilst still copyrighted)
Second, don't use adhesive use contracts e.g. EULAs. There's nothing wrong with just outright selling software instead of making dubious claims of licensing it, and it doesn't leave you unprotected to do so. The last book you bought at Amazon didn't have a EULA -- why should your software?
No. 117(c) fixes MAI on a very very narrow grounds.
The problem with MAI is that in order to legally make adaptations of software so as to run it (e.g. copies of the software into RAM) 1) it must be software, which excludes all other sorts of creative works from the exception, and 2) the person making the adaptation must own the copy, which seems to not happen if you're licensing the software per a EULA.
These are big problems.
I strongly suggest looking at the Utah Lighthouse case (wherein web browsing was held infringement) for just how bad the MAI line of cases can get.
There's no such thing as a valid patent. The best you can possibly say for a patent is that it hasn't been adjudged to be invalid yet.
For a patent to be valid, it would necessarily have to be proven to stand up against all possible challenges, and that's simply not possible. So it's either invalid, or not invalid; never valid.
So far this one has been influential however; besides, I know the 9th's reputation, but that's still not a reason to ignore what's happening over there.
Furthermore, precedent sets that the patent power is limited only for the purpose of the "progress of science"
They really said 'science?'
That's weird. See, the term 'science' as used in the Constitution means general knowledge, and is intended to be promoted through copyrights. Patents are intented to promote the progress of the useful arts, by which are meant useful technologies. (see, e.g. 'state of the art,' 'prior art,' 'a person having ordinary skill in the art' etc. all being terms of art, ha ha, in the realm of patents)
The syntax of the clause bears this out:
Science and the useful Arts
Authors and Inventors
Writings and Discoveries
In all cases, the term associated with copyrights is first, and the term associated with patents is second.
Consulting the OED reveals that the terms didn't effectively switch meanings, with science being limited to natural philosphy, and art chiefly dealing with the fine arts, until very well into the 19th century.
So the Court should've said that the patent power is limited only for the purposes of the 'progress of the useful arts.'
You should probably read the MAI v. Peak case from the 9th Circuit. Although it's a stupid decision, and there are indications that it's incorrect, it does significantly limit the application of 117. It gets worse if you read the Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse case that followed it.
Nevertheless, there is little need in the US for EULAs.
Well, the authoritative source is usually the OED. It has a reference from a work called "Brook's String of Pearls" that someone by the name of J. Hancock wrote in 1668: Some dishonest Booksellers, called Land-Pirats, who make it their practise to steal Impressions of other mens Copies.
Copyright didn't appear on the scene until the Statute of Anne in 1710. There was of course the Stationer's Copyright that was established by Queen Mary, but that was basically a vehicle for official censorship and isn't really relevant to any discussions of copyright.
Of course, if the term didn't exist, and the RIAA, MPAA, et al were casting about for some modern word to use to villify infringers and the like, I think they would probably call them terrorists.
Actually the original meaning was to publish material without legal authority; the term piracy as applied to a publisher predates copyright by several decades.
You do not really need to fly everywhere. The speed of a train is just fine.
Bah. I want to fly everywhere AND only go at the speed of a train. Clearly, passenger zeppelins are the answer to our transportation problems.
The best way to find these things out is on other people's cars. Especially those of your enemies. I suggest conducting some experiments.
Copyright only prevents the consumer from copying the entire work and renting, selling them.
... There is no law that says I *must* watch every bit of that show. Nothing in the copyright law prevents me from skipping parts of a work, cutting a work up, burning it reading aloud, lending it or giving it away.
This is not true.
Video stores pay extra to be able to have permissions to produce X nbr of copies to rent.
This seems untrue as well. You don't have to pay extra to rent movies; if you own one, you can rent it to people. The DVDs you got from the Best Buy -- you can rent those yourself if you have a mind to.
And AFAIK video stores don't do their own duplication, though for that they'd need to make a deal with the studios. More typically the stores just buy in bulk from the studios. Since they want to rent the videos from the first day that they possibly can, they might pay extra for the copies (e.g. if you wanted the first PS2 off the truck, it cost more than if you waited a few years, purely due to how soon you wanted it driving you to pay a certain amount) but they're still just buying them, and you probably could too.
When you buy a book, you own it. You can do whatever you want to that book, including being able to read the last page first!
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, depends, depends, depends, depends, yes.
For the first depends -- regarding cutting a copy up (you couldn't cut up a work if you tried) -- 17 USC 106A might apply, and I guess there could be a 106 derivative argument (and I've seen that before) but it's amazingly weak.
For the second depends -- regarding burning a copy -- again 106A might apply.
For the third depends -- regarding reading aloud -- it might be limited if you did so publicly.
And for the fourth depends -- regarding lending copies out -- see the exceptions buried in 109 for the two classes of works you're not allowed to lend (though perhaps noncommercial lending of those works is not encompassed in the relevant parts of 109, or is allowed under 107).
No.
Copyrights are created by law, not by a contract, which is all that a typical license is. The law in the US creating copyrights is located at 17 USC, most particularly 17 USC 106. Copyright law does, or does not apply, when the law says it does or does not apply.
To alter that -- either lessening the effect of copyright, or imposing artifical parallel restrictions (which still wouldn't be copyrights, just highly limited workalikes) -- would require a contract.
As for your comments related to 17 USC 1201 (a brief primer: the US Code is made up of roughly 50 titles, each of which is comprised of innumerable sections -- the copyright title is title 17, and it's generally handy to note at least once what title you're talking about so that the actual section can be looked up) you said You might own the DVD (polycarbonate substance), but not the content burned on it.
This is and is not true.
You do own a copy of the work fixed within the DVD. You don't own the work itself, but then no one does since a work isn't ownable.
The studios claim that not being able to skip is their right to force you to watch commercials and if you try to circumvent that your are breaking the law.
No, they have no right to force people to watch commercials certainly. That's NOT one of the rights granted to the copyright holder in title 17. What they're actually saying is that they can prevent people from making tools which can be used to avoid the commercials, if they incidentally do some other things, like decrypt the work unauthorizedly.
Again though, this isn't via a license -- they're relying on the law.
The problem is that you DON'T OWN IT. The content creator is licensing it to you. By opening the shrink wrap you agree to that. I don't agree with it, but that is how it is and your argument about owning it is not really accurate.
I think I own the DVDs I've bought.
I tell you what. You're saying that there is a license. A license is a contract -- meaning that there is either a written express contract, an oral express contract, or an implied contract with some facts to support the implication.
In all cases, there should be some indication that there is a contract. If you're saying that there is a contract, SHOW ME what things are indicating that there is one. This is comparatively easy with, say, a EULA. But you I fear are going to have a harder time of it.
But, legally, do you *have* to watch the FBI warning at the beginning of the movie?
Of course not. You can always get up, watch something else, avert the old eyes, or whatever.
I think that what you mean though, is are you allowed to build a DVD player that can skip the FBI warning even if the copyright holder of the movie wants you to watch it.
Well, it's just that the Gazebo story is real, but it happened long enough ago, and was funny enough to spread greatly.
The original story, at leat as I've seen it, goes like so:
Let us cast our minds back to the early days of fantasy role-playing...
In the early '70s, Ed Whitechurch ran 'his game,' and one of the
participants was Eric Sorenson, a veritable giant of a man. This story is
essentially true: I knew both Ed and Eric, and neither denies it (although
Eric, for reasons that will become apparent, never repeats it). The gist
of it is that Eric... well, you need a bit more about Eric. Eric comes
quite close to being a computer. When he games, he methodically considers
each possibility before choosing his preferred option. If given time, he
will invariably pick the optimum solution. It has been known to take
weeks. He is otherwise in all respects a superior gamer, and I've spent
many happy hours competing with and against him, as long as he is given
enough time. So... Eric was playing a neutral paladin (Why should only
lawful, good religions get to have holy warriors? was the rationale) in
Ed's game. He even had a holy sword, which fought well and did all those
things holy swords are supposed to do, including good or evil (by random
die roll). He was on some lord's lands when the following exchange
occurred:
ED: You see a well-groomed garden. In the middle, on a small hill, you
see a gazebo.
ERIC: A gazebo? What color is it?
ED: (Pause) It's white, Eric.
ERIC: How far away is it?
ED: About 50 yards.
ERIC: How big is it?
ED: (Pause) It's about 30 feet across, 15 feet high, with a pointed top.
ERIC: I use my sword to detect whether it's good.
ED: It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo!
ERIC: (Pause) I call out to it.
ED: It won't answer. It's a gazebo!
ERIC: (Pause) I sheathe my sword and draw my bow and arrows. Does it
respond in any way?
ED: No, Eric. It's a gazebo!
ERIC: I shoot it with my bow (rolls to hit). What happened?
ED: There is now a gazebo with an arrow sticking out of it.
ERIC: (Pause) Wasn't it wounded?
ED: Of course not, Eric! It's a gazebo!
ERIC: (Whimper) But that was a plus-three arrow!
ED: It's a gazebo, Eric, a gazebo! If you really want to try to
destroy it, you could try to chop it wih an axe, I suppose, or you
could try to burn it, but I don't know why anybody would even try.
It's a @#%$*& gazebo!
ERIC: (Long pause - he has no axe or fire spells) I run away.
ED: (Thoroughly frustrated) It's too late. You've awakened the gazebo,
and it catches you and eats you.
ERIC: (Reaching for his dice) Maybe I'll roll up a fire-using mage so
I can avenge my paladin...
At this point, the increasingly amused fellow party members restored a
modicum of order by explaining what a gazebo is. This is solely an
afterthought, of course, but Eric is doubly lucky that the gazebo was
not situated on a grassy knoll.
Imagine how carefully you would have to pick up the end of an extension cable if your house had male jacks on the wall.
I dunno about that -- I'm almost certain I've seen some foreign AC wall jacks that included a male end. Possibly though we could just have that be the ground?
Wierdness in connectors might just be a feature protecting against some possible danger. On the other hand, it could just be crappy design.
True -- I'm mostly thinking of external data cables. SCSI, USB, Firewire, serial, and the like.