I make computer games in my spare time. I put them for free on my website as a portfolio and because I'm a generally nice guy.
That is nice.
In your case I'm required to pay extra taxes because I've created something that I want to share for free under my own terms.
Well, I'm not the earlier poster, I can't comment on his proposal, but mine is probably not too different.
Provided that no one else has a copyright or patent that would prohibit you from doing so, having a copyright doesn't help you. A copyright isn't a right to share a work; it's a right to prevent other people from sharing a work. If your work is in the public domain, you can still host your games on your own website, you can put a credit in the game, and you can ask for feedback.
A copyright is only useful if you want to keep other people from hosting them as well, making modifications, etc. If you would've created and published your games even if you couldn't control what other people do with them, why do you feel a need to? If you wouldn't've created and published it without that control, that's fine, but if you're getting power over other people, some sort of quid pro quo is hardly too much to ask.
I think that for published works, copyrights should only be granted if the rightful applicant registers the copyright with the Copyright Office. Further, the copyright term should be quite short, with a number of renewals available (depending perhaps on the type of work), provided that the rightful applicant files for a renewal in a timely fashion. And there should be some fee associated with registration and renewal, though it should probably be fairly modest; the idea is simply to present an easily-jumped hurdle so that the applicant has to think about whether or not he wants a copyright, without actually being a prohibitive amount.
Patent fees can vary depending on whether the inventor is a small or large entity (e.g. a single person working in a garage or IBM); perhaps the fees for copyrights could vary depending on the applicant's ability to pay (although again, they should still be large enough even for the smallest author to have to stop and think).
This is all because copyrights are intended to be an incentive to authors to create and publish works which otherwise would not have been created and published, all in order to increase the size of the public domain as fully and rapidly as possible. If an author would have created and published a work regardless of copyright, he didn't need the incentive, and shouldn't receive it. Since we can't read minds, the best way to determine who should get a copyright and who shouldn't is to have them identify themselves. If an author cares about copyright, he will take action to get one; if the author does not care, he will take no action at all. Thus it has to be an opt-in system.
A modest fee helps to keep applicants from just mindlessly getting copyrights even when unnecessary. After all, even the internal memos and papers generated by a company in the ordinary course of business are usually copyrightable. If they can automatically get rights over them that they don't otherwise care about, they very well may, just to cover their asses. But if it affects their bottom line, they won't bother unless it's worth it on a per-work basis. In fact, we even know from our long and distinguished history with copyright registrations and renewals that most works won't be copyrighted, and most copyrighted works won't be renewed -- getting them into the public domain all the faster because no one actually cares enough to keep them out when it comes down to time, effort, and money.
(People usually like to object that this is onerous for photographers, but we already have procedures for registering multiple works under a single application now. There's no reason to think that photographers would have a hard time of it, though I bet that as a rule they too would not bother with copyrights for most of their photos
No, it's fine. A good copyright system is more important the the GPL.
Besides, who's to say that a good copyright system cannot functionally replicate the GPL?
Why not say that if you want to copyright a piece of software, you are obligated to deposit with the Library of Congress a full copy of the source code, the complete binaries, and such comments and other supplemental information as the Library or the Copyright Office may require so that others can understand the software and copy, modify, and otherwise make use of its noncopyrightable portions during the copyright term, and all of it after the end of the term. And that the Library is obligated to keep the source available to the public (as would other libraries, to avoid single points of failure), including online, so that it can be studied, and in time, copied.
And that copyrights are not to be made available to works with DRM placed on them by the author, copyright holder, or other authorized parties. And that DRM is not only legal to break, to get at the public-domain works within, but that people are encouraged to do so. That the Copyright Office and Library of Congress are obligated to assist and coordinate efforts to break DRM and provide an archive of such works to the public, and are given a healthy budget with which to do so.
In my opinion it's much better if copyright holders voluntarily decides to contribute their work to the common good, rather than doing that by force.
Your view of copyright is backward. Copyrights are only supposed to be granted if it advances the common good. By default, however, works are in the public domain.
It's not force to offer copyright holders the choice of either having no protection, or having only the limited amount of protection, with strings attached, that we deign to offer. They have no other choices, is all.
The loss of our culture is both bad and distressing.
There are people who would give and arm and a leg for just one of the lost plays of Shakespeare, much less the 100+ lost plays of Sophocles, or the full contents of the libraries of Alexandria the Cotton Library, or the lost works of the Aztecs or the Maya.
Works should never be lost, and should never be forgotten. Many works will be unpopular and ignored, that's true. But they should nevertheless be preserved. Someone thought they were important enough to create. The least we can do is to keep it intact. And in the future, who knows; perhaps someone will want it, and perhaps it will be of value. No one has a right to deny literally everyone who will come after. No one has a right to destroy our culture and erase our history. We're better off when people don't burn books. Even if an author wants to burn his own books, it should not be supported, and when possible should not be permitted. No one who loves such things could countenance their destruction, even if it is merely through greed and sloth.
tl;dr: Fuck you. You're the worst person I've seen or heard mention of today.
The copyright term was intended to reflect the economic life of the work to the author
Not at all.
In the modern world, the economic life of works is usually pretty short after each publication in a different medium.
A morning newspaper, like a mayfly, runs through most of its economic value in just a few hours.
A typical book has a lifespan of 6-18 months in hardback, and 6-18 months in paperback; a book that still has notable sales after a couple of years is rare. You may think it happens a lot, if you think about the many classic books you see at the store, but really it's minuscule when you consider the vast number of books that don't stay in print.
Movies have short lifespans per publication, but get republished a lot (taking publication in a broad sense inclusive of performance). They come out at first run theaters, and last a few weeks, maybe a month, but usually every week after the opening weekend gets worse and worse; it gets fewer showings, and at worse times, and is steadily displaced by newer movies. Finally it leaves the first run theater and goes to the second run theater, where the ticket prices are less and so are the revenues. Eventually it's out of theaters entirely, and goes to tv. It'll be on pay-per-view, then it'll be published for home video and hit the rental market, where it has a similar spike of popularity and then sells less and less (unless there's a format switch, but Bluray hasn't been a smash success, and we may be seeing the end of that sort of thing). It goes to premium cable channels, then basic cable, then major broadcast networks, and before you know it, it's the Saturday Afternoon Movie on some little independent tv station. The whole process can be stretched out over years, which is impressive, but the original box office take is generally a lot more than the licensing fee that a UHF station will pay.
Textbooks for subjects that don't change a lot -- math, high school science in places without religious nuts, grammar -- may also enjoy unusually long lives, but it's a pretty limited market to begin with.
And going back to the beginning of it all, the 14+14 terms from the Statute of Anne have nothing to do with the economic lifetime of works in the early 18th century. Fourteen years was the term that a patent monopoly could be granted back in the old days, and one monopoly being like another, the term length was adopted for copyrights. The choice of 14 years IIRC was twice the length of an apprenticeship at the time, the idea being that a master with a patent could train a couple of sets of apprentices with the new arts. So it's all fairly arbitrary, really. Certainly no one was doing careful analysis of what was best.
The copyright system is to protect the creator's interests
Utterly wrong. In the US, at least, copyright exists to promote the progress of science -- a public benefit. It doesn't exist for the benefit of authors at all.
The consumers already have a legitimate way to obtain the work -- purchase it or borrow it from a library or a friend.
You might want to check out the Kirtsaeng case currently before the Supreme Court; the publishers are trying to prevent people from legitimately borrowing copies from libraries and friends. No surprise there; publishers hate libraries.
Copyright consumers don't add anything to society as it pertains to artistic works beyond their ability to pay for it.
Copyright consumers are society. Immersion in our culture, and access to our learning, history, and arts is vital for a healthy, active, educated society.
Personally, I don't have any sympathy for people wanting to get something for free.
So you are saying that authors should be obligated to pay for their copyrights, and that they shouldn't just be granted them automatically?
Personally, I wouldn't say that I have sympathy for people who want thin
Are you saying that I as a professional composer should let companies use my older music for free in commercial contexts, to benefit society? How could that possibly benefit anyone except the companies that already are completely nickel-and-diming freelancers like myself?
It benefits society to have multiple sources for copies of works, and to have various sorts of copies of those works. You can go to a bookstore and buy copies of Shakespeare, and some of them will be of high quality, and others will be cheap, and you can go online and download the same works for free.
It benefits society to have derivative works. Other composers can create works based on yours without having to get permission (which may be withheld) or having to meet your standards of quality (which they might not even want to do, due to differing tastes), and other authors can use your works as soundtracks for films or such.
It benefits society to have works publicly performed. A commercial but low-budget orchestra or venue might be able to afford to perform your material based on ticket sales, selling ads in the program, etc., but might not be able to pay licensing fees as well. If the material is in the public domain, it might reach more people.
And it benefits you to have a thriving public domain, since unless you're some sort of weird ascetic, you're likely to listen to more works than you create, and the cheaper they are, the easier this is for you, all else being equal. And if you don't have to seek permission or pay licensing fees, you're freer to create derivative works based on those works.
Just because something benefits companies that are hostile to you doesn't mean that it can't benefit everyone. Those companies benefit from taxpayer-supported police, and fire departments, and judicial systems, and so forth, as we all do. Dismantling them out of spite would just harm ourselves more.
Storing H2 is a massive pain in the ass; it leaks out of the tank, the atoms are so small. There are other problems with it too. Better to combine it with carbon to make methane and only crack it to get the desired liquid hydrogen shortly before you plan on using it.
That having been said, I'd rather use electric propulsion using oxygen as fuel (it's much more practical) whenever possible. Carbon monoxide & oxygen is lousy but can be made from the Martian atmosphere. Aluminum & oxygen is also lousy but can be made from lunar rocks and soil.
Hydrogen that is convenient for use in space by us without amazing science fiction technology is fairly rare. Helium too, which is important stuff to use in conjunction with hydrogen (it helps to push the fuel into the engine).
Yes, the Trojans are at two of the Sun-Jupiter Lagrange points, where the gravity from each of those bodies is balanced, more or less allowing small objects to remain there.
Similar points exist between the Earth and the Sun and between the Earth and the Moon. Three points lie along the axis of the two bodies, and two lie in the orbit of the smaller body, 60 degrees ahead or behind.
Now, you hit an interesting gray area - that plagiarism can be prosecutable only if copyright infringement or actionable fraud can be proved.
Well, not all infringement can be prosecuted either; the requirements for criminal infringement are (slightly) higher than those for civil infringement. Of course there's really no reason to make it a criminal offense to begin with, except that copyright holders are cheap and lazy and would rather have taxpayers foot the bill. At least with patents, and until fairly recently with trademarks, rightsholders have to pay for their own lawsuits and thus can make better determinations as to what is and isn't worth pursuing.
Exactly. Copyright is created by society in order to protect the creators of intellectual property.
No, exactly wrong. I'll give you a clue: Copyright is utilitarian. In that case, given that we've already pretty well established that it harms the public (by infringing on their free speech right, which is very important), it could not be justified unless it also provides some benefit for the public, and the benefit outweighs the harm. That it benefits authors is quite besides the point, though; no one cares about them.
Oh wow, this takes me back. I remember when this sob story was posted on/. about five years ago and kuro5hin about ten years ago. And it was always a store that had been around for 12 years.
Well, in the US no license is required for the owner of a lawfully made copy to rent that copy. If a video store buys an ordinary retail copy of a DVD from Amazon or what have you, they can rent it. This is at 17 USC 109.
Of course, this is currently under attack in the Kirtsaeng case, so we'll find out in a few months whether this continues to hold true.
When you, or I, or anyone else creates something nobody gave it to us. We're just asking that others don't take it as their own.
A simple request would be fine, but people would be free to refuse and do things with the work which you'd rather they didn't.
But if it can be enforced, then that means that other people have given power over themselves to you. (Or you've compelled them, in which case your system would lack legitimacy)
Remember: Authors don't create copyright; ultimately, the public does.
Also, I think you're very much glossing over the issue of how much culture we all reuse when we create new works. While not all works are outright derivative, very few, if any works are in every single respect utterly novel.
Would you say that plagiarism is protected by freedom of speech?
Provided that it is neither copyright infringement, nor actionable fraud, why not? If I claim that I wrote the plays commonly attributed to Shakespeare, is there some good reason to step in and use the law to penalize me in some fashion?
I'm defending the originators right to their work; that others can't take it or sell it at their whim.
Well, that's not a right to their work; their right to their work is the same free speech (or free press, if you prefer, although I don't think there's a relevant distinction here) that everyone else has. If a work is in the public domain, nothing stops an author from publishing it, after all. What you're talking about is a right to censor other people, and to call upon the power of the state to enforce that censorship, all for the purpose of holding a monopoly in the work, permitting the author to charge monopolistic prices on knowledge and culture that could otherwise flow freely to the benefit of all.
As I've said before, it might be a good idea to allow authors to have the right to censor other people despite this being an infringement of the free speech of the entire rest of the world that isn't the author. But it shouldn't be granted casually, and it shouldn't be granted unless there is some benefit to the people suffering under the yoke of copyright which outweighs the cost to them. Just because an author wants something isn't a good enough reason. I want a moon base, but I don't expect people to fork over hundreds of billions of dollars just to satisfy my every whim.
So why should the rest of the world grant an author a copyright? What's in it for them? What makes it worthwhile?
Free speech is your right to say what you want without being persecuted by the government.
It's more than that.
What right does an author have to create his own work (music, poetry, books, music, software) and sell or distribute it at his whim? What right does the public have to copy someone else's work once that work is in the public domain?
It's all the same thing: free speech. It basically has to be, since there's no right granted by the government to do these things. It must be an inherent right, which we would possess even in the absence of government, and it's typically called free speech.
Copyright is an infringement of this. It may be an acceptable one, under certain circumstances, but it's pretty clear that they're opposed to each other.
Free speech. Now, I might be persuaded to give up a little of my free speech in order to grant you a copyright, but you'll have to convince me that I would be better off doing so than otherwise.
Now, in our republic, we normally have elected officials handling this on our behalf, but they're pretty corrupt and generally not too interested in this, so for the moment let's just say it's the two of us haggling over this. I can be convinced -- in fact I already think copyright is basically a good idea under the right circumstances -- but you certainly can't expect a rational person to just give away such an important right for nothing.
Should we work at McDonalds and produce our work for free so that you can get free sh*t?
Of course not! You aren't obligated to produce creative works. If you don't find the market conditions suitable, go get a regular job and abandon your art. But if you're willing to be a sucker, as it were, and work for free, why should that be anyone's fault but your own?
They create it, for among other reasons, to get money
That is certainly true of some copyrightable works, though not the majority of works. But when it isn't necessary to grant a copyright in order to incentivize an author to create and publish a work he otherwise would not have, why should we? It would be the very definition of waste.
Personally I like the idea of granting an exception to copyright for any otherwise infringing actions engaged in by a natural person, noncommercially (where noncommercial behavior could be defined narrowly but not so much so that it swallows the exception). This might very well have the effect of reducing the amount of incentives we provide for authors, and in turn reducing the number of works they create and publish. But since freedom for the public with regard to works is just as important a goal of copyright as increasing the quantity of works, the trade off might very well be worth it. At any rate, I'd be willing to give it a shot to see what happens.
No, I mean it's sad for everyone else that someone will eventually let them back in. Then we'll have to go through all the work of smashing them and containing them again, and they'll cause damage in the meantime.
It's like Aliens: Paul Reiser deserved what he got, but everyone else suffered for it.
Moderates in the Republican camp became Democrats a long time ago. What we need to do, and what I think is likely is that the Democratic party will split into two groups: one liberal, and one moderate conservative (the latter dominates the party right now â" Obama is very conservative). Meanwhile, unless our systems of elections are radically changed nationwide, there will be no room for a third party, and the hardcore conservatives who currently dominate the Republican party â" the theocrats, the bigots, the plutocrats, etc. â" will get totally marginalized and have no effective voice in politics. Eventually, sadly, someone in the conservative camp will eventually try to enlist some of them to help win an election, ignoring the lesson that the Republicans have taught us between 1964 and today: that they're basically cancerous and will destroy from the inside anyone who allows them in.
No, MA only was doing medical marijuana, though we did decriminalize it to some extent a few years ago. Outright legalization hasn't happened here yet⦠but may in the next few years at this rate.
Well, there are applications for very slow airplanes, such as if you really care about altitude or the terrain below is impassible. IIRC, high altitude drone aircraft have been suggested for Venus and Mars probes. The former, because we can't send anything to the surface and have it survive for long, the latter just to get better observations of the ground than we do with satellites. And in both cases you'd want them to be solar or nuclear powered since conventional fuel would run out too fast and there may not be anything convenient to use as an oxidizer.
Well, Steve wasn't running Apple back in the day; Mike Scott and Mike Markkula were. Steve's youth, temperament, and inexperience were among the reasons for bringing in Sculley as well, and we all know what happened then. His position in Apple after he returned was very, very different than it had been before.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't recall if this changed recently, but in the US there was a one year (previously two year) grace period for patents.
I make computer games in my spare time. I put them for free on my website as a portfolio and because I'm a generally nice guy.
That is nice.
In your case I'm required to pay extra taxes because I've created something that I want to share for free under my own terms.
Well, I'm not the earlier poster, I can't comment on his proposal, but mine is probably not too different.
Provided that no one else has a copyright or patent that would prohibit you from doing so, having a copyright doesn't help you. A copyright isn't a right to share a work; it's a right to prevent other people from sharing a work. If your work is in the public domain, you can still host your games on your own website, you can put a credit in the game, and you can ask for feedback.
A copyright is only useful if you want to keep other people from hosting them as well, making modifications, etc. If you would've created and published your games even if you couldn't control what other people do with them, why do you feel a need to? If you wouldn't've created and published it without that control, that's fine, but if you're getting power over other people, some sort of quid pro quo is hardly too much to ask.
I think that for published works, copyrights should only be granted if the rightful applicant registers the copyright with the Copyright Office. Further, the copyright term should be quite short, with a number of renewals available (depending perhaps on the type of work), provided that the rightful applicant files for a renewal in a timely fashion. And there should be some fee associated with registration and renewal, though it should probably be fairly modest; the idea is simply to present an easily-jumped hurdle so that the applicant has to think about whether or not he wants a copyright, without actually being a prohibitive amount.
Patent fees can vary depending on whether the inventor is a small or large entity (e.g. a single person working in a garage or IBM); perhaps the fees for copyrights could vary depending on the applicant's ability to pay (although again, they should still be large enough even for the smallest author to have to stop and think).
This is all because copyrights are intended to be an incentive to authors to create and publish works which otherwise would not have been created and published, all in order to increase the size of the public domain as fully and rapidly as possible. If an author would have created and published a work regardless of copyright, he didn't need the incentive, and shouldn't receive it. Since we can't read minds, the best way to determine who should get a copyright and who shouldn't is to have them identify themselves. If an author cares about copyright, he will take action to get one; if the author does not care, he will take no action at all. Thus it has to be an opt-in system.
A modest fee helps to keep applicants from just mindlessly getting copyrights even when unnecessary. After all, even the internal memos and papers generated by a company in the ordinary course of business are usually copyrightable. If they can automatically get rights over them that they don't otherwise care about, they very well may, just to cover their asses. But if it affects their bottom line, they won't bother unless it's worth it on a per-work basis. In fact, we even know from our long and distinguished history with copyright registrations and renewals that most works won't be copyrighted, and most copyrighted works won't be renewed -- getting them into the public domain all the faster because no one actually cares enough to keep them out when it comes down to time, effort, and money.
(People usually like to object that this is onerous for photographers, but we already have procedures for registering multiple works under a single application now. There's no reason to think that photographers would have a hard time of it, though I bet that as a rule they too would not bother with copyrights for most of their photos
No, it's fine. A good copyright system is more important the the GPL.
Besides, who's to say that a good copyright system cannot functionally replicate the GPL?
Why not say that if you want to copyright a piece of software, you are obligated to deposit with the Library of Congress a full copy of the source code, the complete binaries, and such comments and other supplemental information as the Library or the Copyright Office may require so that others can understand the software and copy, modify, and otherwise make use of its noncopyrightable portions during the copyright term, and all of it after the end of the term. And that the Library is obligated to keep the source available to the public (as would other libraries, to avoid single points of failure), including online, so that it can be studied, and in time, copied.
And that copyrights are not to be made available to works with DRM placed on them by the author, copyright holder, or other authorized parties. And that DRM is not only legal to break, to get at the public-domain works within, but that people are encouraged to do so. That the Copyright Office and Library of Congress are obligated to assist and coordinate efforts to break DRM and provide an archive of such works to the public, and are given a healthy budget with which to do so.
In my opinion it's much better if copyright holders voluntarily decides to contribute their work to the common good, rather than doing that by force.
Your view of copyright is backward. Copyrights are only supposed to be granted if it advances the common good. By default, however, works are in the public domain.
It's not force to offer copyright holders the choice of either having no protection, or having only the limited amount of protection, with strings attached, that we deign to offer. They have no other choices, is all.
The loss of our culture is both bad and distressing.
There are people who would give and arm and a leg for just one of the lost plays of Shakespeare, much less the 100+ lost plays of Sophocles, or the full contents of the libraries of Alexandria the Cotton Library, or the lost works of the Aztecs or the Maya.
Works should never be lost, and should never be forgotten. Many works will be unpopular and ignored, that's true. But they should nevertheless be preserved. Someone thought they were important enough to create. The least we can do is to keep it intact. And in the future, who knows; perhaps someone will want it, and perhaps it will be of value. No one has a right to deny literally everyone who will come after. No one has a right to destroy our culture and erase our history. We're better off when people don't burn books. Even if an author wants to burn his own books, it should not be supported, and when possible should not be permitted. No one who loves such things could countenance their destruction, even if it is merely through greed and sloth.
tl;dr: Fuck you. You're the worst person I've seen or heard mention of today.
The copyright term was intended to reflect the economic life of the work to the author
Not at all.
In the modern world, the economic life of works is usually pretty short after each publication in a different medium.
A morning newspaper, like a mayfly, runs through most of its economic value in just a few hours.
A typical book has a lifespan of 6-18 months in hardback, and 6-18 months in paperback; a book that still has notable sales after a couple of years is rare. You may think it happens a lot, if you think about the many classic books you see at the store, but really it's minuscule when you consider the vast number of books that don't stay in print.
Movies have short lifespans per publication, but get republished a lot (taking publication in a broad sense inclusive of performance). They come out at first run theaters, and last a few weeks, maybe a month, but usually every week after the opening weekend gets worse and worse; it gets fewer showings, and at worse times, and is steadily displaced by newer movies. Finally it leaves the first run theater and goes to the second run theater, where the ticket prices are less and so are the revenues. Eventually it's out of theaters entirely, and goes to tv. It'll be on pay-per-view, then it'll be published for home video and hit the rental market, where it has a similar spike of popularity and then sells less and less (unless there's a format switch, but Bluray hasn't been a smash success, and we may be seeing the end of that sort of thing). It goes to premium cable channels, then basic cable, then major broadcast networks, and before you know it, it's the Saturday Afternoon Movie on some little independent tv station. The whole process can be stretched out over years, which is impressive, but the original box office take is generally a lot more than the licensing fee that a UHF station will pay.
Textbooks for subjects that don't change a lot -- math, high school science in places without religious nuts, grammar -- may also enjoy unusually long lives, but it's a pretty limited market to begin with.
And going back to the beginning of it all, the 14+14 terms from the Statute of Anne have nothing to do with the economic lifetime of works in the early 18th century. Fourteen years was the term that a patent monopoly could be granted back in the old days, and one monopoly being like another, the term length was adopted for copyrights. The choice of 14 years IIRC was twice the length of an apprenticeship at the time, the idea being that a master with a patent could train a couple of sets of apprentices with the new arts. So it's all fairly arbitrary, really. Certainly no one was doing careful analysis of what was best.
The copyright system is to protect the creator's interests
Utterly wrong. In the US, at least, copyright exists to promote the progress of science -- a public benefit. It doesn't exist for the benefit of authors at all.
The consumers already have a legitimate way to obtain the work -- purchase it or borrow it from a library or a friend.
You might want to check out the Kirtsaeng case currently before the Supreme Court; the publishers are trying to prevent people from legitimately borrowing copies from libraries and friends. No surprise there; publishers hate libraries.
Copyright consumers don't add anything to society as it pertains to artistic works beyond their ability to pay for it.
Copyright consumers are society. Immersion in our culture, and access to our learning, history, and arts is vital for a healthy, active, educated society.
Personally, I don't have any sympathy for people wanting to get something for free.
So you are saying that authors should be obligated to pay for their copyrights, and that they shouldn't just be granted them automatically?
Personally, I wouldn't say that I have sympathy for people who want thin
Are you saying that I as a professional composer should let companies use my older music for free in commercial contexts, to benefit society? How could that possibly benefit anyone except the companies that already are completely nickel-and-diming freelancers like myself?
It benefits society to have multiple sources for copies of works, and to have various sorts of copies of those works. You can go to a bookstore and buy copies of Shakespeare, and some of them will be of high quality, and others will be cheap, and you can go online and download the same works for free.
It benefits society to have derivative works. Other composers can create works based on yours without having to get permission (which may be withheld) or having to meet your standards of quality (which they might not even want to do, due to differing tastes), and other authors can use your works as soundtracks for films or such.
It benefits society to have works publicly performed. A commercial but low-budget orchestra or venue might be able to afford to perform your material based on ticket sales, selling ads in the program, etc., but might not be able to pay licensing fees as well. If the material is in the public domain, it might reach more people.
And it benefits you to have a thriving public domain, since unless you're some sort of weird ascetic, you're likely to listen to more works than you create, and the cheaper they are, the easier this is for you, all else being equal. And if you don't have to seek permission or pay licensing fees, you're freer to create derivative works based on those works.
Just because something benefits companies that are hostile to you doesn't mean that it can't benefit everyone. Those companies benefit from taxpayer-supported police, and fire departments, and judicial systems, and so forth, as we all do. Dismantling them out of spite would just harm ourselves more.
I can only hope that at his funeral, the coffin is transported by some absurdly elaborate system of conveyor belts, slides, elevators, and so forth.
Well, depending on where it is stationed and where you're going and how long you can wait to get there, it can actually be incredibly fuel efficient: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_transport_network
Storing H2 is a massive pain in the ass; it leaks out of the tank, the atoms are so small. There are other problems with it too. Better to combine it with carbon to make methane and only crack it to get the desired liquid hydrogen shortly before you plan on using it.
That having been said, I'd rather use electric propulsion using oxygen as fuel (it's much more practical) whenever possible. Carbon monoxide & oxygen is lousy but can be made from the Martian atmosphere. Aluminum & oxygen is also lousy but can be made from lunar rocks and soil.
Hydrogen that is convenient for use in space by us without amazing science fiction technology is fairly rare. Helium too, which is important stuff to use in conjunction with hydrogen (it helps to push the fuel into the engine).
Yes, the Trojans are at two of the Sun-Jupiter Lagrange points, where the gravity from each of those bodies is balanced, more or less allowing small objects to remain there.
Similar points exist between the Earth and the Sun and between the Earth and the Moon. Three points lie along the axis of the two bodies, and two lie in the orbit of the smaller body, 60 degrees ahead or behind.
Now, you hit an interesting gray area - that plagiarism can be prosecutable only if copyright infringement or actionable fraud can be proved.
Well, not all infringement can be prosecuted either; the requirements for criminal infringement are (slightly) higher than those for civil infringement. Of course there's really no reason to make it a criminal offense to begin with, except that copyright holders are cheap and lazy and would rather have taxpayers foot the bill. At least with patents, and until fairly recently with trademarks, rightsholders have to pay for their own lawsuits and thus can make better determinations as to what is and isn't worth pursuing.
Exactly. Copyright is created by society in order to protect the creators of intellectual property.
No, exactly wrong. I'll give you a clue: Copyright is utilitarian. In that case, given that we've already pretty well established that it harms the public (by infringing on their free speech right, which is very important), it could not be justified unless it also provides some benefit for the public, and the benefit outweighs the harm. That it benefits authors is quite besides the point, though; no one cares about them.
Oh wow, this takes me back. I remember when this sob story was posted on /. about five years ago and kuro5hin about ten years ago. And it was always a store that had been around for 12 years.
Ah, happy days.
Well, in the US no license is required for the owner of a lawfully made copy to rent that copy. If a video store buys an ordinary retail copy of a DVD from Amazon or what have you, they can rent it. This is at 17 USC 109.
Of course, this is currently under attack in the Kirtsaeng case, so we'll find out in a few months whether this continues to hold true.
When you, or I, or anyone else creates something nobody gave it to us. We're just asking that others don't take it as their own.
A simple request would be fine, but people would be free to refuse and do things with the work which you'd rather they didn't.
But if it can be enforced, then that means that other people have given power over themselves to you. (Or you've compelled them, in which case your system would lack legitimacy)
Remember: Authors don't create copyright; ultimately, the public does.
Also, I think you're very much glossing over the issue of how much culture we all reuse when we create new works. While not all works are outright derivative, very few, if any works are in every single respect utterly novel.
Would you say that plagiarism is protected by freedom of speech?
Provided that it is neither copyright infringement, nor actionable fraud, why not? If I claim that I wrote the plays commonly attributed to Shakespeare, is there some good reason to step in and use the law to penalize me in some fashion?
I'm defending the originators right to their work; that others can't take it or sell it at their whim.
Well, that's not a right to their work; their right to their work is the same free speech (or free press, if you prefer, although I don't think there's a relevant distinction here) that everyone else has. If a work is in the public domain, nothing stops an author from publishing it, after all. What you're talking about is a right to censor other people, and to call upon the power of the state to enforce that censorship, all for the purpose of holding a monopoly in the work, permitting the author to charge monopolistic prices on knowledge and culture that could otherwise flow freely to the benefit of all.
As I've said before, it might be a good idea to allow authors to have the right to censor other people despite this being an infringement of the free speech of the entire rest of the world that isn't the author. But it shouldn't be granted casually, and it shouldn't be granted unless there is some benefit to the people suffering under the yoke of copyright which outweighs the cost to them. Just because an author wants something isn't a good enough reason. I want a moon base, but I don't expect people to fork over hundreds of billions of dollars just to satisfy my every whim.
So why should the rest of the world grant an author a copyright? What's in it for them? What makes it worthwhile?
Free speech is your right to say what you want without being persecuted by the government.
It's more than that.
What right does an author have to create his own work (music, poetry, books, music, software) and sell or distribute it at his whim? What right does the public have to copy someone else's work once that work is in the public domain?
It's all the same thing: free speech. It basically has to be, since there's no right granted by the government to do these things. It must be an inherent right, which we would possess even in the absence of government, and it's typically called free speech.
Copyright is an infringement of this. It may be an acceptable one, under certain circumstances, but it's pretty clear that they're opposed to each other.
what gives you the right to take it.
Free speech. Now, I might be persuaded to give up a little of my free speech in order to grant you a copyright, but you'll have to convince me that I would be better off doing so than otherwise.
Now, in our republic, we normally have elected officials handling this on our behalf, but they're pretty corrupt and generally not too interested in this, so for the moment let's just say it's the two of us haggling over this. I can be convinced -- in fact I already think copyright is basically a good idea under the right circumstances -- but you certainly can't expect a rational person to just give away such an important right for nothing.
Should we work at McDonalds and produce our work for free so that you can get free sh*t?
Of course not! You aren't obligated to produce creative works. If you don't find the market conditions suitable, go get a regular job and abandon your art. But if you're willing to be a sucker, as it were, and work for free, why should that be anyone's fault but your own?
They create it, for among other reasons, to get money
That is certainly true of some copyrightable works, though not the majority of works. But when it isn't necessary to grant a copyright in order to incentivize an author to create and publish a work he otherwise would not have, why should we? It would be the very definition of waste.
Personally I like the idea of granting an exception to copyright for any otherwise infringing actions engaged in by a natural person, noncommercially (where noncommercial behavior could be defined narrowly but not so much so that it swallows the exception). This might very well have the effect of reducing the amount of incentives we provide for authors, and in turn reducing the number of works they create and publish. But since freedom for the public with regard to works is just as important a goal of copyright as increasing the quantity of works, the trade off might very well be worth it. At any rate, I'd be willing to give it a shot to see what happens.
No, I mean it's sad for everyone else that someone will eventually let them back in. Then we'll have to go through all the work of smashing them and containing them again, and they'll cause damage in the meantime.
It's like Aliens: Paul Reiser deserved what he got, but everyone else suffered for it.
Moderates in the Republican camp became Democrats a long time ago. What we need to do, and what I think is likely is that the Democratic party will split into two groups: one liberal, and one moderate conservative (the latter dominates the party right now â" Obama is very conservative). Meanwhile, unless our systems of elections are radically changed nationwide, there will be no room for a third party, and the hardcore conservatives who currently dominate the Republican party â" the theocrats, the bigots, the plutocrats, etc. â" will get totally marginalized and have no effective voice in politics. Eventually, sadly, someone in the conservative camp will eventually try to enlist some of them to help win an election, ignoring the lesson that the Republicans have taught us between 1964 and today: that they're basically cancerous and will destroy from the inside anyone who allows them in.
No, MA only was doing medical marijuana, though we did decriminalize it to some extent a few years ago. Outright legalization hasn't happened here yet⦠but may in the next few years at this rate.
And I hear PR is going to pursue statehood.
If the tank is holding H2 I'm pretty sure it is going to leak.
Well, there are applications for very slow airplanes, such as if you really care about altitude or the terrain below is impassible. IIRC, high altitude drone aircraft have been suggested for Venus and Mars probes. The former, because we can't send anything to the surface and have it survive for long, the latter just to get better observations of the ground than we do with satellites. And in both cases you'd want them to be solar or nuclear powered since conventional fuel would run out too fast and there may not be anything convenient to use as an oxidizer.
Oh I don't know, Steve was fairly slimy. His treatment of Chrissann Brennan, for example, or how he cheated Woz out of money when Steve was at Atari.
Well, Steve wasn't running Apple back in the day; Mike Scott and Mike Markkula were. Steve's youth, temperament, and inexperience were among the reasons for bringing in Sculley as well, and we all know what happened then. His position in Apple after he returned was very, very different than it had been before.