Re:How do we distance ourselves from the thieves
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"Squishy" DRM?
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· Score: 2
They might excuse it. We have copyright laws because we want to cause the public to benefit. Public benefits are measured by a) useful works available, and b) freedom to use works.
For example, without copyrights we had, let's imagine, 5% of a, and 100% of b. Let's further say that after the first copyright laws were passed, the numbers became 25% of a, and 90% of b.
(N.B. these numbers are all pretty damn arbitrary!)
Since the old total was 105, and the new total was 115, this means that the public would benefit more from _THAT_ copyright law than if they didn't have it.
On the other hand, what if right now, we're at 75% of a, and 25% of b? With a total of 100, this means that not only are we worse off than we were with some different copyright law, but we are actually worse off than we would be with NO law.
While the realities are not so easily quantified, if copying 1 cd did somehow result in an overall public benefit, then honestly, we want to encourage it! 'Cos the system isn't there to prevent people from doing something, it's there to leave them better off than they would be without it.
While this is _sorta_ true, the big problem is that the market is not a cure to all ills. If enough members of the market conspire to create a cartel that monopolizes the field, this is in fact a market failure caused by too little intervention.
'Course, we have things like copyrights because there was a significant market failure without them too, so it's really just one big screwy area.
I do agree that there's room for innovation. My only minor nit is with the MDEF.
On most keyboards -- certainly those Apple ships -- the space, control and option keys don't have any symbols on them. Thus the use of symbols in Mercutio is really perverse as there's no real hint what keys they match.
Adding symbols along with the text to those keys (and text to the command key), and in the meantime permitting expansion of the menu symbols into text wouldn't have hurt!
They didn't use enter or return for, as far as I can tell, two reasons.
First, within any app other than the Finder, you'd still likely have to use Cmd-O for open. It's pretty nonsensical to imagine hitting the Return key in Word and getting an Open dialog. Thus, consistancy demands that the one app people will ALL use a lot not be dramatically different from ALL other apps.
Second, when you're renaming an icon in the Finder, you signify that you're done by hitting Return. (there is no rename dialog -- it's all inline) Since modality is not exactly looked upon favorably -- though sometimes tolerated -- on the Mac, it makes sense for Enter in the Finder to mean "toggle the renaming function" rather than "stop the renaming function" with some other key meaning only to start it.
As for the general worth of keyboard navigation, I suggest you have someone actually time you with a stopwatch using the keyboard, and again while using the mouse. Apple did this and to their surprise, the Mouse was often objectively faster, contrary to the subjective experience of the people being tested. This doesn't ALWAYS hold true, but it is apparently common enough.
Don't believe it: then give the experiment a try. There's no other way to be sure, when your personal experience is called into doubt.
I've read the story ("Melancholy Elephants" is the title, actually). I liked it.
I think you're basically right, though I'd make two comments. First, that the question of who benefits needs to be kept to deciding whether the copyright holder or the public benefit. While it _is_ important to decide who the author should be (see the recent work for hire issue in the music industry), this is not quite as high a priority for me. Especially since it will influence the public benefit, and thus perhaps be solved by looking at the problem from the public's perspective.
And in truth, really this has been decided in favor of the public, what's needed now is to convince people that the goals of the system really are society-centric, rather than author-centric.
The second issue is related to the term length, and is the matter of what the copyright should include. There's no reason to blithely assume that the public will be best served by a large copyright across the board.
We should only draw within the confines of copyright protection those types of infringement that actually materially threaten the public interest. For example, it is arguable that non commercial copying is acceptable; that the harm caused by prohibiting it is more than the harm caused by letting it occur. Examples of what I wouldn't consider infringement might be to mandate publication of source code for software, non-commercial music trading, non-commercial derivative works, and the already-extant fair use, incidental copying of software, and backup copying of software. So we've even got a history of this.
Reform's definately needed though. We've gone too far, and while I do not believe that we need to eliminate copyright at all -- the system still holds the promise of overall public benefit -- we could stand to reduce it so that we're certain that it _is_ clearly serving the public first and foremost.
I fully expect to be given -- artifically or otherwise -- the right to capitalize on that creation.
Okay, great. Now we have established what you want. What's in it for me?
Lack of jail time.
Cute. Allow me to rephrase my question more clearly:
If I am the government, and my mandate is to represent the best interests of all of the citizens in the country, including, but not limited to you, why should I pass a law that is favorable ONLY to you as opposed to a law that benefitted everyone generally, even if that meant less of a benefit to you as an individual?
I eagerly await your response.
Because it's in MY head, not yours, and I'm going to the government and saying to them that I'm not giving a brain dump until their laws protect me.
So what? Let's imagine that the benefit to society by learning this is X. And the harm to society of protecting you is Y.
If X>Y then it behooves us to protect you. If XI fully expect this to be a power play between content creators and content copiers, and I'm confident that the government will side with creators (well, this isn't even much of a gamble -- the US government has already done this).
Why? There's no historical basis for such a claim. Content copiers won in the U.S. from day one. Copyright law in the U.S. is intended to promote their interests by encouraging to be created many works, and by letting them copy those works.
If it were intended to protect established creators, it would NEVER let people copy things. This invariably cuts into their profits.
Of course, if it were intended to protect ALL authors, it would still permit copying, because there are no totally creative authors. Everyone stands on the shoulders of those who came before.
They know that if they don't, their entire country will suffer a brain drain as the talent goes elsewhere.
This is decidedly false as you've stated it.
Let's imagine that the U.S. abandons all copyright law. The rest of the world keeps it.
This means that if you publish a copyrighted work ANYWHERE, the people of the U.S. can (and will) copy it freely, because they can get their grubby little hands on it. Information is extraordinarily portable. In the worst situation it can be memorized; more often it's just easily carried around in some external medium.
You clearly are no student of history.
For quite a long time, U.S. copyright law only protected American authors. (and most countries had no copyright laws at all) Charles Dickens bitched all the time about how he could publish a serial novel in England where he held a copyright, a copy would find its way to America, and everyone would legally pirate it.
Seems like a win for Americans, no? It doesn't matter whether Dickens lived in the U.S., since we could get the benefit of his creativity anyway. It even saved us money and restrictions on our freedom.
The only alternative Dickens could've had would've been to not publish at all. But then he'd have to do something other than being an author. Maybe he'd work in a bank.
It is to keep authors WRITING that we have copyright law. No one gives a rat's ass where they do it at. There's no brain drain. Such a concept is absurd on its face.
Well, I don't want to be too argumentative, surprisingly enough. I did not mean to promote art at the expense of invention, but rather to show that both are of great importance and should be highly prized. As for the other point, I also do not mean to forget the innumerable contributions made to our culture prior to the creation of the first copyright laws a mere 300 years ago. I totally agree with the 'standing on the shoulders of giants' idea. Again, my point was merely to show that popular culture has value -- comparable to inventions and to older culture -- even if it is copyrighted.
I think we're both basically on the same wavelength here.
Well, note that _I'm_ not saying Britney Spears is better than Bach in my own opinion. I'm putting myself in the shoes of someone who might think that. And that it is perfectly reasonable to rank them that way, since it is equally as subjective to rank them the other way.
It's not as though you have indisputable proof that Bach is better than Britney, you know, or vice versa. It's all just opinion.
I don't believe that the 'popular culture' which is sold by big media firms is important to us, no. Art is important, but I'm talking about the dangers of losing Britney Spears, and you're countering that the Cistine Chapel is important? I'm sorry, but Britney != Cistine Chapel
You are right of course. And this is not an unusual position to adopt. Let's recount your like-minded predecessors, shall we:
1950's: Rock and roll isn't music, it's crap. 1890: Vincent Van Gogh dies having only sold one painting in his lifetime, because he is, after all, a crappy artist. 1600's: Shakespeare doesn't bother publishing his plays because plays are crude entertainment and not real art.
I can go on. Art has to do more with the audience than the artist. Think of films that flopped, but turned out to be classics. It's not because the movie itself changed, it's because the audience found value in it that they hadn't seen before.
For all we know, our descendants will be amazed that we didn't recognize Britney Spears as the greatest musician ever to grace the Earth. They might have whole movements based on her works, and be dismissive of lesser artists, like Bach.
I'd be surprised, but stranger things have happened. It's a perfectly reasonable position for the Britney fans of tomorrow to adopt, because ART IS SUBJECTIVE.
I'll bet you $5 you're not armed with an Artometer that can accurately and objectively measure how much artistic value is in any particular thing. Until you invent one, we have every reason to protect Britney for no more and for no less than the reasons why we might have protected Michelangelo. Just think of them as interchangable.
So, in terms of the inherent right to intellectual property, I believe it does exist, because you shouldn't have the right to force me to think and create for you.
I never once said that I have the right to force you to do anything. I'm not forcing you to create. I'm not chaining you in a slave galley and drumming a rythym for you to think to.
But this goes both ways.
If you create something, why should you be able to force me not to copy them? God gave me eyes and ears and a brain. He created the nature of information in such a way that if I copy it, I don't take it from you, you still have it. In such a way that for me to even know what it is at all, you basically have to reveal it all to me. In such a way that copies are necessarily made just in order to utilize it.
You're forcing me to NOT think of your works, and NOT create copies of it. How can you justify this if you're so opposed to the other? Aren't they basically the same sort of injury: compulsion?
If you are a better person than that, you will ask me to respect your desires. If you're sensible, you'll give me a good reason to do so, rather than just trust my better nature.
So, if you want me to refrain from doing something that I am otherwise free to do, what's in it for me?
This is a question you really must have anticipated in using an analogy of contracts. After all, BOTH sides must exchange some value to have a contract. It's the notion of consideration. It can be slight, but few are likely to agree to such a thing unless each finds it equitable.
So... tell me why I'd be a fool not to give you what you want. Tell me what I gain.
People who create content have repeatedly stated and shown that when their creations have no protection, they go create them elsewhere.
This is not universal. I for example create content. (I'm an artist by trade, though my output is rather low due to demands on my time now that I'm back at school) Not only do I not especially care about the protection it recieves, but as you'll notice if you read my.sig here I actively try to eliminate said protection. For me, it is enough to know that the work has been created and may be valuable in some way to others -- particularly in ways that are only possible when it is in the public domain.
Other artists may be happy with the money that they stand to make by being the first to market. For example, Shakespeare received no protection for his plays, and by necessity they were publicly performed. The audience included actors who, by listening carefully from the performance would learn the parts and stage the same play. Shakespeare's money came more from being the first to present it, and from being in one of the companies that would ultimately present it, keeping him in the game. (actually, he liked real estate even better, but then, who doesn't?)
Commissioned artists work like this -- you pay them a fee and they makes you some art. They don't seriously expect to see any reward from it ever again. Most of my professional experience has been in this respect. It is distinct from, but similar to, the concept of a work for hire.
And then there are some artists who are just happy to do art for art's sake. Or for their reputation. Or out of public-spiritedness. Or because the little green men told them to. (e.g. Whitley Streiber;) Or whatever.
Copyright is an incentive to those artists who are motivated materially by the possibility of financial reward. This is some, maybe even a lot of artists... but not all.
And even then, there is a continuum -- an artist might just wait on tables if the potential reward to him is X, but max out all of his credit cards if it's 100X.
So would you want to have copyrights that last forever if it meant that, say, billion dollar movies might be made? I wouldn't. The trade wouldn't be worth it. It makes more sense to have the field be rich in public domain works than to have utterly grandiose ones.
In fact, it is entirely possible that TODAY we have too much reward for too little benefit. People point to the massive numbers of works being created now as though this is an unquestionable success of the copyright system as it stands, but it is entirely possible that we are getting those at too great a cost to the public domain and works that have not yet been produced, and will not, because they cannot draw on what's new now, and will be somewhat old then.
Anyway, I'm flirting with getting off-point here.
There is a reason why Silicon Valley is in California....
Because there's a lot of VC to be had there? The defense industry? Good weather? Because people who went or were there (Shockley, the Fairchildren) didn't care to leave?
What you're describing is trade secret law. Not copyright by a long shot. And it may have an impact on this... but it's utterly irrelevant to the discussion, and operates on totally different principles. Don't make the mistake of thinking that all forms of IP law are similar.
I fully expect to be given -- artifically or otherwise -- the right to capitalize on that creation.
Okay, great. Now we have established what you want. What's in it for me? You're asking me, after all, to give up my easily exercised ability to use that information too should I legally find it out. Unless you give me not just AN incentive to do as you wish, but one that's big enough to make up for the loss I'll suffer of being able to do what I like, I see no reason why I should submit to your wishes.
And that is what copyright tries to do: to give the public, on whom the burden is placed, a greater net benefit than they would have had if they'd never had copyrights at all.
Necessarily this is limited. It is limited to what makes sense for the public. Whether artists want something or not is irrelevant. Lots of artists don't want their work parodied. The public says, screw that, and lets parodists practice their art anyway, because we prefer to. Artists don't get to make that determination.
You already appear to be buying into this: you think that artists get too much, EVEN IF THEY WANT IT. Because they don't get to decide.
What's left is to follow this all the way: That copyright _may_ be good, but that it has to conform to what the public believes is in its best interests. This may indeed go so far as to give you what you want. But it's a gift; you didn't earn it and you cannot demand it.
I _definately_ agree that culture is not static. You very accurately discern my point in your last two sentences. A utilitarian copyright system is, in principle, useful and desirable. The devil is in the details however -- not any particular implementation of copyright laws will live up to the lofty goals we set for it. Only those that do should recieve our support. (or be legal)
So copyrights are fairly bad as they stand now. But the basic system could be very good. In fact it could be very good without even altering the basic precepts behind it, just what we're doing to achieve them.
[F]undamentally those things which are copyrighted are created by the authors, and they should have the ability to control them.
Oh? How are you getting this? Merely coming up with a creative work doesn't seem to impart control, nor inherently need it to be artifically given. You're not arguing from a standpoint of utility, or you wouldn't've made such an absolute statement. You appear to be arguing from a stance of natural rights.
So... what natural rights? Are you, the author, HARMED because I can copy your work. I'm not excluding you from your ability to do things with it. I can't stop you for the same reason you couldn't stop me. And you ignore the notion that multiple authors may create a work. Did Disney create the Little Mermaid movie themselves, or by using previous works. Who then would be owed control if it flowed from the author?
Copyrights do not work like this. You cannot claim rights for as trifling a thing as a creative work MERELY because you created it. (which as we've seen may not mean complete creation anyway)
The way this _actually_ works 'round these parts is that people are granted copyright protection when society, and the government acting on its behalf, find it in _their_ best interests to do so. Whether it is in authors' best interests is irrelevant, save where that is a factor in the public's.
And frankly, I'm disturbed that you take such a dim view of copyright anyway. Copyright is culture. Our folk heroes now are Bugs Bunny and Luke Skywalker. Our common cultural experiences are in books, music, tv shows and movies. It's how we tell one another about ourselves and the world around us.
It is vitally important.
Do we study ancient Greece because of their inventions (precious few of them) or their art, architecture and philosophy? Do tourists worldwide flock to Rome to marvel at the way that the Sistine Chapel was constructed, or what's painted on the ceiling? Art is damned important. The damage that can occur to our culture is far more signifcant than you understand.
Bah. Once it stops being stylish it's just a simple matter of rebuilding the Lego house into some sort of attack robot, and taking over a different house. And if you use the flat lego pieces that are difficult to pry off of each other, it's just that much harder for the poor sap you're attacking to defend himself.
That's not that odd. In the US if you build, say, a parking lot, you're often required to build a retention pond to collect stormwater runoff.
If you weren't, rain that couldn't seep into the ground would wind up flooding low-lying areas.
You'll find that there are lots of zoning and building codes set up this way. It's nice on paper to be able to do whatever you like with your land, but in reality if everyone did that, you'd probably be miserable as a result of the effects it had on your property.
You don't really need to have a hot water heater on all the time. In the last place I lived where I had my own heater (as opposed to the building having an unmetered boiler) I would only turn it on in the morning, about 5-10 minutes before I had a shower. By then, it was perfectly fine. After I was done, I'd turn it off again.
It can save quite a lot of money. Sadly, it's much harder to manage the same feat with the fridge.
Okay. Having poked around this journaling thing which I never even noticed was there before, I think I'll be staying away from it.
Also now I guess I know what that 'neutral' thingummy is for. I had assumed it was a filter to get rid of posts by users that one considered to be one's enemies, but I couldn't imagine wanting to do such a thing. I mean, at the very least, what if they're right?
I'm interested in talking about things, sure. But I'm not really enough of an, erm, exhibitionist, I guess, to want to talk about my day to the world, nor really enough of a voyeur to want to read about other people's, unless in either case if it somehow ties into something of more general interest. E.g. 'I had a crappy day going with someone to the INS office, why can't we fix the INS?' (I've seen a couple of threads like this before, and it came to mind as a good example)
I suppose I could use it to catalogue glaring user interface deficiencies in everything as I encounter them (like Windows/IE not making the I-beam mouse cursor in this textarea box vanish so that it doesn't obscure text as I write it) but then I fear I'd wind up a) looking like kind of a bore b) spending far too much time on Slashdot.
Hopefully this won't disappoint you.
But -- provided that there are interesting threads and posts -- I'll continue to post generally, I'm sure.
I have (or could get) a following? That's got to be the weirdest thing I've heard today. I've got to say, I'm more than a little disturbed by it.;)
I suppose I may as well check out this journal thing, though I doubt that I'd be bothered to post to it. Partially because, kind of like Piro, I really am not that good at regularly updating things like that. But also because the reason I enjoy/. (and arstechnica, and macnn, and kuro5hin) for the discourse. I think I prefer to be the respondant rather than initiate something myself.
I think that something like two days or so have progressed in the storyline since then. It's like having a comic version of bullet time or something, I swear.
I remember that. In fact, I only finally registered an account on the day when it was no longer possible to post without an account. But I'd been reading since before there were accounts at all. Gosh, it's hard to remember/. back in the days when people just typed in whatever handle they liked into the blank for it.
Altus, who has an account somewhere in the 1000's IIRC was rooming with me at approximately the same time to give an indication of when we were reading here. (having been turned on to the site by the then-somewhat more accurate MacOS Rumors site)
Oh well. Now there'll probably be a Chips 'N Dips era reader chiming in.
I suppose then that you won't be happy to discover that the LSAT given to prospective law students contains a section of, IMO rather sadistic, logic games. (typically of the kind where, given several statements about the qualities of a group of things you have to correctly deduce all the qualities of all the things)
But don't worry -- the LSAT has nothing to do with what you actually learn at law school. It's kind of weird that they even bother including such things.
I seem to vaguely recall that they're not really her girlfirends, per se. Besides -- does Kusanagi really seem like the sort of person that would be prone to making friends outside of her circle? Her boyfriend is in Section 1, and I'd wager she still feels a bit superior to him. I doubt she would tolerate an O.L. or something. They'd have nothing in common.
IIRC, the women are her clients. This is a little side business she has. Recall the conversation about cyborg construction with the nurse. Kusanagi's body has a much higher degree of sensitivity to stimuli than regular humans do, or even most cyborgs. The two women are plugged into _her_, piggybacking on her sensations. That's why when she leaves, they cannot continue by themselves.
It has to be with women though, because Kusanagi's body is female. It wouldn't work, IIRC, with a man, and vice versa. (though I'd rather not think of Batou doing the same thing!)
Also there are four pages missing or retouched, in total.;)
Slashdot Mirror
They might excuse it. We have copyright laws because we want to cause the public to benefit. Public benefits are measured by a) useful works available, and b) freedom to use works.
For example, without copyrights we had, let's imagine, 5% of a, and 100% of b. Let's further say that after the first copyright laws were passed, the numbers became 25% of a, and 90% of b.
(N.B. these numbers are all pretty damn arbitrary!)
Since the old total was 105, and the new total was 115, this means that the public would benefit more from _THAT_ copyright law than if they didn't have it.
On the other hand, what if right now, we're at 75% of a, and 25% of b? With a total of 100, this means that not only are we worse off than we were with some different copyright law, but we are actually worse off than we would be with NO law.
While the realities are not so easily quantified, if copying 1 cd did somehow result in an overall public benefit, then honestly, we want to encourage it! 'Cos the system isn't there to prevent people from doing something, it's there to leave them better off than they would be without it.
While this is _sorta_ true, the big problem is that the market is not a cure to all ills. If enough members of the market conspire to create a cartel that monopolizes the field, this is in fact a market failure caused by too little intervention.
'Course, we have things like copyrights because there was a significant market failure without them too, so it's really just one big screwy area.
No, I _do_ generally agree with you. (although I also remember the bad old days when Cmd-P officially meant 'Plain')
I'm just pointing out this _ONE_ niggling thing.
I do agree that there's room for innovation. My only minor nit is with the MDEF.
On most keyboards -- certainly those Apple ships -- the space, control and option keys don't have any symbols on them. Thus the use of symbols in Mercutio is really perverse as there's no real hint what keys they match.
Adding symbols along with the text to those keys (and text to the command key), and in the meantime permitting expansion of the menu symbols into text wouldn't have hurt!
They didn't use enter or return for, as far as I can tell, two reasons.
First, within any app other than the Finder, you'd still likely have to use Cmd-O for open. It's pretty nonsensical to imagine hitting the Return key in Word and getting an Open dialog. Thus, consistancy demands that the one app people will ALL use a lot not be dramatically different from ALL other apps.
Second, when you're renaming an icon in the Finder, you signify that you're done by hitting Return. (there is no rename dialog -- it's all inline) Since modality is not exactly looked upon favorably -- though sometimes tolerated -- on the Mac, it makes sense for Enter in the Finder to mean "toggle the renaming function" rather than "stop the renaming function" with some other key meaning only to start it.
As for the general worth of keyboard navigation, I suggest you have someone actually time you with a stopwatch using the keyboard, and again while using the mouse. Apple did this and to their surprise, the Mouse was often objectively faster, contrary to the subjective experience of the people being tested. This doesn't ALWAYS hold true, but it is apparently common enough.
Don't believe it: then give the experiment a try. There's no other way to be sure, when your personal experience is called into doubt.
I've read the story ("Melancholy Elephants" is the title, actually). I liked it.
I think you're basically right, though I'd make two comments. First, that the question of who benefits needs to be kept to deciding whether the copyright holder or the public benefit. While it _is_ important to decide who the author should be (see the recent work for hire issue in the music industry), this is not quite as high a priority for me. Especially since it will influence the public benefit, and thus perhaps be solved by looking at the problem from the public's perspective.
And in truth, really this has been decided in favor of the public, what's needed now is to convince people that the goals of the system really are society-centric, rather than author-centric.
The second issue is related to the term length, and is the matter of what the copyright should include. There's no reason to blithely assume that the public will be best served by a large copyright across the board.
We should only draw within the confines of copyright protection those types of infringement that actually materially threaten the public interest. For example, it is arguable that non commercial copying is acceptable; that the harm caused by prohibiting it is more than the harm caused by letting it occur. Examples of what I wouldn't consider infringement might be to mandate publication of source code for software, non-commercial music trading, non-commercial derivative works, and the already-extant fair use, incidental copying of software, and backup copying of software. So we've even got a history of this.
Reform's definately needed though. We've gone too far, and while I do not believe that we need to eliminate copyright at all -- the system still holds the promise of overall public benefit -- we could stand to reduce it so that we're certain that it _is_ clearly serving the public first and foremost.
Lack of jail time.
Cute. Allow me to rephrase my question more clearly:
If I am the government, and my mandate is to represent the best interests of all of the citizens in the country, including, but not limited to you, why should I pass a law that is favorable ONLY to you as opposed to a law that benefitted everyone generally, even if that meant less of a benefit to you as an individual?
I eagerly await your response.
Because it's in MY head, not yours, and I'm going to the government and saying to them that I'm not giving a brain dump until their laws protect me.
So what? Let's imagine that the benefit to society by learning this is X. And the harm to society of protecting you is Y.
If X>Y then it behooves us to protect you. If XI fully expect this to be a power play between content creators and content copiers, and I'm confident that the government will side with creators (well, this isn't even much of a gamble -- the US government has already done this).
Why? There's no historical basis for such a claim. Content copiers won in the U.S. from day one. Copyright law in the U.S. is intended to promote their interests by encouraging to be created many works, and by letting them copy those works.
If it were intended to protect established creators, it would NEVER let people copy things. This invariably cuts into their profits.
Of course, if it were intended to protect ALL authors, it would still permit copying, because there are no totally creative authors. Everyone stands on the shoulders of those who came before.
They know that if they don't, their entire country will suffer a brain drain as the talent goes elsewhere.
This is decidedly false as you've stated it.
Let's imagine that the U.S. abandons all copyright law. The rest of the world keeps it.
This means that if you publish a copyrighted work ANYWHERE, the people of the U.S. can (and will) copy it freely, because they can get their grubby little hands on it. Information is extraordinarily portable. In the worst situation it can be memorized; more often it's just easily carried around in some external medium.
You clearly are no student of history.
For quite a long time, U.S. copyright law only protected American authors. (and most countries had no copyright laws at all) Charles Dickens bitched all the time about how he could publish a serial novel in England where he held a copyright, a copy would find its way to America, and everyone would legally pirate it.
Seems like a win for Americans, no? It doesn't matter whether Dickens lived in the U.S., since we could get the benefit of his creativity anyway. It even saved us money and restrictions on our freedom.
The only alternative Dickens could've had would've been to not publish at all. But then he'd have to do something other than being an author. Maybe he'd work in a bank.
It is to keep authors WRITING that we have copyright law. No one gives a rat's ass where they do it at. There's no brain drain. Such a concept is absurd on its face.
Well, I don't want to be too argumentative, surprisingly enough. I did not mean to promote art at the expense of invention, but rather to show that both are of great importance and should be highly prized. As for the other point, I also do not mean to forget the innumerable contributions made to our culture prior to the creation of the first copyright laws a mere 300 years ago. I totally agree with the 'standing on the shoulders of giants' idea. Again, my point was merely to show that popular culture has value -- comparable to inventions and to older culture -- even if it is copyrighted.
I think we're both basically on the same wavelength here.
Well, note that _I'm_ not saying Britney Spears is better than Bach in my own opinion. I'm putting myself in the shoes of someone who might think that. And that it is perfectly reasonable to rank them that way, since it is equally as subjective to rank them the other way.
It's not as though you have indisputable proof that Bach is better than Britney, you know, or vice versa. It's all just opinion.
I don't believe that the 'popular culture' which is sold by big media firms is important to us, no. Art is important, but I'm talking about the dangers of losing Britney Spears, and you're countering that the Cistine Chapel is important? I'm sorry, but Britney != Cistine Chapel
You are right of course. And this is not an unusual position to adopt. Let's recount your like-minded predecessors, shall we:
1950's: Rock and roll isn't music, it's crap.
1890: Vincent Van Gogh dies having only sold one painting in his lifetime, because he is, after all, a crappy artist.
1600's: Shakespeare doesn't bother publishing his plays because plays are crude entertainment and not real art.
I can go on. Art has to do more with the audience than the artist. Think of films that flopped, but turned out to be classics. It's not because the movie itself changed, it's because the audience found value in it that they hadn't seen before.
For all we know, our descendants will be amazed that we didn't recognize Britney Spears as the greatest musician ever to grace the Earth. They might have whole movements based on her works, and be dismissive of lesser artists, like Bach.
I'd be surprised, but stranger things have happened. It's a perfectly reasonable position for the Britney fans of tomorrow to adopt, because ART IS SUBJECTIVE.
I'll bet you $5 you're not armed with an Artometer that can accurately and objectively measure how much artistic value is in any particular thing. Until you invent one, we have every reason to protect Britney for no more and for no less than the reasons why we might have protected Michelangelo. Just think of them as interchangable.
So, in terms of the inherent right to intellectual property, I believe it does exist, because you shouldn't have the right to force me to think and create for you.
I never once said that I have the right to force you to do anything. I'm not forcing you to create. I'm not chaining you in a slave galley and drumming a rythym for you to think to.
But this goes both ways.
If you create something, why should you be able to force me not to copy them? God gave me eyes and ears and a brain. He created the nature of information in such a way that if I copy it, I don't take it from you, you still have it. In such a way that for me to even know what it is at all, you basically have to reveal it all to me. In such a way that copies are necessarily made just in order to utilize it.
You're forcing me to NOT think of your works, and NOT create copies of it. How can you justify this if you're so opposed to the other? Aren't they basically the same sort of injury: compulsion?
If you are a better person than that, you will ask me to respect your desires. If you're sensible, you'll give me a good reason to do so, rather than just trust my better nature.
So, if you want me to refrain from doing something that I am otherwise free to do, what's in it for me?
This is a question you really must have anticipated in using an analogy of contracts. After all, BOTH sides must exchange some value to have a contract. It's the notion of consideration. It can be slight, but few are likely to agree to such a thing unless each finds it equitable.
So... tell me why I'd be a fool not to give you what you want. Tell me what I gain.
People who create content have repeatedly stated and shown that when their creations have no protection, they go create them elsewhere.
.sig here I actively try to eliminate said protection. For me, it is enough to know that the work has been created and may be valuable in some way to others -- particularly in ways that are only possible when it is in the public domain.
;) Or whatever.
This is not universal. I for example create content. (I'm an artist by trade, though my output is rather low due to demands on my time now that I'm back at school) Not only do I not especially care about the protection it recieves, but as you'll notice if you read my
Other artists may be happy with the money that they stand to make by being the first to market. For example, Shakespeare received no protection for his plays, and by necessity they were publicly performed. The audience included actors who, by listening carefully from the performance would learn the parts and stage the same play. Shakespeare's money came more from being the first to present it, and from being in one of the companies that would ultimately present it, keeping him in the game. (actually, he liked real estate even better, but then, who doesn't?)
Commissioned artists work like this -- you pay them a fee and they makes you some art. They don't seriously expect to see any reward from it ever again. Most of my professional experience has been in this respect. It is distinct from, but similar to, the concept of a work for hire.
And then there are some artists who are just happy to do art for art's sake. Or for their reputation. Or out of public-spiritedness. Or because the little green men told them to. (e.g. Whitley Streiber
Copyright is an incentive to those artists who are motivated materially by the possibility of financial reward. This is some, maybe even a lot of artists... but not all.
And even then, there is a continuum -- an artist might just wait on tables if the potential reward to him is X, but max out all of his credit cards if it's 100X.
So would you want to have copyrights that last forever if it meant that, say, billion dollar movies might be made? I wouldn't. The trade wouldn't be worth it. It makes more sense to have the field be rich in public domain works than to have utterly grandiose ones.
In fact, it is entirely possible that TODAY we have too much reward for too little benefit. People point to the massive numbers of works being created now as though this is an unquestionable success of the copyright system as it stands, but it is entirely possible that we are getting those at too great a cost to the public domain and works that have not yet been produced, and will not, because they cannot draw on what's new now, and will be somewhat old then.
Anyway, I'm flirting with getting off-point here.
There is a reason why Silicon Valley is in California....
Because there's a lot of VC to be had there? The defense industry? Good weather? Because people who went or were there (Shockley, the Fairchildren) didn't care to leave?
What you're describing is trade secret law. Not copyright by a long shot. And it may have an impact on this... but it's utterly irrelevant to the discussion, and operates on totally different principles. Don't make the mistake of thinking that all forms of IP law are similar.
I fully expect to be given -- artifically or otherwise -- the right to capitalize on that creation.
Okay, great. Now we have established what you want. What's in it for me? You're asking me, after all, to give up my easily exercised ability to use that information too should I legally find it out. Unless you give me not just AN incentive to do as you wish, but one that's big enough to make up for the loss I'll suffer of being able to do what I like, I see no reason why I should submit to your wishes.
And that is what copyright tries to do: to give the public, on whom the burden is placed, a greater net benefit than they would have had if they'd never had copyrights at all.
Necessarily this is limited. It is limited to what makes sense for the public. Whether artists want something or not is irrelevant. Lots of artists don't want their work parodied. The public says, screw that, and lets parodists practice their art anyway, because we prefer to. Artists don't get to make that determination.
You already appear to be buying into this: you think that artists get too much, EVEN IF THEY WANT IT. Because they don't get to decide.
What's left is to follow this all the way: That copyright _may_ be good, but that it has to conform to what the public believes is in its best interests. This may indeed go so far as to give you what you want. But it's a gift; you didn't earn it and you cannot demand it.
I _definately_ agree that culture is not static. You very accurately discern my point in your last two sentences. A utilitarian copyright system is, in principle, useful and desirable. The devil is in the details however -- not any particular implementation of copyright laws will live up to the lofty goals we set for it. Only those that do should recieve our support. (or be legal)
So copyrights are fairly bad as they stand now. But the basic system could be very good. In fact it could be very good without even altering the basic precepts behind it, just what we're doing to achieve them.
I didn't say that this was a parody. I said that, LIKE parodies, that it is made for profit isn't the end of the fair use analysis.
It is entirely possible that this is a fair use, despite the profit motive. That's what I'm saying.
What's really funny about that is that provided that they accepted cash donations in good faith, the recipients do not have to pay back the money.
The sneakers would be in deep shit if found out, but the charities are a-ok.
Thus is the super-negotiability of cash. Tremble in its presence!
[F]undamentally those things which are copyrighted are created by the authors, and they should have the ability to control them.
Oh? How are you getting this? Merely coming up with a creative work doesn't seem to impart control, nor inherently need it to be artifically given. You're not arguing from a standpoint of utility, or you wouldn't've made such an absolute statement. You appear to be arguing from a stance of natural rights.
So... what natural rights? Are you, the author, HARMED because I can copy your work. I'm not excluding you from your ability to do things with it. I can't stop you for the same reason you couldn't stop me. And you ignore the notion that multiple authors may create a work. Did Disney create the Little Mermaid movie themselves, or by using previous works. Who then would be owed control if it flowed from the author?
Copyrights do not work like this. You cannot claim rights for as trifling a thing as a creative work MERELY because you created it. (which as we've seen may not mean complete creation anyway)
The way this _actually_ works 'round these parts is that people are granted copyright protection when society, and the government acting on its behalf, find it in _their_ best interests to do so. Whether it is in authors' best interests is irrelevant, save where that is a factor in the public's.
And frankly, I'm disturbed that you take such a dim view of copyright anyway. Copyright is culture. Our folk heroes now are Bugs Bunny and Luke Skywalker. Our common cultural experiences are in books, music, tv shows and movies. It's how we tell one another about ourselves and the world around us.
It is vitally important.
Do we study ancient Greece because of their inventions (precious few of them) or their art, architecture and philosophy? Do tourists worldwide flock to Rome to marvel at the way that the Sistine Chapel was constructed, or what's painted on the ceiling? Art is damned important. The damage that can occur to our culture is far more signifcant than you understand.
That it's for profit is only one factor in the analysis. People often make parodies for profit, and they constitute a fair use.
Bah. Once it stops being stylish it's just a simple matter of rebuilding the Lego house into some sort of attack robot, and taking over a different house. And if you use the flat lego pieces that are difficult to pry off of each other, it's just that much harder for the poor sap you're attacking to defend himself.
That's not that odd. In the US if you build, say, a parking lot, you're often required to build a retention pond to collect stormwater runoff.
If you weren't, rain that couldn't seep into the ground would wind up flooding low-lying areas.
You'll find that there are lots of zoning and building codes set up this way. It's nice on paper to be able to do whatever you like with your land, but in reality if everyone did that, you'd probably be miserable as a result of the effects it had on your property.
You don't really need to have a hot water heater on all the time. In the last place I lived where I had my own heater (as opposed to the building having an unmetered boiler) I would only turn it on in the morning, about 5-10 minutes before I had a shower. By then, it was perfectly fine. After I was done, I'd turn it off again.
It can save quite a lot of money. Sadly, it's much harder to manage the same feat with the fridge.
Okay. Having poked around this journaling thing which I never even noticed was there before, I think I'll be staying away from it.
Also now I guess I know what that 'neutral' thingummy is for. I had assumed it was a filter to get rid of posts by users that one considered to be one's enemies, but I couldn't imagine wanting to do such a thing. I mean, at the very least, what if they're right?
I'm interested in talking about things, sure. But I'm not really enough of an, erm, exhibitionist, I guess, to want to talk about my day to the world, nor really enough of a voyeur to want to read about other people's, unless in either case if it somehow ties into something of more general interest. E.g. 'I had a crappy day going with someone to the INS office, why can't we fix the INS?' (I've seen a couple of threads like this before, and it came to mind as a good example)
I suppose I could use it to catalogue glaring user interface deficiencies in everything as I encounter them (like Windows/IE not making the I-beam mouse cursor in this textarea box vanish so that it doesn't obscure text as I write it) but then I fear I'd wind up a) looking like kind of a bore b) spending far too much time on Slashdot.
Hopefully this won't disappoint you.
But -- provided that there are interesting threads and posts -- I'll continue to post generally, I'm sure.
I have (or could get) a following? That's got to be the weirdest thing I've heard today. I've got to say, I'm more than a little disturbed by it. ;)
/. (and arstechnica, and macnn, and kuro5hin) for the discourse. I think I prefer to be the respondant rather than initiate something myself.
I suppose I may as well check out this journal thing, though I doubt that I'd be bothered to post to it. Partially because, kind of like Piro, I really am not that good at regularly updating things like that. But also because the reason I enjoy
I think that something like two days or so have progressed in the storyline since then. It's like having a comic version of bullet time or something, I swear.
I remember that. In fact, I only finally registered an account on the day when it was no longer possible to post without an account. But I'd been reading since before there were accounts at all. Gosh, it's hard to remember /. back in the days when people just typed in whatever handle they liked into the blank for it.
Altus, who has an account somewhere in the 1000's IIRC was rooming with me at approximately the same time to give an indication of when we were reading here. (having been turned on to the site by the then-somewhat more accurate MacOS Rumors site)
Oh well. Now there'll probably be a Chips 'N Dips era reader chiming in.
I suppose then that you won't be happy to discover that the LSAT given to prospective law students contains a section of, IMO rather sadistic, logic games. (typically of the kind where, given several statements about the qualities of a group of things you have to correctly deduce all the qualities of all the things)
But don't worry -- the LSAT has nothing to do with what you actually learn at law school. It's kind of weird that they even bother including such things.
I seem to vaguely recall that they're not really her girlfirends, per se. Besides -- does Kusanagi really seem like the sort of person that would be prone to making friends outside of her circle? Her boyfriend is in Section 1, and I'd wager she still feels a bit superior to him. I doubt she would tolerate an O.L. or something. They'd have nothing in common.
;)
IIRC, the women are her clients. This is a little side business she has. Recall the conversation about cyborg construction with the nurse. Kusanagi's body has a much higher degree of sensitivity to stimuli than regular humans do, or even most cyborgs. The two women are plugged into _her_, piggybacking on her sensations. That's why when she leaves, they cannot continue by themselves.
It has to be with women though, because Kusanagi's body is female. It wouldn't work, IIRC, with a man, and vice versa. (though I'd rather not think of Batou doing the same thing!)
Also there are four pages missing or retouched, in total.