Don't worry about Mac users. Toast still works fine, and anyone who's sticking with the Mac will end up with OS X which starts to open the door for Unix software to come in. (Although personally, having Unix underlying the system is not appealing to me, so I've been migrating towards Win due to a lack of options)
Of course, the public is not FORCED to grant copyrights on music or to permit collusive and monopolistic behavior in the music industry. Perhaps they should leave well enough alone.
My guess would be no, you couldn't. If you did a serious RE job, where you ultimately produced a completely different work that was identical to Word if they were both considered black boxes, and only from abstract specifications, having never actually decompiled Word, you'd stand a better chance. But good luck!
What the statute means is that given a preexisting legal copy - the CD you get from the store, for instance - you can copy directly off of that to HD, and from that to RAM, and from that bits to cache and CPU, etc. without fear because copyright is inapplicable to those copies.
At the very least, I'd say you were stretching it in your example. I wouldn't expect that it would be legal.
There isn't one. There doesn't need to be one. In 99.44% of cases regarding copyright holders and the users of copyrighted works, there isn't one either. Software is unusual wrt having licenses at all, and it's mostly a historical accident and the reasons for it no longer apply except in the cases of unusual things like the GPL. MS EULAs are pointless, irrelevant and redundant.
Basically, if I'm a user, so longs as I legally obtain a copyrighted work, I can do anything I want with it, barring making copies, (except in certain cases, such as backups or quotations) making works so derivative that they constitute an infringement, (except in certain cases such as parodies) putting on public performances, (except in certain cases, such as manditory licensing of music) and from distributing said copies.
There is no significant difference for the purpose of this discussion between software and a book. I'd bet money that you do not as a matter of course agree to licenses explicitly or implictly that govern what you may do with a book. OTOH, you are bound by laws which do govern what you may do, but that isn't a contract. You are not licensing the content within the book, and it would be a grave mistake to think so.
I too have found that the GPL is utterly irrelevant for actual usage. Additionally, I find the mere existance of software licenses in nearly all cases - with an exception for the GPL's as it pertains only to copying - abhorent and unecessary.
I would also like to point out that you are utterly and demonstrably WRONG. Term 0 of the GPL states:
This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
Now, if everything I've read about the GPL is incorrect, including the GPL itself, I'll be pretty surprised, I can tell you that.
The GPL explicitly applies only to the modification of the software and the creation of copies and distribution therof. Furthermore, for a user who does not agree to the license, the statutory exceptions of 17 USC 117 permit him to make whatever copies are necessary (e.g. copies to RAM) in order to run the software, and to make backups. The copyrights of software publishers have not applied to those matters for AFAIK over two decades. Indeed, one wonders how legal a license that dealt with such matters would be given that the copyright holder is not a factor anyway.
Refusal of the GPL does not require an alternate form of permission from the copyright holder in order to obtain a copy. In order to make this clear, as it's difficult to express, I will employ an example.
A programmer, Foo, has agreed to the GPL of a piece of software, and distributes copies. As part of his obligation to distribute them (which he wishes to fulfill) he has them available for download on an ftp site.
Bar, a user, wants to use the software, and downloads a copy from Foo's site. However, being more legally astute than you, he finds that the GPL is unecessary for his purposes, and declines to agree. Nevertheless he can legally posess, run, make backup copies of and transfer (not copy) what he downloaded all he likes.
Although this appears to be a copyright violation - Bar made a copy w/o agreeing to the license - it is not. Because Foo has permission to grant permission to others to make copies as a function of his duty to distribute it. Additional copies made by Bar would be infringing, except when permitted by law, such as in the case of backups and incidental copies needed to run it. But any copies he downloads are perfectly legal.
Your statement "Take this program..." is accurate, but usage is a whole different matter and thus what you say here is not really germane to this thread. Your next paragraph is wholly in the wrong, however. The license, again, specifically has no bearing on use. Indeed, as a rule copyrighted materials can be used for any purpose under the sun provided that such use does not include the creation and distribution of copies, except where exceptions are made by Congress or the courts.
Posession of a legally acquired piece of GPL software, use thereof, transfer to another - these are all legal and have nothing whatsoever to do with the license. Indeed, one wonders if a license that exclusively dealt with such issues would be at all legal, as it would involve absolutely no consideration by the copyright holder. (i.e. "You agree not to do anything that you're legally allowed to do, except what I say you could do, but which you could have done anyway")
If you disagree, please feel free to point out precisely where in the GPL or in copyright law you find support for your argument. Meanwhile, I'm going to continue to encourage people to use MS software w/o agreeing to the EULA as it is a useless, potentially illegal, after-the-fact license which restricts the rights the user already enjoys having paid for the software prior to opening the box. The GPL at least has a redeeming feature in granting rights one didn't have in the first place.
What? Fessick is a Turkish giant! He's in amazing shape. Vizzini is a little bald guy with uneven legs and a bit of a hunchback - that's why he needs Inigio and Fessick: to act as his brawn. I don't recall if the Albino also had a hunchback or not, but he had enough problems;)
That happened in the US too, some time ago. Copyright is a positive right, not a natural one. Unless Congress says that it applies to something, it doesn't. And should they say that it doesn't apply to software, hardcover books or songs by people named Joe, then it doesn't either.
Thus until sometime in the 70's IIRC, software just couldn't be copyrighted. This is where EULAs come from. (which had to be agreed to _prior_ to obtaining the software to be binding)
Eventually, Congress determined that software was worthy of copyright, but this caused a problem in that now the various incidental copies to RAM et al could not be legally made, and EULAs were needed to permit people to do anything with the stuff.
More recently, Congress has determined that although software may be copyrighted, it is also legal to make backup copies and run it so long as it was legally obtained, regardless of a license. Which makes one wonder why we have EULAs....
There are bounds of course on what Congress can do here - they could never eliminate fair use copying for instance, as that derives from over a century of judicial precedent based on the Constitution from which Congress derives its powers. But within their boundaries, you'd be surprised at how arbitrary things could be if so desired. Sadly, they're pushing outwards these days at the behest of their corporate masters....
Er, we've been in a digital age for thousands of years. We call the basic unit letters - various combinations of letters can be used to convey information; the letters can be copied and recopied with perfect fidelity.
What's interesting about the current day is not that we're using digital encoding of transistors or magnetic regions but that the COST of recopying a work digitally has become exceptionally low. What was once effectively restricted to publishers due to cost is now in everyone's grasp. Even the publishers. (who could run off a nigh-infinite number of mp3s if they wanted to)
When everyone's effectively just as good of a publisher as a big company is, those big companies need to find ways to artificially hobble the masses. Meanwhile, we begin to wonder what the point of assisting publishers was in the first place. (Copyright doesn't help artists much - if they can't copy a work, what good is it? It permits them to choose a particular publisher, but is of greatest benefit to them, not artists)
Then tie the restrictions to federal regulations of interstate commerce or federal funding of state-run programs.
I generally don't care much for usurping state soverignty with the money card, but it is a tool that can be used for good aims as well as ill; we must be judicious about it is all.
Right. I just don't tune in of my own free will to the specific parts of the web page that I don't like. Like graphics that are 468 x 60.
No one has an obligation to look at ads. You can not look at them in the newspaper, you can not look at them on billboards, you can not look at them on tv. There's no ethical or legal dilemma wrt that. If a web site thinks that it can stay in business because they assume that a certain number of advertisers will pay money for a _chance_ that people will see their ads, more power to them. But I don't have to make it my problem.
I hate ads, I don't look at ads, and I really don't care if people have business models that assume that this is not the case. It's just not my problem. Indeed, if people would start treating advertising like toxic waste, maybe we could get rid of some of it. I've never heard anyone say that it actually improves society or that is is absolutely necessary.
The courts can't say that odd contract provisions are only permissible when you're a commercial concern. If they're valid at all - and MS's EULA rests on the same foundation - the GPL must also be valid. Either way it's a win for the FSF.
Contracts can get pretty strange before they really cross the threshold into unenforcability. Requiring that someone kill themselves would not be valid, requiring that they wear a duck on their head or have to license derivative software under certain terms is.
This is true, but there is a big caveat. (and some smaller ones)
The one most germane to this discussion is that should you legally acquire software, you do NOT have to agree to the conditions of any license in order to make any copies necessary for using it or for making backups.
Since, due to the pecularities of most computers software must be copied from some initial medium like CD to some other medium like RAM, that's why there was ever a problem at all. Had you a machine that could run programs w/o ever making copies in whole or in part, copyright would really never even enter the picture.
Now a precondition of the sale might be to agree, but the very very meagre case law on this issue indicates (last time I checked, IANAL) that things like shrinkwrap licenses don't count. Thus MS would actually have to ist down with you and hash out a contract prior to money leaving your wallet and product being held in your hand to enforce their EULAs.
(Other types of exceptions exist, e.g. manditory licensing under Congressionally determined terms)
Of course, in this particular case, what you're saying does apply, but do beware of making such blanket statements. I would add however, that also if you don't like their terms, write your Congressmen in support of copyright reforms that would prohbit such terms from being set at all! Copyright's hardly immutable.
I _am_ an artist. Believe me, you can get somethings for nothing too, at times. (though at that point people have to _want_ to participate for free)
Anyway, you're wrong. TV could be paid for with subscription models (e.g. HBO, which wasn't running external ads the last time I saw it), taxes (e.g. the BBC), donations (e.g. PBS) and probably a number that I haven't thought of, off the top of my head.
Besides which, there's no rule that requires that a TV show have such high production demands. Sure, it's great to see a miniseries on, for instance, the building of the pyramids wherein an actual, full-size pyramid is constructed with actual human labor over the course of years. But you can do a lot with less than that as well. Shakespeare had no sets, no lighting, no curtains and a handful of costumes and props.
Given the great developments in technology within the last twenty years, good shows could probably be produced with lower costs than ever before.
Sure, there'll still be a need to pay the core people well, but even just increasing the amount of material produced would be likely to make overall costs more approachable resulting in a lessened need for advertising. (if any was involved at all - again, it need not be)
This is kind of why I like foreign movies a lot - true, you're unlikely to see the latest jillion dollar effects, but there's tons of them and many are quite good.
I needed a good reason to stop watching TV. This ought to do nicely. Too bad I won't've really gotten my money's worth out of the rabbit ears, though.
(I really don't understand this compulsion to stick advertising everywhere - it can't possibly be improving life or the arts, and people seemed to generally get by fine without it for millenia. But I do know that I _hate_ advertising, and will consciously avoid it and filter it out no matter how good it is, how targeted towards me it is, whether or not it's actually useful for me, or if doing so harms someone. That it's advertising at all is enough to make me avoid it.)
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Digital Copyright
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1) Successful authors have a guaranteed income. They have no need to produce additional works. For instance much as I enjoyed Ellison's "Invisible Man" it's not a good thing that he never finished another work in his life. Copyright is not intended to let authors get rich - only to get them to produce.
2) Derivative works cannot be produced during the lifetimes of people who would be inclined to make such works. Imagining that the copyright on Star Trek expires in a century, and that there are no intervening new works to preserve an audience for it, no one will even notice. Copyright is not permission for authors to exclusively strip mine a work so that no one else may derive value from it when it eventually is openly available.
3) The public, through Congress, can arbitrarily set the length of term and coverage of copyright within certain bounds. It would be entirely possible for books to have copyright for five years, movies for one, and software not at all. The optimal state would be works that were never copyrighted with authors who could afford to continue to produce. NOT one in which authors had perpetual copyrights.
The balancing act is between the promotion achieved by the creation of new original works and the promotion achieved by the refinment of derivative works. The welfare of the authors is of secondary concern.
And I'd like to point out that I'm a an artist by trade, and I know perfectly well that our present system of copyright laws is an outrage. Artists are members of the public too!
I definately agree with what you're saying. It saddens the hell out of me that I pretty certainly won't be able to share the things that I enjoyed growing up with my children later on.
I am not a consumer, dammit! That's not my role in life, and I refuse to play it for the convenience of those who stand to make money from that.
Really? Most IBM clone cases and peripherals are all beige - seems like matching colors to me;)
Personally I'm a Mac user and while I would appreciate a nice case - say something made out of a nice cherry or mahogony - I'm prepared to go with what's cheap and immediately available. OTOH, there are plenty of people on the Windows side of the pond that seriously trick out their cases. You should probably avoid such expansive statements - they're rarely correct.
Why would _our_ sunlight generally be decreased? We don't have to stick the sats in between the Earth and the Sun (although they will in the course of their orbits ocassionally do so) but generally stick them to the sides where they're getting light that otherwise goes into space.
Remember the point of a Dyson Sphere? To collect wasted solar energy. Given the resources, we could put gigantic collectors above and below the sun leaving the ecliptic free. We're starting small of course, but it is, I think, better than what we have now. (hint: burning fossil fuels also generates heat as well as polluting chemicals which may cause greenhouse effects further changing temperature.
In that case, you're radically misidentifying how things really work.
Okay, I'll play and say that even selfless acts have some selfish motivation, such as one wanting to serve someone else.
In that case, how can you have a problem with laws that prohibit such pricing? A long time ago legally chosen representatives of the several states agreed with powers invested in them by the citizenry to follow the laws of the nation. Doing so is simply the price of business with the vast majority of society, and that same vast majority has never really seemed to have a problem with this.
So simply by being a member of society, you are binding yourself to follow the various rules, including the formal laws. If there is a law prohibiting dynamic pricing the only options you get - regardless of whether you explicity desired them or not - are to adhere, to adhere but legally change the law, to break the law or to completely withdraw from society.
You do not get to follow some laws and not follow other laws claiming that you need only do what you desire to do, as you ALREADY gave up certain rights implicitly.
Even if you felt that it was not in your best interests for your neighbor to live, you have already consented to the possibility of being charged with murder (or manslaughter, or criminal neglect, etc. depending on the specifics) simply by staying here.
A truely Randian society would I suspect either be complete anarchy (e.g. it is not in my interest to respect your property rights/life) or become totalitarian, rather as how many Communists had good intentions that backfired. I can't say that I find either desirable.
A certain measure of selfishness and selflessness are required for a working society. Where the real question is is in the ratio.
Oh please. Selflessness is not a terrible thing. Absolute, enforced selflessness would be, but so would absolute, enforced selfishness.
In moderation, both can be harnessed for good purposes, but generally I'd lean more towards the former than the latter. Remember the old adage about giving a man a fish and feeding him for a day, and teaching him how to fish and feeding him for life? Rand would probably have let him starve to death, period. That's _not_ a good solution.
Anything that saves users from having to waste time is needed, and will be taken advantage of frequently, although perhaps not consciously.
A comparable example lies in the realm of monitors. CRTs used to take a couple of minutes to warm up and become usable. Old TVs were like this. A *lot* of work went into preheating the CRTs and developing CRTs that could run colder or warm faster. Now you can push the button and the picture comes up in seconds.
If you really believe what you say, prove it - turn on your screen, go get a cup of coffee and wait three minutes before getting to work. Otherwise admit that this is a very important thing. Not the only important thing, but it is up there.
He knows. There's an entire screed on the benefits of habitual behavior. But the habits wind up malformed or don't come together at all unless they're widely applied.
Try reversing the functions of your car's pedals every day - you'll find that it's good to have enough consistancy to form these kinds of habits.
He's not out of touch with reality, reality just hasn't caught up.
His Canon Cat word processor booted instantly, in 7 seconds. That is, it _appeared_ to come up instantly, thanks to his little trick, and others. (e.g. only going into a sleep mode and not totally powering down) Psychological studies had indicated that it takes people about 8 seconds to switch brain gears and begin actually consciously interacting. By booting in 7 and buffering the inputs, it was ready to go before the users were.
Technologies such as hibernation - particularly rather granular ones, as well as just monolithically dumping a stored RAM dump of the system from disk to RAM - and sufficiently stable platforms so as to not need to worry about leaving systems up constantly could be used to make this a reality on the desktop.
We're not there yet, but we could be and he actually was, just in a limited environment.
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Don't worry about Mac users. Toast still works fine, and anyone who's sticking with the Mac will end up with OS X which starts to open the door for Unix software to come in. (Although personally, having Unix underlying the system is not appealing to me, so I've been migrating towards Win due to a lack of options)
IIRC, MS is licensing it from Roxio. Apple's is also licensed from them, AFAIK.
But yeah, I agree doing business with those guys up the street inevitably results in getting screwed. Remember Spyglass?
Of course, the public is not FORCED to grant copyrights on music or to permit collusive and monopolistic behavior in the music industry. Perhaps they should leave well enough alone.
My guess would be no, you couldn't. If you did a serious RE job, where you ultimately produced a completely different work that was identical to Word if they were both considered black boxes, and only from abstract specifications, having never actually decompiled Word, you'd stand a better chance. But good luck!
What the statute means is that given a preexisting legal copy - the CD you get from the store, for instance - you can copy directly off of that to HD, and from that to RAM, and from that bits to cache and CPU, etc. without fear because copyright is inapplicable to those copies.
At the very least, I'd say you were stretching it in your example. I wouldn't expect that it would be legal.
There isn't one. There doesn't need to be one. In 99.44% of cases regarding copyright holders and the users of copyrighted works, there isn't one either. Software is unusual wrt having licenses at all, and it's mostly a historical accident and the reasons for it no longer apply except in the cases of unusual things like the GPL. MS EULAs are pointless, irrelevant and redundant.
Basically, if I'm a user, so longs as I legally obtain a copyrighted work, I can do anything I want with it, barring making copies, (except in certain cases, such as backups or quotations) making works so derivative that they constitute an infringement, (except in certain cases such as parodies) putting on public performances, (except in certain cases, such as manditory licensing of music) and from distributing said copies.
There is no significant difference for the purpose of this discussion between software and a book. I'd bet money that you do not as a matter of course agree to licenses explicitly or implictly that govern what you may do with a book. OTOH, you are bound by laws which do govern what you may do, but that isn't a contract. You are not licensing the content within the book, and it would be a grave mistake to think so.
I too have found that the GPL is utterly irrelevant for actual usage. Additionally, I find the mere existance of software licenses in nearly all cases - with an exception for the GPL's as it pertains only to copying - abhorent and unecessary.
I would also like to point out that you are utterly and demonstrably WRONG. Term 0 of the GPL states:
Now, if everything I've read about the GPL is incorrect, including the GPL itself, I'll be pretty surprised, I can tell you that.
The GPL explicitly applies only to the modification of the software and the creation of copies and distribution therof. Furthermore, for a user who does not agree to the license, the statutory exceptions of 17 USC 117 permit him to make whatever copies are necessary (e.g. copies to RAM) in order to run the software, and to make backups. The copyrights of software publishers have not applied to those matters for AFAIK over two decades. Indeed, one wonders how legal a license that dealt with such matters would be given that the copyright holder is not a factor anyway.
Refusal of the GPL does not require an alternate form of permission from the copyright holder in order to obtain a copy. In order to make this clear, as it's difficult to express, I will employ an example.
Although this appears to be a copyright violation - Bar made a copy w/o agreeing to the license - it is not. Because Foo has permission to grant permission to others to make copies as a function of his duty to distribute it. Additional copies made by Bar would be infringing, except when permitted by law, such as in the case of backups and incidental copies needed to run it. But any copies he downloads are perfectly legal.
Your statement "Take this program..." is accurate, but usage is a whole different matter and thus what you say here is not really germane to this thread. Your next paragraph is wholly in the wrong, however. The license, again, specifically has no bearing on use. Indeed, as a rule copyrighted materials can be used for any purpose under the sun provided that such use does not include the creation and distribution of copies, except where exceptions are made by Congress or the courts.
Posession of a legally acquired piece of GPL software, use thereof, transfer to another - these are all legal and have nothing whatsoever to do with the license. Indeed, one wonders if a license that exclusively dealt with such issues would be at all legal, as it would involve absolutely no consideration by the copyright holder. (i.e. "You agree not to do anything that you're legally allowed to do, except what I say you could do, but which you could have done anyway")
If you disagree, please feel free to point out precisely where in the GPL or in copyright law you find support for your argument. Meanwhile, I'm going to continue to encourage people to use MS software w/o agreeing to the EULA as it is a useless, potentially illegal, after-the-fact license which restricts the rights the user already enjoys having paid for the software prior to opening the box. The GPL at least has a redeeming feature in granting rights one didn't have in the first place.
What? Fessick is a Turkish giant! He's in amazing shape. Vizzini is a little bald guy with uneven legs and a bit of a hunchback - that's why he needs Inigio and Fessick: to act as his brawn. I don't recall if the Albino also had a hunchback or not, but he had enough problems ;)
Er - I thought that Vizzini was a hunchback. Ballmer's just balding.
That happened in the US too, some time ago. Copyright is a positive right, not a natural one. Unless Congress says that it applies to something, it doesn't. And should they say that it doesn't apply to software, hardcover books or songs by people named Joe, then it doesn't either.
Thus until sometime in the 70's IIRC, software just couldn't be copyrighted. This is where EULAs come from. (which had to be agreed to _prior_ to obtaining the software to be binding)
Eventually, Congress determined that software was worthy of copyright, but this caused a problem in that now the various incidental copies to RAM et al could not be legally made, and EULAs were needed to permit people to do anything with the stuff.
More recently, Congress has determined that although software may be copyrighted, it is also legal to make backup copies and run it so long as it was legally obtained, regardless of a license. Which makes one wonder why we have EULAs....
There are bounds of course on what Congress can do here - they could never eliminate fair use copying for instance, as that derives from over a century of judicial precedent based on the Constitution from which Congress derives its powers. But within their boundaries, you'd be surprised at how arbitrary things could be if so desired. Sadly, they're pushing outwards these days at the behest of their corporate masters....
Er, we've been in a digital age for thousands of years. We call the basic unit letters - various combinations of letters can be used to convey information; the letters can be copied and recopied with perfect fidelity.
What's interesting about the current day is not that we're using digital encoding of transistors or magnetic regions but that the COST of recopying a work digitally has become exceptionally low. What was once effectively restricted to publishers due to cost is now in everyone's grasp. Even the publishers. (who could run off a nigh-infinite number of mp3s if they wanted to)
When everyone's effectively just as good of a publisher as a big company is, those big companies need to find ways to artificially hobble the masses. Meanwhile, we begin to wonder what the point of assisting publishers was in the first place. (Copyright doesn't help artists much - if they can't copy a work, what good is it? It permits them to choose a particular publisher, but is of greatest benefit to them, not artists)
Then tie the restrictions to federal regulations of interstate commerce or federal funding of state-run programs.
I generally don't care much for usurping state soverignty with the money card, but it is a tool that can be used for good aims as well as ill; we must be judicious about it is all.
Right. I just don't tune in of my own free will to the specific parts of the web page that I don't like. Like graphics that are 468 x 60.
No one has an obligation to look at ads. You can not look at them in the newspaper, you can not look at them on billboards, you can not look at them on tv. There's no ethical or legal dilemma wrt that. If a web site thinks that it can stay in business because they assume that a certain number of advertisers will pay money for a _chance_ that people will see their ads, more power to them. But I don't have to make it my problem.
I hate ads, I don't look at ads, and I really don't care if people have business models that assume that this is not the case. It's just not my problem. Indeed, if people would start treating advertising like toxic waste, maybe we could get rid of some of it. I've never heard anyone say that it actually improves society or that is is absolutely necessary.
Tough noogies.
The courts can't say that odd contract provisions are only permissible when you're a commercial concern. If they're valid at all - and MS's EULA rests on the same foundation - the GPL must also be valid. Either way it's a win for the FSF.
Contracts can get pretty strange before they really cross the threshold into unenforcability. Requiring that someone kill themselves would not be valid, requiring that they wear a duck on their head or have to license derivative software under certain terms is.
This is true, but there is a big caveat. (and some smaller ones)
The one most germane to this discussion is that should you legally acquire software, you do NOT have to agree to the conditions of any license in order to make any copies necessary for using it or for making backups.
Since, due to the pecularities of most computers software must be copied from some initial medium like CD to some other medium like RAM, that's why there was ever a problem at all. Had you a machine that could run programs w/o ever making copies in whole or in part, copyright would really never even enter the picture.
Now a precondition of the sale might be to agree, but the very very meagre case law on this issue indicates (last time I checked, IANAL) that things like shrinkwrap licenses don't count. Thus MS would actually have to ist down with you and hash out a contract prior to money leaving your wallet and product being held in your hand to enforce their EULAs.
(Other types of exceptions exist, e.g. manditory licensing under Congressionally determined terms)
Of course, in this particular case, what you're saying does apply, but do beware of making such blanket statements. I would add however, that also if you don't like their terms, write your Congressmen in support of copyright reforms that would prohbit such terms from being set at all! Copyright's hardly immutable.
I _am_ an artist. Believe me, you can get somethings for nothing too, at times. (though at that point people have to _want_ to participate for free)
Anyway, you're wrong. TV could be paid for with subscription models (e.g. HBO, which wasn't running external ads the last time I saw it), taxes (e.g. the BBC), donations (e.g. PBS) and probably a number that I haven't thought of, off the top of my head.
Besides which, there's no rule that requires that a TV show have such high production demands. Sure, it's great to see a miniseries on, for instance, the building of the pyramids wherein an actual, full-size pyramid is constructed with actual human labor over the course of years. But you can do a lot with less than that as well. Shakespeare had no sets, no lighting, no curtains and a handful of costumes and props.
Given the great developments in technology within the last twenty years, good shows could probably be produced with lower costs than ever before.
Sure, there'll still be a need to pay the core people well, but even just increasing the amount of material produced would be likely to make overall costs more approachable resulting in a lessened need for advertising. (if any was involved at all - again, it need not be)
This is kind of why I like foreign movies a lot - true, you're unlikely to see the latest jillion dollar effects, but there's tons of them and many are quite good.
I needed a good reason to stop watching TV. This ought to do nicely. Too bad I won't've really gotten my money's worth out of the rabbit ears, though.
(I really don't understand this compulsion to stick advertising everywhere - it can't possibly be improving life or the arts, and people seemed to generally get by fine without it for millenia. But I do know that I _hate_ advertising, and will consciously avoid it and filter it out no matter how good it is, how targeted towards me it is, whether or not it's actually useful for me, or if doing so harms someone. That it's advertising at all is enough to make me avoid it.)
1) Successful authors have a guaranteed income. They have no need to produce additional works. For instance much as I enjoyed Ellison's "Invisible Man" it's not a good thing that he never finished another work in his life. Copyright is not intended to let authors get rich - only to get them to produce.
2) Derivative works cannot be produced during the lifetimes of people who would be inclined to make such works. Imagining that the copyright on Star Trek expires in a century, and that there are no intervening new works to preserve an audience for it, no one will even notice. Copyright is not permission for authors to exclusively strip mine a work so that no one else may derive value from it when it eventually is openly available.
3) The public, through Congress, can arbitrarily set the length of term and coverage of copyright within certain bounds. It would be entirely possible for books to have copyright for five years, movies for one, and software not at all. The optimal state would be works that were never copyrighted with authors who could afford to continue to produce. NOT one in which authors had perpetual copyrights.
The balancing act is between the promotion achieved by the creation of new original works and the promotion achieved by the refinment of derivative works. The welfare of the authors is of secondary concern.
And I'd like to point out that I'm a an artist by trade, and I know perfectly well that our present system of copyright laws is an outrage. Artists are members of the public too!
I definately agree with what you're saying. It saddens the hell out of me that I pretty certainly won't be able to share the things that I enjoyed growing up with my children later on.
I am not a consumer, dammit! That's not my role in life, and I refuse to play it for the convenience of those who stand to make money from that.
Really? Most IBM clone cases and peripherals are all beige - seems like matching colors to me ;)
Personally I'm a Mac user and while I would appreciate a nice case - say something made out of a nice cherry or mahogony - I'm prepared to go with what's cheap and immediately available. OTOH, there are plenty of people on the Windows side of the pond that seriously trick out their cases. You should probably avoid such expansive statements - they're rarely correct.
Why would _our_ sunlight generally be decreased? We don't have to stick the sats in between the Earth and the Sun (although they will in the course of their orbits ocassionally do so) but generally stick them to the sides where they're getting light that otherwise goes into space.
Remember the point of a Dyson Sphere? To collect wasted solar energy. Given the resources, we could put gigantic collectors above and below the sun leaving the ecliptic free. We're starting small of course, but it is, I think, better than what we have now. (hint: burning fossil fuels also generates heat as well as polluting chemicals which may cause greenhouse effects further changing temperature.
In that case, you're radically misidentifying how things really work.
Okay, I'll play and say that even selfless acts have some selfish motivation, such as one wanting to serve someone else.
In that case, how can you have a problem with laws that prohibit such pricing? A long time ago legally chosen representatives of the several states agreed with powers invested in them by the citizenry to follow the laws of the nation. Doing so is simply the price of business with the vast majority of society, and that same vast majority has never really seemed to have a problem with this.
So simply by being a member of society, you are binding yourself to follow the various rules, including the formal laws. If there is a law prohibiting dynamic pricing the only options you get - regardless of whether you explicity desired them or not - are to adhere, to adhere but legally change the law, to break the law or to completely withdraw from society.
You do not get to follow some laws and not follow other laws claiming that you need only do what you desire to do, as you ALREADY gave up certain rights implicitly.
Even if you felt that it was not in your best interests for your neighbor to live, you have already consented to the possibility of being charged with murder (or manslaughter, or criminal neglect, etc. depending on the specifics) simply by staying here.
A truely Randian society would I suspect either be complete anarchy (e.g. it is not in my interest to respect your property rights/life) or become totalitarian, rather as how many Communists had good intentions that backfired. I can't say that I find either desirable.
A certain measure of selfishness and selflessness are required for a working society. Where the real question is is in the ratio.
Oh please. Selflessness is not a terrible thing. Absolute, enforced selflessness would be, but so would absolute, enforced selfishness.
In moderation, both can be harnessed for good purposes, but generally I'd lean more towards the former than the latter. Remember the old adage about giving a man a fish and feeding him for a day, and teaching him how to fish and feeding him for life? Rand would probably have let him starve to death, period. That's _not_ a good solution.
Anything that saves users from having to waste time is needed, and will be taken advantage of frequently, although perhaps not consciously.
A comparable example lies in the realm of monitors. CRTs used to take a couple of minutes to warm up and become usable. Old TVs were like this. A *lot* of work went into preheating the CRTs and developing CRTs that could run colder or warm faster. Now you can push the button and the picture comes up in seconds.
If you really believe what you say, prove it - turn on your screen, go get a cup of coffee and wait three minutes before getting to work. Otherwise admit that this is a very important thing. Not the only important thing, but it is up there.
He knows. There's an entire screed on the benefits of habitual behavior. But the habits wind up malformed or don't come together at all unless they're widely applied.
Try reversing the functions of your car's pedals every day - you'll find that it's good to have enough consistancy to form these kinds of habits.
He's not out of touch with reality, reality just hasn't caught up.
His Canon Cat word processor booted instantly, in 7 seconds. That is, it _appeared_ to come up instantly, thanks to his little trick, and others. (e.g. only going into a sleep mode and not totally powering down) Psychological studies had indicated that it takes people about 8 seconds to switch brain gears and begin actually consciously interacting. By booting in 7 and buffering the inputs, it was ready to go before the users were.
Technologies such as hibernation - particularly rather granular ones, as well as just monolithically dumping a stored RAM dump of the system from disk to RAM - and sufficiently stable platforms so as to not need to worry about leaving systems up constantly could be used to make this a reality on the desktop.
We're not there yet, but we could be and he actually was, just in a limited environment.