What the US does dramatically effects me. And the US is the heart and soul of the computing industry, so the ripples it produces are felt far and wide. Not to mention that where the US goes, Europe is frequently right behind us.
Apple, btw, has a CRPM on their DVD burner. I wouldn't be surprised to see one on the CD burner in the near future... especially as it's just a part that they get from some manufacturer up the chain.
You think that Linux can effect the home market? Hah. Sure, open web servers are great. That does not translate into cheap components for you and me, or anyone else. Besides, what business do you have serving content that might be copyrighted, buddy? No, they'll go after you too.
As I've said, let's fight this even if we think we'll win. How can it hurt to give the market a nudge? And if we are losing already, well, we still need to get busy. Complacency will do us in.
There is no need for MS to bother with this. They can still sue the crap out of anyone who pirates the software in most jurisdictions, yet there doesn't have to be a license or serial number at all in distributing it.
A strongly implied part of the copyright contract is that works have to be useful. A book that's so heavily encrypted as to be unreadable has not effectively been published, and will not enrich the public domain when it enters it. MS can leave the door wide open, and not lose a shred of their legal shield. Indeed, they're granted that shield on the condition that they leave the door open. Now if only Congress or the courts would revoke copyrights from publishers who seem to want to grant and enforce them themselves. They'd be welcome to try, but would get no help from Uncle Sam.
No, he's got a salient point. Allow me to restate it more clearly.
He creates the music all by himself. He registers the copyright with the USCO. He has the copyright all to himself.
However, when he burns it onto a CD, if there's a royalty or whatnot on it, he is having to pay the RIAA for the ability to copy his work. That is highly unconstitutional; Congress cannot make the initial grant of copyright to anyone other than the author. And authors need no one's permission to make copies. Or to let others make copies. Nor can public domain works be treated in this manner. It doesn't matter that he's using CDRs, he can use anything he wants, if he owns it, there is no justification whatsoever for paying the RIAA in order to exercise his own copyright.
Media taxes are truly something that we've got to get rid of; they have no basis in law, as long as they are being used in relation to copyright. (so a sales tax that simply paid off the govt. would be alright, but still dangerously close to infringing on the first amendment if too closely tied to media)
Allow me to point out that 17 USC 117 creates a statutory exemption to copyright with regards to computers making any copies they need to function of software (e.g. loading it into ram) and that you can make backup copies of software up the wazoo, as long as you don't keep them when you get rid of the original.
EULAs are rather moot these days, and the arguments that they're null and void are getting stronger (as are the precedents to that effect)
Ah, I know it's bad form to reply to one's own post, but I forgot to put in the haiku I mentioned. It's hereby in the public domain (and so are all my other posts - now to change my.sig to make that clear) and here it is:
Cherry blossom time
The wind cannot chill glad hearts
Break up Microsoft
It's always nice to get some intelligent debate going on/.
You do indeed have natural rights to free speech. In the total absence of law, you can speak freely. It can be dangerous as people also have natural rights to kill one another, but you've got it. You're confusing that people generally let many of their more destructive rights be tightly bound in order to preserve themselves and their remaining rights.
Free speech is not particularly destructive. It is certainly impossible to harm people with speech - libel and slander are the closest we come to that, and even then it's generally agreed upon that it is better to err on the side of free speech, as it has a greater impact than anyone's own repuatation.
Most restrictions on speech concern different harms - the clear and present danger test is what's meant by people invoking the hairy old 'fire/theater' thing. If you say something which will have an immediate AND direct danger to someone, that's not protected. Saying that all Jews should die, is not immediate. If I'm saying it to my cat, it's not even dangerous. Saying that they should all die starting with that one right there, get him, is. Clear and present danger is a hard standard to meet.
The purpose of this though, is not to limit speech. If there IS a fire in a crowded theater, it's your DUTY to yell about it! It is to limit the most extremely dangerous results of speech, and that's such a dangerous thing to comptemplate that we've let in the camel's nose, but we're staunchly against the rest of the damn camel getting into the tent.
Copyright as well, exists in balance with the guarantee that the government will not interfere with freedom of speech. If copyright did not have a built-in pressure valve in the progress clause, it would probably have been overridden entirely by the First Amendment, which came in later. Copyright only grants exclusive rights to authors under the circumstances that Congress sees fit to grant, and even then, those circumstances lose when they face a use that promotes progress more than denying that use does.
Certainly Congress could declare that a statutory exemption exists for peer-to-peer file sharing, but only if both peers are named 'Bob.' It's their call; vague arguments about the natural copyright of authors (hint: there is none) don't apply there.
Moving on to Jefferson, the flame is knowledge. Your knowledge can never be diminished because others have it too. The immediate benefit to you may be less, but one of the best things about free speech is that it can directly help humanity to exercise it. He's advocating that.
For example, I composed a haiku this morning, while I was waiting for the bus. Spring has come early here (Seattle) and the cherry trees around my apartment are blooming. After I finished it, I was rather happy with it. Once I got to work, I immediately sent it on to my friends. Does this mean that because now at least four other people know it that I only can be 1/5th as happy?
No, of course not. This is what Jefferson's talking about. At what point did it become good to decide that the poor have no right to knowledge - that it is better for them to never be able to stand on the shoulders of giants, the way that everyone in civilization has. That it is better for them to forever have to reinvent the wheel just to catch up than to contribute their own insights to society, and thus give _us_ a new, higher point to build upon.
How is it good to deny people knowledge? Offering a reward for creating new knowledge, or discovering something previously unseen is a great idea. To do it on the backs of the people who can benefit from that knowledge, and to make specious arguments for never letting go of that knowledge simply does not do good.
You answered your own question. Art isn't property. Instances of that art may be.
In the case of the Mona Lisa, the tangible THING that was painted by DaVinci is worth more than I'll ever see. In the case of the picture on the Mona Lisa, it's not worth anything fungible. Great cultural value sure, but it won't get you a cup of coffee.
The picture on paintings, the words in a novel, the shape of a statue - that is what is so heavily debated. No one's claimed that the tangible medium doesn't have ordinary, respectable property value.
Me, I'm an artist and sometimes-writer (not a good writer, I'm afraid) and I agree with the earlier poster. I'd rather get paid up front and let anyone who wants to enjoy or improve upon, or copy it to others to enjoy my work do so. It's an old system - patronage works like that, as do a lot of comissions.
I think that there are greater benefits for me personally by myself building on the work done by others on my own works. Linux is a decent example of that, but there are others.
I could certainly tolerate copyright laws of more limited term and scope though. People just need to remember that we only have them in order to accomplish societal goods - if that's accomplished through personal rewards, fine, but don't be blinded by them.
Your justification is quite wrong. Radio and TV can be recorded onto a medium and preserved and replayed personally forever. This is not because they are streaming. It is because they are already paid for. Advertisers pay for broadcast TV and radio. Listeners and viewers recieve it for free, just as though they had bought a copy themselves.
Similarly, space shifting of music from CDs to mp3 players has been upheld in court, without coming under the AHRA. (computers don't apply, as they're not specifically recording devices, but copies are still legal)
There's certainly no law that requires that the little copyright statement in a book be truthful. They can say that the sky is green for all I care - it's irrelevant, and it's not the law.
Software licensing is also moot these days. EULAs came about because software didn't qualify for copyright at all. After it did it turned out that Congress had done a literally half-assed job. While there was a copyright on software, there was not the necessary exlcusion on the copies that computers have to make in order to work. (e.g. copying programs into RAM)
That has been corrected. And the same bit of law (17 USC 117) states that backup copies are legal. EULAs can claim to grant that right, but they don't. EULAs are full of beans, and there's no purpose in having them that is not probably illegal or detrimental to users. Check out the law - you'll be surprised how out of date your assumptions are.
Fair use also means that you can copy excerpts from the CD. Or play it for your friends and family. Or use it in teaching. Or space shift it to other media. (which is effectively the same as making a backup copy...)
That IS what the courts and the law have said. You say different? Fine - show me rulings to that effect that have not been voided by changes in law, or overturned by other rulings. Put your money where your mouth is.
Information is not ownable. It never has been. It never will or can be.
Let's consider: for something to be owned it must be property. What makes something property? The best definition I know - the one that's not recursive, and is used in the law - is this: For something to be property, the owner must be able to use, control if and how others use, and dispose of it.
When I read a good book, I remember it. And the words on the page don't vanish when read, copies are made, with or without the permission of the author, in my memory. Even the author can't get rid of the original in his own mind. What he wrote, he did so from his internal copy. The author has no control on if and how others use the work, and cannot dispose of it.
That is what makes it not property. If you have a better way to determine what property is, and how information can be considered to be property, I'd like to hear it. But recursive definitions: it's property because it's owned, it's owned because it's property; are not useful.
Furthermore, you're ignorant of even the most fundemental copyright law. In that there isn't one. Human beings have a right to free speech - this includes saying what the other fellow just said. It's a right granted to us by God, and you can be forced not to use it, but you've still got it. There is another God-given right that we all have - the right to shut up - and again, while you might be tortured into speaking, no one can actually make you if you're determined. Authors who don't want to share their works don't have to, but they should not act surprised when people share them too.
If this were not so, shouldn't you be paying the writers who invented words like 'information.' They have a natural right to own it, you said. I doubt that they explicitly gave it up. Better pay up, buddy.
In the US at any rate, which is where H.E. and AOL are both based, copyrights are limited even as they're granted. The clearly stated purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of the arts. (patents are covered by precisely the same clause, btw) Nowhere is there a statement indicating that the purpose is to serve as an author's pension fund, and the original, decent term of 14 years would serve to ram that point home.
Copyrights do not exist by default. They may be granted, if the Congress so chooses (it doesn't have to - there's no natural right to them) but if so, it MUST promote the progress of the arts, it MUST only be granted to the author, and it MUST last for a limited time.
The second clause means that H.E.'s suit is probably going to cause copyright infringement. What right do musicians who don't want their works distributed on Napster have to prevent those who do want their works distributed on Napster from doing so? Well, none.
The third clause makes it very clear that the best state for information to be in, and that its natural state is that of freedom. Free speech is the right to freely tell people anything, no matter from what source it derives. Jefferson wrote that ideas are like fire; when he has one, and is illuminated by it, it does not help others. But if it is shared, it does not diminish the original flame. More light is created - and those people can further illuminate others.
This is not a bad thing.
Yes, it's good that you're rewarded for inventing that engine. (although copyright laws protect publishers more than authors - authors have ALWAYS been shafted. Only now, ironically, with the net, can authors meet the economies of scale that publishers enjoy) But that doesn't mean that you, your heirs, and your entire line through the end of the world should be rewared for your effort. Let them be rewarded for _their_ efforts instead.
And let total strangers with ideas like your own make their own improvements. It's just as bad that Disney doesn't let people make their own Mickey Mouse films as it would be if the Grimm family didn't let Disney make fairy tale movies.
Works of art are unique - at least for the time being - in that they not only can be reproduced forever at very little or no cost, but that they must be reproduced in order to be used.
If you don't believe me, please check to see if these words are leaping off of your screen, walking across your desk, and hopping in your eyeballs. No? No: you are making a copy of them inside your own head just to read them.
And if you want to, you can remember them forever; I can't stop you. I can't exert the kind of control that needs to be exerted in order for something to be considered property. Define property. What conditions must something meet to be property? The best definition I know is that if it is ownable, the owner must be able to use it, control how and if it is used by others, and get rid of it. With words, I can do the first. The last two are not possible, unless you propose that authors lobotomize their readers and themselves at will.
Works belong to the public because that is their natural state of being. When you speak to me, anyone who can hear it has that speech. It's just like fire - that you give some to me does not diminish your own, and I can spread it to others myself. It is not property, because each copy is itself copied as it's used.
And you seem like a shortsighted person who's willing to give up the future for a little cash right now.
Tell me, what happens when some bright fellow invents a perfect nanotech assembler? If we don't all kill each other, it's almost guaranteed to happen. Then I can walk up to your chair, and almost magically cause an identical one to appear. It doesn't diminish your ability to treat the original as property; you've still got it. But now I've got the twin. And anyone else who wants one can have one too.
Given this power that could let anyone in the world have the best foods, and medicines, and clothing and homes that can be divised, your attitude would continue to enforce famine, sickness, nakedness, and homelessness. Because human inventiveness would have outpaced our social structure, and you are unwilling to change that structure.
Go on - tell me that your future would be good. Justify it. There's no fundemental difference. We have copyright NOT because words can be treated as property - which they're not anyway, if you actually examine the law - but as a carrot. The promise of some additional rewards is to encourage the creation of new works. And yet, that would be pointless if it wasn't for the small print that taketh away just as the large print giveth. That those rewards can only be guaranteed for a limited amount of time, and that the purpose is explicitly not to line the pockets of an author, but to promote the progress of the arts.
The arts advance as people can use that which has come before. Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. The artists of the Renissance had to have the Romans and Greeks. The authors of the Lost Generation had to have the authors of the Victorian era. Some small reward can perhaps be justified if the unrestricted work has great effect. Owning it forever stunts the effect irrepairably. That is why we do not do it. The right to speech, and the need for human advancement are infinitely more important than the sin of averice. If a little sin can do a great good, we'll cope. But don't expect that from a big sin.
Look, just because you don't think you need more power doesn't make it so.
Wasn't 640KB of RAM enough? Couldn't you do word processing and email on a PDP?
Whenever the things acquire more capabilities, they are not wasted, they are utilized. Some of it is used for breathing room - it's easier to write software these days, because you don't have to aggressively optimize it to run with meager resources. Some of it is used for truly new things: did your Apple II have games with graphics as nice as those in Quake 3?
You see, you're only looking at the short term. Yes, for the next couple of years, if the free hardware market vanished, you'd be able to get by. But development is not going to stop on the closed market. And you are just going to get left in the dust.
What happens in ten years? Still going to be using the same thing you are now? Not planning on using anything that we didn't imagine existing now? If you had thought that in 1990, you might have a web browser. But probably not a very good one. You wouldn't have any particularly new games. CD burning? Not easily - the vast majority of those came along later. mp3? I doubt you'd have enough horsepower.
If a lot of manufacturers move to the closed market, the new hardware will still follow the same trend we've had for decades - better, faster and cheaper.
Oh, it'll be restrictive alright, and I'm pissed off about it. But we can't all pretend that our present machines represent the apex of computing, and never upgrade. It's just not so.
Go use your Apple II, or your PDP8. Have fun - that's exactly the same boat you'll end up in.
And the government (in the US anyway, which is the default nationality around here, it seems) hasn't got the power to ban them either.
For most of the powers we grant the government, we extract a limitation on it. Copyright can only exist insofar as it does not interfere with free speech, fair use, etc. Banning P2PFS because it could be used illegally infringes on the first amendment and copyright itself. Charges have to be more specific than that, and wholesale bans are so unusual that it would take a hell of a lot of truly good justification, and even then I wouldn't put my money on it.
Oh sure. In truth, I have not read books that were otherwise available to me in printed form (I have a _very_ good library for that) though I've got copies of books on my system for searching. But I've read plenty of stories and scripts and such that weren't otherwise available.
A week or two ago I reread (something I do when I get bored and finish whatever I had on hold at the library) "Dance of Shiva" by John Biles. Great little anime fanfic. It's about 1.2MB of raw text.
At present I have archived about 40MB of stories, scripts, a few books from Gutenberg and so on. I've easily read at least five or ten times that, but it's not all worth keeping. (like the crappy Harry Potter novela I wasted my time with last night... man, was it bad)
I don't have a printer, and I don't find it terribly uncomfortable to read off the screen for long periods of time, so I've never bothered with that. Given how poorly typeset and composited it would be, I'd be rather averse to even bothering. A really well designed and thought-out handheld reader might work out, but nothing I've seen so far makes me interested.
Besides, why are you asking - you read contraversial/. posts don't you? Those get pretty damn long at times.;)
DA is a smart guy, I'm sure he knows. He did put out a copy of the first three (or was it four?) HHGTG books in Hypercard on the Mac about ten years ago.
Hah! You're quite wrong. Tell, me, which of these two would you take?
A 96GHz computer, with 20GB RAM, 1TB HD, 10Gb ethernet, and a 20" flatscreen
A 1.5GHz computer with 1GB RAM, 50GB HD, 1Gb ethernet and a 19" tube.
Did I mention that all the current software and games are only available on the former? And that there are no cheap upgrades or support for the latter?
Get real. Companies and governments want these, and will ban or undercut anything else. Linux is great, provided that there's a strong base of generic hardware. Get rid of that, and the rest falls apart. Laws are turning out to be very effective in comparison to winning in the market.
In short, we're in deep, deep trouble. Why don't we assume this to be the case, and act accordingly. If we're wrong, the only problems will be that we looked foolish. If we're right, we might have a chance to save microcomputing from being ruined. I'll be a pessimist and hope I'm wrong.
Regarding arms:
One of the purposes of the guarantee that there will be no infringement on the right to bear arms is protection from hostile government. Before you point out the existance of a military (which the Framers knew about too) allow me to clarify: protection from hostile government, foreign or domestic.
Criminals are prone to behave towards armed people in three ways. First, avoid them. Second, wait for them to let down their guard, or convince them to do so. Third, strike preemptively.
Oppressive governments are the same. When the government is good, there is no cause to fear it. But it is very difficult to determine whether a government will be good or bad, and bad governments do not announce their intentions in order to assist people in overthrowing them. Sadly then, it's important to always be vigilant.
A government that would like to oppress the people who it is supposed to serve will either be cowed from doing so by the difficulty in oppressing an armed populace, try to disarm them, or simply blitzkreig. The former is what we count on mostly when there is the danger of oppressive government. Even a bad government can be kept from doing much ill, and can be waited out. The second is dangerously similar to what you suggest. Even if it acted with the best of intentions, a disarmed populace will be vunerable to an oppressive government, and given the imperfection of humanity, that becomes a matter of time. The third is dangerous, but generally not feasible. The US _could_ kill everyone in, say, Kansas, but then it would be in dire straits as it really needed those people working for it. Even Hitler didn't do that to everyone, though he probably would have liked to. Additionally many of our other freedoms and various attitudes we try to engender in our military are useful in minimizing this.
Letting government have too close a hand in the control of who can have weapons, of what sorts, when, etc. is like letting a fox into the henhouse.
Regarding religion:
I don't care if students pray as long as it doesn't interfere with teaching. It really couldn't be prevented anyway. (so praying that you'll do well on a test is okay, sacrificing a goat is just a bit too disruptive) But I'm adamantly against the government endorsing or supporting, in ANY way, any religion.
As usual then, I haven't found a politician I'm completely happy with. Without close examination (pointless, as I don't get to vote for him) Boucher is okay on copyright and guns, and very poor on religion. And that's without looking into his opinions and records on other subjects. It's not unusual, really. Lord knows I'm sick of most of the idiots I'm stuck with for another couple of years here in WA.
Rental copies are fair game for fair use. So are used rental media that are actually purchased. He's suggesting otherwise, and he hasn't got the power to do such a thing, nor is it especially good that he's suggesting it as a realistic goal.
There's a significant disconnection here - people are persisting in thinking that an unchanging attribute of a medium or reader/writer for that medium is capable of adhering to the principles of fair use and copyright. But they're not. They cannot tell the difference between someone copying certain scenes from a movie for nefarious purposes, or for socially good ones.
And these social goods have constitutional protections -Congress can't make it illegal to make videos on VHS, even if that poses a threat to publishers that want DVDs. When balanced, commercial interests have to take a back seat, imho to social interests. This doesn't mean wiping out copyright altogether; it has it's own social utility. It just can't go beyond being socially useful.
I've heard a MIDI song that was actually the source code of DeCSS. It was certainly unusual, but not the worst thing I've ever heard.
What I meant was a more overall restatement of the fact that any set of data may be acted upon as data or as instructions. Most people here might not consider C to be executable without being compiled into a binary in the way that Perl is. But there's nothing that prevents people from writing software that does that. Or from designing a processor that uses C as a machine language. It's just difficult and inefficient. Someday it will no longer be difficult or inefficient, and our rules should not assume that this will not be the case.
If, for instance under the DMCA, DeCSS programs are treated as verboten, but source is not, what happens when someone eventually writes a program that accepts English as instructions and doesn't need to compile? Saying the instructions becomes illegal.
Programs are currently special in that they are very clear, precise and formal instructions. The predefined vocabulary and grammar are intended to help make it precise, often with the added benefit of being terse. This is no different than mathematics or physics. Indeed, it's quite similar to law itself. (wherein ambiguities are there often to function as ORs)
Trying to draw lines around these is futile, and will have seriously detrimental effects on society. Alternatives need to be developed, and we must reexamine the need for such systems, in whole and in part, altogether.
Boucher seems to be more clueful than most. I wish that there were more Congressmen that were at least at that level.
But he's not entirely palatable.
He has a misconception that Congress granted the right to make recordings of TV shows, and that there was a string attached in the requirement that VCRs have Macrovision. He is of course wrong - that right was already present, and definitively stated as such by the Supreme Court.
He's in favor of extending Macrovision-like controls throughout most consumer electronics. This is generally not a great idea, as those of us who have had legitimate need to copy content from Macrovisioned media, or who have even simply wanted to use VCRs as pass-throughs know. Automated systems cannot accomodate the wide range of legitimate needs that are out there. (e.g. musicians that want to copy songs they hold the copyright to, parodies, quoting, etc.)
Congress hasn't got the right to take them away, and then pretend to grant reduced versions of them back again. Such rights are inherent at a lower level than Congress can operate at. Whether they claim to recognize the existance of Fair Use is irrelevant; it derives from the Constitution.
How he thinks that his first sale system would be implemented is beyond me. It's totally unrealistic, and clearly recognizable as such. Next we'll be defining pi as 3 again....
He doesn't seem to be thoroughly familiar with a statutory exception to copyright that Congress DID grant: 17 USC 117. Incidental copies of media that are necessary to the operation of a computer program probably are covered by this. Given that there's no difference between programs and data anyway, it would be a nightmare to try to draw a line. I think that determining the legalities of caches is not very difficult, and is best left to the courts.
As for the backup thing (the other half of that section of law) I can't even figure out the reason for it.
And he'll have to be careful on his mp3 law. Making mp3s and retrieving them across a network is already legal. Making them for other people for that purpose is where a law needs to step in, and I'm not sure from what he said that he realizes this.
Like I said, he's a lot better than most government officials. But let's not get complacent. Copyright law is thorny just to think about, given the principles, rights, grants and balances involved. I think that in trying to do good, he's very likely to do ill, and very strict attention and a lot of thought needs to go into any bills that actually get into Congress. I'm not seeing enough of that here for me to feel comfortable.
You're pretty close. The status of binaries as copyrightable was in doubt in the seventies, I understand. So EULAs were a way to prevent people from running wild with the things; they had to agree not to as a precondition to get it. Once all software was definitively granted the ability to get a copyright under basically the same constraints as anything other copyrightable work, EULAs had to take on a new function. Rather than protect publishers from users, they now had to grant users permission to make copies of copyrighted works. Without that statutory exception it is indeed murky as to whether the copies that have to be necessarily made to execute it are fair use. They pretty much are, we know, but it would take some time for the judicial system to arrive at that determination too.
But with the statutory exception and the ability to obtain a grant of copyright in place for binaries, EULA's are generally moot. Both sides are protected by law. The additional questions of the validity of the things in general makes their continued existance even less sensible.
I still feel that the best course of action is to not agree to 'clickwrap,' as they would seem to be the most enforcable of any of the EULAs possible, and to install software manually. One would hope that third party installer programs and scripts would appear on the scene, but most people do consider it easier to ignore the EULA and not really agree, so there's not a huge market.
One court case to work out the details would not be advisable unless it went all the way to the top. Better to have several cases going through the system to help build precedents. (which hopefully, would be favorable, not that the lower courts are on our side these days)
So what? If I go to the store, purchase a copy of the program, and install it without agreeing to the EULA, I can still legally run it (MS has been compensated; there's a provision in 17 USC that excludes the running of software from infringement) and MS can, indeed go to hell.
Of course, I would hope that they don't drag down the entire neighborhood, as I live pretty close by.
Most copyrighted material is not licensed at all, or as a condition of purchase, software included. Even the legality of a post-sale EULA is the matter of some debate. Don't assume that the things are 100% legit just because software publishers claim that they are. IIRC the case law is almost evenly split, with a slight leaning in favor of the 'EULA's don't count' side.
Heh. I actually have designed a page like that with a textarea for a client that requested it. But we were bright enough to reject the form if the content were changed, and there was some javascript to prevent it on browsers that honored that.
Which isn't great, as contracts SHOULD be negotiable, but it is a good step to protect the idiot company that doesn't want to actually read contracts that it makes.
I don't think that would be good. If Mickey Mouse has some utility in promoting the Arts and Sciences, the end of term could only come when there was none at all. By those rights works that have been important to culture for millenia, such as religious works, would still be copyrighted if those rules had applied. It's a worse losing proposition than long but limited (really limited) terms are for society.
I think that very short terms, and a progressively structured manditory registration system is better.
While I admit that I haven't got a copy handy, I recall that one of my compatriots on a copyright issues mailing list looked up pirate in the OED.
Evidently, it actually has been used to refer to what we think of as copyright pirates for several hundred years. Certainly during the time that 'arr matey'-type pirates were also very notorious. While it's pretty pejorative, I think that it is a valid label, having had that much tradition behind it.
Personally, I put up an ad filter because I don't like advertising. It's great that/. is messing around with other ideas for their advertising system. I'm thrilled.
I will still not turn off the filter however. I don't like advertising, regardless of the specifics of it. When I feel that I want to get something, I'll research it on my own and generally feel better about it for having done so.
Besides which, I've got no obligation to see the ads, even if they're incredibly discreet and tasteful. I don't care if it harms/. ; should that turn out to be the case, I'd suggest that they look into a different way of getting income. Although I don't want to have to pay to use it either. Not very fair of me, I know, but that's how things are.
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What the US does dramatically effects me. And the US is the heart and soul of the computing industry, so the ripples it produces are felt far and wide. Not to mention that where the US goes, Europe is frequently right behind us.
Apple, btw, has a CRPM on their DVD burner. I wouldn't be surprised to see one on the CD burner in the near future... especially as it's just a part that they get from some manufacturer up the chain.
You think that Linux can effect the home market? Hah. Sure, open web servers are great. That does not translate into cheap components for you and me, or anyone else. Besides, what business do you have serving content that might be copyrighted, buddy? No, they'll go after you too.
As I've said, let's fight this even if we think we'll win. How can it hurt to give the market a nudge? And if we are losing already, well, we still need to get busy. Complacency will do us in.
There is no need for MS to bother with this. They can still sue the crap out of anyone who pirates the software in most jurisdictions, yet there doesn't have to be a license or serial number at all in distributing it.
A strongly implied part of the copyright contract is that works have to be useful. A book that's so heavily encrypted as to be unreadable has not effectively been published, and will not enrich the public domain when it enters it. MS can leave the door wide open, and not lose a shred of their legal shield. Indeed, they're granted that shield on the condition that they leave the door open. Now if only Congress or the courts would revoke copyrights from publishers who seem to want to grant and enforce them themselves. They'd be welcome to try, but would get no help from Uncle Sam.
No, he's got a salient point. Allow me to restate it more clearly.
He creates the music all by himself. He registers the copyright with the USCO. He has the copyright all to himself.
However, when he burns it onto a CD, if there's a royalty or whatnot on it, he is having to pay the RIAA for the ability to copy his work. That is highly unconstitutional; Congress cannot make the initial grant of copyright to anyone other than the author. And authors need no one's permission to make copies. Or to let others make copies. Nor can public domain works be treated in this manner. It doesn't matter that he's using CDRs, he can use anything he wants, if he owns it, there is no justification whatsoever for paying the RIAA in order to exercise his own copyright.
Media taxes are truly something that we've got to get rid of; they have no basis in law, as long as they are being used in relation to copyright. (so a sales tax that simply paid off the govt. would be alright, but still dangerously close to infringing on the first amendment if too closely tied to media)
Allow me to point out that 17 USC 117 creates a statutory exemption to copyright with regards to computers making any copies they need to function of software (e.g. loading it into ram) and that you can make backup copies of software up the wazoo, as long as you don't keep them when you get rid of the original.
EULAs are rather moot these days, and the arguments that they're null and void are getting stronger (as are the precedents to that effect)
Ah, I know it's bad form to reply to one's own post, but I forgot to put in the haiku I mentioned. It's hereby in the public domain (and so are all my other posts - now to change my .sig to make that clear) and here it is:
Cherry blossom time
The wind cannot chill glad hearts
Break up Microsoft
;)
It's always nice to get some intelligent debate going on /.
You do indeed have natural rights to free speech. In the total absence of law, you can speak freely. It can be dangerous as people also have natural rights to kill one another, but you've got it. You're confusing that people generally let many of their more destructive rights be tightly bound in order to preserve themselves and their remaining rights.
Free speech is not particularly destructive. It is certainly impossible to harm people with speech - libel and slander are the closest we come to that, and even then it's generally agreed upon that it is better to err on the side of free speech, as it has a greater impact than anyone's own repuatation.
Most restrictions on speech concern different harms - the clear and present danger test is what's meant by people invoking the hairy old 'fire/theater' thing. If you say something which will have an immediate AND direct danger to someone, that's not protected. Saying that all Jews should die, is not immediate. If I'm saying it to my cat, it's not even dangerous. Saying that they should all die starting with that one right there, get him, is. Clear and present danger is a hard standard to meet.
The purpose of this though, is not to limit speech. If there IS a fire in a crowded theater, it's your DUTY to yell about it! It is to limit the most extremely dangerous results of speech, and that's such a dangerous thing to comptemplate that we've let in the camel's nose, but we're staunchly against the rest of the damn camel getting into the tent.
Copyright as well, exists in balance with the guarantee that the government will not interfere with freedom of speech. If copyright did not have a built-in pressure valve in the progress clause, it would probably have been overridden entirely by the First Amendment, which came in later. Copyright only grants exclusive rights to authors under the circumstances that Congress sees fit to grant, and even then, those circumstances lose when they face a use that promotes progress more than denying that use does.
Certainly Congress could declare that a statutory exemption exists for peer-to-peer file sharing, but only if both peers are named 'Bob.' It's their call; vague arguments about the natural copyright of authors (hint: there is none) don't apply there.
Moving on to Jefferson, the flame is knowledge. Your knowledge can never be diminished because others have it too. The immediate benefit to you may be less, but one of the best things about free speech is that it can directly help humanity to exercise it. He's advocating that.
For example, I composed a haiku this morning, while I was waiting for the bus. Spring has come early here (Seattle) and the cherry trees around my apartment are blooming. After I finished it, I was rather happy with it. Once I got to work, I immediately sent it on to my friends. Does this mean that because now at least four other people know it that I only can be 1/5th as happy?
No, of course not. This is what Jefferson's talking about. At what point did it become good to decide that the poor have no right to knowledge - that it is better for them to never be able to stand on the shoulders of giants, the way that everyone in civilization has. That it is better for them to forever have to reinvent the wheel just to catch up than to contribute their own insights to society, and thus give _us_ a new, higher point to build upon.
How is it good to deny people knowledge? Offering a reward for creating new knowledge, or discovering something previously unseen is a great idea. To do it on the backs of the people who can benefit from that knowledge, and to make specious arguments for never letting go of that knowledge simply does not do good.
You answered your own question. Art isn't property. Instances of that art may be.
In the case of the Mona Lisa, the tangible THING that was painted by DaVinci is worth more than I'll ever see. In the case of the picture on the Mona Lisa, it's not worth anything fungible. Great cultural value sure, but it won't get you a cup of coffee.
The picture on paintings, the words in a novel, the shape of a statue - that is what is so heavily debated. No one's claimed that the tangible medium doesn't have ordinary, respectable property value.
Me, I'm an artist and sometimes-writer (not a good writer, I'm afraid) and I agree with the earlier poster. I'd rather get paid up front and let anyone who wants to enjoy or improve upon, or copy it to others to enjoy my work do so. It's an old system - patronage works like that, as do a lot of comissions.
I think that there are greater benefits for me personally by myself building on the work done by others on my own works. Linux is a decent example of that, but there are others.
I could certainly tolerate copyright laws of more limited term and scope though. People just need to remember that we only have them in order to accomplish societal goods - if that's accomplished through personal rewards, fine, but don't be blinded by them.
I don't think so.
Your justification is quite wrong. Radio and TV can be recorded onto a medium and preserved and replayed personally forever. This is not because they are streaming. It is because they are already paid for. Advertisers pay for broadcast TV and radio. Listeners and viewers recieve it for free, just as though they had bought a copy themselves.
Similarly, space shifting of music from CDs to mp3 players has been upheld in court, without coming under the AHRA. (computers don't apply, as they're not specifically recording devices, but copies are still legal)
There's certainly no law that requires that the little copyright statement in a book be truthful. They can say that the sky is green for all I care - it's irrelevant, and it's not the law.
Software licensing is also moot these days. EULAs came about because software didn't qualify for copyright at all. After it did it turned out that Congress had done a literally half-assed job. While there was a copyright on software, there was not the necessary exlcusion on the copies that computers have to make in order to work. (e.g. copying programs into RAM)
That has been corrected. And the same bit of law (17 USC 117) states that backup copies are legal. EULAs can claim to grant that right, but they don't. EULAs are full of beans, and there's no purpose in having them that is not probably illegal or detrimental to users. Check out the law - you'll be surprised how out of date your assumptions are.
Fair use also means that you can copy excerpts from the CD. Or play it for your friends and family. Or use it in teaching. Or space shift it to other media. (which is effectively the same as making a backup copy...)
That IS what the courts and the law have said. You say different? Fine - show me rulings to that effect that have not been voided by changes in law, or overturned by other rulings. Put your money where your mouth is.
Information is not ownable. It never has been. It never will or can be.
Let's consider: for something to be owned it must be property. What makes something property? The best definition I know - the one that's not recursive, and is used in the law - is this: For something to be property, the owner must be able to use, control if and how others use, and dispose of it.
When I read a good book, I remember it. And the words on the page don't vanish when read, copies are made, with or without the permission of the author, in my memory. Even the author can't get rid of the original in his own mind. What he wrote, he did so from his internal copy. The author has no control on if and how others use the work, and cannot dispose of it.
That is what makes it not property. If you have a better way to determine what property is, and how information can be considered to be property, I'd like to hear it. But recursive definitions: it's property because it's owned, it's owned because it's property; are not useful.
Furthermore, you're ignorant of even the most fundemental copyright law. In that there isn't one. Human beings have a right to free speech - this includes saying what the other fellow just said. It's a right granted to us by God, and you can be forced not to use it, but you've still got it. There is another God-given right that we all have - the right to shut up - and again, while you might be tortured into speaking, no one can actually make you if you're determined. Authors who don't want to share their works don't have to, but they should not act surprised when people share them too.
If this were not so, shouldn't you be paying the writers who invented words like 'information.' They have a natural right to own it, you said. I doubt that they explicitly gave it up. Better pay up, buddy.
In the US at any rate, which is where H.E. and AOL are both based, copyrights are limited even as they're granted. The clearly stated purpose of copyright is to promote the progress of the arts. (patents are covered by precisely the same clause, btw) Nowhere is there a statement indicating that the purpose is to serve as an author's pension fund, and the original, decent term of 14 years would serve to ram that point home.
Copyrights do not exist by default. They may be granted, if the Congress so chooses (it doesn't have to - there's no natural right to them) but if so, it MUST promote the progress of the arts, it MUST only be granted to the author, and it MUST last for a limited time.
The second clause means that H.E.'s suit is probably going to cause copyright infringement. What right do musicians who don't want their works distributed on Napster have to prevent those who do want their works distributed on Napster from doing so? Well, none.
The third clause makes it very clear that the best state for information to be in, and that its natural state is that of freedom. Free speech is the right to freely tell people anything, no matter from what source it derives. Jefferson wrote that ideas are like fire; when he has one, and is illuminated by it, it does not help others. But if it is shared, it does not diminish the original flame. More light is created - and those people can further illuminate others.
This is not a bad thing.
Yes, it's good that you're rewarded for inventing that engine. (although copyright laws protect publishers more than authors - authors have ALWAYS been shafted. Only now, ironically, with the net, can authors meet the economies of scale that publishers enjoy) But that doesn't mean that you, your heirs, and your entire line through the end of the world should be rewared for your effort. Let them be rewarded for _their_ efforts instead.
And let total strangers with ideas like your own make their own improvements. It's just as bad that Disney doesn't let people make their own Mickey Mouse films as it would be if the Grimm family didn't let Disney make fairy tale movies.
Heh. This is patently untrue.
Works of art are unique - at least for the time being - in that they not only can be reproduced forever at very little or no cost, but that they must be reproduced in order to be used.
If you don't believe me, please check to see if these words are leaping off of your screen, walking across your desk, and hopping in your eyeballs. No? No: you are making a copy of them inside your own head just to read them.
And if you want to, you can remember them forever; I can't stop you. I can't exert the kind of control that needs to be exerted in order for something to be considered property. Define property. What conditions must something meet to be property? The best definition I know is that if it is ownable, the owner must be able to use it, control how and if it is used by others, and get rid of it. With words, I can do the first. The last two are not possible, unless you propose that authors lobotomize their readers and themselves at will.
Works belong to the public because that is their natural state of being. When you speak to me, anyone who can hear it has that speech. It's just like fire - that you give some to me does not diminish your own, and I can spread it to others myself. It is not property, because each copy is itself copied as it's used.
And you seem like a shortsighted person who's willing to give up the future for a little cash right now.
Tell me, what happens when some bright fellow invents a perfect nanotech assembler? If we don't all kill each other, it's almost guaranteed to happen. Then I can walk up to your chair, and almost magically cause an identical one to appear. It doesn't diminish your ability to treat the original as property; you've still got it. But now I've got the twin. And anyone else who wants one can have one too.
Given this power that could let anyone in the world have the best foods, and medicines, and clothing and homes that can be divised, your attitude would continue to enforce famine, sickness, nakedness, and homelessness. Because human inventiveness would have outpaced our social structure, and you are unwilling to change that structure.
Go on - tell me that your future would be good. Justify it. There's no fundemental difference. We have copyright NOT because words can be treated as property - which they're not anyway, if you actually examine the law - but as a carrot. The promise of some additional rewards is to encourage the creation of new works. And yet, that would be pointless if it wasn't for the small print that taketh away just as the large print giveth. That those rewards can only be guaranteed for a limited amount of time, and that the purpose is explicitly not to line the pockets of an author, but to promote the progress of the arts.
The arts advance as people can use that which has come before. Newton stood on the shoulders of giants. The artists of the Renissance had to have the Romans and Greeks. The authors of the Lost Generation had to have the authors of the Victorian era. Some small reward can perhaps be justified if the unrestricted work has great effect. Owning it forever stunts the effect irrepairably. That is why we do not do it. The right to speech, and the need for human advancement are infinitely more important than the sin of averice. If a little sin can do a great good, we'll cope. But don't expect that from a big sin.
Look, just because you don't think you need more power doesn't make it so.
Wasn't 640KB of RAM enough? Couldn't you do word processing and email on a PDP?
Whenever the things acquire more capabilities, they are not wasted, they are utilized. Some of it is used for breathing room - it's easier to write software these days, because you don't have to aggressively optimize it to run with meager resources. Some of it is used for truly new things: did your Apple II have games with graphics as nice as those in Quake 3?
You see, you're only looking at the short term. Yes, for the next couple of years, if the free hardware market vanished, you'd be able to get by. But development is not going to stop on the closed market. And you are just going to get left in the dust.
What happens in ten years? Still going to be using the same thing you are now? Not planning on using anything that we didn't imagine existing now? If you had thought that in 1990, you might have a web browser. But probably not a very good one. You wouldn't have any particularly new games. CD burning? Not easily - the vast majority of those came along later. mp3? I doubt you'd have enough horsepower.
If a lot of manufacturers move to the closed market, the new hardware will still follow the same trend we've had for decades - better, faster and cheaper.
Oh, it'll be restrictive alright, and I'm pissed off about it. But we can't all pretend that our present machines represent the apex of computing, and never upgrade. It's just not so.
Go use your Apple II, or your PDP8. Have fun - that's exactly the same boat you'll end up in.
And the government (in the US anyway, which is the default nationality around here, it seems) hasn't got the power to ban them either.
For most of the powers we grant the government, we extract a limitation on it. Copyright can only exist insofar as it does not interfere with free speech, fair use, etc. Banning P2PFS because it could be used illegally infringes on the first amendment and copyright itself. Charges have to be more specific than that, and wholesale bans are so unusual that it would take a hell of a lot of truly good justification, and even then I wouldn't put my money on it.
Oh sure. In truth, I have not read books that were otherwise available to me in printed form (I have a _very_ good library for that) though I've got copies of books on my system for searching. But I've read plenty of stories and scripts and such that weren't otherwise available.
/. posts don't you? Those get pretty damn long at times. ;)
A week or two ago I reread (something I do when I get bored and finish whatever I had on hold at the library) "Dance of Shiva" by John Biles. Great little anime fanfic. It's about 1.2MB of raw text.
At present I have archived about 40MB of stories, scripts, a few books from Gutenberg and so on. I've easily read at least five or ten times that, but it's not all worth keeping. (like the crappy Harry Potter novela I wasted my time with last night... man, was it bad)
I don't have a printer, and I don't find it terribly uncomfortable to read off the screen for long periods of time, so I've never bothered with that. Given how poorly typeset and composited it would be, I'd be rather averse to even bothering. A really well designed and thought-out handheld reader might work out, but nothing I've seen so far makes me interested.
Besides, why are you asking - you read contraversial
DA is a smart guy, I'm sure he knows. He did put out a copy of the first three (or was it four?) HHGTG books in Hypercard on the Mac about ten years ago.
Hah! You're quite wrong. Tell, me, which of these two would you take?
A 96GHz computer, with 20GB RAM, 1TB HD, 10Gb ethernet, and a 20" flatscreen
A 1.5GHz computer with 1GB RAM, 50GB HD, 1Gb ethernet and a 19" tube.
Did I mention that all the current software and games are only available on the former? And that there are no cheap upgrades or support for the latter?
Get real. Companies and governments want these, and will ban or undercut anything else. Linux is great, provided that there's a strong base of generic hardware. Get rid of that, and the rest falls apart. Laws are turning out to be very effective in comparison to winning in the market.
In short, we're in deep, deep trouble. Why don't we assume this to be the case, and act accordingly. If we're wrong, the only problems will be that we looked foolish. If we're right, we might have a chance to save microcomputing from being ruined. I'll be a pessimist and hope I'm wrong.
Regarding arms:
One of the purposes of the guarantee that there will be no infringement on the right to bear arms is protection from hostile government. Before you point out the existance of a military (which the Framers knew about too) allow me to clarify: protection from hostile government, foreign or domestic.
Criminals are prone to behave towards armed people in three ways. First, avoid them. Second, wait for them to let down their guard, or convince them to do so. Third, strike preemptively.
Oppressive governments are the same. When the government is good, there is no cause to fear it. But it is very difficult to determine whether a government will be good or bad, and bad governments do not announce their intentions in order to assist people in overthrowing them. Sadly then, it's important to always be vigilant.
A government that would like to oppress the people who it is supposed to serve will either be cowed from doing so by the difficulty in oppressing an armed populace, try to disarm them, or simply blitzkreig. The former is what we count on mostly when there is the danger of oppressive government. Even a bad government can be kept from doing much ill, and can be waited out. The second is dangerously similar to what you suggest. Even if it acted with the best of intentions, a disarmed populace will be vunerable to an oppressive government, and given the imperfection of humanity, that becomes a matter of time. The third is dangerous, but generally not feasible. The US _could_ kill everyone in, say, Kansas, but then it would be in dire straits as it really needed those people working for it. Even Hitler didn't do that to everyone, though he probably would have liked to. Additionally many of our other freedoms and various attitudes we try to engender in our military are useful in minimizing this.
Letting government have too close a hand in the control of who can have weapons, of what sorts, when, etc. is like letting a fox into the henhouse.
Regarding religion:
I don't care if students pray as long as it doesn't interfere with teaching. It really couldn't be prevented anyway. (so praying that you'll do well on a test is okay, sacrificing a goat is just a bit too disruptive) But I'm adamantly against the government endorsing or supporting, in ANY way, any religion.
As usual then, I haven't found a politician I'm completely happy with. Without close examination (pointless, as I don't get to vote for him) Boucher is okay on copyright and guns, and very poor on religion. And that's without looking into his opinions and records on other subjects. It's not unusual, really. Lord knows I'm sick of most of the idiots I'm stuck with for another couple of years here in WA.
Rental copies are fair game for fair use. So are used rental media that are actually purchased. He's suggesting otherwise, and he hasn't got the power to do such a thing, nor is it especially good that he's suggesting it as a realistic goal.
There's a significant disconnection here - people are persisting in thinking that an unchanging attribute of a medium or reader/writer for that medium is capable of adhering to the principles of fair use and copyright. But they're not. They cannot tell the difference between someone copying certain scenes from a movie for nefarious purposes, or for socially good ones.
And these social goods have constitutional protections -Congress can't make it illegal to make videos on VHS, even if that poses a threat to publishers that want DVDs. When balanced, commercial interests have to take a back seat, imho to social interests. This doesn't mean wiping out copyright altogether; it has it's own social utility. It just can't go beyond being socially useful.
I've heard a MIDI song that was actually the source code of DeCSS. It was certainly unusual, but not the worst thing I've ever heard.
What I meant was a more overall restatement of the fact that any set of data may be acted upon as data or as instructions. Most people here might not consider C to be executable without being compiled into a binary in the way that Perl is. But there's nothing that prevents people from writing software that does that. Or from designing a processor that uses C as a machine language. It's just difficult and inefficient. Someday it will no longer be difficult or inefficient, and our rules should not assume that this will not be the case.
If, for instance under the DMCA, DeCSS programs are treated as verboten, but source is not, what happens when someone eventually writes a program that accepts English as instructions and doesn't need to compile? Saying the instructions becomes illegal.
Programs are currently special in that they are very clear, precise and formal instructions. The predefined vocabulary and grammar are intended to help make it precise, often with the added benefit of being terse. This is no different than mathematics or physics. Indeed, it's quite similar to law itself. (wherein ambiguities are there often to function as ORs)
Trying to draw lines around these is futile, and will have seriously detrimental effects on society. Alternatives need to be developed, and we must reexamine the need for such systems, in whole and in part, altogether.
Boucher seems to be more clueful than most. I wish that there were more Congressmen that were at least at that level.
But he's not entirely palatable.
He has a misconception that Congress granted the right to make recordings of TV shows, and that there was a string attached in the requirement that VCRs have Macrovision. He is of course wrong - that right was already present, and definitively stated as such by the Supreme Court.
He's in favor of extending Macrovision-like controls throughout most consumer electronics. This is generally not a great idea, as those of us who have had legitimate need to copy content from Macrovisioned media, or who have even simply wanted to use VCRs as pass-throughs know. Automated systems cannot accomodate the wide range of legitimate needs that are out there. (e.g. musicians that want to copy songs they hold the copyright to, parodies, quoting, etc.)
Congress hasn't got the right to take them away, and then pretend to grant reduced versions of them back again. Such rights are inherent at a lower level than Congress can operate at. Whether they claim to recognize the existance of Fair Use is irrelevant; it derives from the Constitution.
How he thinks that his first sale system would be implemented is beyond me. It's totally unrealistic, and clearly recognizable as such. Next we'll be defining pi as 3 again....
He doesn't seem to be thoroughly familiar with a statutory exception to copyright that Congress DID grant: 17 USC 117. Incidental copies of media that are necessary to the operation of a computer program probably are covered by this. Given that there's no difference between programs and data anyway, it would be a nightmare to try to draw a line. I think that determining the legalities of caches is not very difficult, and is best left to the courts.
As for the backup thing (the other half of that section of law) I can't even figure out the reason for it.
And he'll have to be careful on his mp3 law. Making mp3s and retrieving them across a network is already legal. Making them for other people for that purpose is where a law needs to step in, and I'm not sure from what he said that he realizes this.
Like I said, he's a lot better than most government officials. But let's not get complacent. Copyright law is thorny just to think about, given the principles, rights, grants and balances involved. I think that in trying to do good, he's very likely to do ill, and very strict attention and a lot of thought needs to go into any bills that actually get into Congress. I'm not seeing enough of that here for me to feel comfortable.
You're pretty close. The status of binaries as copyrightable was in doubt in the seventies, I understand. So EULAs were a way to prevent people from running wild with the things; they had to agree not to as a precondition to get it. Once all software was definitively granted the ability to get a copyright under basically the same constraints as anything other copyrightable work, EULAs had to take on a new function. Rather than protect publishers from users, they now had to grant users permission to make copies of copyrighted works. Without that statutory exception it is indeed murky as to whether the copies that have to be necessarily made to execute it are fair use. They pretty much are, we know, but it would take some time for the judicial system to arrive at that determination too.
But with the statutory exception and the ability to obtain a grant of copyright in place for binaries, EULA's are generally moot. Both sides are protected by law. The additional questions of the validity of the things in general makes their continued existance even less sensible.
I still feel that the best course of action is to not agree to 'clickwrap,' as they would seem to be the most enforcable of any of the EULAs possible, and to install software manually. One would hope that third party installer programs and scripts would appear on the scene, but most people do consider it easier to ignore the EULA and not really agree, so there's not a huge market.
One court case to work out the details would not be advisable unless it went all the way to the top. Better to have several cases going through the system to help build precedents. (which hopefully, would be favorable, not that the lower courts are on our side these days)
So what? If I go to the store, purchase a copy of the program, and install it without agreeing to the EULA, I can still legally run it (MS has been compensated; there's a provision in 17 USC that excludes the running of software from infringement) and MS can, indeed go to hell.
Of course, I would hope that they don't drag down the entire neighborhood, as I live pretty close by.
Most copyrighted material is not licensed at all, or as a condition of purchase, software included. Even the legality of a post-sale EULA is the matter of some debate. Don't assume that the things are 100% legit just because software publishers claim that they are. IIRC the case law is almost evenly split, with a slight leaning in favor of the 'EULA's don't count' side.
Heh. I actually have designed a page like that with a textarea for a client that requested it. But we were bright enough to reject the form if the content were changed, and there was some javascript to prevent it on browsers that honored that.
Which isn't great, as contracts SHOULD be negotiable, but it is a good step to protect the idiot company that doesn't want to actually read contracts that it makes.
I don't think that would be good. If Mickey Mouse has some utility in promoting the Arts and Sciences, the end of term could only come when there was none at all. By those rights works that have been important to culture for millenia, such as religious works, would still be copyrighted if those rules had applied. It's a worse losing proposition than long but limited (really limited) terms are for society.
I think that very short terms, and a progressively structured manditory registration system is better.
While I admit that I haven't got a copy handy, I recall that one of my compatriots on a copyright issues mailing list looked up pirate in the OED.
Evidently, it actually has been used to refer to what we think of as copyright pirates for several hundred years. Certainly during the time that 'arr matey'-type pirates were also very notorious. While it's pretty pejorative, I think that it is a valid label, having had that much tradition behind it.
Personally, I put up an ad filter because I don't like advertising. It's great that /. is messing around with other ideas for their advertising system. I'm thrilled.
/. ; should that turn out to be the case, I'd suggest that they look into a different way of getting income. Although I don't want to have to pay to use it either. Not very fair of me, I know, but that's how things are.
I will still not turn off the filter however. I don't like advertising, regardless of the specifics of it. When I feel that I want to get something, I'll research it on my own and generally feel better about it for having done so.
Besides which, I've got no obligation to see the ads, even if they're incredibly discreet and tasteful. I don't care if it harms