Regarding Jules Verne, yeah Miyazaki would be okay, I guess. (really he's into flying - check out Porco Rosso)
But look for Nadia and the Mysterious Seas. (aka Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water) Lovely little 39 part TV series set in the late 19th century and incredibly heavily based on Jules Verne. Mostly 20,000 Leagues and the Mysterious Island. Very good show.
Meh. I keep hearing that, but I can't see it. There are quite a few anime that are really good in terms of the animation quality and sound. (though _everyone_ cheats on the animation. When you know what to look for it gets a little sad. Plot is a different story. A well written anime is more important to me than a good looking one, though that would be the #2 concern.
But really, GitS was just okay. I think that the fact that it had CGI, and invisible cyborg chick warriors is what actually makes it popular. Not the quality of the plot, really. Personally, as far as near-future sf movies by Oshii Mamoru go, I'd put my vote solidly behind Patlabor 2. If you can believe it, it's even slower than GitS is; don't be put off by this however.
Now probably the best sf anime ever is Wings of Honneamise. Don't bother with the R1 DVD though, reports are that they really fucked up the transfer.
Copyright infringement is _not_ theft. Nor is "Intellectual Property" property, much less anything real at all. If you really want me to go into why, I will, but it's a fairly long post to write, and the bus is coming soon, so I'd prefer it if you just read through my earlier posts on that subject.
Following from that though, in order for something to be stolen, it has to be property. Copyrighted content is not property. (as discussed at length elsewhere) Confusingly for many, the copyright itself which applies to the content is property. Not the content; the content's copyright.
But it can't be stolen either. Neither natural nor positive rights (copyright is one of the latter, btw) can be stolen. The proper word is infringement. If the govt. censors you, do they steal your right to free speech? No, they infringe upon it. Surely you know that it's important to speak clearly.
This doesn't mean that copyright infringement is necessarily less serious than theft. (it could be in some cases, though not all) But bear in mind that copyright infringement may not be morally wrong. Copyrights are created out of thin air under the assumption that they're good. They may not be, you know. It has not been determined, and probably never will be.
Well, I'm sure you guys out on Neptune didn't have the Web in 1991, but it certainly existed.
Tim Berners-Lee created the web, and wrote the first browser/editor on his NeXT at CERN. (he had developed other hypertext systems though) Imaginatively, the program itself was called WorldWideWeb. This was in the period of 1989 and 1990. So the web certainly did exist ten years ago.
Additionally, WWW supported graphics, but they had to appear in different windows. Inline graphics came later. They, and support for several major platforms were the big deals about NCSA Mosaic.
Lastly, while I don't doubt that about banners, I suspect that non-free online services like Compuserve had similar advertising earlier.
Naw, I don't even drink but I know that it's a big deal for people that do. When I lived in MA the Blue Laws were always a PITA. Fortunately, we had NH not far away;)
Meanwhile here in Seattle, although there's some mildly odd things regarding hard liquor, you can at least get beer and wine from the supermarket, and they're all open 24/7. I can see how that would be attractive for some people.
MS should not be punished for the foolish actions of their competitors.
But they should be punished for illegal abuses of an existing monopoly in order to acquire another one. (in fact, a third monopoly)
Monopoly power may be considered as a reward for very successful companies. But it's dangerous. Remember kids, we have capitalism because it produces highly efficent markets as a side effect. Ideally. In reality, it produces markets that become efficient, then become inefficient as firms monopolize it and kill off competition. If you want to be a monopoly around here, it means that you're subject to special attention and rules.
MS has broken those rules, time and again, and harmed the marketplace for its own benefit. That is why there are legal actions against them, and in fact, those actions are not intended to punish, but to restore competition to the marketplace so that we can continue getting benefits from it.
Worse yet, the Moon in Space: 1999 wasn't cracked in half. Which, as we all know happened to it in 1994 because of a runaway planet passing between the Earth and the Moon.:)
Re: argument, I had first wanted to point out that Capitalism, while better than the other systems we know about, isn't perfect, and is hopefully not the end all be all of economic models. And secondly, you hd said: "I don't understand how you can believe that a physical item can be owned but a non-physical item can't" in the context of copyright, which I went into at great length.
Remember my lad, it doesn't matter if you believe that people have the right to own it and that it's property, it matters if it can be reasonably shown to be ownable property and if your friendly neighboorhood government decides that it is. In the US, which is generally a good starting point for these discussions on/. copyrighted content has never been shown to be ownable property nor been declared by law to be. When you become tyrant supreme of the world, feel free to change the law, though I'll still be waiting with baited breath as to what definition of property you'll use that can be extended to words. Please stop resorting to 'Because I said so.'
Re: property, I didn't say you had to be able to destroy it. I said you had to be able to dispose of it. Give it away, sell it, destroy it - they all count. As you note, different options may be needed for different items: land is tricky to destroy. It's pretty easy to give or sell it though. Books are well known on the other hand for being really easy to light afire.
Oh, and for streaming video, sorry, no. While the 'owner' may be able to make contracts with people regarding the creation of and lending of copies, he cannot prevent users from capturing those copies against his will. Maybe they have hacked the streaming protocol or client to save it to disk. (shouldn't be awful in Unix, which is good at doing that kind of thing I'd think) Maybe they have a videocamera pointed at the screen. And it still wouldn't matter, because as long as someone looks at the output, and remembers, that will be a copy that the 'owner' has no power over. Unless you plan to let copyright holders lobotomize people at will. (which doesn't exactly fulfill the goals of copyright does it?) The same thing goes for destroying the copies. The copies that they wanted made may be destroyed. But they couldn't do anything about other copies.
I do agree a bit with what you say about agreeing to terms. But not altogether. First off, if you didn't agree to the terms and used it anyway you're a copyright infringer, aka pirate. Not a thief. There's a slight difference. (you know - MSDOS wasn't quite DRDOS. Burglary isn't precisely identical with robbery. Affect isn't effect. Laypeople might not realize or care, but that doesn't eliminate the difference)
Secondly, if an author makes their work available under onerous terms (e.g. willfully give up fair use, first sale, etc.) do they deserve full copyright protection? Personally, I wouldn't think so. Rather like people who encrypt works but claim that they were published. More attention has to be paid, IMHO, to the long term effects of these practices, and the responsibility of authors if they wish to be afforded the luxury of a copyright.
It was part of a speech by James Philpot Curran of Ireland. In 1790.
The actual quote is: "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and punishment of his guilt."
If words can be property, there's no purpose in copyright law. But they aren't property. They can't be property, unless you adopt a Newspeak approach to language in which words can be what you want them to mean. (heh - words are property, love is hate, war is peace)
Copyrights do serve a useful purpose, when used as instructed. We haven't been for the last few decades though, and it shows. If there were significant reform in the realm of copyright - a drastic shortening of terms, laws emphasizing the utilitarian model, stricter requirements for registration and extensions of works, better archiving - it could be an extraordinarily good thing. However the concept that words can be property is offensive and quite wrong. It's possible to be for a good copyright system and against IP in about the same way that it's possible to be for moderate use of alcohol but against drunkeness.
Unfortunately our government is listening more towards moneyed interests and foreign powers than it is to us, the jerkoffs.
First, I like capitalism, but it has problems. The reason that I like capitalism is that when it's working right, and people are acting competitively, there's a lot of efficiency that results.
The problem is that none of the capitalists involved are interested in efficiency or competition. They're motivated by a desire to destroy their competition and get maximum profits.
Consumers in a capitalist system want producers to have minimum profits and pass the savings back. But businesses keep trying to become monopolies, and when they do they pretty much inevitably try to exert that monopoly power to get more wealth, ruining the capitalist landscape.
If capitalism had a built in governor that could prevent the system from degrading like that, it'd be totally sweet. It's not though.
Is there a better system? Perhaps. Has it been discovered? Sadly, no. Find me something better than capitalism and I'd be all for it. I'm not stupid; I want things that are good, regardless of what the name is. If Communism or Socialism were better I'd be in favor of them. As it stands, we're doing best with Capitalism, but it's certainly not good enough to make me satisfied.
As for property, you're an idiot. Sorry, don't mean to be flame-happy, but it's true. As has been explained countless times on/. by myself and others, information cannot be owned. Non-physical items _may_ depending on their nature be owned, and in fact copyright is one of those, but that's not what the previous poster was talking about.
Unless you've got a better one, the working definition of property is that is is something that can meet three criteria. 1) that the owner be able to use and enjoy the thing 2) that they can let others use it at their sufferance 3) that they can dispose of it.
Information meets the first one just fine, we all know that.
But as for the second, when you let other people read your novel, you can't have it back. The manuscript, yes. The words, no. I can recite whole portions of books, movies, songs, etc. from memory. It's not unusual. But if I were to place them in a commercial venue, it would be infringement. Clearly my memories are sufficient to count, yet, my memories are clearly not ownable. Nor would it be desirable for them to be. People with photographic memories can and do read books once and never need to refer to a printed copy again. Yet if they read a book, it is not considered copyright infringement unless they copied it out again. Still, the information from the book was copied into their noggins and can't fulfill requirement #2.
The third is just the same. The author holds the original copy of a work in their head, generally. Then they copy it out to some medium. Copies in a medium may be protected, but not the intangible portion of the work - the exact words, the look of a painting, shape of a sculpture, etc.
Copyrights are entirely different. While no one can own the words in a book, they can own an artificial and limited right granted under certain conditions, for certain purposes by the government. This right permits them exclusively to make copies of the work without legal liability, for as long as the government permits it to exist. (which is regulated) The right is property - it can be used, extended or withdrawn to others, or given away or destroyed. But then again, it's not information.
Sure, but at that time businesses were individuals. The (stupid imho) concept of corporations getting effectively permanent charters and civil liberties was totally alien. That didn't come along until the late 19th century, and hasn't looked like much of a good idea since, either.
No. Our cultural imperialism has more to do with commercial interests. If Baywatch is popular in the states, someone will try to see if it's popular anywhere else. Same with jeans, McDonalds, etc. That the US has been really successful for some time helps too. We couldn't be cultural imperialists if the foreigners we sold things to didn't want the stuff.
Remember "Life of Brian"? The rebellious Jews are griping about all the terrible things that the Romans are doing, while trying hard to ignore some of the more useful things. (e.g. aquaducts, good roads) We don't really take over countries like that anymore (and I personally get pissed off whenever we prop up or overthrow a government - we shouldn't be doing that) but we do sell things to them. Popular things, as it happens.
Now, our political imperialism (not in the sense of taking over other countries but in spreading our ideas about governance) is what comes from the concept of natural rights.
And it seems to be a pretty good meme from where I'm sitting. Can you tell me why, absent any government Australians innately have less of a right to free speech than Americans do? Well they don't. Set an Australian down in the middle of nowhere, and he can say what he wants. His mouth doesn't stick shut because there's no government to tell him he can speak. (sadly, it still doesn't mean that anyone will be able to understand what the hell he's talking about;)
That right is infringed upon as a matter of course in most places. While always under assault in the US even, we prohibit our government from infringing on it here. We really explicitly prohibit that. As much as a really prohibited thing.
If Australians refused to put up with that kind of crap, and installed a government that wasn't permitted to censor them it would still not be the creation of a right of free speech, but a limitation on government from screwing with an independently existing right of free speech. They're entitled to do so, certainly. And while we in the states shouldn't force them to, I can't say that we should all pleased that they don't either.
(one of the traditional problems American foreign relations have faced is our desire to spread our memes and encourage people to establish democratic governments, while still adhering to our high opinion of soverignty)
Pfft. Capitalism is great, but the players in it suffer from feedback.
Remember, the goal of society permitting a capitalistic system (there may indeed be a better, though undiscovered one - never know) is to encourage efficiency through competition.
It's a lot like free speech; rather than declare any one idea right, it must compete against other ideas, expecting that good ones will bubble up. (of course a student of memes will expect slightly different results) Even if MS were the best software house ever, it would be foolish to trust that it is the best software house possible, or that this was caused by it's monopoly.
The goal of the businesses operating in a capitalistic system however is to make a profit. Generally at the expense of the competition. Eliminating them entirely is in fact ideal. Not for the system of course, but for the self-interested person in the system.
Without systems in place to encourage competition, and supress monopolies, they will triumph.
What happens when a group of companies forms a cartel? Well, they can pool their resources. And they can employ natural or create artificial barriers to entry to deny the market to competitiors. Tactical lawsuits certainly would seem to be a good method if nothing else works. Make your competitors burn through all their money and establish legal precedents to keep the rest in check.
Not to mention that even if the small competitors (which are tolerated at best like tickbirds and never normally allowed to grow) do manage somehow to be a real threat to the monopoly, it has no interest in helping you. Better if it too is part of the monopoly, or destroys the first only to install one of its own.
I agree that the government has been culpable, but your precious businesses are acting as expected. Using ANY means necessary to succeed. If that means buying off the government, they'd be happy to do so, and are known for it historically anyway.
In the GNU Manifesto, I found this quote: Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that the program can be used. This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity derives from the program. When there is a deliberate choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.
The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the consequences that result if everyone hoards information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so. Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.
There was also this: People who have studied the issue of intellectual property rights carefully (such as lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to intellectual property. The kinds of supposed intellectual property rights that the government recognizes were created by specific acts of legislation for specific purposes.
But that's exactly what I was talking about. A natural copyright is the same as an intrinsic copyright. And both birds are 100% imaginary. No, the FSF does not have a natural right to control distribution with the exception of their right to choose not to distribute the work in the first place (that is if they keep the toothpaste in the tube, that's fine, but they can't put it back once it's come out)
This is however an entirely different kettle of fish than an artificial (or positive) right to control distribution, which we certainly do labor under. But we have that artificial right for the purpose of promoting progress in the arts and sciences. We do not have it for promoting Bill Gates' bank account, though if that's the best way to accomplish the goal of promotion, fine.
What classical meaning? Last time I checked the Copyright Clause of the Constitution was still the same as it always was. And given as how it derives from good thinking about the nature of speech, utilitarian systems are about the only justifiable form of copyright.
But I think that Stallman believes that the goals of copyright (hint: not to make money for copyright holders) would be better served if there weren't any on software. I don't know if he's against it in general. I doubt it though.
He didn't say it was a right. He said it was a cause. Americans for Widgets have a cause. Americans Against Widgets also have a cause. Causes aren't the same as rights.
Additionally, what do you mean by 'morally owned'? If you mean, authors of software should be able to claim credit for their authorship, I don't have any immediate problems with it. (it may require closer study though) If you mean, authors have a natural right to control the distribution and use of their works, copies and derivatives therof, you're wrong. There's no such thing, the law (in the states anyhow) has never claimed such a thing, and it really doesn't matter what people thing. A large number of people are opposed to free speech too, depending on how you pose the question, and it doesn't mean that they're right either.
I can tell you though that copyright is entirely different than freedom of speech. MS does have as much right to release closed source software as newspapers do copyrighting their news. At least, as long as Congress considers either to be copyrightable, which they don't actually have to. (software wasn't for some time)
And there's nothing that prohibits MS from refusing to release their source.
But on the other hand, what about this? What if Congress decides that in order to get copyright at all, MS must place their source in the Library of Congress. If they do, the source is copyrighted, but publicly readable. (like any published material) And only if the source is up does MS get to hold a copyright on the binaries. There's nothing that prevents Congress from doing this. And there's nothing that prevents MS from choosing not to accept what the government's big print giveth, even though that means giving up what the small print taketh away. There is after all, no natural entitlement to copyright.
Also, note that the GPL is kind of like environmentalism for a software 'commons.' If they gave without strings (e.g. BSD, public domain) there's nothing that prevents other people from taking and not continuing to sustain the source from which it comes. The constant lengthening of copyright terms are an excellent example. Disney takes fairy tale stories and makes movies. But they don't let people take the movies and make other movies, which is essential to the whole issue of copyright. The point is to have the most movies, not to protect Disney's pocketbook.
The GPL is a method of letting people take but requiring that they add to what can be taken. Its a choice; no one has to take at all. And it would be moot if there were no copyright at all. I don't think that it's accurate to call it proprietary though. It's not in the same spirit as that at all.
Napster is going to rig the whole system up so that you can do virtually nothing with the music you get. Can't move it to a different machine, can't burn it to mp3, etc. Basically they'll try to gut the entire mp3 standard.
Well the essential difference is that Americans generally believe (when they think about it at all, and don't take it for granted) that people have a natural right to free speech, which derives from how people fundementally are. (i.e. deriving from God, nature, universe, whatever) The First Amendment doesn't grant that right, as it's already present, but it is a guarantee that the government cannot infringe upon that right. By the (imho pretty damn good) standard of natural rights, Aussies have them too; everyone does. It's just a matter of getting the government to respect them, not to grant them at its lesiure.
But... just mark me down as one of the guys that leaves Earth, and comes back in a few hundred years (thanks to cryogenics) to the Planet of the Women;)
1) It's not stealing. It's copyright infringement. There is a difference. It is not insignificant. (and it is still a matter of some debate as to whether it's even copyright infringement)
2) Artists do not have the right to be compensated for their work.
3) But we do grant them the revokable right to be compensated for some particular copy of that work. (otherwise you'd have to give artists money for making stuff regardless of if they sold it! As I'm an artist, I'd appreciate it, but still be against it in general)
4) Artists only get to have a say in how their work is distributed when THEY sell it. Or if they agree to a contract with someone to whom they sell it as a prerequisite. EULAs pretty likely don't count, given the First Sale principle and the current mixed bag of judicial rulings on the legality of EULAs
Can't see how anyone thinks they can enforce digital rights management on the current hardware that is out there and that we all have.
They can't. But why should that stop them? Quick, does your car have a catalytic converter? $20 says it does. For some strange reason, hardware manufacturers always like to jump in bed on these sorts of projects. All they have to do is stop releasing hardware that's open. Eventually you will need to get and use the new stuff. Maybe b/c your old hardware dies. More likely b/c it can't run any of the new software (which requires the new hardware) or is just too slow, or you can't impress your friends.
Some people have ten and twenty and thirty year old computers hanging around. But if all new computers were somehow incapable of supporting Napster, it would die, no matter how popular, within, oh, 3-5 years. And as a business they would prefer to attract affluent users, who are precisely the people that buy new hardware every year or less, and who would most rapidly not be able to use it.
CDR is great. We can all fuck over the RIAA with CDR. Until they switch to DVDA. Or something else. Because we don't have DVD burners. And in fact, they will move heaven and earth to avoid letting us have DVD burners that are compatable with DVDA players, because they learned their lesson. Seen a DAT walkman lately? It was poised to be the next big thing you know. Do you think there will be HDTV VHS? Hell no. Or firewire commerical DVD players?
Sorry my lad, they don't care about enforcing their little schemes on what we have, because they know that eventually we won't have it anymore. Except for a handful of people who enjoy antiquated systems, and that's small enough to tolerate. Napster was here, now, and popular. An unacceptable threat. And b/c we've foolishly permitted businesses of all kinds - record companies AND electronic companies - to be so large, a boycott of the new stuff will never fly. If every person on/. refused to buy the new media and the new players and never cracked and never backed down they'd basically tell us to go to hell. We're too small. And they're too big.
I don't think that we should give up, but I do think that we'd all better start working on workarounds, b/c the noose is tightening. What happens when Windows embeds the ID of your Pentium V into every mp4 that you make and emails you a cease and desist letter the second you try to ul it somewhere? We're not all using Linux yet.
Let's have a little thought experiment. Imagine that the two of us live in an environment where there are absolutely no laws whatsoever.
Do you have freedom of speech? The answer is yes. In a state of nature you are not compelled to check with an external authority in order to speak. The First Amendment is a recognition of this right which is natural, and granted by God. It doesn't say that we have it, of course we have it. It says that Congress can't abdridge it.
Do you have a copyright that prevents me from exercising my freedom of speech to repeat whatever you just said? The answer is no. Again, in this state of nature, _I_ am not compelled to check with an external authority in order to speak _either_. You can't have it both ways.
(Additionally, you _do_ have the right not to speak at all. If I ask you a question you are not compelled by your inherent nature to answer. You can refuse. The Fifth Amendment is partially a recognition of this, although it's not really as strong.)
Speech is unownable. Blame God if you like, because that's how the universe actually works, but no one can own speech.
Now, when we get into the US, the situation is actually very similar, due to the clever writing of the Copyright Clause from which all copyright must derive in this country.
If you speak, you do not own your speech. *BUT* the government can create, out of whole cloth, a new, artificial (or 'positive') right. This is the right to make copies of that speech, under certain circumstances* _without legal liabilities_.
*The circumstances are basically: only if it promotes progress, only if you have that right (though you can choose to transfer it away), and only for a limited time before these rights vanish like sanity in front of Cthulhu)
Everyone can still copy your speech; this can't be prevented. And furthermore, in some situations it's highly desirable, and to deny it would in conflict with the requirements upon which copyright is granted. But what _you_ can do is sue them.
Backing up a little bit though, copyright is ONLY concerned with copying. (which includes public performance - also a form of dissemination) Use is right out the window. Authors do not get to control use. They never have, there's no natural basis, and hopefully they never will because it would be absolutely terrible.
The only control that an author has over the use of their work is to not give it to the person who they don't want to use it in the first place. You also can't prevent people from selling it to people you don't want to have it. That's generic property law.
(You could require anyone who bought a copy from you to agree to a contract in which they wouldn't resell it, or at least only with your permission, but the First Sale doctrine prohibits you from just printing a notice in a book sold in a public store. Selling to the general public undermines your position. This is good, because there is a recognized greater social goal to the creation and dissemination of works than there is to the control of the author)
Furthermore, why would it be fine for you to decide how I use your speech? Does that help society? (the objective of copyright: "to Promote Progress of Science and the Useful Arts," NOT to line the author's pockets; that's just one of an option of means to achieve progress)
There is simply no natural entitlement that authors have to copyrights, or that they have to use rights. If there were, it would exist independently of a government. It doesn't. Claiming that it does, or that the sky is blue, or that pi = 3 or that the Sun and the Planets orbit the Earth does not make it so.
There is such a fscking common misconception about this.
Copyrights _are_ good when properly used.
But they are NOT by any means whatsoever fundemental to human nature. They are wholly artificial, and from the dawn of man to the 17th century didn't exist. At all. And it took another hundred years for copyrights to be anything really interesting or useful or good. (they were originally a form of censorship, which to some extent they still are)
Sure, even babies have a concept of ownership. (which I object to - that strikes me as something learned, not inherent from the womb) Shall we all act like babies?
I'll grant that it is up to artists to decide what they want to do with their work. It is not, however, up to artists to decide what WE will do with their work once we have it.
Copyright. COPY-RIGHT. Not, a million times NOT USE-RIGHT. And not, a billion times not an inherent, natural right. We have copyrights to serve a purpose. When they don't, they're not valid. When they don't fit into the narrow mold we allot them from the graciousness of our hears, they're not valid.
Besides which, you're not all that up to date on your economic models. Napster users are rabidly capitalistic. They want stuff for the lowest price possible. Free is very low indeed. If they were communists they would pay musicians according to their needs. Not according to how good they were. Or even if they did anything at all. But the musicians would be expected to play as much as they could, according to their abilities.
Note by the way, that not only do we live in a system which is largely, but not entirely capitalistic, it would not be desirable to do so. While good things can come FROM any economic model, human beings have a certain set of ground rules (e.g. freedom of speech) which are not always compatable with those of the economy (e.g. pay to speak) and it is essential that we favor humanity over relatively trivial dollars and cents.
Am I defending Napster users? Not particularly. But I refuse to walk into the trap that businesses have set for us either; their goals are not coincident with the goals of me in specific or that are desirable for humanity at large.
Copyright is good. Generally. The copyright we've got now, and the rush to exploit it, lengthen it, retroactively apply it, and otherwise destroy its nemesis, the freedom of speech? It's not good. Not even a little.
So if we have "Digital Rights Management" (what's a digital right anyway? Didn't see it in my copy of the Constitution) how's he going to take care of certain problems?
Securing copyright to the author
So if an author who has distributed a work via DRM loses the original, and posesses the copyright, what prevents him from unlocking a DRMed copy, as is his Constitutional right?
If he can, why can't the rest of us pretend to be him and spoof the system?
If it's power left with an external authority, what if it doesn't comply with the author's wishes, won't that infringe on the copyright? Or are little guys who can't pay entitled to copyright but not entitled to this govt. mandated system?
Limited terms
Do the DRMs vanish magically when the term expires? How do they know? It can't get set at creation, b/c Congress might retroactively REDUCE the term. Does he propose that 99% of Internet traffic become "copyright queries" between content and a server?
Fair use
How can it tell the difference between me quoting in a fair use manner, and in an infringing manner? Will each piece of content include a Pocket Judge as seen on TV?
Fair use and Promoting progress
If I compile enough materials togethether that I effectively have an unprotected copy of the original, what protects it? The OS? Will it be illegal, under the aegis of "promoting the arts and sciences" to write one's own readers and OSes? Seems to be now, but this will take very general purpose software, like say, vi, which can open text files w/o checking the DRM, and make them illegal unless a giant corporation owns them.
Fair use and General changes
How is the DRM aware of changes that it needs to accomodate due to legal issues? If the courts decide it's unconstitutional, and that any work protected under it shall be stripped of copyright (not entirely unheard of, IIRC) do they all automatically comply? How? What if Congress or the courts add more forms of fair use? Do these things magically accomodate these changes in the law? Or are they stupid, inflexible computer programs? Which is the par for ALL programs... it's the human element that's important.
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding Jules Verne, yeah Miyazaki would be okay, I guess. (really he's into flying - check out Porco Rosso)
But look for Nadia and the Mysterious Seas. (aka Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water) Lovely little 39 part TV series set in the late 19th century and incredibly heavily based on Jules Verne. Mostly 20,000 Leagues and the Mysterious Island. Very good show.
Meh. I keep hearing that, but I can't see it. There are quite a few anime that are really good in terms of the animation quality and sound. (though _everyone_ cheats on the animation. When you know what to look for it gets a little sad. Plot is a different story. A well written anime is more important to me than a good looking one, though that would be the #2 concern.
But really, GitS was just okay. I think that the fact that it had CGI, and invisible cyborg chick warriors is what actually makes it popular. Not the quality of the plot, really. Personally, as far as near-future sf movies by Oshii Mamoru go, I'd put my vote solidly behind Patlabor 2. If you can believe it, it's even slower than GitS is; don't be put off by this however.
Now probably the best sf anime ever is Wings of Honneamise. Don't bother with the R1 DVD though, reports are that they really fucked up the transfer.
Man, do you read the stuff you write?
Copyright infringement is _not_ theft. Nor is "Intellectual Property" property, much less anything real at all. If you really want me to go into why, I will, but it's a fairly long post to write, and the bus is coming soon, so I'd prefer it if you just read through my earlier posts on that subject.
Following from that though, in order for something to be stolen, it has to be property. Copyrighted content is not property. (as discussed at length elsewhere) Confusingly for many, the copyright itself which applies to the content is property. Not the content; the content's copyright.
But it can't be stolen either. Neither natural nor positive rights (copyright is one of the latter, btw) can be stolen. The proper word is infringement. If the govt. censors you, do they steal your right to free speech? No, they infringe upon it. Surely you know that it's important to speak clearly.
This doesn't mean that copyright infringement is necessarily less serious than theft. (it could be in some cases, though not all) But bear in mind that copyright infringement may not be morally wrong. Copyrights are created out of thin air under the assumption that they're good. They may not be, you know. It has not been determined, and probably never will be.
Well, I'm sure you guys out on Neptune didn't have the Web in 1991, but it certainly existed.
Tim Berners-Lee created the web, and wrote the first browser/editor on his NeXT at CERN. (he had developed other hypertext systems though) Imaginatively, the program itself was called WorldWideWeb. This was in the period of 1989 and 1990. So the web certainly did exist ten years ago.
Additionally, WWW supported graphics, but they had to appear in different windows. Inline graphics came later. They, and support for several major platforms were the big deals about NCSA Mosaic.
Lastly, while I don't doubt that about banners, I suspect that non-free online services like Compuserve had similar advertising earlier.
Naw, I don't even drink but I know that it's a big deal for people that do. When I lived in MA the Blue Laws were always a PITA. Fortunately, we had NH not far away ;)
Meanwhile here in Seattle, although there's some mildly odd things regarding hard liquor, you can at least get beer and wine from the supermarket, and they're all open 24/7. I can see how that would be attractive for some people.
MS should not be punished for the foolish actions of their competitors.
But they should be punished for illegal abuses of an existing monopoly in order to acquire another one. (in fact, a third monopoly)
Monopoly power may be considered as a reward for very successful companies. But it's dangerous. Remember kids, we have capitalism because it produces highly efficent markets as a side effect. Ideally. In reality, it produces markets that become efficient, then become inefficient as firms monopolize it and kill off competition. If you want to be a monopoly around here, it means that you're subject to special attention and rules.
MS has broken those rules, time and again, and harmed the marketplace for its own benefit. That is why there are legal actions against them, and in fact, those actions are not intended to punish, but to restore competition to the marketplace so that we can continue getting benefits from it.
Worse yet, the Moon in Space: 1999 wasn't cracked in half. Which, as we all know happened to it in 1994 because of a runaway planet passing between the Earth and the Moon. :)
Re: argument, I had first wanted to point out that Capitalism, while better than the other systems we know about, isn't perfect, and is hopefully not the end all be all of economic models. And secondly, you hd said: "I don't understand how you can believe that a physical item can be owned but a non-physical item can't" in the context of copyright, which I went into at great length.
/. copyrighted content has never been shown to be ownable property nor been declared by law to be. When you become tyrant supreme of the world, feel free to change the law, though I'll still be waiting with baited breath as to what definition of property you'll use that can be extended to words. Please stop resorting to 'Because I said so.'
Remember my lad, it doesn't matter if you believe that people have the right to own it and that it's property, it matters if it can be reasonably shown to be ownable property and if your friendly neighboorhood government decides that it is. In the US, which is generally a good starting point for these discussions on
Re: property, I didn't say you had to be able to destroy it. I said you had to be able to dispose of it. Give it away, sell it, destroy it - they all count. As you note, different options may be needed for different items: land is tricky to destroy. It's pretty easy to give or sell it though. Books are well known on the other hand for being really easy to light afire.
Oh, and for streaming video, sorry, no. While the 'owner' may be able to make contracts with people regarding the creation of and lending of copies, he cannot prevent users from capturing those copies against his will. Maybe they have hacked the streaming protocol or client to save it to disk. (shouldn't be awful in Unix, which is good at doing that kind of thing I'd think) Maybe they have a videocamera pointed at the screen. And it still wouldn't matter, because as long as someone looks at the output, and remembers, that will be a copy that the 'owner' has no power over. Unless you plan to let copyright holders lobotomize people at will. (which doesn't exactly fulfill the goals of copyright does it?) The same thing goes for destroying the copies. The copies that they wanted made may be destroyed. But they couldn't do anything about other copies.
I do agree a bit with what you say about agreeing to terms. But not altogether. First off, if you didn't agree to the terms and used it anyway you're a copyright infringer, aka pirate. Not a thief. There's a slight difference. (you know - MSDOS wasn't quite DRDOS. Burglary isn't precisely identical with robbery. Affect isn't effect. Laypeople might not realize or care, but that doesn't eliminate the difference)
Secondly, if an author makes their work available under onerous terms (e.g. willfully give up fair use, first sale, etc.) do they deserve full copyright protection? Personally, I wouldn't think so. Rather like people who encrypt works but claim that they were published. More attention has to be paid, IMHO, to the long term effects of these practices, and the responsibility of authors if they wish to be afforded the luxury of a copyright.
Yeah, it's a little older than WW2.
It was part of a speech by James Philpot Curran of Ireland. In 1790.
The actual quote is: "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and punishment of his guilt."
It gets paraphrased effectively enough though.
No, there's a difference.
If words can be property, there's no purpose in copyright law. But they aren't property. They can't be property, unless you adopt a Newspeak approach to language in which words can be what you want them to mean. (heh - words are property, love is hate, war is peace)
Copyrights do serve a useful purpose, when used as instructed. We haven't been for the last few decades though, and it shows. If there were significant reform in the realm of copyright - a drastic shortening of terms, laws emphasizing the utilitarian model, stricter requirements for registration and extensions of works, better archiving - it could be an extraordinarily good thing. However the concept that words can be property is offensive and quite wrong. It's possible to be for a good copyright system and against IP in about the same way that it's possible to be for moderate use of alcohol but against drunkeness.
Unfortunately our government is listening more towards moneyed interests and foreign powers than it is to us, the jerkoffs.
First, I like capitalism, but it has problems. The reason that I like capitalism is that when it's working right, and people are acting competitively, there's a lot of efficiency that results.
/. by myself and others, information cannot be owned. Non-physical items _may_ depending on their nature be owned, and in fact copyright is one of those, but that's not what the previous poster was talking about.
The problem is that none of the capitalists involved are interested in efficiency or competition. They're motivated by a desire to destroy their competition and get maximum profits.
Consumers in a capitalist system want producers to have minimum profits and pass the savings back. But businesses keep trying to become monopolies, and when they do they pretty much inevitably try to exert that monopoly power to get more wealth, ruining the capitalist landscape.
If capitalism had a built in governor that could prevent the system from degrading like that, it'd be totally sweet. It's not though.
Is there a better system? Perhaps. Has it been discovered? Sadly, no. Find me something better than capitalism and I'd be all for it. I'm not stupid; I want things that are good, regardless of what the name is. If Communism or Socialism were better I'd be in favor of them. As it stands, we're doing best with Capitalism, but it's certainly not good enough to make me satisfied.
As for property, you're an idiot. Sorry, don't mean to be flame-happy, but it's true. As has been explained countless times on
Unless you've got a better one, the working definition of property is that is is something that can meet three criteria. 1) that the owner be able to use and enjoy the thing 2) that they can let others use it at their sufferance 3) that they can dispose of it.
Information meets the first one just fine, we all know that.
But as for the second, when you let other people read your novel, you can't have it back. The manuscript, yes. The words, no. I can recite whole portions of books, movies, songs, etc. from memory. It's not unusual. But if I were to place them in a commercial venue, it would be infringement. Clearly my memories are sufficient to count, yet, my memories are clearly not ownable. Nor would it be desirable for them to be. People with photographic memories can and do read books once and never need to refer to a printed copy again. Yet if they read a book, it is not considered copyright infringement unless they copied it out again. Still, the information from the book was copied into their noggins and can't fulfill requirement #2.
The third is just the same. The author holds the original copy of a work in their head, generally. Then they copy it out to some medium. Copies in a medium may be protected, but not the intangible portion of the work - the exact words, the look of a painting, shape of a sculpture, etc.
Copyrights are entirely different. While no one can own the words in a book, they can own an artificial and limited right granted under certain conditions, for certain purposes by the government. This right permits them exclusively to make copies of the work without legal liability, for as long as the government permits it to exist. (which is regulated) The right is property - it can be used, extended or withdrawn to others, or given away or destroyed. But then again, it's not information.
Sure, but at that time businesses were individuals. The (stupid imho) concept of corporations getting effectively permanent charters and civil liberties was totally alien. That didn't come along until the late 19th century, and hasn't looked like much of a good idea since, either.
No. Our cultural imperialism has more to do with commercial interests. If Baywatch is popular in the states, someone will try to see if it's popular anywhere else. Same with jeans, McDonalds, etc. That the US has been really successful for some time helps too. We couldn't be cultural imperialists if the foreigners we sold things to didn't want the stuff.
;)
Remember "Life of Brian"? The rebellious Jews are griping about all the terrible things that the Romans are doing, while trying hard to ignore some of the more useful things. (e.g. aquaducts, good roads) We don't really take over countries like that anymore (and I personally get pissed off whenever we prop up or overthrow a government - we shouldn't be doing that) but we do sell things to them. Popular things, as it happens.
Now, our political imperialism (not in the sense of taking over other countries but in spreading our ideas about governance) is what comes from the concept of natural rights.
And it seems to be a pretty good meme from where I'm sitting. Can you tell me why, absent any government Australians innately have less of a right to free speech than Americans do? Well they don't. Set an Australian down in the middle of nowhere, and he can say what he wants. His mouth doesn't stick shut because there's no government to tell him he can speak. (sadly, it still doesn't mean that anyone will be able to understand what the hell he's talking about
That right is infringed upon as a matter of course in most places. While always under assault in the US even, we prohibit our government from infringing on it here. We really explicitly prohibit that. As much as a really prohibited thing.
If Australians refused to put up with that kind of crap, and installed a government that wasn't permitted to censor them it would still not be the creation of a right of free speech, but a limitation on government from screwing with an independently existing right of free speech. They're entitled to do so, certainly. And while we in the states shouldn't force them to, I can't say that we should all pleased that they don't either.
(one of the traditional problems American foreign relations have faced is our desire to spread our memes and encourage people to establish democratic governments, while still adhering to our high opinion of soverignty)
Pfft. Capitalism is great, but the players in it suffer from feedback.
Remember, the goal of society permitting a capitalistic system (there may indeed be a better, though undiscovered one - never know) is to encourage efficiency through competition.
It's a lot like free speech; rather than declare any one idea right, it must compete against other ideas, expecting that good ones will bubble up. (of course a student of memes will expect slightly different results) Even if MS were the best software house ever, it would be foolish to trust that it is the best software house possible, or that this was caused by it's monopoly.
The goal of the businesses operating in a capitalistic system however is to make a profit. Generally at the expense of the competition. Eliminating them entirely is in fact ideal. Not for the system of course, but for the self-interested person in the system.
Without systems in place to encourage competition, and supress monopolies, they will triumph.
What happens when a group of companies forms a cartel? Well, they can pool their resources. And they can employ natural or create artificial barriers to entry to deny the market to competitiors. Tactical lawsuits certainly would seem to be a good method if nothing else works. Make your competitors burn through all their money and establish legal precedents to keep the rest in check.
Not to mention that even if the small competitors (which are tolerated at best like tickbirds and never normally allowed to grow) do manage somehow to be a real threat to the monopoly, it has no interest in helping you. Better if it too is part of the monopoly, or destroys the first only to install one of its own.
I agree that the government has been culpable, but your precious businesses are acting as expected. Using ANY means necessary to succeed. If that means buying off the government, they'd be happy to do so, and are known for it historically anyway.
Extracting money from users of a program by restricting their use of it is destructive because the restrictions reduce the amount and the ways that the program can be used. This reduces the amount of wealth that humanity derives from the program. When there is a deliberate choice to restrict, the harmful consequences are deliberate destruction.
The reason a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness. This is Kantian ethics; or, the Golden Rule. Since I do not like the consequences that result if everyone hoards information, I am required to consider it wrong for one to do so. Specifically, the desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.
There was also this:
People who have studied the issue of intellectual property rights carefully (such as lawyers) say that there is no intrinsic right to intellectual property. The kinds of supposed intellectual property rights that the government recognizes were created by specific acts of legislation for specific purposes.
But that's exactly what I was talking about. A natural copyright is the same as an intrinsic copyright. And both birds are 100% imaginary. No, the FSF does not have a natural right to control distribution with the exception of their right to choose not to distribute the work in the first place (that is if they keep the toothpaste in the tube, that's fine, but they can't put it back once it's come out)
This is however an entirely different kettle of fish than an artificial (or positive) right to control distribution, which we certainly do labor under. But we have that artificial right for the purpose of promoting progress in the arts and sciences. We do not have it for promoting Bill Gates' bank account, though if that's the best way to accomplish the goal of promotion, fine.
What classical meaning? Last time I checked the Copyright Clause of the Constitution was still the same as it always was. And given as how it derives from good thinking about the nature of speech, utilitarian systems are about the only justifiable form of copyright.
But I think that Stallman believes that the goals of copyright (hint: not to make money for copyright holders) would be better served if there weren't any on software. I don't know if he's against it in general. I doubt it though.
He didn't say it was a right. He said it was a cause. Americans for Widgets have a cause. Americans Against Widgets also have a cause. Causes aren't the same as rights.
Additionally, what do you mean by 'morally owned'? If you mean, authors of software should be able to claim credit for their authorship, I don't have any immediate problems with it. (it may require closer study though) If you mean, authors have a natural right to control the distribution and use of their works, copies and derivatives therof, you're wrong. There's no such thing, the law (in the states anyhow) has never claimed such a thing, and it really doesn't matter what people thing. A large number of people are opposed to free speech too, depending on how you pose the question, and it doesn't mean that they're right either.
I can tell you though that copyright is entirely different than freedom of speech. MS does have as much right to release closed source software as newspapers do copyrighting their news. At least, as long as Congress considers either to be copyrightable, which they don't actually have to. (software wasn't for some time)
And there's nothing that prohibits MS from refusing to release their source.
But on the other hand, what about this? What if Congress decides that in order to get copyright at all, MS must place their source in the Library of Congress. If they do, the source is copyrighted, but publicly readable. (like any published material) And only if the source is up does MS get to hold a copyright on the binaries. There's nothing that prevents Congress from doing this. And there's nothing that prevents MS from choosing not to accept what the government's big print giveth, even though that means giving up what the small print taketh away. There is after all, no natural entitlement to copyright.
Also, note that the GPL is kind of like environmentalism for a software 'commons.' If they gave without strings (e.g. BSD, public domain) there's nothing that prevents other people from taking and not continuing to sustain the source from which it comes. The constant lengthening of copyright terms are an excellent example. Disney takes fairy tale stories and makes movies. But they don't let people take the movies and make other movies, which is essential to the whole issue of copyright. The point is to have the most movies, not to protect Disney's pocketbook.
The GPL is a method of letting people take but requiring that they add to what can be taken. Its a choice; no one has to take at all. And it would be moot if there were no copyright at all. I don't think that it's accurate to call it proprietary though. It's not in the same spirit as that at all.
The two CDs are a better deal.
Napster is going to rig the whole system up so that you can do virtually nothing with the music you get. Can't move it to a different machine, can't burn it to mp3, etc. Basically they'll try to gut the entire mp3 standard.
With CDs at least you can do stuff.
I'll be damned if I use Napster 2.
Well the essential difference is that Americans generally believe (when they think about it at all, and don't take it for granted) that people have a natural right to free speech, which derives from how people fundementally are. (i.e. deriving from God, nature, universe, whatever)
The First Amendment doesn't grant that right, as it's already present, but it is a guarantee that the government cannot infringe upon that right.
By the (imho pretty damn good) standard of natural rights, Aussies have them too; everyone does. It's just a matter of getting the government to respect them, not to grant them at its lesiure.
Seems like a sensible plan to me.
;)
But... just mark me down as one of the guys that leaves Earth, and comes back in a few hundred years (thanks to cryogenics) to the Planet of the Women
("Get your hands off me, you damn, dirty woman!")
1) It's not stealing. It's copyright infringement. There is a difference. It is not insignificant. (and it is still a matter of some debate as to whether it's even copyright infringement)
2) Artists do not have the right to be compensated for their work.
3) But we do grant them the revokable right to be compensated for some particular copy of that work. (otherwise you'd have to give artists money for making stuff regardless of if they sold it! As I'm an artist, I'd appreciate it, but still be against it in general)
4) Artists only get to have a say in how their work is distributed when THEY sell it. Or if they agree to a contract with someone to whom they sell it as a prerequisite. EULAs pretty likely don't count, given the First Sale principle and the current mixed bag of judicial rulings on the legality of EULAs
They can't. But why should that stop them? Quick, does your car have a catalytic converter? $20 says it does. For some strange reason, hardware manufacturers always like to jump in bed on these sorts of projects. All they have to do is stop releasing hardware that's open. Eventually you will need to get and use the new stuff. Maybe b/c your old hardware dies. More likely b/c it can't run any of the new software (which requires the new hardware) or is just too slow, or you can't impress your friends.
Some people have ten and twenty and thirty year old computers hanging around. But if all new computers were somehow incapable of supporting Napster, it would die, no matter how popular, within, oh, 3-5 years. And as a business they would prefer to attract affluent users, who are precisely the people that buy new hardware every year or less, and who would most rapidly not be able to use it.
CDR is great. We can all fuck over the RIAA with CDR. Until they switch to DVDA. Or something else. Because we don't have DVD burners. And in fact, they will move heaven and earth to avoid letting us have DVD burners that are compatable with DVDA players, because they learned their lesson. Seen a DAT walkman lately? It was poised to be the next big thing you know. Do you think there will be HDTV VHS? Hell no. Or firewire commerical DVD players?
Sorry my lad, they don't care about enforcing their little schemes on what we have, because they know that eventually we won't have it anymore. Except for a handful of people who enjoy antiquated systems, and that's small enough to tolerate. Napster was here, now, and popular. An unacceptable threat. And b/c we've foolishly permitted businesses of all kinds - record companies AND electronic companies - to be so large, a boycott of the new stuff will never fly. If every person on /. refused to buy the new media and the new players and never cracked and never backed down they'd basically tell us to go to hell. We're too small. And they're too big.
I don't think that we should give up, but I do think that we'd all better start working on workarounds, b/c the noose is tightening. What happens when Windows embeds the ID of your Pentium V into every mp4 that you make and emails you a cease and desist letter the second you try to ul it somewhere? We're not all using Linux yet.
Nope. You get to decide if you speak at all.
Let's have a little thought experiment. Imagine that the two of us live in an environment where there are absolutely no laws whatsoever.
Do you have freedom of speech? The answer is yes. In a state of nature you are not compelled to check with an external authority in order to speak. The First Amendment is a recognition of this right which is natural, and granted by God. It doesn't say that we have it, of course we have it. It says that Congress can't abdridge it.
Do you have a copyright that prevents me from exercising my freedom of speech to repeat whatever you just said? The answer is no. Again, in this state of nature, _I_ am not compelled to check with an external authority in order to speak _either_. You can't have it both ways.
(Additionally, you _do_ have the right not to speak at all. If I ask you a question you are not compelled by your inherent nature to answer. You can refuse. The Fifth Amendment is partially a recognition of this, although it's not really as strong.)
Speech is unownable. Blame God if you like, because that's how the universe actually works, but no one can own speech.
Now, when we get into the US, the situation is actually very similar, due to the clever writing of the Copyright Clause from which all copyright must derive in this country.
If you speak, you do not own your speech. *BUT* the government can create, out of whole cloth, a new, artificial (or 'positive') right. This is the right to make copies of that speech, under certain circumstances* _without legal liabilities_.
*The circumstances are basically: only if it promotes progress, only if you have that right (though you can choose to transfer it away), and only for a limited time before these rights vanish like sanity in front of Cthulhu)
Everyone can still copy your speech; this can't be prevented. And furthermore, in some situations it's highly desirable, and to deny it would in conflict with the requirements upon which copyright is granted. But what _you_ can do is sue them.
Backing up a little bit though, copyright is ONLY concerned with copying. (which includes public performance - also a form of dissemination) Use is right out the window. Authors do not get to control use. They never have, there's no natural basis, and hopefully they never will because it would be absolutely terrible.
The only control that an author has over the use of their work is to not give it to the person who they don't want to use it in the first place. You also can't prevent people from selling it to people you don't want to have it. That's generic property law.
(You could require anyone who bought a copy from you to agree to a contract in which they wouldn't resell it, or at least only with your permission, but the First Sale doctrine prohibits you from just printing a notice in a book sold in a public store. Selling to the general public undermines your position. This is good, because there is a recognized greater social goal to the creation and dissemination of works than there is to the control of the author)
Furthermore, why would it be fine for you to decide how I use your speech? Does that help society? (the objective of copyright: "to Promote Progress of Science and the Useful Arts," NOT to line the author's pockets; that's just one of an option of means to achieve progress)
There is simply no natural entitlement that authors have to copyrights, or that they have to use rights. If there were, it would exist independently of a government. It doesn't. Claiming that it does, or that the sky is blue, or that pi = 3 or that the Sun and the Planets orbit the Earth does not make it so.
There is such a fscking common misconception about this.
Copyrights _are_ good when properly used.
But they are NOT by any means whatsoever fundemental to human nature. They are wholly artificial, and from the dawn of man to the 17th century didn't exist. At all. And it took another hundred years for copyrights to be anything really interesting or useful or good. (they were originally a form of censorship, which to some extent they still are)
Sure, even babies have a concept of ownership. (which I object to - that strikes me as something learned, not inherent from the womb) Shall we all act like babies?
I'll grant that it is up to artists to decide what they want to do with their work. It is not, however, up to artists to decide what WE will do with their work once we have it.
Copyright. COPY-RIGHT. Not, a million times NOT USE-RIGHT. And not, a billion times not an inherent, natural right. We have copyrights to serve a purpose. When they don't, they're not valid. When they don't fit into the narrow mold we allot them from the graciousness of our hears, they're not valid.
Besides which, you're not all that up to date on your economic models. Napster users are rabidly capitalistic. They want stuff for the lowest price possible. Free is very low indeed. If they were communists they would pay musicians according to their needs. Not according to how good they were. Or even if they did anything at all. But the musicians would be expected to play as much as they could, according to their abilities.
Note by the way, that not only do we live in a system which is largely, but not entirely capitalistic, it would not be desirable to do so. While good things can come FROM any economic model, human beings have a certain set of ground rules (e.g. freedom of speech) which are not always compatable with those of the economy (e.g. pay to speak) and it is essential that we favor humanity over relatively trivial dollars and cents.
Am I defending Napster users? Not particularly. But I refuse to walk into the trap that businesses have set for us either; their goals are not coincident with the goals of me in specific or that are desirable for humanity at large.
Copyright is good. Generally. The copyright we've got now, and the rush to exploit it, lengthen it, retroactively apply it, and otherwise destroy its nemesis, the freedom of speech? It's not good. Not even a little.
So if an author who has distributed a work via DRM loses the original, and posesses the copyright, what prevents him from unlocking a DRMed copy, as is his Constitutional right?
If he can, why can't the rest of us pretend to be him and spoof the system?
If it's power left with an external authority, what if it doesn't comply with the author's wishes, won't that infringe on the copyright? Or are little guys who can't pay entitled to copyright but not entitled to this govt. mandated system?
Do the DRMs vanish magically when the term expires? How do they know? It can't get set at creation, b/c Congress might retroactively REDUCE the term. Does he propose that 99% of Internet traffic become "copyright queries" between content and a server?
How can it tell the difference between me quoting in a fair use manner, and in an infringing manner? Will each piece of content include a Pocket Judge as seen on TV?
If I compile enough materials togethether that I effectively have an unprotected copy of the original, what protects it? The OS? Will it be illegal, under the aegis of "promoting the arts and sciences" to write one's own readers and OSes? Seems to be now, but this will take very general purpose software, like say, vi, which can open text files w/o checking the DRM, and make them illegal unless a giant corporation owns them.
How is the DRM aware of changes that it needs to accomodate due to legal issues? If the courts decide it's unconstitutional, and that any work protected under it shall be stripped of copyright (not entirely unheard of, IIRC) do they all automatically comply? How? What if Congress or the courts add more forms of fair use? Do these things magically accomodate these changes in the law? Or are they stupid, inflexible computer programs? Which is the par for ALL programs... it's the human element that's important.