in high school, i was friends with an upperclassman who was at the time, the editor in chief of the primary underground school paper. (This was Leon High School, Tallahassee, FL in 1992-93)
i joined the staff, and to ostensibly conceal our identities from the administration, even though we openly sold the two-sheets in the morning every month or so for a quarter a pop, even to teachers, we all had aliases.
i was for some reason given 'Captain Kangarooski' and just started using it as a handle on the net. it makes looking for me on google pretty easy, i can tell you.
no one's ever called me that irl though - it's pretty strictly an online thing. and no i don't know if it's supposed to be a naval captain or an army captain. that's one of the great mysteries of our age.
No, a single multipurpose machine that could interpret what you're doing and respond appropriately.
I still think of OpenDoc - you sit down at the computer and hit 'New Document.' A blank document opens up, and you can pick and choose third party tool 'modules' to create and format data in the mixed document.
Commonly used tools can be accessed via floating palettes. Unusual ones via menus, or causing palettes to appear that you don't normally keep around.
See Raskin's 'Canon Cat' systems from the 80's for the instant-on that is, I admit, very nice.
And certain assumptions could probably be made when you activate the computer by interacting with it; if the user starts drawing with a pen, goto an art program; if he types, go to an editor; if the typing is a url, a web browser.
But let the user override this with his own preferences if he wants, and if in doubt, goto a generic default screen with file management stuff and the ability to create/view documents.
Re:It's illegal to distribute circumvention tools.
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DVD Case Follow-Up
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· Score: 1
Actually, while it is legal to circumvent a work for which you have permission, it is illegal to "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" that allows you to do so.
And so what the large print giveth, the small print taketh away. Except that it's impossible to take away fair use rights, which derive from the Constitution, and I think it's pretty obvious that access to works is a necesary prerequisite to use, covering it too.
Correct, which is one of the reasons for the shorter term, the reason for the required archival (of a high quality copy that can be used to create a very very large quantity of copies) at the LoC, and the continued persistance of no authorial rights other than copyright and the right of first sale.
Imagine you're a musician. You're poor, so you use consumer grade equipment (reasonable now that we have good desktop computers, midi, sound cards and cd burners. Nice as a studio rig is, you can get by)
The *same* mechanisms that 'protect' music from being copied if you don't own the copyright can *also* prevent you from making copies of music for which you *do* own the copyright. And yet breaking those 'protections' is illegal, because you might violate someone else's copyright in order to fully exercise your own.
Plus, the gross of a work is unfair. If a company spends $100 million dollars to make a film, and the film grosses $101 million dollars, then the film has generated $1 million in profits, yet by your method the company would have to pay out an enormous amount to continue to secure the copyright. On the other hand, a company that makes a cheapie film for $50,000 then makes a million dollars on the film, would have to pay out a much smaller amount of money to continue the copyright, even though they are making more money on the film then the big company. The big company is punished for taking a big risk on a "titanic" scale film and succeeding.
Well, what I'm concerned about is that in Hollywood, for a long time, movies have never made any money. This is why it's very foolish to agree to a contract in which you'll receive part of the net. Well, there won't be a net - legions of snake warriors and skilled accountants will manage to screw you. On the other hand, the gross is often quite large, and the people who both know enough and have enough power to acquire it, take their percentages there.
I agree, it would really be better to do the net, but it's not effective.
Under your scheme, Joe Blow could continue to extend his copyright at essentially zero cost. This is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. I want copyrights to only be extended when they serve a purpose.
I'll conceed that this is not an effective deterrant towards copyright squatting. (it's not really that either: squatters improve fallow land, which is why they have rights) But you must agree that a gigantic corporation could pay to extend their copyright on virtually anything that they did copyright for as long as possible as a matter of course if the fees were also affordable by mere mortals.
Thus perhaps as I mentioned a floor on the price that makes Joe Blow think about it, but which scales up so that Disney or Sony also has to think about it.
Having his copyrights expire during his lifetime would be a disaster. The stress of watching it happen might well kill him. His sole source of income -- destroyed. Who would want to be a writer if they knew that would happen to them? For certain people, copyrights serve as a pension of sorts.
Naw. I can't agree there. Remember - the purpose of copyright isn't to provide a pension for authors, it's to encourage authors to write more. From history we have the original Copyright Act of 1798? had 14 year terms from fixation. And a long pre-copyright tradition of patronage where patrons would typically comission a work, or the works created for a period of time, but would not keep paying after the work was complete and delivered.
Additionally, it is dangerous to rely on royalties of a copyrighted work as a pension. You only get them for as long as the work is popular. If English teachers everywhere decide that "Catcher in the Rye" is full of beans, Salinger won't get nearly as much money. Not necessarily dangerous for the author who's young and productive, but if you're old, and that's your only income you've got trouble a brewin'. Knowing ahead of time that the royalties WILL stop coming, even if every man, woman, child and dog reads the thing will probably avoid the sort of shock you describe better.
So if Gershwin wants to provide for his family he should do what everyone else does: take the money that he gets and invest it. We reward artists for being productive and creating great works of art. We do not reward them for not doing anything else; that's just the situation I'd want to avoid. Stephen King is going to be prolific no matter what. And while I'm sorry, Ralph Ellison should've gotten off of his ass or found a different job. He effectively wrote one book, and that's all I'm prepared to reward him for. But what I would have paid to read his (completed) NEXT book. Or the one after that. Or however many he would have had to write to keep food on the table.
Spouses and children of authors aren't special either. If they too have some great artistic gift, let _them_ exercise it. But if their family can't hold onto money, that's hardly a good reason to infringe on everyone's freedom of speech.
While it might be interesting to have a fixed term interruptable by death, I will at least grant that already progressing terms or extensions can be allowed to run their course. Partially as a bone to the pension argument, which I still disagree with, but also because it would be a royal pain in the ass for the USCO to keep track of who dies. An error would be disasterous: once something is in the public domain, it should not be taken out.
1) Yeah, that's fine. If a work has been registered a proper and correct copyright notice would be required. This could come into play in that lawsuits are only possible if the copyright had been indicated - otherwise they're rather baiting people into respecting works that may not deserve it.
Up until '76 or so IIRC that was required, so I can see it coming back.
2 and 3) I disagree. Something like Mickey Mouse has netted Disney *BILLIONS* of dollars over the years. They would, I am quite certain pony up for everything to be registered as long as possible. The prices are absolute which lets the rich copyright holders keep them for as long as possible, and the poor ones lose them right away.
This is why I had a percentage of the gross. If it's worth it to Disney, they'll figure out how much Mickey made them, and cough up a hefty amount.
While Joe Blow, author of "Meet Joe Blow: An Autobiography" only has to put in a few bucks... if he even cares.
Possibly a minimum could be put in - no less than $1000 to renew....
But I strongly feel that copyrighted works should enter the public domain no matter what during the lifetime of the author and the audience. First because there is no amount of money that can encourage an author to write more works (the actual purpose of copyrights) after he's dead. And if he has a bestseller, which implies that he could make a significant contribution to the arts, he shouldn't be able to retire on it. Let him be prolific!
And as for the audience, they too can make contributions to society. Derivative works are close to my heart, and I don't see a problem with some of them (e.g. fan fiction - often better than the original)
4) I agree. Additionally, since ALL copyrighted works would have to be preserved in the best possible form in the LoC (none of this situation where a large number of famed silent films have been permanently lost) and made publicly available there's still a hope left even if the work is more or less abandoned.
5) Agreed - see my note on point 1. Also make it an abuse of copyright (resulting in the loss of the copyright of the offending work) if the date is changed without getting a legal extension. On a composite or extended work there could simply be multiple dates, eg. Copyright 1995, 2005
6) Quite so.
Note also that some trademarks must also necessarily expire when the earliest work incorporating it does.
It is not enough that Mickey Mouse films be available to everyone as they expire. New, independent films also have to be produced, and unless the trademark on the character runs out at the same time as the first work he's in enters the public domain there's no real gain.
Anyone can write a story about Odysseus, or King Arthur, or Paul Bunyan. Imagine the blow to the arts if they were trademarked. Characters like Superman or Bugs Bunny aren't special, and should also be able to be used by anyone when the time comes.
IIRC this is already a principle of copyright and trademark law, and is the reason Disney's so frickin' evil in that regard.
1) Terms of 10 years, retroactively applied
2) In order to gain the ability to levy civil or criminal charges against an infringer, works must be registered with the USCO.
3) Registration requires:
a) Archiving a useful copy of a work (high quality masters of video, source code to software, ordinary copies of books) in the Library of Congress
b) A fee to handle processing by the USCO and storage fees at the LoC.
4) One extension may be granted for a maximum 20 year term. If this is done, a significant amount of money (1/100th of the gross of the work over the previous ten years?) is charged for this. The money goes towards the creation of public domain works: software, art, literature, etc. which are also archived in the LoC.
5) Fair use rights are protected, as are any necessary steps needed to exercise these rights (law doesn't matter here - this derives from the Constitution)
It's illegal to make, sell or modify VCRs that aren't susceptable to the automatic gain control hack (which is what Macrovision is) unless IIRC it's grandfathered in.
Do you really think that there's any incentive for VCR manufacturers who don't also own movie studios (thus not Sony) to have Macrovision? Hell no. In an unrestricted market that stuff sells like hotcakes. Check out the relative popularity of standard non-region 1 DVD players vs. modded players in foreign countries.
Heh. MS is not as concerned about their OS monopoly as you might think. While they'd be upset to lose it, they have bigger fish to fry. You're generally correct in your assessment though.
Here's my theory:.net may have indeed started as a project intended to kill off Java. But that has not been the point of the thing for quite a while now.
Let's set the wayback machine for 1982. Microsoft has been around for about seven years. They got their start writing BASIC for a lot of different platforms, and Bill's strong abilities to hash out deals favorable to MS served him well. (e.g. having Apple by the balls in the 80's b/c he controlled Applesoft BASIC) One of the few deals at this time that I'm aware of that he screwed up on was IMSAI, but that's okay. They augered in pretty quickly.
Anyway though, a couple of years ago (c. 1980) MS gets a secret deal with IBM. Thanks to Mary Gates being pals at United Way with an IBM bigwig - I forget who. They're going to write an OS (which they have to quickly buy from outside; they've never done this) for a new computer. It all works out well, but IBM makes one critical error that isn't immediately important.
IBM failed to buy MS; buy DOS; or get exclusive, perpetual rights to DOS. If they had, things would've been a lot different.
While Bill may indeed have been smart enough at the time to forsee what was coming, I think that he was just covering his ass. Despite the infamous 'Hobbyist Letter' Bill has little or no sense of ethics IMHO. I've heard that the BASIC for the Altair was developed on educational hardware, that he ported ADVENT w/o permission, etc. so my confidence in Bill is low. OTOH he has the Devil's own luck, and a mean attitude.
Anyway, while it's been easy to copy out the IBM BIOS and stick it in an otherwise all-legal board b/c of their decision to go with all third party off the shelf hardware, that BIOS is illegal. Compaq, however, manages to come out with an RE'd BIOS that's quite legal.
And now Bill is on the road to riches. Because: An OS that is abstracted from the hardware makes hardware makers irrelevant.
More or less. Enough for Joe Blow consumer who has a Dell at work, a Compaq at home, a Gateway laptop and an eMachines for the kiddies. Nowadays you can run Windows on a non-Intel chip, or even a chip emulating an Intel chip.
So on our return trip to the present, there's one quote from the near past that should stand out. "The browser is the operating system." Boy oh boy did MS take this to heart. In fact, that's the key to.net right there.
DOS (and Windows) succeeded because: An OS that is abstracted from the hardware makes hardware makers irrelevant.
Thus Netscape was threatening to succeed because: Software that is abstracted from the OS makes OS makers irrelevant.
Not just anything will do. The software that could make that come true would have to be very compelling stuff all on it's lonesome. Furthermore, it would have to be cross-platform to protect itself from threats and gain the kind of enormous mindshare necessary for this strategy to work.
Like a web browser - which is really a very pretty but not awfully smart terminal application.
If Netscape ran on the Mac, Windows and Unix, and people _did_ stuff on those browsers, well, that could be done on any OS. And then Windows would be no more special than the Mac. Or frickin' Irix. In fact, people might start using those because, hey, what's the damn difference?
MS did that to IBM in the early 80's. IBM is a dinosaur, sure. I'd say that they're probably a Tyrannasaurus Rex. Big and mean with little tiny forearms:) It took both the cold externally induced winter of the long-running Justice Department investegation against them and the cunning little MS mammals to bring them down.
MS doesn't want to think of themselves as a dinosaur. They killed a dinosaur. But if they were, I'd say that they're more of a Raptor. Big enough without losing mobility, even meaner, and perfectly happy to take down anything that moves. Even 'harmless' little mammals. 'Cos you never know.
And to them Netscape was looking like a decidedly threatening mammal.
Bringing out IE (actually arranging a licensing agreement with Spyglass to rebrand and fork Spyglass Mosiac, while simultaneously screwing Spyglass over royally for kicks) was a reflex action. IE wasn't even useful until v3 or so, whereas NS was the bomb since v.9, before it was even called Netscape, and before the stupid throbbing N.
But MS had at that time two strong monopolies. First, their OS monopoly, which had pretty much crystalized by the time of Win95's introduction. Second, their office suite monopoly, which was a little fresher. MS not only managed to kill off the consumer-level 'works' market by making Office (gotta love those generic names - they seriously increase mindshare) readily available, but they also killed off their business application competitors, notably WordPerfect.
(In a curious reversal, they also may have used the office monopoly to ensure the OS monopoly - MS Office 4.2 for the Mac was truly awful. And it took years for Mac Office 98 to rectify it, by which time the damage was done)
But, but, but, they committed a terrible sin against themselves by pursuing the application monopoly. When users are very firmly locked into using Office, and they are thanks to the dirty tricks we all know and love, they no longer care a hell of a lot about the OS. If a Flintstones-type computer with a little bird inside can open usable Word documents that's good enough.
MS made Windows a near-commodity for a huge number of business users. Game consoles were of course competiting with MS (though they didn't know it at the time) for the dollars of home users who might get a console instead for playing games. And until Netscape came along the last compelling thing MS had was MSN. Which prior to Hotmail was an AOL wanna be.
So's anyway, MS goes after threatening NS with a vengence. They bring out IE. They bring out Outlook (which goes after Eudora as well as NS's mail and news capabilities) but then, probably while mulling over the Final Java Solution the.net strategy hits them.
If the OS monopoly has been seriously compromised by both the web and Office, it's time to set up a system that both brings it back into the fold while simultaneously making it unecessary.
.net is, as far as I've been able to tell, a way of preserving the more important office suite monopoly in conjunction with the browser monopoly, by making Office a web site.
They've been doing things for a while that lead up to this. Based on some interviews with senior Microsofties I've been putting the pieces together for a couple of years.
Office is well known for forcing upgrades in order to read new files. It's a bit like a virus that's hostile to non-carriers and benign to them that's got it. One or two 'infections' in a major corporation and all admins can do is delay the inevitable upgrade.
MS is a big proponent of UCITA, and has been more and more active lately in subscription oriented software (e.g. $100/year to use Office, even if you didn't upgrade - though it would likely upgrade for you even if you didn't want to)
And now MS has a big XML 'web application' push.
Put 'em together and you get something like MSOffice.net: $100/year for businesses, constant (though buggy, natch) software upgrades, files stored on centrally located MS servers and intranets (hate to be their competitors), files that can't be read by previous versions, only works on IE and Windows (as long as it's MS Windows) and gives Bill a great deal of power.
Like the PS/2 it wouldn't work if it all happened at once... not easily, but it'll definately come to pass if done incrementally.
I figure that the penultimate step will be a well-entrenched version of Word that has auto-update capabilities. If MS releases one final, very buggy update, it'll be difficult for people to stick with it. Those guys at DirecTV had about the same idea.
Java could have made Windows irrelevant, and had really compelling cross-platform office apps appeared, even made a dent in Office. But it didn't, and half of that fight, the cross-platform part, was well and truly over before it began. Sun cared b/c Sun has their own OS. Most people never cared b/c they already had Windows.
We'll see where this goes. It may be several years yet before MS puts the last piece into place. I hadn't expected the court case to move so fast, and neither did they, so that may be having an impact on their plans.
Anyone care to refute, or comment? It's a fun theory and I enjoy it, but it could just be the CIA satellites talking for all I know.
No, don't be silly. The editor is a derivative work of the software used to create it, the running binary is derivative of the chipset and CPU... I think that everything gets sent back to Von Neumann, or Turing, or someone.:)
If copyright were abolished tomorrow there would, it's expected, be no NEED for the GPL.
Firstly, because no one would have much of a reason to keep their source code secret - you could copy the binaries freely, so there's little to be gained by concealing source. And by releasing the source, third parties could modify it, or produce good add-ons, or port it, etc. increasing mindshare for what that would be worth.
Secondly you do not need to agree to the GPL in order to download use or modify software distributed under it. It's already protected by copyright. You need to agree to the GPL (or work out private arrangements with the copyright holder) in order to REDISTRIBUTE the software or your modified version therof.
This is why the GPL is so much better than 99.44% of software licenses. It only grants you rights by agreeing to it. Nothing is taken away. Wheras something like MS's EULA tries to (illegally IMHO) strip people of rights they're guaranteed by copyright law in order to let them use something they already paid for anyway. The BSD license is also quite good, but I personally don't care for it as much as I like the GPL as it doesn't take measures to ensure the continued viability of the community it serves.
2. No, Tim Berners-Lee developed the entire idea of the Web at CERN in Switzerland in '89. (IIRC, the original program, running on a NeXT was called WorldWideWeb - it browsed, it served, the only major differences from today were the lack of tables and inline graphics)
Re:Microsoft == bad partner, no multimedia savvy
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Live Streaming Video?
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I imagine that he's a god of getting computers to display and transform graphics in new ways, and very efficiently.
Me, I'm a graphic designer but for all I know there's a little man inside the computer that makes graphics display on screen.
Tricky. In general, I'd agree with you, but current law doesn't seem to be on the side of Hughes.
*I* think that if you have a computer which you allow to run non-trusted software, and can recieve such software independently of what you do, you're asking for trouble. (although there should still be some kind of minor trespass violation - it's illegal to enter a house with an open door if it's not yours, just not as bad as if you had broken the door down)
On the other hand, it's illegal to hack computers, no matter what sort of crappy security they have. While no intelligent US hacker is going to step forward and sue Hughes for hacking (as they'd quickly get counter-sued for watching it) Canadians may have better luck. I think that it would be rather funny for them to start a class-action suit, as their watching is quite legal but Hughes' hacking still isn't.
As others have pointed out Hughes is sending the signal to hackers. In fact, they want to send it to nearly everyone, ideally. Furthermore they're sending it as a broadcast radio signal, and that's a public resource.
If you proceed with your logic, you imply that it would be illegal to read billboards on the side of the road (ideally for this argument in the state-owned right of way) if the whim of the owner was that you weren't allowed.
Just as there is a right to free speech, there MUST be in order to actually have such a right function, an equally absolute right to listen. Otherwise you're supporting the opinion that you have a right to free speech, but if the government finds it inconvenient, people who listen can be arrested. (despite the speaker going free) This is a nonsensical propisition you're making, I think we'll all agree.
If a communication is privileged or there is an expectation of privacy (e.g. whispering, talking in a way that cannot reasonably be intercepted outside your home, lawyer-client discussions) I can see making that a minor crime. Generally one that's worse for the government (e.g. tapping w/o a warrant) than individuals.
But sending data across a public medium to virtually the entire continent does not strike me as private. Even the Internet is not private - it's a network of other, smaller networks, and it's hardly possible to believe that communications across it are automatically private. Certainly the most esteemed privacy/encryption experts on the net don't think so.
Once someone recieves such a stream - particularly if it was sent so that they, their neighbors and their countrymen could recieve it - I don't see how it's Hughes' business what's done with it. If they wish to prevent people from seeing it, the best way is to not send it to them at all. The second best way is to heavily encrypt it, but encryption is not a guarantee. It also means that Hughes' business is not TV but decryption software. If someone manages to put out an RE'd version w/o infringing on patents, then that's their right too. We rely on that right to have microcomputers that aren't all sold by IBM.
And furthermore, in Canada, which is what we're discussing, the people there explicitly DO have the right to watch broadcast signals. There's just no two ways about it there. If the law in Pottsylvania were that TV broadcasters had to give out free TV sets to people in order to have a license to broadcast then Hughes would have to either stop broadcasting to them, or start handing out the sets; it doesn't matter if the law is different than US law, sovereign states have the right to have different laws.
That's not too good. System files I can understand requiring a fairly rigid directory structure. As for applications, documents, etc. their location shouldn't matter. Computers are tools for users, not the other way around. If Joe Blow prefers keeping all his documents in the same directory as a program, why shouldn't he? Not everyone is as anal about file organization as many/. denziens, and they don't have to be.
Lord knows, I'd be pissed if someone told me that I wasn't allowed to keep my computer in my bedroom, and that it HAD to be in the den or something. Let people do what they want up to the point where it actually breaks the machine. And then try to improve that machine, cause it shouldn't break on such a stupid thing.
Due to the current (and IMHO stupid) copyright laws, your own stuff is also copyrighted.
And there is certainly no significant independent commercial reason for the lack of digital outputs on Minidiscs. As an example from elsewhere, commercial DVD players are prohibited from having Firewire outputs. Why? They're not terribly expensive, and there's no technical reason why not to. And as people record their own DVDs they have every right to dump them out from their players via Firewire, or composite, or carrier pigeon if they'd like.
But the big media corporations that get these laws passed, and form cartels to control the scope of innovation in consumer (and even professional) gear don't want consumers being able to distribute their own creative works. It would harm their business.
One small correction:
Let us say that you film a movie. You now hold the copyright on that movie, regardless of whatever media it's expressed in. You transfer the movie to DVD, encrypting it with CSS and setting a region code, which you're certainly allowed to do.*
You are then PROHIBITED from watching the movie for which you are the sole copyright holder, and for which you legally own a copy of on a homemade player such as one incorporating DeCSS, because you _might_ infringe on someone's copyright with it.
So in fact, even when creating your own works, the big media corporations have managed to strip away your rights by buying Congressmen.
*YMMV - Some countries are beginning to take legal action against those who set region codes on DVDs as it's an illegal restraint of trade or some such. Even in the US, it has yet to be determined if it's legal or not for products sold to viewers.
You ignore a lot of stuff in making that statement.
First, it has never been and never will be possible to own content.
Second, while it's just my opinion, and I'm not a lawyer, I feel that the first amendment rights to free speech and free press ought to override excessive copyright laws. Additionally, the copyright clause itself should be causing many current copyright laws to be stricken from the books as unconstitutional. As usual, the Constitution trumps any law that Congress might pass, and there are no copyright laws in the Constitution, only the power granted to Congress to create them. (again, provided that they're constitutional laws)
Third, copyrights are totally artificial. If it were not for the addition (which IIRC was argued about a lot at the time) of the copyright clause to the Constitution, Congress could never pass such a law, and we wouldn't even have this argument. On the other hand, even if it weren't written in the first amendment, you'd STILL have the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. They're natural rights. You get them from God, or nature, or whatever.
While I personally think that copyrights are not a bad idea, current copyright laws are really bad, pretty blatantly unconstitutional, and perverting the entire idea. (which is NOT so that people could profit from their work, but so that advances would be made in the arts and sciences. Profit is just a carrot)
125? When I was at my parents' house for the holidays they had something like 300+ channels for some reason. Can't imagine why, neither watches a great deal of tv. Myself, I don't watch anything other than stuff on disc and tape, and The Simpsons.
But I think you're wrong about stereo. For some weird reason, tv shows that people listen to in stereo, even despite the crappy ass speaker seperation on tvs, improves their perception of the overall picture quality. Even if there's no actual improvement, a percieved one isn't really bad - it makes your watching more enjoyable.
As for watching lots of content, that's great, but I'll be damned if I'll stand for the continued unconstitutional expansion of copyright law at the behest of media corporations.
This is Steve Jobs we're talking about. The same man who once followed the belief that if all he ate were fruits and nuts that he wouldn't need to bathe. He's not exactly well known for being a levelheaded guy.
So 1) Health and animal rights probably don't enter into it
2) All the alcoholic beverages I can think of offhand are made from plants anyway. Unless he's concerned about harming yeast, I can't see a connection.
Re:Maybe MS will write the software...
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Laser-equipped 747
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Please don't: I may not like MS, but I do live perilously close to it. One small accident, and I'd lose all my stuff!
(Besides, what you really would want to do - after I move - is cause Mt. Rainier to blow up, getting Microsoft, Amazon and Real all in one blow:)
Slashdot Mirror
in high school, i was friends with an upperclassman who was at the time, the editor in chief of the primary underground school paper. (This was Leon High School, Tallahassee, FL in 1992-93)
i joined the staff, and to ostensibly conceal our identities from the administration, even though we openly sold the two-sheets in the morning every month or so for a quarter a pop, even to teachers, we all had aliases.
i was for some reason given 'Captain Kangarooski' and just started using it as a handle on the net. it makes looking for me on google pretty easy, i can tell you.
no one's ever called me that irl though - it's pretty strictly an online thing. and no i don't know if it's supposed to be a naval captain or an army captain. that's one of the great mysteries of our age.
No, a single multipurpose machine that could interpret what you're doing and respond appropriately.
I still think of OpenDoc - you sit down at the computer and hit 'New Document.' A blank document opens up, and you can pick and choose third party tool 'modules' to create and format data in the mixed document.
Commonly used tools can be accessed via floating palettes. Unusual ones via menus, or causing palettes to appear that you don't normally keep around.
See Raskin's 'Canon Cat' systems from the 80's for the instant-on that is, I admit, very nice.
And certain assumptions could probably be made when you activate the computer by interacting with it; if the user starts drawing with a pen, goto an art program; if he types, go to an editor; if the typing is a url, a web browser.
But let the user override this with his own preferences if he wants, and if in doubt, goto a generic default screen with file management stuff and the ability to create/view documents.
Actually, while it is legal to circumvent a work for which you have permission, it is illegal to "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof" that allows you to do so.
And so what the large print giveth, the small print taketh away. Except that it's impossible to take away fair use rights, which derive from the Constitution, and I think it's pretty obvious that access to works is a necesary prerequisite to use, covering it too.
Correct, which is one of the reasons for the shorter term, the reason for the required archival (of a high quality copy that can be used to create a very very large quantity of copies) at the LoC, and the continued persistance of no authorial rights other than copyright and the right of first sale.
Yeah, but I don't think you go far enough.
Imagine you're a musician. You're poor, so you use consumer grade equipment (reasonable now that we have good desktop computers, midi, sound cards and cd burners. Nice as a studio rig is, you can get by)
The *same* mechanisms that 'protect' music from being copied if you don't own the copyright can *also* prevent you from making copies of music for which you *do* own the copyright. And yet breaking those 'protections' is illegal, because you might violate someone else's copyright in order to fully exercise your own.
If someone can defend that, I'd like to hear it.
Well, what I'm concerned about is that in Hollywood, for a long time, movies have never made any money. This is why it's very foolish to agree to a contract in which you'll receive part of the net. Well, there won't be a net - legions of snake warriors and skilled accountants will manage to screw you. On the other hand, the gross is often quite large, and the people who both know enough and have enough power to acquire it, take their percentages there.
I agree, it would really be better to do the net, but it's not effective.
Under your scheme, Joe Blow could continue to extend his copyright at essentially zero cost. This is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. I want copyrights to only be extended when they serve a purpose.
I'll conceed that this is not an effective deterrant towards copyright squatting. (it's not really that either: squatters improve fallow land, which is why they have rights) But you must agree that a gigantic corporation could pay to extend their copyright on virtually anything that they did copyright for as long as possible as a matter of course if the fees were also affordable by mere mortals.
Thus perhaps as I mentioned a floor on the price that makes Joe Blow think about it, but which scales up so that Disney or Sony also has to think about it.
Having his copyrights expire during his lifetime would be a disaster. The stress of watching it happen might well kill him. His sole source of income -- destroyed. Who would want to be a writer if they knew that would happen to them? For certain people, copyrights serve as a pension of sorts.
Naw. I can't agree there. Remember - the purpose of copyright isn't to provide a pension for authors, it's to encourage authors to write more. From history we have the original Copyright Act of 1798? had 14 year terms from fixation. And a long pre-copyright tradition of patronage where patrons would typically comission a work, or the works created for a period of time, but would not keep paying after the work was complete and delivered.
Additionally, it is dangerous to rely on royalties of a copyrighted work as a pension. You only get them for as long as the work is popular. If English teachers everywhere decide that "Catcher in the Rye" is full of beans, Salinger won't get nearly as much money. Not necessarily dangerous for the author who's young and productive, but if you're old, and that's your only income you've got trouble a brewin'. Knowing ahead of time that the royalties WILL stop coming, even if every man, woman, child and dog reads the thing will probably avoid the sort of shock you describe better.
So if Gershwin wants to provide for his family he should do what everyone else does: take the money that he gets and invest it. We reward artists for being productive and creating great works of art. We do not reward them for not doing anything else; that's just the situation I'd want to avoid. Stephen King is going to be prolific no matter what. And while I'm sorry, Ralph Ellison should've gotten off of his ass or found a different job. He effectively wrote one book, and that's all I'm prepared to reward him for. But what I would have paid to read his (completed) NEXT book. Or the one after that. Or however many he would have had to write to keep food on the table.
Spouses and children of authors aren't special either. If they too have some great artistic gift, let _them_ exercise it. But if their family can't hold onto money, that's hardly a good reason to infringe on everyone's freedom of speech.
While it might be interesting to have a fixed term interruptable by death, I will at least grant that already progressing terms or extensions can be allowed to run their course. Partially as a bone to the pension argument, which I still disagree with, but also because it would be a royal pain in the ass for the USCO to keep track of who dies. An error would be disasterous: once something is in the public domain, it should not be taken out.
1) Yeah, that's fine. If a work has been registered a proper and correct copyright notice would be required. This could come into play in that lawsuits are only possible if the copyright had been indicated - otherwise they're rather baiting people into respecting works that may not deserve it.
Up until '76 or so IIRC that was required, so I can see it coming back.
2 and 3) I disagree. Something like Mickey Mouse has netted Disney *BILLIONS* of dollars over the years. They would, I am quite certain pony up for everything to be registered as long as possible. The prices are absolute which lets the rich copyright holders keep them for as long as possible, and the poor ones lose them right away.
This is why I had a percentage of the gross. If it's worth it to Disney, they'll figure out how much Mickey made them, and cough up a hefty amount.
While Joe Blow, author of "Meet Joe Blow: An Autobiography" only has to put in a few bucks... if he even cares.
Possibly a minimum could be put in - no less than $1000 to renew....
But I strongly feel that copyrighted works should enter the public domain no matter what during the lifetime of the author and the audience. First because there is no amount of money that can encourage an author to write more works (the actual purpose of copyrights) after he's dead. And if he has a bestseller, which implies that he could make a significant contribution to the arts, he shouldn't be able to retire on it. Let him be prolific!
And as for the audience, they too can make contributions to society. Derivative works are close to my heart, and I don't see a problem with some of them (e.g. fan fiction - often better than the original)
4) I agree. Additionally, since ALL copyrighted works would have to be preserved in the best possible form in the LoC (none of this situation where a large number of famed silent films have been permanently lost) and made publicly available there's still a hope left even if the work is more or less abandoned.
5) Agreed - see my note on point 1. Also make it an abuse of copyright (resulting in the loss of the copyright of the offending work) if the date is changed without getting a legal extension. On a composite or extended work there could simply be multiple dates, eg. Copyright 1995, 2005
6) Quite so.
Note also that some trademarks must also necessarily expire when the earliest work incorporating it does.
It is not enough that Mickey Mouse films be available to everyone as they expire. New, independent films also have to be produced, and unless the trademark on the character runs out at the same time as the first work he's in enters the public domain there's no real gain.
Anyone can write a story about Odysseus, or King Arthur, or Paul Bunyan. Imagine the blow to the arts if they were trademarked. Characters like Superman or Bugs Bunny aren't special, and should also be able to be used by anyone when the time comes.
IIRC this is already a principle of copyright and trademark law, and is the reason Disney's so frickin' evil in that regard.
I had been thinking something like this:
1) Terms of 10 years, retroactively applied
2) In order to gain the ability to levy civil or criminal charges against an infringer, works must be registered with the USCO.
3) Registration requires:
a) Archiving a useful copy of a work (high quality masters of video, source code to software, ordinary copies of books) in the Library of Congress
b) A fee to handle processing by the USCO and storage fees at the LoC.
4) One extension may be granted for a maximum 20 year term. If this is done, a significant amount of money (1/100th of the gross of the work over the previous ten years?) is charged for this. The money goes towards the creation of public domain works: software, art, literature, etc. which are also archived in the LoC.
5) Fair use rights are protected, as are any necessary steps needed to exercise these rights (law doesn't matter here - this derives from the Constitution)
Yeah, right. Check out 17 USC 1201 (k)(1)
It's illegal to make, sell or modify VCRs that aren't susceptable to the automatic gain control hack (which is what Macrovision is) unless IIRC it's grandfathered in.
Do you really think that there's any incentive for VCR manufacturers who don't also own movie studios (thus not Sony) to have Macrovision? Hell no. In an unrestricted market that stuff sells like hotcakes. Check out the relative popularity of standard non-region 1 DVD players vs. modded players in foreign countries.
Heh. MS is not as concerned about their OS monopoly as you might think. While they'd be upset to lose it, they have bigger fish to fry. You're generally correct in your assessment though.
.net may have indeed started as a project intended to kill off Java. But that has not been the point of the thing for quite a while now.
.net right there.
:) It took both the cold externally induced winter of the long-running Justice Department investegation against them and the cunning little MS mammals to bring them down.
.net strategy hits them.
Here's my theory:
Let's set the wayback machine for 1982. Microsoft has been around for about seven years. They got their start writing BASIC for a lot of different platforms, and Bill's strong abilities to hash out deals favorable to MS served him well. (e.g. having Apple by the balls in the 80's b/c he controlled Applesoft BASIC) One of the few deals at this time that I'm aware of that he screwed up on was IMSAI, but that's okay. They augered in pretty quickly.
Anyway though, a couple of years ago (c. 1980) MS gets a secret deal with IBM. Thanks to Mary Gates being pals at United Way with an IBM bigwig - I forget who. They're going to write an OS (which they have to quickly buy from outside; they've never done this) for a new computer. It all works out well, but IBM makes one critical error that isn't immediately important.
IBM failed to buy MS; buy DOS; or get exclusive, perpetual rights to DOS. If they had, things would've been a lot different.
While Bill may indeed have been smart enough at the time to forsee what was coming, I think that he was just covering his ass. Despite the infamous 'Hobbyist Letter' Bill has little or no sense of ethics IMHO. I've heard that the BASIC for the Altair was developed on educational hardware, that he ported ADVENT w/o permission, etc. so my confidence in Bill is low. OTOH he has the Devil's own luck, and a mean attitude.
Anyway, while it's been easy to copy out the IBM BIOS and stick it in an otherwise all-legal board b/c of their decision to go with all third party off the shelf hardware, that BIOS is illegal. Compaq, however, manages to come out with an RE'd BIOS that's quite legal.
And now Bill is on the road to riches. Because: An OS that is abstracted from the hardware makes hardware makers irrelevant.
More or less. Enough for Joe Blow consumer who has a Dell at work, a Compaq at home, a Gateway laptop and an eMachines for the kiddies. Nowadays you can run Windows on a non-Intel chip, or even a chip emulating an Intel chip.
So on our return trip to the present, there's one quote from the near past that should stand out. "The browser is the operating system." Boy oh boy did MS take this to heart. In fact, that's the key to
DOS (and Windows) succeeded because: An OS that is abstracted from the hardware makes hardware makers irrelevant.
Thus Netscape was threatening to succeed because: Software that is abstracted from the OS makes OS makers irrelevant.
Not just anything will do. The software that could make that come true would have to be very compelling stuff all on it's lonesome. Furthermore, it would have to be cross-platform to protect itself from threats and gain the kind of enormous mindshare necessary for this strategy to work.
Like a web browser - which is really a very pretty but not awfully smart terminal application.
If Netscape ran on the Mac, Windows and Unix, and people _did_ stuff on those browsers, well, that could be done on any OS. And then Windows would be no more special than the Mac. Or frickin' Irix. In fact, people might start using those because, hey, what's the damn difference?
MS did that to IBM in the early 80's. IBM is a dinosaur, sure. I'd say that they're probably a Tyrannasaurus Rex. Big and mean with little tiny forearms
MS doesn't want to think of themselves as a dinosaur. They killed a dinosaur. But if they were, I'd say that they're more of a Raptor. Big enough without losing mobility, even meaner, and perfectly happy to take down anything that moves. Even 'harmless' little mammals. 'Cos you never know.
And to them Netscape was looking like a decidedly threatening mammal.
Bringing out IE (actually arranging a licensing agreement with Spyglass to rebrand and fork Spyglass Mosiac, while simultaneously screwing Spyglass over royally for kicks) was a reflex action. IE wasn't even useful until v3 or so, whereas NS was the bomb since v.9, before it was even called Netscape, and before the stupid throbbing N.
But MS had at that time two strong monopolies. First, their OS monopoly, which had pretty much crystalized by the time of Win95's introduction. Second, their office suite monopoly, which was a little fresher. MS not only managed to kill off the consumer-level 'works' market by making Office (gotta love those generic names - they seriously increase mindshare) readily available, but they also killed off their business application competitors, notably WordPerfect.
(In a curious reversal, they also may have used the office monopoly to ensure the OS monopoly - MS Office 4.2 for the Mac was truly awful. And it took years for Mac Office 98 to rectify it, by which time the damage was done)
But, but, but, they committed a terrible sin against themselves by pursuing the application monopoly. When users are very firmly locked into using Office, and they are thanks to the dirty tricks we all know and love, they no longer care a hell of a lot about the OS. If a Flintstones-type computer with a little bird inside can open usable Word documents that's good enough.
MS made Windows a near-commodity for a huge number of business users. Game consoles were of course competiting with MS (though they didn't know it at the time) for the dollars of home users who might get a console instead for playing games. And until Netscape came along the last compelling thing MS had was MSN. Which prior to Hotmail was an AOL wanna be.
So's anyway, MS goes after threatening NS with a vengence. They bring out IE. They bring out Outlook (which goes after Eudora as well as NS's mail and news capabilities) but then, probably while mulling over the Final Java Solution the
If the OS monopoly has been seriously compromised by both the web and Office, it's time to set up a system that both brings it back into the fold while simultaneously making it unecessary.
.net is, as far as I've been able to tell, a way of preserving the more important office suite monopoly in conjunction with the browser monopoly, by making Office a web site.
They've been doing things for a while that lead up to this. Based on some interviews with senior Microsofties I've been putting the pieces together for a couple of years.
Office is well known for forcing upgrades in order to read new files. It's a bit like a virus that's hostile to non-carriers and benign to them that's got it. One or two 'infections' in a major corporation and all admins can do is delay the inevitable upgrade.
MS is a big proponent of UCITA, and has been more and more active lately in subscription oriented software (e.g. $100/year to use Office, even if you didn't upgrade - though it would likely upgrade for you even if you didn't want to)
And now MS has a big XML 'web application' push.
Put 'em together and you get something like MSOffice.net: $100/year for businesses, constant (though buggy, natch) software upgrades, files stored on centrally located MS servers and intranets (hate to be their competitors), files that can't be read by previous versions, only works on IE and Windows (as long as it's MS Windows) and gives Bill a great deal of power.
Like the PS/2 it wouldn't work if it all happened at once... not easily, but it'll definately come to pass if done incrementally.
I figure that the penultimate step will be a well-entrenched version of Word that has auto-update capabilities. If MS releases one final, very buggy update, it'll be difficult for people to stick with it. Those guys at DirecTV had about the same idea.
Java could have made Windows irrelevant, and had really compelling cross-platform office apps appeared, even made a dent in Office. But it didn't, and half of that fight, the cross-platform part, was well and truly over before it began. Sun cared b/c Sun has their own OS. Most people never cared b/c they already had Windows.
We'll see where this goes. It may be several years yet before MS puts the last piece into place. I hadn't expected the court case to move so fast, and neither did they, so that may be having an impact on their plans.
Anyone care to refute, or comment? It's a fun theory and I enjoy it, but it could just be the CIA satellites talking for all I know.
No, don't be silly. The editor is a derivative work of the software used to create it, the running binary is derivative of the chipset and CPU... I think that everything gets sent back to Von Neumann, or Turing, or someone. :)
If copyright were abolished tomorrow there would, it's expected, be no NEED for the GPL.
Firstly, because no one would have much of a reason to keep their source code secret - you could copy the binaries freely, so there's little to be gained by concealing source. And by releasing the source, third parties could modify it, or produce good add-ons, or port it, etc. increasing mindshare for what that would be worth.
Secondly you do not need to agree to the GPL in order to download use or modify software distributed under it. It's already protected by copyright. You need to agree to the GPL (or work out private arrangements with the copyright holder) in order to REDISTRIBUTE the software or your modified version therof.
This is why the GPL is so much better than 99.44% of software licenses. It only grants you rights by agreeing to it. Nothing is taken away. Wheras something like MS's EULA tries to (illegally IMHO) strip people of rights they're guaranteed by copyright law in order to let them use something they already paid for anyway. The BSD license is also quite good, but I personally don't care for it as much as I like the GPL as it doesn't take measures to ensure the continued viability of the community it serves.
2. No, Tim Berners-Lee developed the entire idea of the Web at CERN in Switzerland in '89. (IIRC, the original program, running on a NeXT was called WorldWideWeb - it browsed, it served, the only major differences from today were the lack of tables and inline graphics)
I imagine that he's a god of getting computers to display and transform graphics in new ways, and very efficiently.
Me, I'm a graphic designer but for all I know there's a little man inside the computer that makes graphics display on screen.
Two very different fields.
Tricky. In general, I'd agree with you, but current law doesn't seem to be on the side of Hughes.
*I* think that if you have a computer which you allow to run non-trusted software, and can recieve such software independently of what you do, you're asking for trouble. (although there should still be some kind of minor trespass violation - it's illegal to enter a house with an open door if it's not yours, just not as bad as if you had broken the door down)
On the other hand, it's illegal to hack computers, no matter what sort of crappy security they have. While no intelligent US hacker is going to step forward and sue Hughes for hacking (as they'd quickly get counter-sued for watching it) Canadians may have better luck. I think that it would be rather funny for them to start a class-action suit, as their watching is quite legal but Hughes' hacking still isn't.
I disagree.
As others have pointed out Hughes is sending the signal to hackers. In fact, they want to send it to nearly everyone, ideally. Furthermore they're sending it as a broadcast radio signal, and that's a public resource.
If you proceed with your logic, you imply that it would be illegal to read billboards on the side of the road (ideally for this argument in the state-owned right of way) if the whim of the owner was that you weren't allowed.
Just as there is a right to free speech, there MUST be in order to actually have such a right function, an equally absolute right to listen. Otherwise you're supporting the opinion that you have a right to free speech, but if the government finds it inconvenient, people who listen can be arrested. (despite the speaker going free) This is a nonsensical propisition you're making, I think we'll all agree.
If a communication is privileged or there is an expectation of privacy (e.g. whispering, talking in a way that cannot reasonably be intercepted outside your home, lawyer-client discussions) I can see making that a minor crime. Generally one that's worse for the government (e.g. tapping w/o a warrant) than individuals.
But sending data across a public medium to virtually the entire continent does not strike me as private. Even the Internet is not private - it's a network of other, smaller networks, and it's hardly possible to believe that communications across it are automatically private. Certainly the most esteemed privacy/encryption experts on the net don't think so.
Once someone recieves such a stream - particularly if it was sent so that they, their neighbors and their countrymen could recieve it - I don't see how it's Hughes' business what's done with it. If they wish to prevent people from seeing it, the best way is to not send it to them at all. The second best way is to heavily encrypt it, but encryption is not a guarantee. It also means that Hughes' business is not TV but decryption software. If someone manages to put out an RE'd version w/o infringing on patents, then that's their right too. We rely on that right to have microcomputers that aren't all sold by IBM.
And furthermore, in Canada, which is what we're discussing, the people there explicitly DO have the right to watch broadcast signals. There's just no two ways about it there. If the law in Pottsylvania were that TV broadcasters had to give out free TV sets to people in order to have a license to broadcast then Hughes would have to either stop broadcasting to them, or start handing out the sets; it doesn't matter if the law is different than US law, sovereign states have the right to have different laws.
That's not too good. System files I can understand requiring a fairly rigid directory structure. As for applications, documents, etc. their location shouldn't matter. Computers are tools for users, not the other way around. If Joe Blow prefers keeping all his documents in the same directory as a program, why shouldn't he? Not everyone is as anal about file organization as many /. denziens, and they don't have to be.
Lord knows, I'd be pissed if someone told me that I wasn't allowed to keep my computer in my bedroom, and that it HAD to be in the den or something. Let people do what they want up to the point where it actually breaks the machine. And then try to improve that machine, cause it shouldn't break on such a stupid thing.
Real Networks, Inc. v. Streambox, Inc. in the US District Court in western Washington IIRC.
Due to the current (and IMHO stupid) copyright laws, your own stuff is also copyrighted.
And there is certainly no significant independent commercial reason for the lack of digital outputs on Minidiscs. As an example from elsewhere, commercial DVD players are prohibited from having Firewire outputs. Why? They're not terribly expensive, and there's no technical reason why not to. And as people record their own DVDs they have every right to dump them out from their players via Firewire, or composite, or carrier pigeon if they'd like.
But the big media corporations that get these laws passed, and form cartels to control the scope of innovation in consumer (and even professional) gear don't want consumers being able to distribute their own creative works. It would harm their business.
One small correction:
Let us say that you film a movie. You now hold the copyright on that movie, regardless of whatever media it's expressed in. You transfer the movie to DVD, encrypting it with CSS and setting a region code, which you're certainly allowed to do.*
You are then PROHIBITED from watching the movie for which you are the sole copyright holder, and for which you legally own a copy of on a homemade player such as one incorporating DeCSS, because you _might_ infringe on someone's copyright with it.
So in fact, even when creating your own works, the big media corporations have managed to strip away your rights by buying Congressmen.
*YMMV - Some countries are beginning to take legal action against those who set region codes on DVDs as it's an illegal restraint of trade or some such. Even in the US, it has yet to be determined if it's legal or not for products sold to viewers.
You ignore a lot of stuff in making that statement.
First, it has never been and never will be possible to own content.
Second, while it's just my opinion, and I'm not a lawyer, I feel that the first amendment rights to free speech and free press ought to override excessive copyright laws. Additionally, the copyright clause itself should be causing many current copyright laws to be stricken from the books as unconstitutional. As usual, the Constitution trumps any law that Congress might pass, and there are no copyright laws in the Constitution, only the power granted to Congress to create them. (again, provided that they're constitutional laws)
Third, copyrights are totally artificial. If it were not for the addition (which IIRC was argued about a lot at the time) of the copyright clause to the Constitution, Congress could never pass such a law, and we wouldn't even have this argument. On the other hand, even if it weren't written in the first amendment, you'd STILL have the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. They're natural rights. You get them from God, or nature, or whatever.
While I personally think that copyrights are not a bad idea, current copyright laws are really bad, pretty blatantly unconstitutional, and perverting the entire idea. (which is NOT so that people could profit from their work, but so that advances would be made in the arts and sciences. Profit is just a carrot)
Real sued some company that made a product that could copy and save streamed audio and video, won, and it was only protected by a single bit.
125? When I was at my parents' house for the holidays they had something like 300+ channels for some reason. Can't imagine why, neither watches a great deal of tv. Myself, I don't watch anything other than stuff on disc and tape, and The Simpsons.
But I think you're wrong about stereo. For some weird reason, tv shows that people listen to in stereo, even despite the crappy ass speaker seperation on tvs, improves their perception of the overall picture quality. Even if there's no actual improvement, a percieved one isn't really bad - it makes your watching more enjoyable.
As for watching lots of content, that's great, but I'll be damned if I'll stand for the continued unconstitutional expansion of copyright law at the behest of media corporations.
This is Steve Jobs we're talking about. The same man who once followed the belief that if all he ate were fruits and nuts that he wouldn't need to bathe. He's not exactly well known for being a levelheaded guy.
So 1) Health and animal rights probably don't enter into it
2) All the alcoholic beverages I can think of offhand are made from plants anyway. Unless he's concerned about harming yeast, I can't see a connection.
Please don't: I may not like MS, but I do live perilously close to it. One small accident, and I'd lose all my stuff!
:)
(Besides, what you really would want to do - after I move - is cause Mt. Rainier to blow up, getting Microsoft, Amazon and Real all in one blow