The basis of copyright and patent law in the US - as explicitly written in the Constitution and reaffirmed again and again by the Supreme Court - is that there is no legal protection of information whatsoever unless legislated into existance. And furthermore, the laws governing and creating the concept of copyright here are subject to restriction in order to preserve, as best as possible, public domain information.
So avoiding licensing here (would a EULA be legal in a copyrightless world? Don't think so....) copyright holders should be damn happy with whatever they get. There is no, and never ever has been ANY basis for beliving that they have any natural rights to their works. This doesn't mean that copyrights don't serve a useful function; they _can_. But copyrights are unnatural, weird and should not be relied upon or expanded much. Certainly, IMHO the current copyright law is de facto unconstitutional.
Yep. But what's your point (other than spreading the myth that there even is such a thing as 'intellectual property')
Let's consider the dangers inherent in going down the road that big corporations and other groups with a vested interest in copyrighted material are trying to lead us down.
What was the first web site with a sidebar? With javascript mouseover images? With tabs? God help you if you use any of those elements - you'd be "ripping them off."
There is perhaps a happy medium. Unfortunately we're currently on the road to ruin by having all of these unconstitutional copyright laws floating around. While neither extreme is all that great, I'd take a world with no copyrights over one with tolitarian copyrights any day. Wouldn't you?
What? GPL'ed software does not require that you agree to the GPL in order to alter it. Given that the source has to be distributed for the software to be covered under the GPL, it would be moot.
The trick is, you can't redistribute your remix version to other people unless you agree to the GPL.
But wait again! If you remix it and manage to transform the original work into something substantially different, the new work is now copyrighted to you - not the original creator. This doesn't mean that adding more bass is sufficiently transformative, but if you remixed the hell out of it, you could be a-ok.
Why do you feel that there's a need for a license? Copyrighted works automatically get a large number of protections. Why the hell must it be licensed too? The GPL is only used when the otherwise (generally) restricted act of copying and distribution is granted.
But there's no need compatable with copyright laws to pass licenses like most of MS's.
Fortunately music is generally distributed without a license. (I forget if radio stations actually agree to a license or if it's all automatic)
Regarding your second point, it's off-target entirely. While intent is good, the ACTUAL WORDING of the Constitution that permits copyrights to exist in the first place (no one's just entitled to them you know) is: "The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
If it don't promote, they really can't do it. If it's not limited (and these days it effectively isn't) they can't do it. If the rights are initially (prior to some transfer) secured to someone else they can't do it.
At any rate, can you prove that the art of music would decline? Remembering to balance the level of quality with the volume of works _and_ the freedom of access by the public to those works. Copyright does not serve a useful function unless people can use the materials; misuse your copyright and it can be revoked.
Additionally, don't forget that for thousands and thousands of years there was no copyright. Guess all of the writings, works of art, and music before roughly 1800 must've been crap, huh?
Or perhaps the real answer is that modern copyright laws are basically unconstitutional and in need of serious reform, and that the entire concept is in danger of being rendered moot anyway. (I'd prefer the former personally, but I could live with the latter)
Well, while you're trying your damnest to attack the GPL I think, you're actually more right than you know. The copyright clause of the Constitution really does say that copyrights are only valid if it promotes the arts or sciences. So if it were shown that the art of music were somehow improved if there were no copyrights on music, Congress would have no constitutional avenue but to rewrite copyright laws so that they didn't apply to music.
Given the direction that our copyright laws are going in, it probably won't be long before the GPL is protectable and the harsh copyrights on music are not (though they'll probably just revert to more relaxed copyrights)
Wow. I had no idea that the RIAA members were fans of Star Trek.
You see, there's this classic rule in Trek, known as the 'Rule of Three.' The idea is, name two things that are real, and then, in order to make it plain that it's similar but futuristic, name one made up thing. i.e.: "the great philosophers, Plato and Decartes and Surak."
In the case of the RIAA annoucement, they've named three forms of copyright infringement and are pretending that the fourth is too.
Now I just want to know who their favorite character is;)
No. I am a graphic designer - and we have been around since 'computer' was a job description.
MS has been responsible for absolutely no innovations in the realms of layout, photography, plate-making, lithographic printing and more recently computer DTP. (which I've done almost exclusively on Macs, with Quark, PageMaker, Illustrator, Freehand and Photoshop)
More recently I've been doing web design - which still doesn't require anything of Microsoft's; like all good designers, I write code that complies to the HTML spec. MS has been good about implementing most of the spec (but it's not as though they have traditionally done so) but there still hasn't been any real innovation here.
While MS is already being attacked (pretty successfully) by the federal government, the individual states all have their own laws as well. If MS wishes to do business in any of those states, they have to conform to state laws, except where the state law is overridden by federal law.
In CA, MS's proven monopolistic practices are illegal under state law. And so there's a bunch of people who claim to have been directly harmed (by having to buy Windows at a high, non-competitive price) by MS. Many other states, however, don't permit suits like this because of their laws. But that hasn't stopped people from trying.
Fortunately CA is significant; I don't think MS would be as worried if Rhode Island or Wyoming had active class-action suits too.
Presumably you have to have been a CA resident and bought a copy of Windows. If the findings in the federal antitrust case are any indication you'd probably get a refund of $50 minus lawyer's fees (which are probably about 30% of the TOTAL amount refunded, setting them up for life)
Well, there go the music videos. (honestly, they don't do as much for the plot as something else might have, but I'd still prefer the series were uncut in the end)
So, let me indulge my morbid curiosity: how do they establish that Hitomi ends up on Gaia anyway? I hope that they left in enough of the pendant to keep it (and what Hitomi's doing with it) as a critical part of the plot.
You don't like Oh! My Goddess!? Man, where else are you going to find a series that has a literal Godess of Debugging in it? I'd think that it would be more popular around here for that reason if nothing else.
I suggest that you look for (as you appear to like sf, mecha and deep, or at least cool plots):
Vision of Escaflowne (watch at least the first five episodes - I guarantee you'll be hooked)
Gundam 0083 UC - Stardust Memories (much better than that tripe known as Gundam Wing)
Macross Plus (OAVs not the movie)
The two Patlabor movies. (quite possibly the most realistic portrayal of mecha ever)
Giant Robo (fun retro anime)
Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water (very good Verne-inspired anime, but kind of similar to Eva)
Slashdot supports, among other things, the ability to embolden text, and the ability to italicize text (which I don't normally use, because it takes more work).
But italicized text is not necessarily cursive. Cursive script is quite different from Roman rustic script. (which we'd now call printing) The letters were simplified after the fall of Rome, particularly with regards to how frequently one's pen had to be picked up. And the Carolingian scribes developed mixed-case script.
Italics, came later. The Italian scribe Niccolo Niccoli mistook Carolingian texts for ancient Roman texts in the 15th century. And liking the natural slant of the blackletter script (which is commonly observed in handwriting) combined it with the letterforms of the ancient rustic script.
While some letters are quite similar between cursive script and Venitian italics (e.g. f, g, k and s) italics are otherwise dissimilar.
The most visible dissimilarity in the modern day is that cursive script letters are typically connected within words (and sometimes even between words) to further improve writing efficiency. Print letters are almost never connected, with the exception of ligatures (eg if) as this was the style of the ancient Romans. However, even modern typefaces, such as all of the sans serif faces can be italicized merely by skewing them to the right.
So anyway, while Slashdot supports the bold tag, there's no such thing as a cursive tag. Thus we can safely conclude that you sir, are the moron of this particular thread.
I stumbled accross an interview with the creators of Cowboy Bebop running in the latest issue of Ex.
1) Cowboy Bebop is a very good anime that ran on TV in Japan recently. More recently, Bandai has been releasing it on DVD in the US (translated - dubs and subs are available). Ex is an online magazine about anime, manga and other related subjects. (e.g. anime-based video games)
Tons of nifty bits including some spoilers (they are obscured, so if you, like me, haven't seen the 2 DVDs that haven't yet been released in the US, don't worry) as well as the revelation that the script is written for the Bebop movie.
2)There's a lot of interesting information for fans of the show. But some of this information could potentially spoil your enjoyment of the show if you aren't already thoroughly familiar with it (e.g. finding out that Darth Vader is Luke's father before seeing the movie) and has been hidden so that you won't find out unless you want to. Additionally, four of the planned six DVDs have been released in the US. The remaining two will be out by October. Lastly, a movie is planned (it's not a sequel though - it takes place in between some of the TV episodes).
Tons of great Fay fan service for CowboyNeal too.
3) Faye [Valentine] is one of the main characters - the interview has a couple of pictures of her butt, which CowboyNeal will certainly appreciate;)
While I heard that Fox was airing Escaflowne on TV, I haven't seen it. After all, I'm actually kind of pissed off that it introduced a FIVE MONTH delay in the release of the Escaflowne DVDs. Why, if they had been released when they were supposed to be, we would probably have already gotten to the *amazing jaw-dropping episode* by now.
So let me get this perfectly straight. Fox, which is airing Escaflowne dubbed into English, has CUT OUT the original soundtrack?
...
are they out of their FUCKING _*MINDS*_? It's one of the best OSTs around!
Please tell me that I'm misinterpreting this, and that they didn't replace the soundtrack with some mindless synthesized crap.
Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit
educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Certainly, this strikes me as indicating that creating a course packet is acceptable. The trick comes in the size of the packet - you're less likely to get in trouble if you use the important bits (e.g. a couple poems or a few hundred choice words of prose) than if you copy entire books and include them in the packet.
But it is generally decided on a case-by-case basis. Other than the four part test above, there are no _real_ guidelines as to precisely what you can and can't do. There are, however, a lot of university policies, which are generally pretty good guesses.
Well, we're ok until the RIAA manages to weasel their way in with the hardware manufacturers in the same way that the MPAA has been doing. (see recent stories re: encrypted video signals)
Then we might end up with the CD drives doing the watermarking _for_ them. But hopefully a watermark stripper would emerge shortly therafter (perhaps by comparing hashes of many rips, or just compressing it away)
This won't help much. You still have to dl the entire song before you can check to make sure that the entire song is what you really wanted. At best it could kill the dl when you got to the cuckoo, or run in the background and flag the cuckoos.
AFAICT, you're right on that it won't significantly help the RIAA (not the MPAA) stop trading; this is the identification of a SONG, not of a particular source CD. So the RIAA can tell that someone definately ripped... I dunno... Raymond Scott's _Powerhouse_ but they don't have any way of determining who ripped it, or from what specific CD, or what store sold that CD to whom.
It might be bad for sampling, but one hopes that it can be successfully fought for in court (didn't Negativland do something along those lines already?)
Naw. The ARPANet was funded by ARPA (which had less of a connection to the War Department then than they do now, hence the name change to DARPA) but was worked on completely by civilian researchers.
The Army had nothin' to do with it. The 'the internet is designed to survive nuclear war' story is not true. It has enough problems with backhoes.
Well of course it'll die. So will Linux and Windows someday.
I'm a big Mac user, and when I can get my hands on something better (e.g. non-homicidal desktop HAL 9000) I'll switch to it.
But yeah, there's been no reason so far to believe that Linux will take over the niche that the Mac occupies. Nor do I expect the Mac (or Windows or Linux) to die anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that you're missing something here.
The basis of copyright and patent law in the US - as explicitly written in the Constitution and reaffirmed again and again by the Supreme Court - is that there is no legal protection of information whatsoever unless legislated into existance. And furthermore, the laws governing and creating the concept of copyright here are subject to restriction in order to preserve, as best as possible, public domain information.
So avoiding licensing here (would a EULA be legal in a copyrightless world? Don't think so....) copyright holders should be damn happy with whatever they get. There is no, and never ever has been ANY basis for beliving that they have any natural rights to their works. This doesn't mean that copyrights don't serve a useful function; they _can_. But copyrights are unnatural, weird and should not be relied upon or expanded much. Certainly, IMHO the current copyright law is de facto unconstitutional.
Yep. But what's your point (other than spreading the myth that there even is such a thing as 'intellectual property')
Let's consider the dangers inherent in going down the road that big corporations and other groups with a vested interest in copyrighted material are trying to lead us down.
What was the first web site with a sidebar? With javascript mouseover images? With tabs? God help you if you use any of those elements - you'd be "ripping them off."
There is perhaps a happy medium. Unfortunately we're currently on the road to ruin by having all of these unconstitutional copyright laws floating around. While neither extreme is all that great, I'd take a world with no copyrights over one with tolitarian copyrights any day. Wouldn't you?
What? GPL'ed software does not require that you agree to the GPL in order to alter it. Given that the source has to be distributed for the software to be covered under the GPL, it would be moot.
The trick is, you can't redistribute your remix version to other people unless you agree to the GPL.
But wait again! If you remix it and manage to transform the original work into something substantially different, the new work is now copyrighted to you - not the original creator. This doesn't mean that adding more bass is sufficiently transformative, but if you remixed the hell out of it, you could be a-ok.
Why do you feel that there's a need for a license? Copyrighted works automatically get a large number of protections. Why the hell must it be licensed too? The GPL is only used when the otherwise (generally) restricted act of copying and distribution is granted.
But there's no need compatable with copyright laws to pass licenses like most of MS's.
Fortunately music is generally distributed without a license. (I forget if radio stations actually agree to a license or if it's all automatic)
Regarding your second point, it's off-target entirely. While intent is good, the ACTUAL WORDING of the Constitution that permits copyrights to exist in the first place (no one's just entitled to them you know) is: "The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
If it don't promote, they really can't do it. If it's not limited (and these days it effectively isn't) they can't do it. If the rights are initially (prior to some transfer) secured to someone else they can't do it.
At any rate, can you prove that the art of music would decline? Remembering to balance the level of quality with the volume of works _and_ the freedom of access by the public to those works. Copyright does not serve a useful function unless people can use the materials; misuse your copyright and it can be revoked.
Additionally, don't forget that for thousands and thousands of years there was no copyright. Guess all of the writings, works of art, and music before roughly 1800 must've been crap, huh?
Or perhaps the real answer is that modern copyright laws are basically unconstitutional and in need of serious reform, and that the entire concept is in danger of being rendered moot anyway. (I'd prefer the former personally, but I could live with the latter)
I dunno. I was thinking Kirk - because they like to screw everyone they meet. ;)
Well, while you're trying your damnest to attack the GPL I think, you're actually more right than you know. The copyright clause of the Constitution really does say that copyrights are only valid if it promotes the arts or sciences. So if it were shown that the art of music were somehow improved if there were no copyrights on music, Congress would have no constitutional avenue but to rewrite copyright laws so that they didn't apply to music.
Given the direction that our copyright laws are going in, it probably won't be long before the GPL is protectable and the harsh copyrights on music are not (though they'll probably just revert to more relaxed copyrights)
Wow. I had no idea that the RIAA members were fans of Star Trek.
;)
You see, there's this classic rule in Trek, known as the 'Rule of Three.' The idea is, name two things that are real, and then, in order to make it plain that it's similar but futuristic, name one made up thing. i.e.: "the great philosophers, Plato and Decartes and Surak."
In the case of the RIAA annoucement, they've named three forms of copyright infringement and are pretending that the fourth is too.
Now I just want to know who their favorite character is
Wow. Took me five minutes when I lived in FL. And the driving test (no parallel) didn't even leave the parking lot.
Man, that was sweet.
You can't compare Acrobat, FrameMaker and Word at all, really.
It's like saying that Porsches are very cheap cars compared to a hot-air balloon and a freight train. They're totally different.
No. I am a graphic designer - and we have been around since 'computer' was a job description.
MS has been responsible for absolutely no innovations in the realms of layout, photography, plate-making, lithographic printing and more recently computer DTP. (which I've done almost exclusively on Macs, with Quark, PageMaker, Illustrator, Freehand and Photoshop)
More recently I've been doing web design - which still doesn't require anything of Microsoft's; like all good designers, I write code that complies to the HTML spec. MS has been good about implementing most of the spec (but it's not as though they have traditionally done so) but there still hasn't been any real innovation here.
So now, why again do I owe my job to MS?
I suspect that you're not an American.
While MS is already being attacked (pretty successfully) by the federal government, the individual states all have their own laws as well. If MS wishes to do business in any of those states, they have to conform to state laws, except where the state law is overridden by federal law.
In CA, MS's proven monopolistic practices are illegal under state law. And so there's a bunch of people who claim to have been directly harmed (by having to buy Windows at a high, non-competitive price) by MS. Many other states, however, don't permit suits like this because of their laws. But that hasn't stopped people from trying.
Fortunately CA is significant; I don't think MS would be as worried if Rhode Island or Wyoming had active class-action suits too.
Presumably you have to have been a CA resident and bought a copy of Windows. If the findings in the federal antitrust case are any indication you'd probably get a refund of $50 minus lawyer's fees (which are probably about 30% of the TOTAL amount refunded, setting them up for life)
There's some stuff on their site
Of course, the crowd of Rebels were a practical effect; most of them are cardboard cutouts, IIRC.
Well, there go the music videos. (honestly, they don't do as much for the plot as something else might have, but I'd still prefer the series were uncut in the end)
So, let me indulge my morbid curiosity: how do they establish that Hitomi ends up on Gaia anyway? I hope that they left in enough of the pendant to keep it (and what Hitomi's doing with it) as a critical part of the plot.
I suggest that you look for (as you appear to like sf, mecha and deep, or at least cool plots):
What a crappy insult.
Slashdot supports, among other things, the ability to embolden text, and the ability to italicize text (which I don't normally use, because it takes more work).
But italicized text is not necessarily cursive. Cursive script is quite different from Roman rustic script. (which we'd now call printing) The letters were simplified after the fall of Rome, particularly with regards to how frequently one's pen had to be picked up. And the Carolingian scribes developed mixed-case script.
Italics, came later. The Italian scribe Niccolo Niccoli mistook Carolingian texts for ancient Roman texts in the 15th century. And liking the natural slant of the blackletter script (which is commonly observed in handwriting) combined it with the letterforms of the ancient rustic script.
While some letters are quite similar between cursive script and Venitian italics (e.g. f, g, k and s) italics are otherwise dissimilar.
The most visible dissimilarity in the modern day is that cursive script letters are typically connected within words (and sometimes even between words) to further improve writing efficiency. Print letters are almost never connected, with the exception of ligatures (eg if) as this was the style of the ancient Romans. However, even modern typefaces, such as all of the sans serif faces can be italicized merely by skewing them to the right.
So anyway, while Slashdot supports the bold tag, there's no such thing as a cursive tag. Thus we can safely conclude that you sir, are the moron of this particular thread.
1) Cowboy Bebop is a very good anime that ran on TV in Japan recently. More recently, Bandai has been releasing it on DVD in the US (translated - dubs and subs are available). Ex is an online magazine about anime, manga and other related subjects. (e.g. anime-based video games)
Tons of nifty bits including some spoilers (they are obscured, so if you, like me, haven't seen the 2 DVDs that haven't yet been released in the US, don't worry) as well as the revelation that the script is written for the Bebop movie.
2)There's a lot of interesting information for fans of the show. But some of this information could potentially spoil your enjoyment of the show if you aren't already thoroughly familiar with it (e.g. finding out that Darth Vader is Luke's father before seeing the movie) and has been hidden so that you won't find out unless you want to. Additionally, four of the planned six DVDs have been released in the US. The remaining two will be out by October. Lastly, a movie is planned (it's not a sequel though - it takes place in between some of the TV episodes).
Tons of great Fay fan service for CowboyNeal too.
3) Faye [Valentine] is one of the main characters - the interview has a couple of pictures of her butt, which CowboyNeal will certainly appreciate ;)
While I heard that Fox was airing Escaflowne on TV, I haven't seen it. After all, I'm actually kind of pissed off that it introduced a FIVE MONTH delay in the release of the Escaflowne DVDs. Why, if they had been released when they were supposed to be, we would probably have already gotten to the *amazing jaw-dropping episode* by now.
So let me get this perfectly straight. Fox, which is airing Escaflowne dubbed into English, has CUT OUT the original soundtrack?
...
are they out of their FUCKING _*MINDS*_? It's one of the best OSTs around!
Please tell me that I'm misinterpreting this, and that they didn't replace the soundtrack with some mindless synthesized crap.
Sec. 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
Certainly, this strikes me as indicating that creating a course packet is acceptable. The trick comes in the size of the packet - you're less likely to get in trouble if you use the important bits (e.g. a couple poems or a few hundred choice words of prose) than if you copy entire books and include them in the packet.
But it is generally decided on a case-by-case basis. Other than the four part test above, there are no _real_ guidelines as to precisely what you can and can't do. There are, however, a lot of university policies, which are generally pretty good guesses.
Well, we're ok until the RIAA manages to weasel their way in with the hardware manufacturers in the same way that the MPAA has been doing. (see recent stories re: encrypted video signals)
Then we might end up with the CD drives doing the watermarking _for_ them. But hopefully a watermark stripper would emerge shortly therafter (perhaps by comparing hashes of many rips, or just compressing it away)
This won't help much. You still have to dl the entire song before you can check to make sure that the entire song is what you really wanted. At best it could kill the dl when you got to the cuckoo, or run in the background and flag the cuckoos.
AFAICT, you're right on that it won't significantly help the RIAA (not the MPAA) stop trading; this is the identification of a SONG, not of a particular source CD. So the RIAA can tell that someone definately ripped... I dunno... Raymond Scott's _Powerhouse_ but they don't have any way of determining who ripped it, or from what specific CD, or what store sold that CD to whom.
It might be bad for sampling, but one hopes that it can be successfully fought for in court (didn't Negativland do something along those lines already?)
Naw. The ARPANet was funded by ARPA (which had less of a connection to the War Department then than they do now, hence the name change to DARPA) but was worked on completely by civilian researchers.
The Army had nothin' to do with it. The 'the internet is designed to survive nuclear war' story is not true. It has enough problems with backhoes.
Anyway, there's more here, though I rather liked Captain Scarlet better. OTOH, if you want a really cheesy cartoon theme song, try Gigantor. ;)
SIG
Well of course it'll die. So will Linux and Windows someday.
I'm a big Mac user, and when I can get my hands on something better (e.g. non-homicidal desktop HAL 9000) I'll switch to it.
But yeah, there's been no reason so far to believe that Linux will take over the niche that the Mac occupies. Nor do I expect the Mac (or Windows or Linux) to die anytime soon.