Ironically, Photoshop was first developed for use in the post-production of Cameron's "The Abyss." (IIRC it was used to help do the 'splash' effect when the water tentacle falls down)
I find it difficult to believe that people do not use Photoshop or similar image manipulation tools, along with a number of other tools, when working on movies. In the end, movies are just a large collection of stills.
(at the very least, I'd imagine that it's handy for cleaning up mattes)
Heh. The Kinko's case has been widely misapplied. Basically, IIRC, it's perfectly alright for professors or students to copy works for some educational purpose.
But what was happening was that Kinko's was getting a list of what the professor planned to copy, doing it themselves, and selling the copies at a profit.
There is a significant difference between a professor making a bunch of copies and Kinko's making copies under their own inititive. But perhaps most professors didn't look into it that closely; certainly Kinko's does nothing to encourage people to make their own copies either.
This exists already for purchased works - it's known as the First Sale doctrine. The real trick is, do the psuedo-licenses that software houses and now book publishers foist on people actually apply?
It's actually a little funny that you mention this: as the article notes, Sparrows appear in _Dark_Angel_. I saw them getting ready to film some of it the last time I was in Vancouver. Man, are those things ugly. It reminded me of the silly little car in _Brazil_.
As a resident of the Seattle-Tacoma area though, I did enjoy the fake license plates they had put on them: Washington - the City-State
Silverhawks? Bleh. While there have been far, far worse cartoons (Monchichi's anyone;) that is stooping pretty low. Glad I already finished taping all of Reboot. (Season 3 will be on DVD soon! Hurray! But by ADV! Who suck!)
Honestly, even though I'm a pretty big anime fan, I have absolutely zero interest in watching 99.44% of the crap that Cartoon Network tries to pass off these days. Sailor Moon? Tenchi TV? DBZ? For god's sake, who -and this is the important bit- in their _right_mind_ wants to watch any of those?
Fox has Escaflowne OTOH, which is _very_ good. (though I haven't seen their version, just fansubs some years ago)
Now they just need to get the rights to, oh say, Cowboy Bebop or Nadia or one of the better Gundams (no, Gundam Wing is not as good as 0080 or 0083 or V) and then, rather than having Americans begin to appreciate anime they might end up appreciating GOOD anime.
(whereupon we make 'em watch Otaku no Video and invest in Otakuland. Tatakae, OTAKING!;)
Re:Frisbee; personal information ... shades of TRO
on
The Computer of 2010
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· Score: 1
This is _precisely_ what I was thinking of. So does Forbes predict that we'll be able to throw the 2010 PCs at people to de-rez them? Hope not, I'm not all that good at frisbee or jai-alai.
Maybe, but the true rarity will be 100 year old recordings of Antiques Roadshow (and on a related note, go watch Cowboy Bebop, which deals with this a bit;)
While this is moving outside of the realm of this discussion, I concur re: libertarianism. Mostly in that I distrust corporations (which would have made many of the founding fathers go white with shock) even more than I distrust the government.
But sensible gun control deals with nuclear weapons, and biological warfare. I don't trust the government to strip people of the only thing that ultimately is intended as a check on the government. And I don't let foxes guard my henhouse either.
I guess I should be happy with a vacation of some weeks from the last time I had to do this.
Ahem.
It's impossible to steal music.
Here's why (this isn't a cyber-hippy argument, I swear):
By definition, it is only possible to steal something that's owned. Conversely, if something cannot be owned, it cannot be stolen.
So music can't be stolen, because it can't be owned. And when I say that it can't be owned, I mean it. In order to own something, there are three requirements that must be met.
1)The owner must be able to make full use of the owned item
2)The owner must be able to control if and how others use the owned item
3)The owner must be able to dispose of (eg sell, destroy, give away) the owned item at will
So let's look at music, and how it fits with these things. Remember, we're talking about MUSIC. Not CDs. Not tapes. Not mp3s. Not even sound waves travelling through the air. None of those things are music, they are simply the media upon which music is transferred. Music is ultimately a concept.
1)If you write an original song, can you use it? Obviously the answer is yes. You can hum it, sing it, play it backwards to listen to the satanic messages, etc. (probably by having placed it onto a convenient medium, but hey, you might just be that good)
2)If you let me listen to the song, can you exert control over it? Here, the answer is no. You see, there are many seperate copies of the song floating around at this point.
There is the original copy, which exists within your mind. Don't believe me? Well let's prove it. Surely you know 'Doo Wah Diddy' - well can you hum it? Better yet, can you remember how it goes in your mind, without actually making any sounds? (eg when it gets stuck in your head) Then we've successfully demonstrated that music exists independently of any particular medium.
So what happens when you make a copy of the music in your mind onto a carrier like a soundwave, or sheet music, or a CD or mp3? Two copies exist. When I listen to the music, a third copy is created, within my mind. Even if I give back your CD, I can also do the trick with remembering how the song goes. (bear in mind that while most people have average memories, there are those with perfect recall that won't forget a note of the song)
Can you make me give back the copy in my mind? Not without a lobotomy, I'd warrant. And while you can demand that I not listen to the music in my mind, you can't enforce that in any way whatsoever, and neither can any court in the world. You simply do not have control over how I use the song.
3)So given that, can you get rid of the song? Perhaps by selling it or giving it away? Again, no. You can give people COPIES, but the original is basically stuck in your mind. And you can't give people the copies that exist in other listener's minds (like mine) either.
So music, or anything else that can be memorized, isn't able to fulfill the three traditional legal requirements for ownership. And without ownership, there can be no stealing or theft.
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What you _really_ mean is that people are commiting copyright infringement. Copyrights are ownable, but they're a package of rights governing legal transactions over an unownable piece of information. They do not pretend to be actual ownership of that information; that's impossible. (this is why the term 'Intellectual Property' is patently offensive. There is no such thing, nor would it be good if there were)
Additionally, do remember that from the dawn of humanity until about ~1730 there were no copyright laws. And yet the system worked, and there were books and songs and paintings all over the damn place. The system doesn't rely on copyright laws. I don't advocate totally getting rid of them, but they are in need of massive reform. More copyrights, as I've shown in another post, harm society. Few to no copyrights are optimal. And the fundementals of US copyright law exist for the benefit of society, not for copyright holders. Don't believe it? Read the Constitution.
Copyright law also prohibits some creation. I'd get in a lot of trouble if I made a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Even if it was better than anything that's ever come out of Disney, even if it was the best movie in history, it would still be illegal. (under trademark law as well, actually)
So doesn't it appear that copyright law has a major flaw in it if I'm prohibited from making a good movie, just because it relies on people having seen someone else's movie? (Disney appears to have done well for itself, constantly making adaptations of fairy tales. The only difference is that the fairy tales are not copyrighted. The act of making an adaptation or a remake is NOT different, and arguably provides the same benefit to society either way)
IIRC the libraries here have a limit of a few hundred items at any one time. I think that it was only set because of businesses (notably day cares) checking out entire sections of the library and renewing them as much as possible. But most people don't run into that.
The trick here is this: when content is available to the public for free, and when it can be used in any way whatsoever (ie public domain) then it has the greatest benefit for society possible.
Society is harmed when content is restricted.
Let's pretend that copyrights have existed forever, that they never expire, and that the copyright holder has total control over the use of his copyrighted material. Since these are all things that big, moneyed copyright holders (e.g. MPAA, RIAA) are trying to do, this is a reasonable position to explore.
Now then, this means that the heirs of the person who invented the word 'the' own it. They can control your use of it, because, after all, in this hypothetical world of super-copyrights, they're entitled to full control by virtue of having developed it. Permitting people to use it freely for some period of time is nice of them, but doesn't harm their copyright (which is in fact the case in reality - only trademarks require defense by the holder)
Does it benefit society to have to pay royalties on your use of 'the' in everyday conversation, or in your writings? No. It very fundementally harms the exercise of language. (which has to be widely comprehensible in order to function, hindering the development of private languages)
At the other extreme would be a world in which there is no control over information whatsoever, except initial non-distribution. That is, if you write a book and don't wish to lose control over all extant copies, you'd better not show it to anyone. Because they, and everyone else in the world would be free to copy it.
This has been the case throughout most of history. Of course, there were cultural/political limits imposed on what you could write (e.g. seditious material would not be looked upon favorably) but the copying of otherwise permissible material was a-ok. While there is the very real problem of compensating artists for their work BEYOND the initial payment for it that they recieved, the world still ended up with a pretty large amount of creative works.
Many of these works are going to be derivative. For instance William Shakespeare, universally regarded as the greatest of all English writers copied the plots for virtually everything he did from other sources. Hamlet was a play before he got to it. Romeo and Juliet ("Shakespeare in Love" aside) was a poem. This doesn't make him any less good at what he did. But society clearly benefited from his ability to take works that had been developed originally by others and rewrite them into something better.
While the benefit to society of any particular derivative work might be minimal (which is why they're generally considered infringing under modern copyright law) there is still likely to be some benefit. I have some degree of experience here, having read blatantly derivative works (in which the characters, setting, and basic plot are all copyrighted) which were superior to the source material.
So a loss of copyright carries a much greater benefit to society than an enlargement of copyright does.
The only questions left deal with volume.
1) Will more works be created (beneficial) if copyrights exist than would be created and improved upon (beneficial) if copyrights did not.
2) If works are copyrightable, what copyright laws will encourage the optimal ratio of creation (benefical) to harm caused to society by the inability to freely redistribute and modify those works (harmful)
That is the argument we're really looking at. And as always, tied into it, is money. Lots and lots of money.
Personally, I'm an artist. I don't think that it would ultimately be good for copyrights to vanish. But I don't think that modern copyrights are good, or even constitutional. The system is in need of a great deal of reform, and copyrights need to be reduced in scope, become more difficult to attain, and be shorter in duration. That, I think, would help.
I live in Seattle. So it's understandable why I wouldn't call Frank Gehry an architect in a million years. I don't even go near Seattle Center anymore if I can help it, 'cause of him.
Yeah, I'm aware of that, and I have also read through the transcripts. I guess I was being too brief.
The 2600 legal team did raise the issue that the MPAA members were using the DMCA in a manner that is prohibited by existing antitrust law. Nowhere IIRC does the DMCA explicitly override antitrust laws _or_ require that copyright holders act in an illegally monopolistic manner in order to control access. But the judge appears to have taken the opinion that any means by which a copyright holder enforces access control is upheld by the DMCA, which takes precedence over existing laws.
Which doesn't make much sense - can MGM stab me in the back if I use DeCSS? No. There are obviously limitations on how they can exercise their access control. It seems to me that only methods which don't contradict existing laws (e.g. antitrust) would be permissible.
Additionally, permitting them to operate as monopolies flys in the face of the Copyright clause, which requires that copyrights be limited.
IIRC they did, but the Judge shot them down right away, claiming that antitrust laws don't apply here. Which is total bullshit, excuse my French.
It should be noted that the Judge's old firm did consulting work for the MPAA in regards to DVDs and antitrust legislation. This is why there's been a lot of talk about him being biased. He probably is.
True, but it is his job to determine whether or not the DMCA is a constitutional law, and whether it can be exercised in a way that is constitutional. He's failed miserably there.
1) The first amendment DOES permit the publication of potentially dangerous information or instructions. This has been upheld by the Supreme Court for quite some time (at least since the case in which a magazine published instructions for nuclear weapons construction in the 60s -70s)
No, you can't say "Let's go kill Brian Adams, right now" but you can say "Brian Adams will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." One is an immediate incitement to an illegal act. The other is not - it's protected speech.
And source code has been found in a different circuit to be protected speech, and once a case involving that idea gets to the Supreme Court it's likely to be upheld there too - why should VERY PRECISE speech be less protected than vague speech? It's not impossible to program a computer in English, if you're clear and write an interpreter.
2) The MPAA members are illegally using their copyrights to acquire and keep a monopoly on DVD players. The traditional remedy, as I have heard, is to invalidate the copyrights being used in this manner until such a time as they are no longer being used for illegal activities.
The Judge (whose firm has consulted for the MPAA on antitrust issues in the past - which is why he probably should not have been involved with this case) quickly decided that the DMCA overrides antitrust law (it plainly doesn't and the Congressional record is clear on that over and over again) and refused to hear arguments along those lines.
3) Fair use is being circumvented by the DMCA, but fair use is a right which for over a hundred years was found by courts high and low to be more fundemental than copyright. While Congress has since explicitly enacted laws protecting fair use, they are constitutionally unable (so sayeth the courts) to get rid of it.
But Kaplan let himself be fooled by the MPAA who claim that fair use still exists, even though you can't actually exercise it.
4) The MPAA never showed any harm, which is something of a prerequisite. The case should have ended at the beginning, really.
2600 has a MUCH stronger case than the MPAA. They just don't come across as well to a biased judge.
Heh. Anime really just means animation. But all genres are represented; I've seen tragedies, comedies, science fiction,fantasy, adventure, dramas, mysteries, etc. I'm naming stuff _I_ like, and that I think other people might like. If you like high romance, then clearly my suggestions aren't going to do you _that_ much good.
Regarding your comments on the stuff I suggested:
Macross Plus
Are you certain that it was Macross _PLUS_ that you saw? Your description sounds a lot more like the original Macross (which, having been produced in the early 80's would have lousy 80's idol music, though it's otherwise a good series) or Macross II or Macross 7, neither of which were particularly good. There are only four episodes of Mac+ anyway. And a movie that's really just a condensed version, with a couple minutes of new footage.
Of course, music has always been at the core of all of the Macross series. Which is actually pretty cool; it gives it a lot of heart, if the romance aspect weren't already enough.
Escaflowne
Heh. It's really worth seeing. The story is fantastic, the animation and music is brilliant. Really it's not about Hitomi (the girl) as much as you'd think, though she is one of the three main characters. Given my background in physics, I thought it was suprisingly cool when I figured everything out, but I don't want to give anything away if possible.
Cagliostro
Whatever. It's a good story, it's very widely liked, and it dates back to the early 80's IIRC. Not everything is animated in the style of Lain. Hell, Giant Robo, which is extremely cool (but not on R1 DVD yet, sad to say) is deliberately animated in a retro style. Much like the Gekiganger segments in Nadesico.
Patlabor
The TV series is, IMHO, a comedy about reject policemen piloting mecha. The movies have a couple comedic moments, but are both extremely serious. And much of the Ghost in the Shell team worked on the 2nd movie; the animation's virtually identical in style and quality.
Lodoss
Meh. A lot of people like it. Personally, I don't plan on buying it; I've seen it, I'm not that interested in it. But I'm trying to name stuff that a lot of people like, and that will hopefully get them interested in anime even more. My favorite OAVs are Otaku no Video, but you don't see me hawking them.
Lain
I thought it was a lot like Evangelion. But the first DVD of Eva was so crappy production-wise that it's not something that I can reccomend. I've seen better series than Lain.
Tenchi
Other than Sasami, who the hell is a submissive girl in this series? Surely you're not talking about Aeka? Go listen to the 'Call Me Princess' song before you object. Again though, a lot of people like Tenchi, so it belongs on the list. I mean, you like Ranma, and it's extremely similar, so I don't see the problem you have with it.
As for your choices:
Ghost in the Shell
Stunning animation, but they butchered the manga. Shirow had the same problem with Appleseed. His stuff's too long and too complicated to fit into an anime. I really have gotten tired of people proclaiming it to be brilliant when it's largely Predator-style effects, naked cyborgs and guns. If there had been more plot I'd feel better about it.
Akira
Good, tough to grok, but not on the list mostly because it's not on DVD. Also because everyone always says Akira, and I'd like for people to know of more than a handful of good series.
Bubblegum Crisis
Heh. I left this out _because_ the animation is so bad until Ep5. I love the series personally, though it's a little short. Haven't seen the new one yet, I really need to.
Ranma
Are the TV episodes out on DVD yet? The movies are virtually inaccessable without them, or at least the manga. The relationships are just too complex. I don't think that you can even draw an accurate flowchart in 2 dimensions. Funny, but it did get slow after a while. I hope you at least kept watching them long enough for Ukyo to appear;)
Anyway, I agree that just being animated does not make a movie good. Disney's proved that already, and there's tons of crap in Japan that thankfully never sets foot in the States. If you want SF the best thing I can think of offhand is Sol Bianca or Alita or Super Atragon. But many anime _do_ tend to emphasize the human aspect of the series over the setting, and that's what draws so many people to it. So while you might bitch that a kick-ass series like Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water (and if ADV would get off their asses and put out DVDs of this already, I think my opinion of them would improve a tiny bit, those hosers) has too much 'soap opera' in it, and not enough 19th century SF, I'm mostly watching for the relationship between Jean and Marie. So are most people, I think. What's the point of a series without people?
I'll try to stick to the stuff that's been released on DVD in the states. All the anime companies are moving to DVD, though some of them are better (Bandai) than others (ADV). Also, you'll find that subtitled anime is generally a lot better than the dubs. There are very few American voice actors that can match the Japanese.
Cowboy Bebop
Interplanetary bounty hunters - an ex-cop; a former mafia hit man (??); an amoral, beautiful, thieving, cheating, woman with a huge debt; and a somewhat feral uberhacker. Kicks the most ass of anything that's come out recently.
Macross Plus
Two old friends, now enemies, flight-testing new transformable planes for the military. And another friend working with the first computer capable of singing. Great stuff.
Escaflowne
(This is actually coming out _soon_, though it's already on VHS) A high school girl accidently gets teleported to a hidden sister planet of Earth, called Gaia. Where she gets in the middle of a huge conflict between various countries, all of whom use mecha (they haven't generally developed electronics; they're 99% gears and flywheels) Eerily similar to Star Wars after a little while, and they always knock you flat on your ass every fifth episode.
Castle of Cagliostro
There's a series of French novels about Aresene Lupin, a master thief. This movie is about his grandson, Lupin III, who's not terribly serious but knows what he's doing. This is the best of the Lupin movies, and the director, Miyazaki is one of the best in Japan. People always seem to like his movies.
Patlabor 1
In order to avoid rising sea levels and to get more land, Tokyo Bay is being dammed and reclaimed. To speed it up, construction mecha - Labors - are developed. But soon, people start using them for criminal activities (sharing mp3s perhaps;) so the Police also get mecha - Patrol Labors. This is one of two movies after the long-running TV/OAV series. It's got a lot more mystery than action, but it's really very good. The 2nd movie, not yet released is excellent.
Grave of the Fireflies
A really sad movie involving two siblings, set in the closing days of WWII, in Japan. Excellent movie, but really depressing. Very much worth seeing.
Record of Lodoss War
This was someone's Dungeons and Dragons campaign, I'm sure. Novice warrior, grizzled dwarf, a thief, a wizard, a cleric and a cute elf girl save the world from the forces of Evil. (one of whom looks like Evil Spock;) It's pretty good, and I understand that there's a sequel coming out in the states now.
Serial Experiments Lain
Creepy series about a girl who gets email from dead people. But this seriously explores computers and what happens when we create an infosphere, and what can be done with it. Takes a couple watchings at the end to figure out what they're doing precisely. And 'Arisa's name is actually Alice, those morons.
Tenchi Muyo!
I no longer even keep track of how many versions of this series are out there. I liked the original OAVs, which aren't on DVD. You might like the TV series better. Cartoon Network is showing something, who knows what. Go wild.
Yeah, Apple's next generation Mac System was at one time named Copland. (and Rhapsody, and MacOS 9, and MacOS X)
What's funny to me though is that when Apple was demoing the multi-user functionality of Copland many years ago (this has ultimately just become MacOS 9's Multiple Users) they did so with examples from the Simpsons.;)
Of course, the Powerpuffs are essentially Magical Girl Anime if it had been (and in fact, it is) animated by Hanna-Barbara. It's a great parody, and I used to watch it a bit, but AFAIK it hasn't gotten out of that rut yet.
Also, Spawn sucks (in all forms known to man) and while the X-Men scripts weren't bad, the animation was lousy because it was too closely based on the comic. Batman is an excellent example of how animation gets better as the character designs get more simplified - even when comparing the earlier designs to the later ones (with the exception IMHO of the Riddler)
Reboot of course, was plenty good once the stories started to come together in Season 2.
The reason for this is involved with IIRC trademark law. If a trademarked character is in a work that enters the public domain, the trademark goes with it.
Disney can't afford to lose Mickey Mouse, and unfortunately we're all stuck suffering because of it.
The NeXT cubes have four slots (with some variant of NuBus), with dimensions of IIRC 11" x 11". The motherboard occupied one slot. About the only other cards ever made were the NeXT Dimension (a pretty rare video card) and one or two other really specialized boards. Some cubes have been hacked to contain multiple motherboards.
I don't think you'll get an ATX board in there without really pulling things apart.
I conceed that it's presently illegal (under some, but not all circumstances) to copy and distribute copies of copyrighted material for which the copier doesn't have authorization to do so.
But OTOH a law's just not a law until the courts have reviewed it. The DMCA's modifications to copyright law are particularly heinous. I don't expect them all to stand w/o significant modification by the courts.
(As for my handle - it's a long story, but derives from the title character of the kid's show "Captain Kangaroo"... who for all we know is an army captain)
No, you misunderstand what I said. Let's say that Stephen King writes yet another novel. He offers to sell it to a publisher for one million dollars. Whereupon if copyrights don't exist, the novel is the property of the publisher; King doesn't see a dime beyond the first million but nothing prevents anyone else from copying it either.
This is how things _used_ to work, although I don't think that it would be terribly wise right now. I don't have an awful problem with copyrights in general, I just think that modern-day copyright law is unconstitutional and is in need of significant reform.
Slashdot Mirror
Ironically, Photoshop was first developed for use in the post-production of Cameron's "The Abyss." (IIRC it was used to help do the 'splash' effect when the water tentacle falls down)
I find it difficult to believe that people do not use Photoshop or similar image manipulation tools, along with a number of other tools, when working on movies. In the end, movies are just a large collection of stills.
(at the very least, I'd imagine that it's handy for cleaning up mattes)
Heh. The Kinko's case has been widely misapplied. Basically, IIRC, it's perfectly alright for professors or students to copy works for some educational purpose.
But what was happening was that Kinko's was getting a list of what the professor planned to copy, doing it themselves, and selling the copies at a profit.
There is a significant difference between a professor making a bunch of copies and Kinko's making copies under their own inititive. But perhaps most professors didn't look into it that closely; certainly Kinko's does nothing to encourage people to make their own copies either.
This exists already for purchased works - it's known as the First Sale doctrine. The real trick is, do the psuedo-licenses that software houses and now book publishers foist on people actually apply?
I'd say, no, they generally do not.
It's actually a little funny that you mention this: as the article notes, Sparrows appear in _Dark_Angel_. I saw them getting ready to film some of it the last time I was in Vancouver. Man, are those things ugly. It reminded me of the silly little car in _Brazil_.
As a resident of the Seattle-Tacoma area though, I did enjoy the fake license plates they had put on them: Washington - the City-State
;)
Silverhawks? Bleh. While there have been far, far worse cartoons (Monchichi's anyone ;) that is stooping pretty low. Glad I already finished taping all of Reboot. (Season 3 will be on DVD soon! Hurray! But by ADV! Who suck!)
;)
Honestly, even though I'm a pretty big anime fan, I have absolutely zero interest in watching 99.44% of the crap that Cartoon Network tries to pass off these days. Sailor Moon? Tenchi TV? DBZ? For god's sake, who -and this is the important bit- in their _right_mind_ wants to watch any of those?
Fox has Escaflowne OTOH, which is _very_ good. (though I haven't seen their version, just fansubs some years ago)
Now they just need to get the rights to, oh say, Cowboy Bebop or Nadia or one of the better Gundams (no, Gundam Wing is not as good as 0080 or 0083 or V) and then, rather than having Americans begin to appreciate anime they might end up appreciating GOOD anime.
(whereupon we make 'em watch Otaku no Video and invest in Otakuland. Tatakae, OTAKING!
This is _precisely_ what I was thinking of. So does Forbes predict that we'll be able to throw the 2010 PCs at people to de-rez them? Hope not, I'm not all that good at frisbee or jai-alai.
ObSimpsons: Has anyone here seen Tron?
Maybe, but the true rarity will be 100 year old recordings of Antiques Roadshow (and on a related note, go watch Cowboy Bebop, which deals with this a bit ;)
While this is moving outside of the realm of this discussion, I concur re: libertarianism. Mostly in that I distrust corporations (which would have made many of the founding fathers go white with shock) even more than I distrust the government.
But sensible gun control deals with nuclear weapons, and biological warfare. I don't trust the government to strip people of the only thing that ultimately is intended as a check on the government. And I don't let foxes guard my henhouse either.
I guess I should be happy with a vacation of some weeks from the last time I had to do this.
Ahem.
It's impossible to steal music.
Here's why (this isn't a cyber-hippy argument, I swear):
By definition, it is only possible to steal something that's owned. Conversely, if something cannot be owned, it cannot be stolen.
So music can't be stolen, because it can't be owned. And when I say that it can't be owned, I mean it. In order to own something, there are three requirements that must be met.
1)The owner must be able to make full use of the owned item
2)The owner must be able to control if and how others use the owned item
3)The owner must be able to dispose of (eg sell, destroy, give away) the owned item at will
So let's look at music, and how it fits with these things. Remember, we're talking about MUSIC. Not CDs. Not tapes. Not mp3s. Not even sound waves travelling through the air. None of those things are music, they are simply the media upon which music is transferred. Music is ultimately a concept.
1)If you write an original song, can you use it? Obviously the answer is yes. You can hum it, sing it, play it backwards to listen to the satanic messages, etc. (probably by having placed it onto a convenient medium, but hey, you might just be that good)
2)If you let me listen to the song, can you exert control over it? Here, the answer is no. You see, there are many seperate copies of the song floating around at this point.
There is the original copy, which exists within your mind. Don't believe me? Well let's prove it. Surely you know 'Doo Wah Diddy' - well can you hum it? Better yet, can you remember how it goes in your mind, without actually making any sounds? (eg when it gets stuck in your head) Then we've successfully demonstrated that music exists independently of any particular medium.
So what happens when you make a copy of the music in your mind onto a carrier like a soundwave, or sheet music, or a CD or mp3? Two copies exist. When I listen to the music, a third copy is created, within my mind. Even if I give back your CD, I can also do the trick with remembering how the song goes. (bear in mind that while most people have average memories, there are those with perfect recall that won't forget a note of the song)
Can you make me give back the copy in my mind? Not without a lobotomy, I'd warrant. And while you can demand that I not listen to the music in my mind, you can't enforce that in any way whatsoever, and neither can any court in the world. You simply do not have control over how I use the song.
3)So given that, can you get rid of the song? Perhaps by selling it or giving it away? Again, no. You can give people COPIES, but the original is basically stuck in your mind. And you can't give people the copies that exist in other listener's minds (like mine) either.
So music, or anything else that can be memorized, isn't able to fulfill the three traditional legal requirements for ownership. And without ownership, there can be no stealing or theft.
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What you _really_ mean is that people are commiting copyright infringement. Copyrights are ownable, but they're a package of rights governing legal transactions over an unownable piece of information. They do not pretend to be actual ownership of that information; that's impossible. (this is why the term 'Intellectual Property' is patently offensive. There is no such thing, nor would it be good if there were)
Additionally, do remember that from the dawn of humanity until about ~1730 there were no copyright laws. And yet the system worked, and there were books and songs and paintings all over the damn place. The system doesn't rely on copyright laws. I don't advocate totally getting rid of them, but they are in need of massive reform. More copyrights, as I've shown in another post, harm society. Few to no copyrights are optimal. And the fundementals of US copyright law exist for the benefit of society, not for copyright holders. Don't believe it? Read the Constitution.
Copyright law also prohibits some creation. I'd get in a lot of trouble if I made a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Even if it was better than anything that's ever come out of Disney, even if it was the best movie in history, it would still be illegal. (under trademark law as well, actually)
So doesn't it appear that copyright law has a major flaw in it if I'm prohibited from making a good movie, just because it relies on people having seen someone else's movie? (Disney appears to have done well for itself, constantly making adaptations of fairy tales. The only difference is that the fairy tales are not copyrighted. The act of making an adaptation or a remake is NOT different, and arguably provides the same benefit to society either way)
IIRC the libraries here have a limit of a few hundred items at any one time. I think that it was only set because of businesses (notably day cares) checking out entire sections of the library and renewing them as much as possible. But most people don't run into that.
The trick here is this: when content is available to the public for free, and when it can be used in any way whatsoever (ie public domain) then it has the greatest benefit for society possible.
Society is harmed when content is restricted.
Let's pretend that copyrights have existed forever, that they never expire, and that the copyright holder has total control over the use of his copyrighted material. Since these are all things that big, moneyed copyright holders (e.g. MPAA, RIAA) are trying to do, this is a reasonable position to explore.
Now then, this means that the heirs of the person who invented the word 'the' own it. They can control your use of it, because, after all, in this hypothetical world of super-copyrights, they're entitled to full control by virtue of having developed it. Permitting people to use it freely for some period of time is nice of them, but doesn't harm their copyright (which is in fact the case in reality - only trademarks require defense by the holder)
Does it benefit society to have to pay royalties on your use of 'the' in everyday conversation, or in your writings? No. It very fundementally harms the exercise of language. (which has to be widely comprehensible in order to function, hindering the development of private languages)
At the other extreme would be a world in which there is no control over information whatsoever, except initial non-distribution. That is, if you write a book and don't wish to lose control over all extant copies, you'd better not show it to anyone. Because they, and everyone else in the world would be free to copy it.
This has been the case throughout most of history. Of course, there were cultural/political limits imposed on what you could write (e.g. seditious material would not be looked upon favorably) but the copying of otherwise permissible material was a-ok. While there is the very real problem of compensating artists for their work BEYOND the initial payment for it that they recieved, the world still ended up with a pretty large amount of creative works.
Many of these works are going to be derivative. For instance William Shakespeare, universally regarded as the greatest of all English writers copied the plots for virtually everything he did from other sources. Hamlet was a play before he got to it. Romeo and Juliet ("Shakespeare in Love" aside) was a poem. This doesn't make him any less good at what he did. But society clearly benefited from his ability to take works that had been developed originally by others and rewrite them into something better.
While the benefit to society of any particular derivative work might be minimal (which is why they're generally considered infringing under modern copyright law) there is still likely to be some benefit. I have some degree of experience here, having read blatantly derivative works (in which the characters, setting, and basic plot are all copyrighted) which were superior to the source material.
So a loss of copyright carries a much greater benefit to society than an enlargement of copyright does.
The only questions left deal with volume.
1) Will more works be created (beneficial) if copyrights exist than would be created and improved upon (beneficial) if copyrights did not.
2) If works are copyrightable, what copyright laws will encourage the optimal ratio of creation (benefical) to harm caused to society by the inability to freely redistribute and modify those works (harmful)
That is the argument we're really looking at. And as always, tied into it, is money. Lots and lots of money.
Personally, I'm an artist. I don't think that it would ultimately be good for copyrights to vanish. But I don't think that modern copyrights are good, or even constitutional. The system is in need of a great deal of reform, and copyrights need to be reduced in scope, become more difficult to attain, and be shorter in duration. That, I think, would help.
I live in Seattle. So it's understandable why I wouldn't call Frank Gehry an architect in a million years. I don't even go near Seattle Center anymore if I can help it, 'cause of him.
Yeah, I'm aware of that, and I have also read through the transcripts. I guess I was being too brief.
The 2600 legal team did raise the issue that the MPAA members were using the DMCA in a manner that is prohibited by existing antitrust law. Nowhere IIRC does the DMCA explicitly override antitrust laws _or_ require that copyright holders act in an illegally monopolistic manner in order to control access. But the judge appears to have taken the opinion that any means by which a copyright holder enforces access control is upheld by the DMCA, which takes precedence over existing laws.
Which doesn't make much sense - can MGM stab me in the back if I use DeCSS? No. There are obviously limitations on how they can exercise their access control. It seems to me that only methods which don't contradict existing laws (e.g. antitrust) would be permissible.
Additionally, permitting them to operate as monopolies flys in the face of the Copyright clause, which requires that copyrights be limited.
IIRC they did, but the Judge shot them down right away, claiming that antitrust laws don't apply here. Which is total bullshit, excuse my French.
It should be noted that the Judge's old firm did consulting work for the MPAA in regards to DVDs and antitrust legislation. This is why there's been a lot of talk about him being biased. He probably is.
True, but it is his job to determine whether or not the DMCA is a constitutional law, and whether it can be exercised in a way that is constitutional. He's failed miserably there.
Their legal footing is this (IANAL):
1) The first amendment DOES permit the publication of potentially dangerous information or instructions. This has been upheld by the Supreme Court for quite some time (at least since the case in which a magazine published instructions for nuclear weapons construction in the 60s -70s)
No, you can't say "Let's go kill Brian Adams, right now" but you can say "Brian Adams will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." One is an immediate incitement to an illegal act. The other is not - it's protected speech.
And source code has been found in a different circuit to be protected speech, and once a case involving that idea gets to the Supreme Court it's likely to be upheld there too - why should VERY PRECISE speech be less protected than vague speech? It's not impossible to program a computer in English, if you're clear and write an interpreter.
2) The MPAA members are illegally using their copyrights to acquire and keep a monopoly on DVD players. The traditional remedy, as I have heard, is to invalidate the copyrights being used in this manner until such a time as they are no longer being used for illegal activities.
The Judge (whose firm has consulted for the MPAA on antitrust issues in the past - which is why he probably should not have been involved with this case) quickly decided that the DMCA overrides antitrust law (it plainly doesn't and the Congressional record is clear on that over and over again) and refused to hear arguments along those lines.
3) Fair use is being circumvented by the DMCA, but fair use is a right which for over a hundred years was found by courts high and low to be more fundemental than copyright. While Congress has since explicitly enacted laws protecting fair use, they are constitutionally unable (so sayeth the courts) to get rid of it.
But Kaplan let himself be fooled by the MPAA who claim that fair use still exists, even though you can't actually exercise it.
4) The MPAA never showed any harm, which is something of a prerequisite. The case should have ended at the beginning, really.
2600 has a MUCH stronger case than the MPAA. They just don't come across as well to a biased judge.
I believe that there's one built into a Ten-Gallon Hat ;)
Regarding your comments on the stuff I suggested:
Macross Plus
Are you certain that it was Macross _PLUS_ that you saw? Your description sounds a lot more like the original Macross (which, having been produced in the early 80's would have lousy 80's idol music, though it's otherwise a good series) or Macross II or Macross 7, neither of which were particularly good. There are only four episodes of Mac+ anyway. And a movie that's really just a condensed version, with a couple minutes of new footage.
Of course, music has always been at the core of all of the Macross series. Which is actually pretty cool; it gives it a lot of heart, if the romance aspect weren't already enough.
Escaflowne
Heh. It's really worth seeing. The story is fantastic, the animation and music is brilliant. Really it's not about Hitomi (the girl) as much as you'd think, though she is one of the three main characters. Given my background in physics, I thought it was suprisingly cool when I figured everything out, but I don't want to give anything away if possible.
Cagliostro
Whatever. It's a good story, it's very widely liked, and it dates back to the early 80's IIRC. Not everything is animated in the style of Lain. Hell, Giant Robo, which is extremely cool (but not on R1 DVD yet, sad to say) is deliberately animated in a retro style. Much like the Gekiganger segments in Nadesico.
Patlabor
The TV series is, IMHO, a comedy about reject policemen piloting mecha. The movies have a couple comedic moments, but are both extremely serious. And much of the Ghost in the Shell team worked on the 2nd movie; the animation's virtually identical in style and quality.
Lodoss
Meh. A lot of people like it. Personally, I don't plan on buying it; I've seen it, I'm not that interested in it. But I'm trying to name stuff that a lot of people like, and that will hopefully get them interested in anime even more. My favorite OAVs are Otaku no Video, but you don't see me hawking them.
Lain
I thought it was a lot like Evangelion. But the first DVD of Eva was so crappy production-wise that it's not something that I can reccomend. I've seen better series than Lain.
Tenchi
Other than Sasami, who the hell is a submissive girl in this series? Surely you're not talking about Aeka? Go listen to the 'Call Me Princess' song before you object. Again though, a lot of people like Tenchi, so it belongs on the list. I mean, you like Ranma, and it's extremely similar, so I don't see the problem you have with it.
As for your choices:
Ghost in the Shell
Stunning animation, but they butchered the manga. Shirow had the same problem with Appleseed. His stuff's too long and too complicated to fit into an anime. I really have gotten tired of people proclaiming it to be brilliant when it's largely Predator-style effects, naked cyborgs and guns. If there had been more plot I'd feel better about it.
Akira
Good, tough to grok, but not on the list mostly because it's not on DVD. Also because everyone always says Akira, and I'd like for people to know of more than a handful of good series.
Bubblegum Crisis
Heh. I left this out _because_ the animation is so bad until Ep5. I love the series personally, though it's a little short. Haven't seen the new one yet, I really need to.
Ranma ;)
Are the TV episodes out on DVD yet? The movies are virtually inaccessable without them, or at least the manga. The relationships are just too complex. I don't think that you can even draw an accurate flowchart in 2 dimensions. Funny, but it did get slow after a while. I hope you at least kept watching them long enough for Ukyo to appear
Anyway, I agree that just being animated does not make a movie good. Disney's proved that already, and there's tons of crap in Japan that thankfully never sets foot in the States. If you want SF the best thing I can think of offhand is Sol Bianca or Alita or Super Atragon. But many anime _do_ tend to emphasize the human aspect of the series over the setting, and that's what draws so many people to it. So while you might bitch that a kick-ass series like Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water (and if ADV would get off their asses and put out DVDs of this already, I think my opinion of them would improve a tiny bit, those hosers) has too much 'soap opera' in it, and not enough 19th century SF, I'm mostly watching for the relationship between Jean and Marie. So are most people, I think. What's the point of a series without people?
Cowboy Bebop
Interplanetary bounty hunters - an ex-cop; a former mafia hit man (??); an amoral, beautiful, thieving, cheating, woman with a huge debt; and a somewhat feral uberhacker. Kicks the most ass of anything that's come out recently.
Macross Plus
Two old friends, now enemies, flight-testing new transformable planes for the military. And another friend working with the first computer capable of singing. Great stuff.
Escaflowne
(This is actually coming out _soon_, though it's already on VHS) A high school girl accidently gets teleported to a hidden sister planet of Earth, called Gaia. Where she gets in the middle of a huge conflict between various countries, all of whom use mecha (they haven't generally developed electronics; they're 99% gears and flywheels) Eerily similar to Star Wars after a little while, and they always knock you flat on your ass every fifth episode.
Castle of Cagliostro
There's a series of French novels about Aresene Lupin, a master thief. This movie is about his grandson, Lupin III, who's not terribly serious but knows what he's doing. This is the best of the Lupin movies, and the director, Miyazaki is one of the best in Japan. People always seem to like his movies.
Patlabor 1 ;) so the Police also get mecha - Patrol Labors. This is one of two movies after the long-running TV/OAV series. It's got a lot more mystery than action, but it's really very good. The 2nd movie, not yet released is excellent.
In order to avoid rising sea levels and to get more land, Tokyo Bay is being dammed and reclaimed. To speed it up, construction mecha - Labors - are developed. But soon, people start using them for criminal activities (sharing mp3s perhaps
Grave of the Fireflies
A really sad movie involving two siblings, set in the closing days of WWII, in Japan. Excellent movie, but really depressing. Very much worth seeing.
Record of Lodoss War ;) It's pretty good, and I understand that there's a sequel coming out in the states now.
This was someone's Dungeons and Dragons campaign, I'm sure. Novice warrior, grizzled dwarf, a thief, a wizard, a cleric and a cute elf girl save the world from the forces of Evil. (one of whom looks like Evil Spock
Serial Experiments Lain
Creepy series about a girl who gets email from dead people. But this seriously explores computers and what happens when we create an infosphere, and what can be done with it. Takes a couple watchings at the end to figure out what they're doing precisely. And 'Arisa's name is actually Alice, those morons.
Tenchi Muyo!
I no longer even keep track of how many versions of this series are out there. I liked the original OAVs, which aren't on DVD. You might like the TV series better. Cartoon Network is showing something, who knows what. Go wild.
Yeah, Apple's next generation Mac System was at one time named Copland. (and Rhapsody, and MacOS 9, and MacOS X)
;)
What's funny to me though is that when Apple was demoing the multi-user functionality of Copland many years ago (this has ultimately just become MacOS 9's Multiple Users) they did so with examples from the Simpsons.
...Boy, I'm thirsty, I could use a Tab....
Of course, the Powerpuffs are essentially Magical Girl Anime if it had been (and in fact, it is) animated by Hanna-Barbara. It's a great parody, and I used to watch it a bit, but AFAIK it hasn't gotten out of that rut yet.
Also, Spawn sucks (in all forms known to man) and while the X-Men scripts weren't bad, the animation was lousy because it was too closely based on the comic. Batman is an excellent example of how animation gets better as the character designs get more simplified - even when comparing the earlier designs to the later ones (with the exception IMHO of the Riddler)
Reboot of course, was plenty good once the stories started to come together in Season 2.
The reason for this is involved with IIRC trademark law. If a trademarked character is in a work that enters the public domain, the trademark goes with it.
Disney can't afford to lose Mickey Mouse, and unfortunately we're all stuck suffering because of it.
Have fun.
The NeXT cubes have four slots (with some variant of NuBus), with dimensions of IIRC 11" x 11". The motherboard occupied one slot. About the only other cards ever made were the NeXT Dimension (a pretty rare video card) and one or two other really specialized boards. Some cubes have been hacked to contain multiple motherboards.
I don't think you'll get an ATX board in there without really pulling things apart.
I conceed that it's presently illegal (under some, but not all circumstances) to copy and distribute copies of copyrighted material for which the copier doesn't have authorization to do so.
But OTOH a law's just not a law until the courts have reviewed it. The DMCA's modifications to copyright law are particularly heinous. I don't expect them all to stand w/o significant modification by the courts.
(As for my handle - it's a long story, but derives from the title character of the kid's show "Captain Kangaroo"... who for all we know is an army captain)
No, you misunderstand what I said. Let's say that Stephen King writes yet another novel. He offers to sell it to a publisher for one million dollars. Whereupon if copyrights don't exist, the novel is the property of the publisher; King doesn't see a dime beyond the first million but nothing prevents anyone else from copying it either.
This is how things _used_ to work, although I don't think that it would be terribly wise right now. I don't have an awful problem with copyrights in general, I just think that modern-day copyright law is unconstitutional and is in need of significant reform.