I'm sold on the idea that a decent social support infrastructure is directly responsible to the low crime rate in Europe. That's something I'll pay for. Then the question of "Is it ok to steal to save the life of your baby" hardly ever arises.
You don't need a legal system to establish that a person who creates something has all rights to it.
Rights don't exist without a legal system. With no society, you no more have rights than a gazelle has the right not to be eaten by a lion. Your rights are defined by what society will prevent other people from doing, such as killing you, saying bad things about you, or selling copies of the book that they bought from you.
An author has absolute control over his work until and unless he assigns all or some of those rights to others, such as a publisher
Under our current legal system, that is true.
In other words, society isn't in a position to grant any rights to an author, inventor or creator because all the rights belong to the work's author
Sort of. He has the right to hide it in his closet and not tell anyone about it. Once he shares it with someone else, then his "rights" are defined by the restrictions that society will impose on that other person's actions.
I'd prefer it if you'd acknowledge that I don't believe that ideas can be owned. If it isn't property, it isn't theft. I do, however, accept that limited exclusive rights can be granted by society to inventors and creators. Violating those rights is not theft. It is an offence against the law, but not an offence against morality.
He's expressing an opinion, you know, as in free speech? Who are you to question his right to express his opinions, whether or not those opinions are related to morality?
Now if you had accused RMS of double standards, then you'd have a case:
We did our best to avoid ever copying Unix code, despite our basic premise that to prohibit copying of software is morally wrong.
So why, Mr Stallman, does the GPL contain clauses that can revoke the user's right to distribute the software? If you violate the licence that grants you the legal right to do that which should be a moral right, then you lose that right. There's something wrong with that.
If they catch more people getting songs for free, they can lower prices because they won't have to cover for freeloaders!
That doesn't stand up at all. I'm not saying that p2p music copying is right, and I don't do it myself (ok, I did, once, on a friend's computer; I wanted to listen to the Soviet National Anthem, so I downloaded it with Kazaa), but downloading music from the internet harms no-one. The only possible cause of harm is if you were going to buy the music otherwise. Personally, I have bought only two music CDs in the last 5 years. My entertainment spending goes on other things these days, such as DVDs, games (computer and tabletop), and travel. Having said that, I think the RIAA are generally right to go after the infringers themselves, rather than the tools.
You are not allowed to do any installations that you don't purhase "support" for.
A pretty clear violation of the GPL (restricting redistribution) there.
Or, put another way, your service contract is invalid if you exercise your right to install on more machines that you have a service contract for. You can go ahead and install it, but your service contract terminates. Does that violate the GPL? I doubt it.
For me it's interesting not from a technical POV, which is all very dated anyway, but as one man's journey into hackerdom. It's a fascinating insight into the culture as it was at the time. Maybe more so because I'm on the other side of the pond, and knew less about that era in the U.S. than a statesider would.
Ah, so that's what this story is about. I was wondering what the fuss was about. Well, I can honestly say I never clicked on those ads, 'cos it was obvious what they were. And I don't even consider myself an Internet guru, I barely know what IP addresses are (just enough to set up a home network with 255.255.255.0 in one of the boxes and 10.10.10.[1-10] in the other, don't even think about asking me to contemplate the meaning of a subnet).
And what is with the "Most Recent Queries" box on the right?
What's the problem? They get a query that contains an album ID, they look up the name, and link to it on their front page. What's the problem? Nowhere is the query for that album linked to you. Now what would be neat: split that box in two for recent "warning"s and recent "all-clear"s.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sold on the idea that a decent social support infrastructure is directly responsible to the low crime rate in Europe. That's something I'll pay for. Then the question of "Is it ok to steal to save the life of your baby" hardly ever arises.
I'd prefer it if you'd acknowledge that I don't believe that ideas can be owned. If it isn't property, it isn't theft. I do, however, accept that limited exclusive rights can be granted by society to inventors and creators. Violating those rights is not theft. It is an offence against the law, but not an offence against morality.
Now if you had accused RMS of double standards, then you'd have a case:So why, Mr Stallman, does the GPL contain clauses that can revoke the user's right to distribute the software? If you violate the licence that grants you the legal right to do that which should be a moral right, then you lose that right. There's something wrong with that.
Yeah, it even includes a direct copyright violation, in that it contains the majority of the parent post!
He's in good company.
Post-exposure vaccination is effective, so I presume you mean 100% fatal if untreated? I didn't know that.
Unleash the awesome power of plain text, as I always maintain.
Yes, but maybe dropped fees = more customers = more profit.
FM broadcast. Ogg Vorbis support coming soon. Does Archos have Linux support? (genuine question, not rhetorical)
More pertinently, which one would Brian Boitano use?
Shit, how sad am I?
For me it's interesting not from a technical POV, which is all very dated anyway, but as one man's journey into hackerdom. It's a fascinating insight into the culture as it was at the time. Maybe more so because I'm on the other side of the pond, and knew less about that era in the U.S. than a statesider would.
Ah, so that's what this story is about. I was wondering what the fuss was about. Well, I can honestly say I never clicked on those ads, 'cos it was obvious what they were. And I don't even consider myself an Internet guru, I barely know what IP addresses are (just enough to set up a home network with 255.255.255.0 in one of the boxes and 10.10.10.[1-10] in the other, don't even think about asking me to contemplate the meaning of a subnet).
The UKCDR is considering this.
Oh I forgot, spare battery, and another penknife.
After the 'phone, it's keyboard, PDA, sync cable, GPS, and penknife, no, there's no room in my pockets for an IM device.