Your post demonstrates the amazing longevity of the successful Big Lie. Read some serious history texts on the origins of National Socialism. You will discover that the name, while perhaps oxymoronic on Marxist-Leninist terms, was perfectly apropos.
In the U.S., copyright is a grant of a temporary economic monopoly over the copying of works for the purpose of encouraging their creation and publication to the benefit of the public. To use the copyright law to keep information secret is to fundamentally violate the intent of the law.
Actually, the "Protocols" is commonly propagated by anti-Semites of all flavours, most famously by left-wing National Socialist types, and currently by radical Islamists. While it is true that there is a fringe element of the right wing that is infected by anti-Semitism, that can also be said of the left wing. For details on groups that have propagated the "Protocols", search wikipedia.
The story says that some folks tracked usage of P2P clients by analyzing 1.6 million PCs. It does NOT say that 1.6 million PCs track popular P2P clients, whatever that might mean.
this is 100% wrong. ISPs in the USA ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS!... The FCC explicitly classified cable (in 2002) and DSL (in 2005) ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services" in order to remove any doubt that they were [not] common carriers.
Of course you are technically correct about your parent poster's technical misuse of the term "common carrier". But that doesn't completely invalidate their point. And you are right about the current unfortunate state of US regulations. But contrary to the arbitrary declaration of the FCC, the ISPs do NOT in fact provide "information services". They simply provide a telecommunications link between parties, just like plain old telephone companies. I suppose if the Commerce Department declared that trucks are vegetables, not vehicles, you would scream TRUCKS ARE NOT VEHICLES!
The mere fact that some ISPs prefer the lack of common carrier status that, combined with certain specific immunities granted by statute, they believe outweighs the benefits of common carrier status, is hardly a decisive argument against treating them as common carriers. If any service in the world bears the attributes of a common carrier, it is what ISPs provide, and this ought to be recognized as such in law, if not for the ISPs' protection, then for the protection of their customers.
I can't completely agree. The RIAA and their ilk give a damn about it. They deliberately misuse the term intellectual property to refer to copyrighted information, because they believe that calling information "property" will create associations in the minds of the public with property and its attendant bundle of rights (of which the man on the street does have some hazy awareness), and so make it easier to propagandize that copying information is "stealing", and that we should thus have stronger copyright laws to prevent that "stealing".
A man puts up a billboard at a certain intersection in a great city containing a pornographic image that some people would be willing to pay gold to see. He builds a business plan around the simple-minded assumption that most citizens who have not paid him will remain unaware of the billboard's existence and location. An observant charioteer names the street address in his weekly news scroll, telling the strange story of the owner's simplemindedness concerning people's ability to buy chariots, travel on the public streets, and direct their attention at billboards standing out in public view. The owner feels some embarrassment at his weak-headedness being made known, and sends forth his legal counsel to the imperial authorities to accuse the driver of the arcane crime of Infringing Intellectual Property, which being translated into common tongue is Interfering with a Business Plan, thereby bringing even greater embarrassment to the scribe, who must endure his shallow knowledge of the law being made known to myriads of people far and wide.
Congrats are in order for a concise, to-the-point explanation that, clearly, many people need to hear. But I'm afraid you dropped the ball near the end. You slipped into the very misunderstanding driving the arguments that folks are offering as to why IP is not property. They don't understand that it is the copyright or patent that is the IP. They think the copyrighted work (information) or invention is the property. So they make all these points about the non-rivalrous use of information, and they would be right, if the discussion were about why copyright and/or patent law is questionable morally, or why information itself cannot be property.
All your points about the right to exclude, etc. apply to the copyright or the patent. And you should have gone on to point out that copyrights and patents are in fact 'rivalrous'. Only one person can exercise the monopoly rights of the copyright or patent owner. So intellectual property easily qualifies as property in that regard, too.
No. You misread the article. It said, "with these nanoparticle coatings, car owners could make their own hydrogen, either in their garage or even when driving." Now, the garage part makes great sense. The owner uses electricity to very efficiently produce hydrogen to carry as a convenient fuel (energy store) in the car. The part that makes no sense, and that your parent poster was pointing out, is the "even while driving". They would have to carry some store of energy (fuel or battery) to draw on to perform the electrolysis, which is silly.
DVD players that can convert images to near high-definition quality can be found for under $100 Chinese dvd player manufacturers have managed to find a way to violate the laws of logic and extract more information than is present in a signal? I must have missed the headline.
Have you not been around long enough to notice that Slashdot employs a formula, a mix of stories on certain topics and of varying degrees of silliness, designed to maximize participation? This story is one of the standard kinds called for by the formula, the Story that a Quick Glance at the Primary Source Will Show to be Laughably Mistaken. It generates a lot of outrage at the injustice or stupidity of some well-known entity such as Amazon from irate gullible or lazy readers, and then a lot of headshaking and lecturing from folks like you regarding the stupidity of the story and of those posters.
Imagine your voice phone provider listening for forbidden topics of conversation, and then inserting "Oh, gotta go, the repairman's at the door" and hanging up. How long would that last?
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association (misnamed in the story) has on their website a December 2006 press release entitled "CHOOSING A CHOCOLATE THAT'S RIGHT FOR YOU: Definitions from the Chocolate Manufacturers Association Help Consumers Understand the Growing Language of Chocolate". It offers this definition of cocoa butter:
Cocoa Butter - The fat naturally present in cacao beans that melts at body temperature and gives chocolate its unique mouth feel. The amount of cocoa butter in cacao beans typically ranges from 50 to 60%.
Better yet, you repeat after me: ETHANOL is one thing, ENERGY is another thing. You want energy, don't subsidize anything. You want money for ethanol producers, subsidize ethanol.
The discussion here has immediately moved into the area of parody fair use. A quick comparison of the sites in question reveals nothing that even approaches being a copy or derivative work. The text and artwork are original. Unless Australian law allows a phrase such as "brought to you by mining" to be copyrighted, this whole fair use tangent is beside the point.
If Mr. Durzy really said what is attributed to him (that in reality, eBay is just now following through on its policy on digitally delivered goods that "the seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner"), then he is curiously confused about intellectual property. The point of the policy is to forbid the digital delivery of copyrighted works without the owner's authorization, because such delivery typically involves copying, which, without approval of the copyright owner, is infringement. An example would be my selling downloads of the latest Grisham novel.
Selling virtual ownership of a virtual item such as a gold coin in an online game does not come close to infringing upon the copyright in the image or other representation of the coin. The 'work' of which the coin is an instance or embodiment is not being copied, and the coin remains within the game, under the control (with respect to the real world) of the company hosting the game. Whether Character A within the game acquires it from Character B by running him through with a sword, or by his owner agreeing through eBay with Character B's owner that in exchange for some number of dollars, Character B will meet Character A at a certain virtual location and hand the coin to him, or deposit it with a trusted third character, is irrelevant. The physical (within the game world) transfer of possession of the coin is not a copying (in the real world or the virtual one). And it is not a 'digital distribution' because, as I said before, it is still within the game, and with respect to the real world, it is still in possession of the gaming company.
The predictable conclusion of this train of thought, of course...
Not at all. Even if we can conclusively demonstrate in a case that an organic disease caused the disordered sexual compulsion felt by the individual, that does not remove his guilt for his criminal acts. It may mitigate it, but it cannot remove it completely. He chose to give in to the compulsion, where he could have done otherwise. Millions of people every day resist strong desires, including sexual ones, because of conscience. To say that he could not choose the right thing is to dehumanize him.
If free will exists, then there must be something which is NOT governed by the physical universe (hence, not deterministic)
Just because something is outside the physical universe does not mean that it is nondeterministic. If that other realm is orderly (rule-based), it will still be deterministic. Positing such a realm does nothing at all to solve the difficulty facing the defender of free will.
Deliberately Selected Junk Story of the Day?
on
The Sierras of Titan
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
What bilge. The editors have stated publicly that they shoot for a certain formulaic mix, rather than to pick the best stories. It's becoming obvious that one element of the mix is the laughably stupid story.
Slashdot Mirror
Your post demonstrates the amazing longevity of the successful Big Lie. Read some serious history texts on the origins of National Socialism. You will discover that the name, while perhaps oxymoronic on Marxist-Leninist terms, was perfectly apropos.
In the U.S., copyright is a grant of a temporary economic monopoly over the copying of works for the purpose of encouraging their creation and publication to the benefit of the public. To use the copyright law to keep information secret is to fundamentally violate the intent of the law.
Actually, the "Protocols" is commonly propagated by anti-Semites of all flavours, most famously by left-wing National Socialist types, and currently by radical Islamists. While it is true that there is a fringe element of the right wing that is infected by anti-Semitism, that can also be said of the left wing. For details on groups that have propagated the "Protocols", search wikipedia.
The story says that some folks tracked usage of P2P clients by analyzing 1.6 million PCs. It does NOT say that 1.6 million PCs track popular P2P clients, whatever that might mean.
Looking for a libertarian 'ACLU'? Check out the merry band of litigators at the Institute for Justice
this is 100% wrong. ISPs in the USA ARE NOT COMMON CARRIERS! ... The FCC explicitly classified cable (in 2002) and DSL (in 2005) ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services" in order to remove any doubt that they were [not] common carriers.
Of course you are technically correct about your parent poster's technical misuse of the term "common carrier". But that doesn't completely invalidate their point. And you are right about the current unfortunate state of US regulations. But contrary to the arbitrary declaration of the FCC, the ISPs do NOT in fact provide "information services". They simply provide a telecommunications link between parties, just like plain old telephone companies. I suppose if the Commerce Department declared that trucks are vegetables, not vehicles, you would scream TRUCKS ARE NOT VEHICLES!
The mere fact that some ISPs prefer the lack of common carrier status that, combined with certain specific immunities granted by statute, they believe outweighs the benefits of common carrier status, is hardly a decisive argument against treating them as common carriers. If any service in the world bears the attributes of a common carrier, it is what ISPs provide, and this ought to be recognized as such in law, if not for the ISPs' protection, then for the protection of their customers.
I can't completely agree. The RIAA and their ilk give a damn about it. They deliberately misuse the term intellectual property to refer to copyrighted information, because they believe that calling information "property" will create associations in the minds of the public with property and its attendant bundle of rights (of which the man on the street does have some hazy awareness), and so make it easier to propagandize that copying information is "stealing", and that we should thus have stronger copyright laws to prevent that "stealing".
A man puts up a billboard at a certain intersection in a great city containing a pornographic image that some people would be willing to pay gold to see. He builds a business plan around the simple-minded assumption that most citizens who have not paid him will remain unaware of the billboard's existence and location. An observant charioteer names the street address in his weekly news scroll, telling the strange story of the owner's simplemindedness concerning people's ability to buy chariots, travel on the public streets, and direct their attention at billboards standing out in public view. The owner feels some embarrassment at his weak-headedness being made known, and sends forth his legal counsel to the imperial authorities to accuse the driver of the arcane crime of Infringing Intellectual Property, which being translated into common tongue is Interfering with a Business Plan, thereby bringing even greater embarrassment to the scribe, who must endure his shallow knowledge of the law being made known to myriads of people far and wide.
Congrats are in order for a concise, to-the-point explanation that, clearly, many people need to hear. But I'm afraid you dropped the ball near the end. You slipped into the very misunderstanding driving the arguments that folks are offering as to why IP is not property. They don't understand that it is the copyright or patent that is the IP. They think the copyrighted work (information) or invention is the property. So they make all these points about the non-rivalrous use of information, and they would be right, if the discussion were about why copyright and/or patent law is questionable morally, or why information itself cannot be property.
All your points about the right to exclude, etc. apply to the copyright or the patent. And you should have gone on to point out that copyrights and patents are in fact 'rivalrous'. Only one person can exercise the monopoly rights of the copyright or patent owner. So intellectual property easily qualifies as property in that regard, too.
No. You misread the article. It said, "with these nanoparticle coatings, car owners could make their own hydrogen, either in their garage or even when driving." Now, the garage part makes great sense. The owner uses electricity to very efficiently produce hydrogen to carry as a convenient fuel (energy store) in the car. The part that makes no sense, and that your parent poster was pointing out, is the "even while driving". They would have to carry some store of energy (fuel or battery) to draw on to perform the electrolysis, which is silly.
You are so confused. Read up on DVDs (and take a course in information theory) before you next presume to talk down to anyone on this subject.
DVD players that can convert images to near high-definition quality can be found for under $100
Chinese dvd player manufacturers have managed to find a way to violate the laws of logic and extract more information than is present in a signal? I must have missed the headline.
Have you not been around long enough to notice that Slashdot employs a formula, a mix of stories on certain topics and of varying degrees of silliness, designed to maximize participation? This story is one of the standard kinds called for by the formula, the Story that a Quick Glance at the Primary Source Will Show to be Laughably Mistaken. It generates a lot of outrage at the injustice or stupidity of some well-known entity such as Amazon from irate gullible or lazy readers, and then a lot of headshaking and lecturing from folks like you regarding the stupidity of the story and of those posters.
http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/whenchoice.html
Imagine your voice phone provider listening for forbidden topics of conversation, and then inserting "Oh, gotta go, the repairman's at the door" and hanging up. How long would that last?
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association (misnamed in the story) has on their website a December 2006 press release entitled "CHOOSING A CHOCOLATE THAT'S RIGHT FOR YOU: Definitions from the Chocolate Manufacturers Association Help Consumers Understand the Growing Language of Chocolate". It offers this definition of cocoa butter:
Cocoa Butter - The fat naturally present in cacao beans that melts at body temperature and gives chocolate its unique mouth feel. The amount of cocoa butter in cacao beans typically ranges from 50 to 60%.
WIth something like this to get excited about, who needs the "Face on Mars"?
Why all the whining? Who said Sci-Fi was supposed to be serious? You must be confusing it with SF.
For those futilely attempting to find any reference anywhere to a movie entitled "The Last Mizmey": the writer no doubt intended "The Last Mimzy".
Better yet, you repeat after me: ETHANOL is one thing, ENERGY is another thing. You want energy, don't subsidize anything. You want money for ethanol producers, subsidize ethanol.
The discussion here has immediately moved into the area of parody fair use. A quick comparison of the sites in question reveals nothing that even approaches being a copy or derivative work. The text and artwork are original. Unless Australian law allows a phrase such as "brought to you by mining" to be copyrighted, this whole fair use tangent is beside the point.
If Mr. Durzy really said what is attributed to him (that in reality, eBay is just now following through on its policy on digitally delivered goods that "the seller must be the owner of the underlying intellectual property, or authorized to distribute it by the intellectual property owner"), then he is curiously confused about intellectual property. The point of the policy is to forbid the digital delivery of copyrighted works without the owner's authorization, because such delivery typically involves copying, which, without approval of the copyright owner, is infringement. An example would be my selling downloads of the latest Grisham novel.
Selling virtual ownership of a virtual item such as a gold coin in an online game does not come close to infringing upon the copyright in the image or other representation of the coin. The 'work' of which the coin is an instance or embodiment is not being copied, and the coin remains within the game, under the control (with respect to the real world) of the company hosting the game. Whether Character A within the game acquires it from Character B by running him through with a sword, or by his owner agreeing through eBay with Character B's owner that in exchange for some number of dollars, Character B will meet Character A at a certain virtual location and hand the coin to him, or deposit it with a trusted third character, is irrelevant. The physical (within the game world) transfer of possession of the coin is not a copying (in the real world or the virtual one). And it is not a 'digital distribution' because, as I said before, it is still within the game, and with respect to the real world, it is still in possession of the gaming company.
The predictable conclusion of this train of thought, of course ...
Not at all. Even if we can conclusively demonstrate in a case that an organic disease caused the disordered sexual compulsion felt by the individual, that does not remove his guilt for his criminal acts. It may mitigate it, but it cannot remove it completely. He chose to give in to the compulsion, where he could have done otherwise. Millions of people every day resist strong desires, including sexual ones, because of conscience. To say that he could not choose the right thing is to dehumanize him.
If free will exists, then there must be something which is NOT governed by the physical universe (hence, not deterministic)
Just because something is outside the physical universe does not mean that it is nondeterministic. If that other realm is orderly (rule-based), it will still be deterministic. Positing such a realm does nothing at all to solve the difficulty facing the defender of free will.
What bilge. The editors have stated publicly that they shoot for a certain formulaic mix, rather than to pick the best stories. It's becoming obvious that one element of the mix is the laughably stupid story.