And if the article had said that the judge ordered them to exchange bullets at twenty paces "so that they could conduct discovery", I suppose you still would be saying the same thing? You, like the judge, do not understand what giving someone's Facebook password to another party entails.
The government knows you can't get the genie back into the bottle, the cat into the bag, or the National Geographic back into its paper sleeve. They aren't stupid.
You're right: they aren't stupid; but when they nonetheless abuse people as though they did believe that the genie can be put back in the bottle, they are evil.
more like registering a fraudulent title to the car
You are perceptive to notice this difference; it arises from the fact that a car is physical, and so subject to a physical theft without transfer of title. But a copyright is not a physical object; it is a legal right enforced by the state. One could effectively steal it from its owner only by fraudulently convincing others, including the state, that one owns it, which under a registration regime would most effectively be accomplished by getting it registered in one's name.
I'm afraid you have run off the rails with all the talk about destroying and tracking down copies. Destroying a copy or copies of a work is a non-event from a copyright standpoint. It neither infringes nor steals the copyright. And a copyright owner need not track down or even possess copies of the work he owns the copyright in to exercise his exclusive rights with respect to the work.
No, you do not have it right. You have made the common error of imagining that it is the copyrighted work that is "intellectual property", the thing that is owned by the copyright owner. Actually, what is owned is the copyright itself, that is, the exclusive right to authorize copying of the work.
The analog of car theft would be not infringement, but the act of assuming the ownership of a copyright without the consent of the rightful owner. This could happen if a person were to fraudulently convince the state agency that administers copyrights that the owner of the copyright has assigned it to him.
Infringement is more like a trespass -- like someone finding your car unlocked and sitting in it. The copyright owner is still recognized as owner and is still for the most part enjoying the state's enforcement of his monopoly.
Please do not misread me as a defender of the justice of copyright law. That is a question for another time.
No, you can't have the Governor locked up, only the person who sends you the image. But seriously, even if the Governor posted the image, do you imagine that you could persuade a prosecutor to indict him? 'Laws' like this that would, if uniformly enforced, place the entire population behind bars, are not truly laws; they are an affront to the rule of law.
It is not "apparent" that the enactment of patent laws by politicians was due to failure of the free market to support innovation. That is only one of several conceivable factors that might have indirectly induced the political behaviour in question.
What valuable rhetorical tools are words like "equal" and "same". How easy to equivocate with them. Charging "the same prices" for vastly different services is not "serving equally" if we are using the word "equally" to mean "with equal treatment", or "justly". If Smith lives twice as far from her job as Jones, is she treated "equally" if she gets to buy fuel at half the price per unit that Jones pays, so that her commute is equal in price to Jones's?
Hardly. Here is the relevant text from that document:
"The Congress shall have Power... To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers"
You will notice that it does not require the Congress to do so, nor to outlaw competition. The laws that would need to be repealed are known as the Private Express Statutes.
Often, once a question or problem arises, the answer is obvious. The problem may not be obvious; it may not yet have arisen many if any times, Nevertheless, the solution is obvious, and when presented with the problem and a description of the elements of the problem, any reasonably intelligent fifth-grader with a modicum of arithmetic skills would figure out the solution -- often the only or at least most elegant solution, the one that no-one would fail to arrive at. Such solutions are not supposed to be patentable. You are applying the obviousness test to the wrong thing.
Whereas, as you rightly point out, a copyrighted work will not, due to the laws of probability, be duplicated without copying it, such is hardly the case for an invention like a drill, as so many have to their chagrin discovered.
This was long one of the cornerstones of US copyright law. You must have been in a Rip van Winkle nap while that principle was being excised from the law by clever judges over the last few decades. Sadly, you can't even write a completely novel imagining of an older Holden Caulfield's behaviour without falling afoul of the current 'copyright' case law.
Slashdot Mirror
And if the article had said that the judge ordered them to exchange bullets at twenty paces "so that they could conduct discovery", I suppose you still would be saying the same thing? You, like the judge, do not understand what giving someone's Facebook password to another party entails.
Thanks for the dandy explanation of discovery. But you just made it crystal clear that what the judge ordered is not that.
The government knows you can't get the genie back into the bottle, the cat into the bag, or the National Geographic back into its paper sleeve. They aren't stupid.
You're right: they aren't stupid; but when they nonetheless abuse people as though they did believe that the genie can be put back in the bottle, they are evil.
more like registering a fraudulent title to the car
You are perceptive to notice this difference; it arises from the fact that a car is physical, and so subject to a physical theft without transfer of title. But a copyright is not a physical object; it is a legal right enforced by the state. One could effectively steal it from its owner only by fraudulently convincing others, including the state, that one owns it, which under a registration regime would most effectively be accomplished by getting it registered in one's name.
I'm afraid you have run off the rails with all the talk about destroying and tracking down copies. Destroying a copy or copies of a work is a non-event from a copyright standpoint. It neither infringes nor steals the copyright. And a copyright owner need not track down or even possess copies of the work he owns the copyright in to exercise his exclusive rights with respect to the work.
No, you do not have it right. You have made the common error of imagining that it is the copyrighted work that is "intellectual property", the thing that is owned by the copyright owner. Actually, what is owned is the copyright itself, that is, the exclusive right to authorize copying of the work.
The analog of car theft would be not infringement, but the act of assuming the ownership of a copyright without the consent of the rightful owner. This could happen if a person were to fraudulently convince the state agency that administers copyrights that the owner of the copyright has assigned it to him.
Infringement is more like a trespass -- like someone finding your car unlocked and sitting in it. The copyright owner is still recognized as owner and is still for the most part enjoying the state's enforcement of his monopoly.
Please do not misread me as a defender of the justice of copyright law. That is a question for another time.
The same brilliant AIs that will recognize the worthy questions from students.
This time it's 'falsifying evidence' because he tried to hand off the camera
Preserving it is falsifying it? Orwell had nothing on this.
Naughty, naughty! Don't you know that you are not allowed to voice unpopular opinions here? -1, Troll for you!
To a lawyer, every letter.
It would behoove you to avail yourself of readily accessible information on a subject before pontificating.
All your base are belong to U.S.
No, you can't have the Governor locked up, only the person who sends you the image. But seriously, even if the Governor posted the image, do you imagine that you could persuade a prosecutor to indict him? 'Laws' like this that would, if uniformly enforced, place the entire population behind bars, are not truly laws; they are an affront to the rule of law.
When pigs fly.
Of course it is illegal. What difference does that make? Oh, you must be from a place that still has the rule of law.
It is not "apparent" that the enactment of patent laws by politicians was due to failure of the free market to support innovation. That is only one of several conceivable factors that might have indirectly induced the political behaviour in question.
Ending the life of someone who was not dying is "end of life care"? You belong in an Orwell novel.
Have you really not read the Constitution, or are you just a troll?
What valuable rhetorical tools are words like "equal" and "same". How easy to equivocate with them. Charging "the same prices" for vastly different services is not "serving equally" if we are using the word "equally" to mean "with equal treatment", or "justly". If Smith lives twice as far from her job as Jones, is she treated "equally" if she gets to buy fuel at half the price per unit that Jones pays, so that her commute is equal in price to Jones's?
But that is of course hardly an argument for the continued existence of the USPS.
Hardly. Here is the relevant text from that document:
"The Congress shall have Power ... To establish Post Offices and Post Roads; ... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers"
You will notice that it does not require the Congress to do so, nor to outlaw competition. The laws that would need to be repealed are known as the Private Express Statutes.
Often, once a question or problem arises, the answer is obvious. The problem may not be obvious; it may not yet have arisen many if any times, Nevertheless, the solution is obvious, and when presented with the problem and a description of the elements of the problem, any reasonably intelligent fifth-grader with a modicum of arithmetic skills would figure out the solution -- often the only or at least most elegant solution, the one that no-one would fail to arrive at. Such solutions are not supposed to be patentable. You are applying the obviousness test to the wrong thing.
Whereas, as you rightly point out, a copyrighted work will not, due to the laws of probability, be duplicated without copying it, such is hardly the case for an invention like a drill, as so many have to their chagrin discovered.
Copyright covers only the specific expression.
This was long one of the cornerstones of US copyright law. You must have been in a Rip van Winkle nap while that principle was being excised from the law by clever judges over the last few decades. Sadly, you can't even write a completely novel imagining of an older Holden Caulfield's behaviour without falling afoul of the current 'copyright' case law.
To complete the thought: "We don't track everyone. We just make it possible for the state to track everyone."
If they lowered the price to 9.99 USD, I'll bet they would sell ten times as many discs.