>Legally, they can put whatever the heck kind of restrictions they want on their license.
No, because laws controls and restricts what is allowed to put into consumer contracts. When selling to business, it is basically correct though, there is very little at all you can't put into a contract.
>Would you be happy with "One licence, one CD player"?
Just wait until they want to restrict it further to, for example "one player in one specific room", or even further, to a specific coordinate on the surface for the world and for a specific time only. The final step would be limiting it to one specific person at that place too.
Were have you got that strange idea from? Care to specify or point to a specific part of sales laws (or other laws) that says software is special?
>You can't "buy" software.
Of course you can!
> You can only buy a *license to use* software.
What are you babling about? You buy products and it is controlled by typically (consumer)sales laws. There is nothing special by software in those laws that discuss "license to use" (it is about sales after all). License (which is basically a fomr of contract, and money countries doesn't even have the concept of "license" in their laws and it owuld thus be the same as a contract) is something you need to get to do something you would otherwise not be allowed to do. There is no law forbidding use to start with, not even for software, thus you don't need to get/buy it anyway. Further, it would have absolutely NOTHING to do with the ownership to start with so no idea why you make that connection.
>I agree that some form of copy protection is needed....... Most of those games had >relatively simple copy protection, you had to have the CD in the drive, or there was a >CD Key and it was checked against a server to make sure it wasn't in use.
That is not copy protection though, it is access protection. Quite different. At least from a legal persepctive in many countries. Ture, it is often called copy protection since it makes people less prone to actually copy but from the legal perspective it does matter if you want to work arround it not to actually copy but to just have it more convenient of not having to shuffle arround CDs all the time for example.
And you do HOW when you want to play off line or can't connect to the net? And you do WHAT when the server is no longer available, perhaps due tothe company ceasing to exist or decide they don't support the game any more or something else happens? Just two examples of problems with such a system.
>The problem is if you put it there and balance the whole game difficulty around it >being available,
The point was not to put it there AND rebalance the whole game. Why would you need to rebalance the whole game? The point was to put it there, nothing more. Those who feel the game is allready to hard, or that likes to be able to stop playing and save progress so far at their own descision and so on, can then do it. Those who likes to only save at specific points can do that as well. No need to redesign anything.
You are discussing if the price will get people to pay or not and if one will sell. My original commment was that someone can ask whatever price they want. That doesn't mean anyone will buy it, but someone having something for sale can ask whatever price they want. If you don't like it, don't buy.
The other question, which I was not commenting on at all and which you bring up constantly is what makes it possible to ask a certain price AND have people buy it instead of buying something else or creating it themselves. You can all it prisworthyness or whatever. There is nothing preventing anyone from asking a price for what they sell that is not priceworthy. I have not touched that subject at all and have not commented on it nor will I do now.
>Except that the only reason they have anything to "sell" in the first >place is because of an artificially created regime that allows them >to sue people who take copies (which do not harm the voracity or nature >of the original) and so one cannot talk of the issue in terms of apparently >natural rights.
You are appearantly mixing up two things, copyright and ownership. They are not the same. Selling is about ownership, anyone is free to sell anything at whatever price (even if there is really no one buying, although it would not be so good business but they can still do it). That has nothing to do with copyright which you mention. Copyright is not a requirement to sell anything. Actually, most of the things in the world are sold without there being any copyright invovlved. Copyright do affect the possibility to limit who copies and create NEW copies and products which in turn can be owned and sold. Sure, the reason that the market allows for a certain price is of course in part due to copyright but the question was not why a certain price works in the market.
>Slashdot is really big on throwing the word "right" around, >but it seems to me it is almost always sorely misused.
Since we was discussing copyright, I used the terminology the US copyright law uses. It gives certain "rights" to the copyright holder. Hence why I used the same terminology. I have no idea about others use of the world.
>In all seriousness: would you please tell me from where you think you derive >a right to take something I have created from me and, say, sell it for your >own profit--even if it is by copying the work rather than stealing it?
A few missonconceptions you seem to have. First of all just because you created something, it is not "yours" in the sense that you own it. You are just the creator. Such works are intangible and can't be owned. Instead, one have set up copyright, it does NOT give you ownership either, instead it grants the creator a few exclusive rights to the work for a limited time. That is it.
Next, you seem to make up and claim I said things I did not. I have never claimed what you say here. In general, someone can not copy and sell someone elses work that is under copyright since copying and distribution and making works available to the public is EXACTLY those rights given to the copyright holder for a limited time. Obviously, after that time, the excusivness of those rights no longer belongs to the copyright holder, which is why it is possible for anyone to, for example copy and sell works created in the 18th century (quite long ago but just an example). So no, one can't do what you claim I said. On the other hand, the creator doesn't "own" the work and anything not given as a right to the copyright holder is free for anyone to do. In addition, there are exceptions to the exclusivness of those rights, so that for example some copyiong is STILL allowed by someone other than the copyright holder.
>Maybe this is a "right" in a "survival of the fittest" sense, >but I'd like to think we are at least a few steps above this.
It it the way copyright is set up. it is a compromise, so that society benefits the most by encouraging creation of new works. Basically the general public give up certain "rights" (or whatever world you feel fits better) and those instead belongs to the creator for a limited time. The end effect is basically that it is possible for the creator to for example earn money for a while as a reward for the creation of a work.
>If I write a book for my friends and family to read, and one of >my friends decides to copy it down and sell it out from under >me (the bastard!), you're telling me this is his right?
Stop puting words in my mouth, were have I said that? On the contrary, I specifically, in the part you quoted, said the creator gets a few exclusive rights which thus no longer belongs to the public. Hence, it would be copyright infringement most likely in the example you just mentioned. That IS what I was talking about. The initial list forgot however that copyright is not an ownership, it is a set of rights given temoprarilly to the creator.
>are you serious? that must be a joke. You're >saying if i write a novel (with the intent to >publish) it instantly becomes public property >and i only have a time-limited-license to >profit from my own creation?
I do agree with you that a fixed time would probably be much better. I don't see how the stockpiling would make any difference though, the time to get income would be the same, unless there is large taxes on money inherited as oposed to the copyright the difference would not be large since the children would instead inheret the money for non stockpiled work.
The ultimately goal for copyright though is not to provide for the well being of future children but to make sure that works are created to start with. ONe can raise the point of copyright not expiering upon death as part of it, but then one should also go for fixed time duration in my opinion.
>Except buying a lot of digital goods second hand is going >to become next to impossible as they get tied to USERS rather >than being tied to a physical product like a CD or DVD.
So? Untie them first! It is very hard to tie a non service to a person. One can argue that companies want to sell everything as services instead, on the other hand, if there is a damnd for selling goods, there will be those that offer it, buy that. However, the topic of discussion was the price of a product, not its availability.
>But why should a person, or their family, or their estate, or a company just have >their copyright rights whipped away from them?
They don't. You missed a 1.5 in your list:
1.5 The public desides to give up certain rights to the created cartoon and grant a time limited copyright to the creator!
There is nothing taken away from the person, family or whatever, the limited rights they were granted have run out.
So point five should be:
5. The creator's given time limited rights by the society expires and the work is again free to be used and inspire the creation of new work to benefit the society.
By the way, you don't get copyright on recipies so not sure what that part of your reply was about. Perhaps you can seek patent for it, that is VERY different from copyright though, for one, it has a much shorter time limit on the granted rights by the society to you.
For most people in the world, that means they have to first work to make money that the children can then get. Why should for example artists be different? Why should they not have to work and make their money first? Should my employer or whoever buy my services (or whatever you like to take an example) have to continue to pay to my children AFTER I die? If one still want such a system, a fixed time not tied to ones death would of course be much better.
>Sure, you can charge anything you want.. for services that *you* offer..
Yes, that was what you wrote and I replied to: "so what gives you the right to charge $29.95 per copy?".
>but I'm the one making the copy here.
Ehh, so you are now talking about a case were the buyer is the one manufacturing the actual copy himself? What does that change? Nothing, the seller can still charge whatever they want. As a buyer you factor in the price you pay plus any extra cost you might have which might include many completely unrelated things such as the cost to travell to the shop just as one example.
>Copyright gives you the power to discourage me from making that copy, >forcing people to come to you to get copies. That's the bullshit.
Ehh, a third topic not present in the oririnal post/thread. The discussion was about the cost of development, manufacturing and so on. You are now switching to the purpose of copyright to start with and appearanlty feels it is "bullshit". Fine, most tend to believe it is good in some way or form but feel the current situation is not good.
Ohh, well, true. If you feel you get to little for what you pay the answer is of course to not buy at all. Of course, in some cases there are legal alternatives were you can pay less or even nothing at all. One such example is to buy second hand.
>And as such is the only cost you need cover, so >what gives you the right to charge $29.95 per copy?
The same right that anyone has to price what they sell at whatever price they like. As long as the information on what you sell is correct and good, you can basically ask for any price you want, there is no law forbiding you to charge more than the development cost.
>Oh yes, and that corporate logo is already protected >by copyright law, let's throw out this completely >redundant trademark law.
Trademark and copyright applies to very different things and are not overlaping as you sugest. The name of a company is NOT protected by copyright, but it can indeed be registered and protected by trademark laws.
>But you can license your software under whatever >terms you wish, and the FSF will not prevent you >from using parts of the GPL in your license provided >that you do not call it GPL.
That would be a trademark issue (calling it GPL) and would have nothing to do with the copyright of it as a work.
>If it's outputting part of the executable code that is GPLed, >and transmitting it over the network to another host which is >executing it, then use can be distribution.
Thus, you need to go to copyright law and figure out if it actually IS a distribution that would violate copyright. Otherwsie it would not matter no matter how you or anyone else feels it shall be viewed or looked at.
You must have answered the wrong post. I have not discussed the meaning of "activated". Someone started to discus paper books and tried to make some typically strange comparions without figuring out that paper books (or anything physical) is vastly different in both working and use to for example digital content on computers or other devices.
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>Legally, they can put whatever the heck kind of restrictions they want on their license.
No, because laws controls and restricts what is allowed to put into consumer contracts. When selling to business, it is basically correct though, there is very little at all you can't put into a contract.
>Says the law.
Which law? Please refer to any law that says you specifically can't buy software?
>Would you be happy with "One licence, one CD player"?
Just wait until they want to restrict it further to, for example "one player in one specific room", or even further, to a specific coordinate on the surface for the world and for a specific time only. The final step would be limiting it to one specific person at that place too.
>"Buying" software is not the same thing.
Were have you got that strange idea from? Care to specify or point to a specific part of sales laws (or other laws) that says software is special?
>You can't "buy" software.
Of course you can!
> You can only buy a *license to use* software.
What are you babling about? You buy products and it is controlled by typically (consumer)sales laws. There is nothing special by software in those laws that discuss "license to use" (it is about sales after all). License (which is basically a fomr of contract, and money countries doesn't even have the concept of "license" in their laws and it owuld thus be the same as a contract) is something you need to get to do something you would otherwise not be allowed to do. There is no law forbidding use to start with, not even for software, thus you don't need to get/buy it anyway. Further, it would have absolutely NOTHING to do with the ownership to start with so no idea why you make that connection.
So, for example, everything ever created before we got copyright laws is just some amateurish piece of crap?
Considering many games today doesn't even come with a paper manual, the work is allready done.
>I agree that some form of copy protection is needed. ...... Most of those games had
>relatively simple copy protection, you had to have the CD in the drive, or there was a
>CD Key and it was checked against a server to make sure it wasn't in use.
That is not copy protection though, it is access protection. Quite different. At least from a legal persepctive in many countries. Ture, it is often called copy protection since it makes people less prone to actually copy but from the legal perspective it does matter if you want to work arround it not to actually copy but to just have it more convenient of not having to shuffle arround CDs all the time for example.
And you do HOW when you want to play off line or can't connect to the net? And you do WHAT when the server is no longer available, perhaps due tothe company ceasing to exist or decide they don't support the game any more or something else happens? Just two examples of problems with such a system.
>The problem is if you put it there and balance the whole game difficulty around it
>being available,
The point was not to put it there AND rebalance the whole game. Why would you need to rebalance the whole game? The point was to put it there, nothing more. Those who feel the game is allready to hard, or that likes to be able to stop playing and save progress so far at their own descision and so on, can then do it. Those who likes to only save at specific points can do that as well. No need to redesign anything.
You are discussing if the price will get people to pay or not and if one will sell. My original commment was that someone can ask whatever price they want. That doesn't mean anyone will buy it, but someone having something for sale can ask whatever price they want. If you don't like it, don't buy.
The other question, which I was not commenting on at all and which you bring up constantly is what makes it possible to ask a certain price AND have people buy it instead of buying something else or creating it themselves. You can all it prisworthyness or whatever. There is nothing preventing anyone from asking a price for what they sell that is not priceworthy. I have not touched that subject at all and have not commented on it nor will I do now.
>Except that the only reason they have anything to "sell" in the first
>place is because of an artificially created regime that allows them
>to sue people who take copies (which do not harm the voracity or nature
>of the original) and so one cannot talk of the issue in terms of apparently
>natural rights.
You are appearantly mixing up two things, copyright and ownership. They are not the same. Selling is about ownership, anyone is free to sell anything at whatever price (even if there is really no one buying, although it would not be so good business but they can still do it). That has nothing to do with copyright which you mention. Copyright is not a requirement to sell anything. Actually, most of the things in the world are sold without there being any copyright invovlved. Copyright do affect the possibility to limit who copies and create NEW copies and products which in turn can be owned and sold. Sure, the reason that the market allows for a certain price is of course in part due to copyright but the question was not why a certain price works in the market.
>Slashdot is really big on throwing the word "right" around,
>but it seems to me it is almost always sorely misused.
Since we was discussing copyright, I used the terminology the US copyright law uses. It gives certain "rights" to the copyright holder. Hence why I used the same terminology. I have no idea about others use of the world.
>In all seriousness: would you please tell me from where you think you derive
>a right to take something I have created from me and, say, sell it for your
>own profit--even if it is by copying the work rather than stealing it?
A few missonconceptions you seem to have. First of all just because you created something, it is not "yours" in the sense that you own it. You are just the creator. Such works are intangible and can't be owned. Instead, one have set up copyright, it does NOT give you ownership either, instead it grants the creator a few exclusive rights to the work for a limited time. That is it.
Next, you seem to make up and claim I said things I did not. I have never claimed what you say here. In general, someone can not copy and sell someone elses work that is under copyright since copying and distribution and making works available to the public is EXACTLY those rights given to the copyright holder for a limited time. Obviously, after that time, the excusivness of those rights no longer belongs to the copyright holder, which is why it is possible for anyone to, for example copy and sell works created in the 18th century (quite long ago but just an example). So no, one can't do what you claim I said. On the other hand, the creator doesn't "own" the work and anything not given as a right to the copyright holder is free for anyone to do. In addition, there are exceptions to the exclusivness of those rights, so that for example some copyiong is STILL allowed by someone other than the copyright holder.
>Maybe this is a "right" in a "survival of the fittest" sense,
>but I'd like to think we are at least a few steps above this.
It it the way copyright is set up. it is a compromise, so that society benefits the most by encouraging creation of new works. Basically the general public give up certain "rights" (or whatever world you feel fits better) and those instead belongs to the creator for a limited time. The end effect is basically that it is possible for the creator to for example earn money for a while as a reward for the creation of a work.
>If I write a book for my friends and family to read, and one of
>my friends decides to copy it down and sell it out from under
>me (the bastard!), you're telling me this is his right?
Stop puting words in my mouth, were have I said that? On the contrary, I specifically, in the part you quoted, said the creator gets a few exclusive rights which thus no longer belongs to the public. Hence, it would be copyright infringement most likely in the example you just mentioned. That IS what I was talking about. The initial list forgot however that copyright is not an ownership, it is a set of rights given temoprarilly to the creator.
>are you serious? that must be a joke. You're
>saying if i write a novel (with the intent to
>publish) it instantly becomes public property
>and i only have a time-limited-license to
>profit from my own creation?
That is basically how copyright works, yes.
I do agree with you that a fixed time would probably be much better. I don't see how the stockpiling would make any difference though, the time to get income would be the same, unless there is large taxes on money inherited as oposed to the copyright the difference would not be large since the children would instead inheret the money for non stockpiled work.
The ultimately goal for copyright though is not to provide for the well being of future children but to make sure that works are created to start with. ONe can raise the point of copyright not expiering upon death as part of it, but then one should also go for fixed time duration in my opinion.
>Except buying a lot of digital goods second hand is going
>to become next to impossible as they get tied to USERS rather
>than being tied to a physical product like a CD or DVD.
So? Untie them first! It is very hard to tie a non service to a person. One can argue that companies want to sell everything as services instead, on the other hand, if there is a damnd for selling goods, there will be those that offer it, buy that. However, the topic of discussion was the price of a product, not its availability.
>But why should a person, or their family, or their estate, or a company just have
>their copyright rights whipped away from them?
They don't. You missed a 1.5 in your list:
1.5 The public desides to give up certain rights to the created cartoon and grant a time limited copyright to the creator!
There is nothing taken away from the person, family or whatever, the limited rights they were granted have run out.
So point five should be:
5. The creator's given time limited rights by the society expires and the work is again free to be used and inspire the creation of new work to benefit the society.
By the way, you don't get copyright on recipies so not sure what that part of your reply was about. Perhaps you can seek patent for it, that is VERY different from copyright though, for one, it has a much shorter time limit on the granted rights by the society to you.
>Parents want to provide for their children.
For most people in the world, that means they have to first work to make money that the children can then get. Why should for example artists be different? Why should they not have to work and make their money first? Should my employer or whoever buy my services (or whatever you like to take an example) have to continue to pay to my children AFTER I die? If one still want such a system, a fixed time not tied to ones death would of course be much better.
>Sure, you can charge anything you want.. for services that *you* offer..
Yes, that was what you wrote and I replied to: "so what gives you the right to charge $29.95 per copy?".
>but I'm the one making the copy here.
Ehh, so you are now talking about a case were the buyer is the one manufacturing the actual copy himself? What does that change? Nothing, the seller can still charge whatever they want. As a buyer you factor in the price you pay plus any extra cost you might have which might include many completely unrelated things such as the cost to travell to the shop just as one example.
>Copyright gives you the power to discourage me from making that copy,
>forcing people to come to you to get copies. That's the bullshit.
Ehh, a third topic not present in the oririnal post/thread. The discussion was about the cost of development, manufacturing and so on. You are now switching to the purpose of copyright to start with and appearanlty feels it is "bullshit". Fine, most tend to believe it is good in some way or form but feel the current situation is not good.
Ohh, well, true. If you feel you get to little for what you pay the answer is of course to not buy at all. Of course, in some cases there are legal alternatives were you can pay less or even nothing at all. One such example is to buy second hand.
>And as such is the only cost you need cover, so
>what gives you the right to charge $29.95 per copy?
The same right that anyone has to price what they sell at whatever price they like. As long as the information on what you sell is correct and good, you can basically ask for any price you want, there is no law forbiding you to charge more than the development cost.
>Oh yes, and that corporate logo is already protected
>by copyright law, let's throw out this completely
>redundant trademark law.
Trademark and copyright applies to very different things and are not overlaping as you sugest. The name of a company is NOT protected by copyright, but it can indeed be registered and protected by trademark laws.
>On the other hand, there are EULAs and interpretations
>of Copyright that say "loading from disk into memory is copying."
And typically the same copyright laws that claims so also calims that such copying is not infringement to start with for a lawfull user.
>But you can license your software under whatever
>terms you wish, and the FSF will not prevent you
>from using parts of the GPL in your license provided
>that you do not call it GPL.
That would be a trademark issue (calling it GPL) and would have nothing to do with the copyright of it as a work.
>If it's outputting part of the executable code that is GPLed,
>and transmitting it over the network to another host which is
>executing it, then use can be distribution.
Thus, you need to go to copyright law and figure out if it actually IS a distribution that would violate copyright. Otherwsie it would not matter no matter how you or anyone else feels it shall be viewed or looked at.
You must have answered the wrong post. I have not discussed the meaning of "activated". Someone started to discus paper books and tried to make some typically strange comparions without figuring out that paper books (or anything physical) is vastly different in both working and use to for example digital content on computers or other devices.