You've only got it half right. Society is supposed to be compensated by having more higher quality works in the public domain. That's the reason for having limited terms, so we can get our culture back after the person who created it has their time to earn their share.
The economics just don't work, from where I'm standing. Having two vehicles doesn't stem from allowing one to be useless; Until very recently I had 2 vehicles, and the reason was that both had great utility: My car gets great gas mileage and is extremely comfortable to drive in for long trips, my truck was great for hauling large objects or loads. The idea of having one vehicle that's nearly useless except for a commute then having one vehicle that's useful for everything else breaks the rationale for having more than one vehicle. Also, if they charge enough for electricity to justify the massive capital expenditure building electric stations across the continent, then there will be little to no economic benefit to buying an electric car, especially since the car itself will cost more.
Honestly, I don't think electric cars will be the future of electric vehicles. I'm putting my money where my mouth is, too. I'll be building a prototype electric vehicle over the next year designed to be small, inexpensive, and practical -- the sort of vehicle you don't need another parking spot to own. I guess we'll see if I'm correct or not.
Copyright, like most things, is a contract between artists and society. Originally, the contract was to allow the use of government resources to prevent publishers from reprinting works without paying the artist their due. There is a monetary cost to society in enforcing copyrights, as well as a cost inherent in the monopoly on works granted by copyright. In ages past, the trade-off for this burden to society was being forced to release the works into the public domain after copyright expired, within a reasonable time limit. Further, governments would only enforce copyrights in civil court, it wasn't a criminal issue, and copyright law was limited to the act of copying itself.
This century has seen unprecedented shift in copyright, where copyright owners are seeing more and more rights, with fewer and fewer responsibilities. All Canadians pay taxes on blank media which is handed to the copyright industry. Copyright terms are now several lifetimes long. Now the copyright industry is trying to make the act of copying a criminal offense, and further making peripheral acts illegal and subject to civil and criminal prosecution.
The perpetuity of copyrights is effectively theft of our own culture. "Happy Birthday To You" is a song first written before the second world war, but singing it in public is technically illegal and will be for another generation. Records from the turn of the last century, songs for example written about the depression or the first world war, are illegal to distribute despite the artists who wrote or sang them being long dead. This affected me personally recently when I found someone's amazing record collection with some incredibly interesting songs about life during the depression, but couldn't share any of the unknown songs I found. It won't be long until the records deteriorate completely, and these pieces of our past are gone forever.
Copyright today isn't structured to foster creativity, it's structured to allow companies to build portfolios. The same chilling effect I felt when I wanted to share the old songs with others is felt with artists, musicians, and writers who want to pull from old sources to build upon their own works. When our past culture is stolen, our own present culture becomes transient and loses a lot of value. Scriptwriting would lose tremendously without the works of Shakespeare to draw upon, musicians would lose tremendously without the works of bethoven and bach to draw upon. The current stifling copyright legislation is eradicating more contemporary Shakespeares or Bachs. They disappear into a mist of "Not profitable to sell, not legal to distribute".
Further copyright won't help increase investment in Canada -- Positive conditions for creative workers will, including progressive copyright that allows artists greater freedom to use our history to build their own works. No film company will say "Oh, even though Vancouver is inexpensive to shoot in and very friendly, they haven't criminalised DRM circumvention so we'll go to New York instead".
Ironically, the best thing for everyone would be to continue what was inadvertently started by the copyright industry themselves when they lobbied for the levy on blank media. American film and music companies are now trying to sue their customers into buying media, but this is the worst solution possible -- regular people are finding their lives ruined over a trivial matter, and principled people are no longer buying movies or music because it's unjust to fund such lawsuits. If Canadian laws protected everyone; consumers, new artists, and existing copyright holders, and tried to create a balance rather than simply creating a draconian wall of legislation, I think we'd see more creativity coming from Canada, which would draw the global digital economy into our borders to leverage our talented engineers, technicians, writers, artists, and musicians in a way that more restrictive countries wouldn't enjoy.
It's ironic, but my brother, who doesn't have a license, brought up an excellent point about cars: If you're anywhere a car with a 320km/day range would be useful, you probably don't need a car.
If you live in a larger city, mass transit, taxi service, and walking can help you to get pretty much anywhere you want to be, and for a lot less than the tens of thousands of dollars these crippled vehicles cost. It's not until you leave the cities and need to travel for a number of hours that a cars utility becomes inescapably more convenient, and at that point electric vehicles aren't practical.
Unfortunately, it's not likely we'll see charging stations, because they're not economical to run. Gasoline is something companies can charge for from the ground up and make a fortune. By contrast, people won't allow themselves to pay very much for electrical service.
That's ignoring too that a reasonably fuel-efficient vehicle travelling the speed limit on the highway can travel about 700km on a tank of gas, so you'd have to stop twice as often as well as spending 8-12 hours at each stop.
The movie will be 16 hours long and will chronicle the journey of Frank the warrior on his epic quest to gather seventeen moose heads from the moose spawning area. He makes it to level 12, setting the viewer up for the sequel, where he can finally buy new armour and eat the soft banana bread he was previously not battle hardened enough to eat.
Anyone who has ever owned a diesel knows full well you can make it spit black smoke by hammering the gas way too hard. Check youtube for a few billion examples by proud diesel owners.
What does your insistence on live performance mean for the musician who is no longer up to the physical rigors of manual labour?
Do we retire - or euthanize - every manual labourer at age sixty who still has something to offer but needs and expects something in return for his work?
You're a troll, so let me use a troll-like argument.
On Slashdot, nobody wants to pay for movies or music. They'll freely pirate, and rationalize it by saying the licensing is terrible, and there's DRM, and all this stuff. In reality, if they hate the terms of ownership so much, they should buy something else. Don't want to deal with DRM or licensing? Don't buy stuff with DRM or licensing issues.
Same idea here. Wikipedia is a free encyclopaedia filled with free, legal content. If you hate the fact that you can't break the law and stick a bunch of unlicensed copyrighted photos on there, then simply don't use Wikipedia.
It seems to me that wikipedia's mission is to be a free encyclopaedia anyone can use or edit.
For wikipedia to be an encyclopaedia anyone can use or edit, the content within wikipedia must be free to use or edit.
Copyright law prevents people from using or editing copyrighted images.
For content within wikipedia to be free to use or edit, therefore, the images must either not be copyrighted, or licensed in such a way that they are free for anyone to use or edit.
Therefore, your 'free' options are actually illegal, and could result in someone getting a letter from a lawyer. That's not freedom.
I don't think you know what authenticity is. It's not a fact, and it has little to do with the actual motivations of the speaker. Authenticity is the feeling from the listener that the speaker is being genuine, that the message is genuine.
Some of the most authentic-feeling brands in existence are totally fake: The Daily Show regularly blasts the news-entertainment media for inauthenticity(In fact, they got the show Crossfire taken off the air), despite being a fake news show themselves -- their authenticity comes from admitting they're inauthentic, another part of the news-entertainment media. Haagen-Dasz sounds vaguely scandinavian, but nobody realises that the brand is made up of a couple fake words, and the company actually started in the Bronx, New York.
For a very long time, crappy internet reviews or statements on forums were extremely authentic -- they may be stupid, they may be wrong, but you knew it was a regular person saying it. If someone made a recommendation, you knew it was a regular person making it. If someone had an opinion, you knew it was a regular person who had it.
Today, marketing companies are poisoning that authenticity by paying for fake websites, fake posts, and fake reviews. Suddenly, that shout-out in a forum post isn't necessarily genuine. Suddenly, that passionate Republican or Democrat isn't necessarily a real party supporter. Suddenly, that person sticking up for the nuclear power plant or knocking the Prius and talking up his Ford Focus isn't necessarily a real person expressing real opinions, but a mere actor in a cynical and inauthentic theatre.
From a carbon capture standpoint, cutting down trees (made mostly of carbon) and turning them into something that'll stick around for a while and using that area to grow more new trees seems to me like a way to get MORE carbon out of the atmosphere.
I completely and totally disagree. In fact, the fact that we're having this discussion is proof of that authenticity.
If I believed you weren't arguing for yourself, if I thought you were being paid by a media company to try to shift the public frame towards astroturfing being okay, then you'd lose the authenticity you have, and I'd stop arguing with you -- Arguing with someone whose job it is to present a certain point of view would be a waste of time.
It's because I believe you're a regular person expressing your opinion of your own free will that your opinion gains authenticity. When the fundamental premise of arguing of one's own conviction and opinion leaves, when someone is aruging as an obligation to their employer, the whole discussion -- regardless of what is said -- loses value.
They can complain all they want, and it might even dissuade people from buying used games.
In fact, the tech generation now explicitly considers how the creators will make money when deciding to purchase something or not. I bought MC Frontalot albums because I figured the artist would get the majority of the cash compared to buying an Eminem album, for example.
It's idiotic to say game developers can't do anything about used games. There's plenty they can do.
Blizzard has some great strategies for making their games virtually unsellable: Make the multiplayer a central feature, then make it so the one and only key will be deactivated if multiple copies are detected, or make the whole game multiplayer.
Valve's steam, despite my love for it(There are no game stores where I live so being able to play a game without spending 16 hours driving to the city and back is very nice), completely eliminates the ability of users to sell games. The various console DLC providers, as well as windows live games do similar things.
Forget simple economics, this story has problems with simple logic and empirical data.
The poison is the erosion of authenticity from internet message boards.
If I'm talking with my buddy about my new car and he's saying his aunt had one and it ran great, it's completely different than if a car dealer is having the exact same discussion with me -- the conversation with my buddy has more authenticity, exactly because it's not a marketing message. The same facts may be presented, but it's a completely different message. When I can't know whether my buddy is just an advertiser paid to talk about the car or not, the lack of authenticity issue then poisons my conversation with them too.
When it becomes commonly known practice for car dealers to misrepresent themselves as regular people, as on-line it's becoming increasingly common for marketing to hire people to post fake posts, fake reviews, and create fake fan websites, suddenly the same authenticity that made people value forums, review sites, or fan websites is eroded, poisoning the whole internet.
Marketing executives always keep authenticity in mind because of the powerful effect it has on how a message is percieved.
But way to make an ass of yourself by making assumptions about how I conduct discussions.
I wish the tactic of making false 'contests' by lawyers was ended.
I recall when Jack Thompson offered $100,000 to the first person to make a FPS where game company executives were the enemies, then he refused to follow through when someone actually did it.
They say "Put your money where your mouth is". It seems wrong that they can put monopoly money where their mouth is and act as if they're not full of shit.
You say nothing rhymes with orange But I don't even have to forage. I'll put down my porridge, kick the door off the door hinge, and say "There are things that rhyme with orange"
Go with a simple transistor audio amplifier. It doesn't have to be anything special, it doesn't even have to sound great. It will, however, teach the basics of how semiconductors work.
Slashdot Mirror
I might have missed something;
Is ink from a printer somehow less durable than ink from a pen or printing press?
You've only got it half right. Society is supposed to be compensated by having more higher quality works in the public domain. That's the reason for having limited terms, so we can get our culture back after the person who created it has their time to earn their share.
The economics just don't work, from where I'm standing. Having two vehicles doesn't stem from allowing one to be useless; Until very recently I had 2 vehicles, and the reason was that both had great utility: My car gets great gas mileage and is extremely comfortable to drive in for long trips, my truck was great for hauling large objects or loads. The idea of having one vehicle that's nearly useless except for a commute then having one vehicle that's useful for everything else breaks the rationale for having more than one vehicle. Also, if they charge enough for electricity to justify the massive capital expenditure building electric stations across the continent, then there will be little to no economic benefit to buying an electric car, especially since the car itself will cost more.
Honestly, I don't think electric cars will be the future of electric vehicles. I'm putting my money where my mouth is, too. I'll be building a prototype electric vehicle over the next year designed to be small, inexpensive, and practical -- the sort of vehicle you don't need another parking spot to own. I guess we'll see if I'm correct or not.
Copyright, like most things, is a contract between artists and society. Originally, the contract was to allow the use of government resources to prevent publishers from reprinting works without paying the artist their due. There is a monetary cost to society in enforcing copyrights, as well as a cost inherent in the monopoly on works granted by copyright. In ages past, the trade-off for this burden to society was being forced to release the works into the public domain after copyright expired, within a reasonable time limit. Further, governments would only enforce copyrights in civil court, it wasn't a criminal issue, and copyright law was limited to the act of copying itself.
This century has seen unprecedented shift in copyright, where copyright owners are seeing more and more rights, with fewer and fewer responsibilities. All Canadians pay taxes on blank media which is handed to the copyright industry. Copyright terms are now several lifetimes long. Now the copyright industry is trying to make the act of copying a criminal offense, and further making peripheral acts illegal and subject to civil and criminal prosecution.
The perpetuity of copyrights is effectively theft of our own culture. "Happy Birthday To You" is a song first written before the second world war, but singing it in public is technically illegal and will be for another generation. Records from the turn of the last century, songs for example written about the depression or the first world war, are illegal to distribute despite the artists who wrote or sang them being long dead. This affected me personally recently when I found someone's amazing record collection with some incredibly interesting songs about life during the depression, but couldn't share any of the unknown songs I found. It won't be long until the records deteriorate completely, and these pieces of our past are gone forever.
Copyright today isn't structured to foster creativity, it's structured to allow companies to build portfolios. The same chilling effect I felt when I wanted to share the old songs with others is felt with artists, musicians, and writers who want to pull from old sources to build upon their own works. When our past culture is stolen, our own present culture becomes transient and loses a lot of value. Scriptwriting would lose tremendously without the works of Shakespeare to draw upon, musicians would lose tremendously without the works of bethoven and bach to draw upon. The current stifling copyright legislation is eradicating more contemporary Shakespeares or Bachs. They disappear into a mist of "Not profitable to sell, not legal to distribute".
Further copyright won't help increase investment in Canada -- Positive conditions for creative workers will, including progressive copyright that allows artists greater freedom to use our history to build their own works. No film company will say "Oh, even though Vancouver is inexpensive to shoot in and very friendly, they haven't criminalised DRM circumvention so we'll go to New York instead".
Ironically, the best thing for everyone would be to continue what was inadvertently started by the copyright industry themselves when they lobbied for the levy on blank media. American film and music companies are now trying to sue their customers into buying media, but this is the worst solution possible -- regular people are finding their lives ruined over a trivial matter, and principled people are no longer buying movies or music because it's unjust to fund such lawsuits. If Canadian laws protected everyone; consumers, new artists, and existing copyright holders, and tried to create a balance rather than simply creating a draconian wall of legislation, I think we'd see more creativity coming from Canada, which would draw the global digital economy into our borders to leverage our talented engineers, technicians, writers, artists, and musicians in a way that more restrictive countries wouldn't enjoy.
It's ironic, but my brother, who doesn't have a license, brought up an excellent point about cars: If you're anywhere a car with a 320km/day range would be useful, you probably don't need a car.
If you live in a larger city, mass transit, taxi service, and walking can help you to get pretty much anywhere you want to be, and for a lot less than the tens of thousands of dollars these crippled vehicles cost. It's not until you leave the cities and need to travel for a number of hours that a cars utility becomes inescapably more convenient, and at that point electric vehicles aren't practical.
Unfortunately, it's not likely we'll see charging stations, because they're not economical to run. Gasoline is something companies can charge for from the ground up and make a fortune. By contrast, people won't allow themselves to pay very much for electrical service.
That's ignoring too that a reasonably fuel-efficient vehicle travelling the speed limit on the highway can travel about 700km on a tank of gas, so you'd have to stop twice as often as well as spending 8-12 hours at each stop.
The movie will be 16 hours long and will chronicle the journey of Frank the warrior on his epic quest to gather seventeen moose heads from the moose spawning area. He makes it to level 12, setting the viewer up for the sequel, where he can finally buy new armour and eat the soft banana bread he was previously not battle hardened enough to eat.
Sorry, you're full of crap.
Anyone who has ever owned a diesel knows full well you can make it spit black smoke by hammering the gas way too hard. Check youtube for a few billion examples by proud diesel owners.
What does your insistence on live performance mean for the musician who is no longer up to the physical rigors of manual labour?
Do we retire - or euthanize - every manual labourer at age sixty who still has something to offer but needs and expects something in return for his work?
Prestige doesn't pay the rent.
Really? I figured it was because you're an off-topic, flamebaitish troll.
But hey, keep it up. "HELP HELP! I'M BEING OPPRESSED!"
You're a troll, so let me use a troll-like argument.
On Slashdot, nobody wants to pay for movies or music. They'll freely pirate, and rationalize it by saying the licensing is terrible, and there's DRM, and all this stuff. In reality, if they hate the terms of ownership so much, they should buy something else. Don't want to deal with DRM or licensing? Don't buy stuff with DRM or licensing issues.
Same idea here. Wikipedia is a free encyclopaedia filled with free, legal content. If you hate the fact that you can't break the law and stick a bunch of unlicensed copyrighted photos on there, then simply don't use Wikipedia.
It seems to me that wikipedia's mission is to be a free encyclopaedia anyone can use or edit.
For wikipedia to be an encyclopaedia anyone can use or edit, the content within wikipedia must be free to use or edit.
Copyright law prevents people from using or editing copyrighted images.
For content within wikipedia to be free to use or edit, therefore, the images must either not be copyrighted, or licensed in such a way that they are free for anyone to use or edit.
Therefore, your 'free' options are actually illegal, and could result in someone getting a letter from a lawyer. That's not freedom.
I don't think you know what authenticity is. It's not a fact, and it has little to do with the actual motivations of the speaker. Authenticity is the feeling from the listener that the speaker is being genuine, that the message is genuine.
Some of the most authentic-feeling brands in existence are totally fake: The Daily Show regularly blasts the news-entertainment media for inauthenticity(In fact, they got the show Crossfire taken off the air), despite being a fake news show themselves -- their authenticity comes from admitting they're inauthentic, another part of the news-entertainment media. Haagen-Dasz sounds vaguely scandinavian, but nobody realises that the brand is made up of a couple fake words, and the company actually started in the Bronx, New York.
For a very long time, crappy internet reviews or statements on forums were extremely authentic -- they may be stupid, they may be wrong, but you knew it was a regular person saying it. If someone made a recommendation, you knew it was a regular person making it. If someone had an opinion, you knew it was a regular person who had it.
Today, marketing companies are poisoning that authenticity by paying for fake websites, fake posts, and fake reviews. Suddenly, that shout-out in a forum post isn't necessarily genuine. Suddenly, that passionate Republican or Democrat isn't necessarily a real party supporter. Suddenly, that person sticking up for the nuclear power plant or knocking the Prius and talking up his Ford Focus isn't necessarily a real person expressing real opinions, but a mere actor in a cynical and inauthentic theatre.
They're trees. What's your hurry?
From a carbon capture standpoint, cutting down trees (made mostly of carbon) and turning them into something that'll stick around for a while and using that area to grow more new trees seems to me like a way to get MORE carbon out of the atmosphere.
I completely and totally disagree. In fact, the fact that we're having this discussion is proof of that authenticity.
If I believed you weren't arguing for yourself, if I thought you were being paid by a media company to try to shift the public frame towards astroturfing being okay, then you'd lose the authenticity you have, and I'd stop arguing with you -- Arguing with someone whose job it is to present a certain point of view would be a waste of time.
It's because I believe you're a regular person expressing your opinion of your own free will that your opinion gains authenticity. When the fundamental premise of arguing of one's own conviction and opinion leaves, when someone is aruging as an obligation to their employer, the whole discussion -- regardless of what is said -- loses value.
I'm far far north.
So why should they shut up?
They can complain all they want, and it might even dissuade people from buying used games.
In fact, the tech generation now explicitly considers how the creators will make money when deciding to purchase something or not. I bought MC Frontalot albums because I figured the artist would get the majority of the cash compared to buying an Eminem album, for example.
What does any of that have to do with the user once the software has left the developer's hands?
Copyright law allows people who own books, movies, music, or video games to sell them.
It's idiotic to say game developers can't do anything about used games. There's plenty they can do.
Blizzard has some great strategies for making their games virtually unsellable: Make the multiplayer a central feature, then make it so the one and only key will be deactivated if multiple copies are detected, or make the whole game multiplayer.
Valve's steam, despite my love for it(There are no game stores where I live so being able to play a game without spending 16 hours driving to the city and back is very nice), completely eliminates the ability of users to sell games. The various console DLC providers, as well as windows live games do similar things.
Forget simple economics, this story has problems with simple logic and empirical data.
The poison is the erosion of authenticity from internet message boards.
If I'm talking with my buddy about my new car and he's saying his aunt had one and it ran great, it's completely different than if a car dealer is having the exact same discussion with me -- the conversation with my buddy has more authenticity, exactly because it's not a marketing message. The same facts may be presented, but it's a completely different message. When I can't know whether my buddy is just an advertiser paid to talk about the car or not, the lack of authenticity issue then poisons my conversation with them too.
When it becomes commonly known practice for car dealers to misrepresent themselves as regular people, as on-line it's becoming increasingly common for marketing to hire people to post fake posts, fake reviews, and create fake fan websites, suddenly the same authenticity that made people value forums, review sites, or fan websites is eroded, poisoning the whole internet.
Marketing executives always keep authenticity in mind because of the powerful effect it has on how a message is percieved.
But way to make an ass of yourself by making assumptions about how I conduct discussions.
Your honour, I contend that my client baba booey baba booey Howard Stern's penis. I rest my case.
I wish the tactic of making false 'contests' by lawyers was ended.
I recall when Jack Thompson offered $100,000 to the first person to make a FPS where game company executives were the enemies, then he refused to follow through when someone actually did it.
They say "Put your money where your mouth is". It seems wrong that they can put monopoly money where their mouth is and act as if they're not full of shit.
lol, Gerald Ford was so stupid, he though 'Beijing' was a verb.
You say nothing rhymes with orange
But I don't even have to forage.
I'll put down my porridge,
kick the door off the door hinge,
and say "There are things that rhyme with orange"
Remember Chairface Chippendale from The Tick? Same idea applies.
Horrible villain. He can store stuff in his head!
Go with a simple transistor audio amplifier. It doesn't have to be anything special, it doesn't even have to sound great. It will, however, teach the basics of how semiconductors work.