increasing complexity violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Lets start with a simple block of ice. The sun shines on it, melting it into chaotic water which flows into the ocean. The sun shines on the ocean evaporating the water into even more highly random water vapor. In the winter the water vapor cools in a cloud, and falls as highly ordered and complex snowflakes.
You are completely misapplying the 2nd law of thermo. It does not prohibit things from becoming more complex or more ordered. In fact, as noted above with snowflakes, when there is an energy flow it is normal and common for order and complexity to spontaneously arise.
When the sun shines on the water, when the sun shines on the earth in general, that sunlight is a source of flowing energy, and that energy can and does do work. It can and does do work forming order and complexity within the system.
The second law of thermo is not violated because the second law says that on average disorder increases, and under the second law the sun is burning a gigantic amount of energy and experiencing a vast increase in entropy. It is normal and permitted to have a small and continual increase in order in one place (the earth) along with a large and continual increase in entropy in the sun. The sun pays for the energy and work needed to continually increase order and complexity on the earth.
a baffling thought to imagine increasing orders of complexity with no intelligent input. Still baffles me.
One key is that there is energy input. Energy can do work.
The other key is that selectively deletion is all it takes to convert random noise into directed information.
If you flip two hundred coins, all it takes is selectively killing off the one hundred tails to end up with perfectly directed perfectly ordered one hundred heads.
Lets say we have a hundred dice all with 2's on top. We put in energy and they reproduce to 200 dice. Normally they reproduce keeping the same number on top. But lets say there's a 10% chance that each "child" die is born flipped one-number-lower. And lets say there's a one-in-a-million chance for each "child" die to be born flipped one-number-higher. So basically we have 180 dice born with 2's, and 20 dice born with 1's. Now we kill off half the dice, starting with the weakest (lowest number). So we wind up with 100 dice all with 2's again. We keep doing that for many generations, many dice mutate to lower numbers and get selectively killed off, and eventually one die will be born with a 3 on top. The 3 survives and multiplies while the 1's and 2's start getting killed off. Pretty soon you have a hundred 3's. As they reproduce you get lots of mutants with 2's, and they are all selectively killed off. Eventually a 4 is born, survives and multiplies. The 3's start ding off. Then a 5 is born, and eventually a 6 is born.
Even though there's a huge 10% chance of a random bad mutation, and a tiny one-in-a-million chance of a random good mutation, all it takes is reproduction + natural selective death to convert that randomness into perfectly a directed continual increase. There is a 100% chance that you will eventually turn a population of all 2's into a population of all 6's.
Now lets get to a powerful illustration of how "zero information" mutations can almost magically create useful new information and valuable increases in complexity.
Lets consider an animal that has black-and-white vision, such as dogs. They have a gene for the eye protein that detects light. A mutation to that gene with typically destroy the ability to detect light, it will render the animal blind. Any time that happens we can assume the animal will die out, so we can just ignore that case. However some mutations will only make a very minor change to the vision protein - some mutations will merely re-turn the protein to detect a different frequency of light. The animal would still see in black-and-white, b
Technology experts are frequently completely clueless about the law.
I'd wager that tech experts on average know more about law than legislators know about tech. However that's not the real issue.
The real issue is that if a tech expert is responsible for some decision and needs to know about the law to figure it out properly, the tech expert is vastly more likely to actually look up the information he needs to know, and he is significantly more likely to actually understand the new information.
And for the record, I am a tech geek who has read the entireUnited States Code Title 17 Copyright Law, in addition to studying many of the key court rulings in the area.
When I post here, in front of a techie audience, one of four things typically happens. (1) Quite often another knowedgable geek posts nitpicking over some detail of law that I glossed over or simplified. (2) Techies recognize and respect knowledge and expertise. (3) They read any law links I provided to confirm/learn for themselves that my information was correct. Or (4) they ask me to back up a linkless part of my post, I provide a link, and we move back to case (3).
Legislators rarely exhibit that sort of respect for tech expertise, nor do they often make a personal effort to investigate and understand tech things for themselves.
About the closest the SOPA congressional hearing came to knowing, respecting, or studying the tech side was when when one of the SOPA supporters tweeted "We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson has so bored me that I'm killing time by surfing the Internet".
While the issue is obvious to you and me, don't forget just how close the U.S. Supreme Court ruling was on VCRs. Six of the Supreme Court were preparing to prohibit VCRs. At the last minute the dissent was able to pick up two more votes, forming a threadbare 5-4 majority ruling VCRs legal on the basis that they are "capable of substantial noninfringing uses".
The remaining 4 justices continued to insist VCRs be prohibited. They insisted "Surely Congress desired to prevent the sale of products that are used almost exclusively to infringe copyrights."
Freaking VCRs were one goddamn vote away from being effectively outlawed in the US.
That is the most idiotic thing I've heard in a long time.
You obviously don't watch Fox News.
And that is not just an idle joke. Just for fun I turned on Fox News to time how long it would take for something appropriate to show up. I shit-you-not, it took less than 100 seconds for a clip of Rick Santorum to come on explaining that gay couples have no need to get married because they can contract for everything like housing arrangements and inheritance.
Just in case anyone doesn't get it, just consider if he made that comment regarding interracial couples wanting to get married. That interracial couples have no business wanting to get married because they can contract for housing arrangements and inheritance and whatnot.
I was using the shopping list as an extreme example. I guess at this point it's worth going over exactly how it is or isn't covered by copyright. A "mere list of things" is not protected by copyright. If you look at my list and type out the items on my list in arbitrary order (preferably alphabetical order), then you would not be violating any copyright of mine. On the other hand copyright recognizes other aspects of my writing in addition to the "mere list of things". Copyright has a very low bar for "creativity". Under copyright law, my choice of order for the items qualifies as creative choice. There is a creative contribution in how I scatter the items around the page. There is also a creative contribution in my usage of "o-jay" for "orange juice" or my misspelling of "mlik" for "milk". There is also creative expression in my personally stylized handwriting.
It would not be copyright infringement to alphabetically type out those items as a purified "mere list". However if you were to photocopy and publish it, you would inherently be copying all of the creative aspects as well. Copyright does pay attention to those "minor" creative aspects. If I sued, the law does recognize a valid copyright in them.
On the other hand (again), this is a pretty silly and extreme example. Almost any court is likely to welcome any excuse to toss it out. The nature of my work was not intended to be commercial or creative, your copying of my work clearly did not impact any market for me selling my work. Actual damages would be zero. Either a court would accept a Fair Use defense (you did infringe my copyright but it's O.K. that you did), or the award for infringement would be the absolute minimum allowable statutory damages ($200 or $300).
I don't think there is any connection to "boomers".
The fact is that a long string of bad copyright laws have been passed for several decades. All our copyright bills are literally written by lawyers employed by the copyright industry, and the idiots in congress pass them with little or no modification. Things have simply been getting worse and worse. It's only recently that anyone in the general public has payed any attention to copyright law. It is only recently with the piling up of copyright insanity, and the internet making copyright law applicable to everyday non-commercial life and causing copyright law to impact routine freedoms and the increasing attack on technology and progress itself and the criminalization of speech (even when that speech does not infringe any copyright).
This has been going on a long time, copyright steadily ratcheting up higher and higher. It's only recently that the general public noticed or cared.
If you include the Copyright marking... Copyright $YEAR_LIST $AUTHOR_LIST Otherwise, copyright law can not apply.
False. The Copyright Act of 1976 eliminated any need to place a copyright notice.
The 1976 law changed it so that anything you write down is automatically copyrighted, the instant you write it. You can scribble your grocery shopping list on a napkin, milk+eggs+etc+etc+etc, toss it in the garbage, and you have a legally enforcible copyright on it. If someone digs that napkin out of the county garbage dump and publishes it, you can sue him for copyright infringement. And win.
How am I to know its protections haven't expired yet?
Congress said "tough shit, screw you, deal with it".
Dredging up some tamper-proof proof it wasn't created long ago is harder to do than you might think.
Congress said "tough shit, screw you, deal with it".
Much like the US Constitution provides us the concept of "Innocent until proven guilty", I assume all works are Copyable unless proven protected.
You can assume anything you like. Under copyright law that is going to qualify as willful infringement and you are going to get smacked with up to $150,000 per infringed work, or actual damages if they are higher, plus you're almost certain to going to get hit for the other side's legal fees.
Lets see if I can make the law even more clear to you. There is a legal term called "innocent infringer". An innocent infringer is when you have good reason to believe you are not infringing copyright. Innocent infringer is when someone hand you something and either they inform you that it is public domain, or perhaps they tell you that they are the copyright owner and that they are granting you permission to copy it. Except it turns out that person lied to you. As an innocent infringer, the law recognizes that you did nothing wrong. And because the law recognizes that you did nothing wrong the law has a special clause to address that situation. Because you are completely innocent, the law states that the court may lower the damages against to the range $200-to-$30,000 per work you infringed. And there is no "innocent until proven guilty" here. The legal burden is upon you to prove your "innocent infringer" status.
Note that a single webpage could easily count as 50 copyrighted works, counting each icon and other element. That would mean, once you prove in court your innocent infringer status, the law mandates damages between $10,000 and $6,000,000 for your single webpage. Even though you did nothing wrong. Under the law you did violate the copyright, and because you did it "innocently" the minimum damages are lowered to $200 per infringement.
In case I haven't mentioned it before, Congress said "tough shit, screw you, deal with it".
If you don't like it, if you think that is evil or insane, I don't disagree. Your problem isn't with me, your problem is with the asshats in congress. In particular the problem is that our copyright bills are literally written by lawyers employed by the copyright industry. The asshats in congress pass those bills into law with little or no modification.
I have barely even begun to describe how insane the law actually is. Just to cite one more of many example, a sneaky redefinition was slipped into the 1997 NET Act. It redefined "financial gain" to cover a huge range on entirely non-commercial activities. In particular it was redefined such that it encompasses virtually any P2P infringement. Any such infringement is then technically swept under the criminal copyright provisions. Criminal laws that were originally intended to target commercial piracy operations. If you have ever used P2P, it is effectively certain that you are technically guilty of criminal copyright infringement, a felony with a federal prison sentence of up to five years in prison. Virtually ev
Yes. Lets be clear. Because apparently some clarification is indeed necessary.
You support the idea that a white jury could nullify a murder conviction against a white man accused of killing a black man because the members of the jury think it's ok for a white man to kill a black man?
Two part answer.
First, you can drop the word "support" there. I acknowledge the fact that the U.S. Constitution prohibits Double Jeopardy. I acknowledge that Jury Nullification is, de facto, part of the operation of the Constitution. Once a Jury has returned a unanimous verdict of "Not Guilty", then de facto the case is over, you can no longer go after the accused, and you cannot go after the Jury for ruling the way it did. You can argue how the world should work, but you cannot dispute the reality of Jury Nullification.
The second part of my answer is that you are completely mis-identifying the problem in your example. The problem in your example isn't Jury Nullification. The problem in your example is that the Judge and the prosecutor (and possibly the defense lawyer) are Racist. The problem is that the Judge and the prosecutor (and possibly the defense lawyer) are violating the defendant's civil rights. The Judge and the prosecutor (and possibly the defense lawyer) either deliberately empaneled an "all white" racist jury, or they were grossly negligent in empaneling an "all white" racist jury.
Unfortunately the constitution prohibits any further prosecution of the murderer, however at least we can still imprison the greater threat. Depending on the exact details of the case, it is likely that the Judge and the prosecutor (and possibly the defense lawyer) can be imprisoned.
Jury nullification sounds good on the surface
No it doesn't. It sounds like crap. That doesn't change the fact that it exists. And it does change the fact that the world in general is often crap. It doesn't change the fact that in the real world sometimes all available choices are crap. It doesn't change the fact that sometimes you get stuck having to choose the least crappy piece of crap that's available.
In most court cases one of three things happen. Either 12 jurors unanimously decide someone is guilty, or 12 jurors unanimously decide someone is not guilty, or the case is borderline and you get a hung jury. However if you have 12 jurors unanimously contemplating something like Jury Nullification, then something else went seriously wrong somewhere else. And then the entire subject of Jury Nullification is nothing more than a distracting mess left behind by whatever the true problem is.
Slap a consistent fine for copying on any verdict. BUT DO NOT GIVE THAT FINE TO THE VICTIM. This is what makes the whole US justice system such a joke.
Sadly, that would only make the problem worse. The last thing you want is for the government to start viewing it as a revenue stream. A revenue stream without the inconvenient word "taxes" attached to it.
Then the government has a perverse incentive to maximize the number of people actually breaking the law, a perverse incentive to sweep up innocent people, a perverse incentive to ensure it is impossible or insanely difficult for innocent people to defend themselves.
Just look at the stupidity that goes on with red-light cameras. The report then comes in that accidents at the intersection have gone UP rather than DOWN, and what does the government do? It shortens the yellow-duration on the light, which increase accidents (and possibly deaths) from people improperly jamming on the brakes. Why? Because the government needs to maximize the number of people "breaking the law" to increase revenue. And a special legal process is put in place to avoid the wasteful expense of accusing a person of breaking the law, along with the possible expense that they might try to defend themselves. Instead a special legal process it put in place either assigning a presumption of guilt or making it some sort of civil suit / administrative violation against the car that is being accused. A bill is simply mailed to the owner of the car. When red-light cameras are a revenue stream, minimizing the cost of processing the guilty is important to maximizing revenue. Minimizing the cost of processing the innocent, and still forcing them to pay, also becomes important to maximizing revenue.
And don't even get started on the abuse of the various civil forfeiture laws. They turn into a major source of funding for law enforcement agencies, paying them to go out and seize as much as possible.
Copyright law is grotesquely deformed as it is. Just imagine how much worse it would get if the government latched on to it as a revenue stream to fix desperate budget shortfalls, without having to utter the dread word "taxes".
Maybe a better comparison would be syphilis. That's almost worth the satisfaction of getting, and getting cured. BTW, as someone linked above, boobies boobies boobies!
There seems to be a slight flaw in your analogy. GoDaddy isn't making a deal with invaders who have landed here. GoDaddy is trying to get invaders to land here.
if someone is doing "wrong," and then changes their mind
GoDaddy didn't change their mind in the slightest.
if that change of mind is obviously [] insincere -- how are we supposed to respond?
The fact that they supported SOPA in the first place was bad, but forgivable.
Getting kicked in the nuts for it and still failing to Get A Clue, is even worse. It's generally rather unwise to forgive someone who is too stupid and stubborn to learn from their mistakes. But at least there would be some shred of respectability that they thought they were doing the right thing and being honest that they still think so.
However their obviously insincere response is unforgivable. They issued a threadbare and dishonest press release that they were withdrawing support in the hope that we would be gullible enough to be fooled by it while they continue "working to help" on SOPA. They feel SOPA is "worth the wait" and they intend "Go Daddy will support it" in the future.
Seriously, how do you respond when someone makes an insincere apology to pacify you, and they do it with the full intention to continue the behavior? Do you stand there saying "Thankyou for your apology, please continue kicking me in the nuts from behind my back."?
continuing to punish them after they've backed off of an unpopular decision
Did you even read their press release? They have not backed off on SOPA. The press release starts out stating that they consider the issue of the "utmost importance" and that they intend to continue "working to help" on the language of SOPA in some unspecified manner, and then astoundingly proceeds to declare "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on [SOPA]". GoDaddy actually has the psychotic GALL to tell us how important it is that WE support this turd.
GoDaddy absolutely did not get the message here. The only message they got is that they are losing $$$.
GoDaddy has only temporarily withdrawn their public endorsement of the law. The press release states they feel SOPA is "worth the wait" and "Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it". GoDaddy still fully desires and intends to support SOPA in the future. GoDaddy expects US to get a clue and reverse our position to support it as soon as possible.
They haven't changed their position in the slightest. All they have backed away from is the shitstorm over their pro-SOPA press release. They are merely trying to use the new press release as an umbrella to hide under while they continue "working to help" on SOPA.
Lets see. On one hand I can go with the basic laws of physics that CO2 and other gases do trap thermal radiation, or on the other hand I can go with global conspiracy theory claims that tens of thousands of scientists are perpetrating a hoax.
I'll go with the basic laws of physics, thankyouverymuch.
Over and over, we read of hidden, manipulated, and cherry-picked data, refusals to abide with having outsiders vet their work, and allowing naked advocacy into the IPCC reports on climate change as if they were peer-reviewed science.
i don't know if anyone will ever get this message, but if you do you have to come save us. oh god. you must come save us! we're slowly going insane each day. each day. each day. many of us are already gone. just siting and starting endlessly. or just screaming. the screaming never stops now. i don't know what happened to the world. it's not there. or it's gone. or we're just. i don't know. cut off. drifting. yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes no one knows how many years its been anymore it just never ends. please come save us we're in samoa and it's december 30 and yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes and it never ends. it never ends. it never ends. for the love of god make it end december 30 december 30 december 30 december 30 december 30 december 30 december 30 december 30 december 30 no one ever dies and it never ends
WIKIPEDIA BOYCOTTS GODADDY, LOBBYING AGAINST SOPA, PLANS ONLINE PROTEST POTENTIALLY INCLUDING PARTIAL BLACKOUT
Jimbo Wales: I am proud to announce that the Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy.
Current protest proposal: * Triggering event: When SOPA has passed committee and is scheduled for a floor vote in either the House or Senate. The banner runs for the week before the vote, and switches to the blackout on the day before.
* Scope: Response is geotargeted to United States IP addresses only
* Duration: Maximum of 7 days for banner component, maximum of 24 hours for blackout component. Blackout is triggered on the business day before the vote. If the vote is on a Monday, blackout runs for 24 hours starting Friday.
* Action (banner): Banners encourage people to contact their Senators and Representatives (priority given to whichever is urgent, House or Senate).
o To the maximum extent possible, readers are given instant information on how they can take action. Campaign is designed to mobilize the public maximally.
o The focus is on generating high-value congressional contacts (phone calls and in-person contacts vs letters or emails)
o A VOIP-based callback system (such as the one used recently by tumblr) is an option if we can find one that fits our needs and allows us to remain acceptably independent.
o Banners operate like the fundraising banners (served via CentralNotice, can be closed per-user, etc).
* Action (blackout): All requests are answered with a black page. The page is semi-protected Wikitext. Once the page is displayed, a cookie is set which prevents its display again. Exact wording to be decided, but it hits the following points:
o SOPA puts Wikipedia, and the rest of the free Internet, at risk
o You can help by contacting your representative and senators (with maximally easy help with ways to do that)
o A "Learn more about SOPA" link which points to the relevant article on the English Wikipedia
o A "Why am I seeing this" link which points to a page detailing the process for reaching this consensus
o A link to click through to the originally requested page
o "You will only see this page once"
I'm not actually too bothered by having a few ads, as long as
* None of them use Flash/Javascript/ActiveX/Popups/Popunders/Floatovers/StupidHTML5Tricks/iFrames/etc.
* None of them use animation, just static images/text
* None of them use cookies
* None of them pretend not to be ads
* None of them are sleazy, annoying, or NSFW.
* None of them get REFERER except the originating site.
There appears to be an error in your list. Ads in the sleazy/NSFW category go on the whitelist.
Title 17 of the United States Code is hereby repealed. All rights and privileges formerly granted under this code are null and void. The United States hereby withdraws from the Berne Convention, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Any currently living executive or lawyer who is now or ever has worked for the RIAA or the MPAA or their foreign counterparts is declared outlaw, and the United States will pay a $50,000 bounty for their capture dead or alive.
This would require amending the Constitution as well, because bills of attainder are not currently allowed. I'd support an amendment allowing this narrow exception:)
Your sarcasm aside, you're right. That was pretty bad. Unconstitutional. Destructive. Abhorrent even, to any sane sense of justice.
Everyone agrees the current situation is bad, and it's only getting worse the longer we fight with each other over it. There is an urgent need to solve the problem, and we all need to come together and pass a reasonable bi-partisan compromise immediately.
I'm happy to Release this Draft Alternative: Title 17 of the United States Code is hereby repealed. All rights and privileges formerly granted under this code are null and void. The United States hereby withdraws from the Berne Convention, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and the World Intellectual Property Organization.
I suggest we rush this out of committee tonight and attach it to the Federal Budget bill to be passed as an Emergency Vote, precluding any unproductive filibuster or amendment squabbles.
Slashdot Mirror
increasing complexity violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Lets start with a simple block of ice. The sun shines on it, melting it into chaotic water which flows into the ocean. The sun shines on the ocean evaporating the water into even more highly random water vapor. In the winter the water vapor cools in a cloud, and falls as highly ordered and complex snowflakes.
You are completely misapplying the 2nd law of thermo. It does not prohibit things from becoming more complex or more ordered. In fact, as noted above with snowflakes, when there is an energy flow it is normal and common for order and complexity to spontaneously arise.
When the sun shines on the water, when the sun shines on the earth in general, that sunlight is a source of flowing energy, and that energy can and does do work. It can and does do work forming order and complexity within the system.
The second law of thermo is not violated because the second law says that on average disorder increases, and under the second law the sun is burning a gigantic amount of energy and experiencing a vast increase in entropy. It is normal and permitted to have a small and continual increase in order in one place (the earth) along with a large and continual increase in entropy in the sun. The sun pays for the energy and work needed to continually increase order and complexity on the earth.
a baffling thought to imagine increasing orders of complexity with no intelligent input. Still baffles me.
One key is that there is energy input. Energy can do work.
The other key is that selectively deletion is all it takes to convert random noise into directed information.
If you flip two hundred coins, all it takes is selectively killing off the one hundred tails to end up with perfectly directed perfectly ordered one hundred heads.
Lets say we have a hundred dice all with 2's on top. We put in energy and they reproduce to 200 dice. Normally they reproduce keeping the same number on top. But lets say there's a 10% chance that each "child" die is born flipped one-number-lower. And lets say there's a one-in-a-million chance for each "child" die to be born flipped one-number-higher. So basically we have 180 dice born with 2's, and 20 dice born with 1's. Now we kill off half the dice, starting with the weakest (lowest number). So we wind up with 100 dice all with 2's again. We keep doing that for many generations, many dice mutate to lower numbers and get selectively killed off, and eventually one die will be born with a 3 on top. The 3 survives and multiplies while the 1's and 2's start getting killed off. Pretty soon you have a hundred 3's. As they reproduce you get lots of mutants with 2's, and they are all selectively killed off. Eventually a 4 is born, survives and multiplies. The 3's start ding off. Then a 5 is born, and eventually a 6 is born.
Even though there's a huge 10% chance of a random bad mutation, and a tiny one-in-a-million chance of a random good mutation, all it takes is reproduction + natural selective death to convert that randomness into perfectly a directed continual increase. There is a 100% chance that you will eventually turn a population of all 2's into a population of all 6's.
Now lets get to a powerful illustration of how "zero information" mutations can almost magically create useful new information and valuable increases in complexity.
Lets consider an animal that has black-and-white vision, such as dogs. They have a gene for the eye protein that detects light. A mutation to that gene with typically destroy the ability to detect light, it will render the animal blind. Any time that happens we can assume the animal will die out, so we can just ignore that case. However some mutations will only make a very minor change to the vision protein - some mutations will merely re-turn the protein to detect a different frequency of light. The animal would still see in black-and-white, b
I prefer Sudoku puzzles with only one clue.
I hate people who try to cramp my creative freedom. I only play blank Sudoko.
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Technology experts are frequently completely clueless about the law.
I'd wager that tech experts on average know more about law than legislators know about tech. However that's not the real issue.
The real issue is that if a tech expert is responsible for some decision and needs to know about the law to figure it out properly, the tech expert is vastly more likely to actually look up the information he needs to know, and he is significantly more likely to actually understand the new information.
And for the record, I am a tech geek who has read the entire United States Code Title 17 Copyright Law, in addition to studying many of the key court rulings in the area.
When I post here, in front of a techie audience, one of four things typically happens. (1) Quite often another knowedgable geek posts nitpicking over some detail of law that I glossed over or simplified. (2) Techies recognize and respect knowledge and expertise. (3) They read any law links I provided to confirm/learn for themselves that my information was correct. Or (4) they ask me to back up a linkless part of my post, I provide a link, and we move back to case (3).
Legislators rarely exhibit that sort of respect for tech expertise, nor do they often make a personal effort to investigate and understand tech things for themselves.
About the closest the SOPA congressional hearing came to knowing, respecting, or studying the tech side was when when one of the SOPA supporters tweeted "We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson has so bored me that I'm killing time by surfing the Internet".
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People do use laser beams for things other than shark-mounting.
Wow, that just made it to the top of the most freakish fetishes list.
P.S.
How do laser beams help you mount a shark? Do they distract the shark or something?
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While the issue is obvious to you and me, don't forget just how close the U.S. Supreme Court ruling was on VCRs. Six of the Supreme Court were preparing to prohibit VCRs. At the last minute the dissent was able to pick up two more votes, forming a threadbare 5-4 majority ruling VCRs legal on the basis that they are "capable of substantial noninfringing uses".
The remaining 4 justices continued to insist VCRs be prohibited. They insisted " Surely Congress desired to prevent the sale of products that are used almost exclusively to infringe copyrights. "
Freaking VCRs were one goddamn vote away from being effectively outlawed in the US.
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Are you dense?
No, said the neutron star.
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That is the most idiotic thing I've heard in a long time.
You obviously don't watch Fox News.
And that is not just an idle joke. Just for fun I turned on Fox News to time how long it would take for something appropriate to show up. I shit-you-not, it took less than 100 seconds for a clip of Rick Santorum to come on explaining that gay couples have no need to get married because they can contract for everything like housing arrangements and inheritance.
Just in case anyone doesn't get it, just consider if he made that comment regarding interracial couples wanting to get married. That interracial couples have no business wanting to get married because they can contract for housing arrangements and inheritance and whatnot.
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I was using the shopping list as an extreme example. I guess at this point it's worth going over exactly how it is or isn't covered by copyright. A "mere list of things" is not protected by copyright. If you look at my list and type out the items on my list in arbitrary order (preferably alphabetical order), then you would not be violating any copyright of mine. On the other hand copyright recognizes other aspects of my writing in addition to the "mere list of things". Copyright has a very low bar for "creativity". Under copyright law, my choice of order for the items qualifies as creative choice. There is a creative contribution in how I scatter the items around the page. There is also a creative contribution in my usage of "o-jay" for "orange juice" or my misspelling of "mlik" for "milk". There is also creative expression in my personally stylized handwriting.
It would not be copyright infringement to alphabetically type out those items as a purified "mere list". However if you were to photocopy and publish it, you would inherently be copying all of the creative aspects as well. Copyright does pay attention to those "minor" creative aspects. If I sued, the law does recognize a valid copyright in them.
On the other hand (again), this is a pretty silly and extreme example. Almost any court is likely to welcome any excuse to toss it out. The nature of my work was not intended to be commercial or creative, your copying of my work clearly did not impact any market for me selling my work. Actual damages would be zero. Either a court would accept a Fair Use defense (you did infringe my copyright but it's O.K. that you did), or the award for infringement would be the absolute minimum allowable statutory damages ($200 or $300).
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I don't think there is any connection to "boomers".
The fact is that a long string of bad copyright laws have been passed for several decades. All our copyright bills are literally written by lawyers employed by the copyright industry, and the idiots in congress pass them with little or no modification. Things have simply been getting worse and worse. It's only recently that anyone in the general public has payed any attention to copyright law. It is only recently with the piling up of copyright insanity, and the internet making copyright law applicable to everyday non-commercial life and causing copyright law to impact routine freedoms and the increasing attack on technology and progress itself and the criminalization of speech (even when that speech does not infringe any copyright).
This has been going on a long time, copyright steadily ratcheting up higher and higher. It's only recently that the general public noticed or cared.
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If you include the Copyright marking... Copyright $YEAR_LIST $AUTHOR_LIST
Otherwise, copyright law can not apply.
False. The Copyright Act of 1976 eliminated any need to place a copyright notice.
The 1976 law changed it so that anything you write down is automatically copyrighted, the instant you write it. You can scribble your grocery shopping list on a napkin, milk+eggs+etc+etc+etc, toss it in the garbage, and you have a legally enforcible copyright on it. If someone digs that napkin out of the county garbage dump and publishes it, you can sue him for copyright infringement. And win.
How am I to know its protections haven't expired yet?
Congress said "tough shit, screw you, deal with it".
Dredging up some tamper-proof proof it wasn't created long ago is harder to do than you might think.
Congress said "tough shit, screw you, deal with it".
Much like the US Constitution provides us the concept of "Innocent until proven guilty", I assume all works are Copyable unless proven protected.
You can assume anything you like. Under copyright law that is going to qualify as willful infringement and you are going to get smacked with up to $150,000 per infringed work, or actual damages if they are higher, plus you're almost certain to going to get hit for the other side's legal fees.
Lets see if I can make the law even more clear to you. There is a legal term called "innocent infringer". An innocent infringer is when you have good reason to believe you are not infringing copyright. Innocent infringer is when someone hand you something and either they inform you that it is public domain, or perhaps they tell you that they are the copyright owner and that they are granting you permission to copy it. Except it turns out that person lied to you. As an innocent infringer, the law recognizes that you did nothing wrong. And because the law recognizes that you did nothing wrong the law has a special clause to address that situation. Because you are completely innocent, the law states that the court may lower the damages against to the range $200-to-$30,000 per work you infringed. And there is no "innocent until proven guilty" here. The legal burden is upon you to prove your "innocent infringer" status.
Note that a single webpage could easily count as 50 copyrighted works, counting each icon and other element. That would mean, once you prove in court your innocent infringer status, the law mandates damages between $10,000 and $6,000,000 for your single webpage. Even though you did nothing wrong. Under the law you did violate the copyright, and because you did it "innocently" the minimum damages are lowered to $200 per infringement.
In case I haven't mentioned it before, Congress said "tough shit, screw you, deal with it".
If you don't like it, if you think that is evil or insane, I don't disagree. Your problem isn't with me, your problem is with the asshats in congress. In particular the problem is that our copyright bills are literally written by lawyers employed by the copyright industry. The asshats in congress pass those bills into law with little or no modification.
I have barely even begun to describe how insane the law actually is. Just to cite one more of many example, a sneaky redefinition was slipped into the 1997 NET Act. It redefined "financial gain" to cover a huge range on entirely non-commercial activities. In particular it was redefined such that it encompasses virtually any P2P infringement. Any such infringement is then technically swept under the criminal copyright provisions. Criminal laws that were originally intended to target commercial piracy operations. If you have ever used P2P, it is effectively certain that you are technically guilty of criminal copyright infringement, a felony with a federal prison sentence of up to five years in prison. Virtually ev
So just to be clear.
Yes. Lets be clear. Because apparently some clarification is indeed necessary.
You support the idea that a white jury could nullify a murder conviction against a white man accused of killing a black man because the members of the jury think it's ok for a white man to kill a black man?
Two part answer.
First, you can drop the word "support" there. I acknowledge the fact that the U.S. Constitution prohibits Double Jeopardy. I acknowledge that Jury Nullification is, de facto, part of the operation of the Constitution. Once a Jury has returned a unanimous verdict of "Not Guilty", then de facto the case is over, you can no longer go after the accused, and you cannot go after the Jury for ruling the way it did. You can argue how the world should work, but you cannot dispute the reality of Jury Nullification.
The second part of my answer is that you are completely mis-identifying the problem in your example. The problem in your example isn't Jury Nullification. The problem in your example is that the Judge and the prosecutor (and possibly the defense lawyer) are Racist. The problem is that the Judge and the prosecutor (and possibly the defense lawyer) are violating the defendant's civil rights. The Judge and the prosecutor (and possibly the defense lawyer) either deliberately empaneled an "all white" racist jury, or they were grossly negligent in empaneling an "all white" racist jury.
Unfortunately the constitution prohibits any further prosecution of the murderer, however at least we can still imprison the greater threat. Depending on the exact details of the case, it is likely that the Judge and the prosecutor (and possibly the defense lawyer) can be imprisoned.
Jury nullification sounds good on the surface
No it doesn't. It sounds like crap. That doesn't change the fact that it exists. And it does change the fact that the world in general is often crap. It doesn't change the fact that in the real world sometimes all available choices are crap. It doesn't change the fact that sometimes you get stuck having to choose the least crappy piece of crap that's available.
In most court cases one of three things happen. Either 12 jurors unanimously decide someone is guilty, or 12 jurors unanimously decide someone is not guilty, or the case is borderline and you get a hung jury. However if you have 12 jurors unanimously contemplating something like Jury Nullification, then something else went seriously wrong somewhere else. And then the entire subject of Jury Nullification is nothing more than a distracting mess left behind by whatever the true problem is.
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Slap a consistent fine for copying on any verdict. BUT DO NOT GIVE THAT FINE TO THE VICTIM. This is what makes the whole US justice system such a joke.
Sadly, that would only make the problem worse. The last thing you want is for the government to start viewing it as a revenue stream. A revenue stream without the inconvenient word "taxes" attached to it.
Then the government has a perverse incentive to maximize the number of people actually breaking the law, a perverse incentive to sweep up innocent people, a perverse incentive to ensure it is impossible or insanely difficult for innocent people to defend themselves.
Just look at the stupidity that goes on with red-light cameras. The report then comes in that accidents at the intersection have gone UP rather than DOWN, and what does the government do? It shortens the yellow-duration on the light, which increase accidents (and possibly deaths) from people improperly jamming on the brakes. Why? Because the government needs to maximize the number of people "breaking the law" to increase revenue. And a special legal process is put in place to avoid the wasteful expense of accusing a person of breaking the law, along with the possible expense that they might try to defend themselves. Instead a special legal process it put in place either assigning a presumption of guilt or making it some sort of civil suit / administrative violation against the car that is being accused. A bill is simply mailed to the owner of the car. When red-light cameras are a revenue stream, minimizing the cost of processing the guilty is important to maximizing revenue. Minimizing the cost of processing the innocent, and still forcing them to pay, also becomes important to maximizing revenue.
And don't even get started on the abuse of the various civil forfeiture laws. They turn into a major source of funding for law enforcement agencies, paying them to go out and seize as much as possible.
Copyright law is grotesquely deformed as it is. Just imagine how much worse it would get if the government latched on to it as a revenue stream to fix desperate budget shortfalls, without having to utter the dread word "taxes".
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There was zero correlation.
Don't be an idiot. It was hellishly hot, and 15,000 people died. Of course there was a correlation.
But as we all know, correlation does not imply causation. It's entirely possible that it was hellishly hot because 15,000 died. ;)
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Maybe a better comparison would be syphilis. That's almost worth the satisfaction of getting, and getting cured.
BTW, as someone linked above, boobies boobies boobies!
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There seems to be a slight flaw in your analogy.
GoDaddy isn't making a deal with invaders who have landed here.
GoDaddy is trying to get invaders to land here.
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if someone is doing "wrong," and then changes their mind
GoDaddy didn't change their mind in the slightest.
if that change of mind is obviously [] insincere -- how are we supposed to respond?
The fact that they supported SOPA in the first place was bad, but forgivable.
Getting kicked in the nuts for it and still failing to Get A Clue, is even worse. It's generally rather unwise to forgive someone who is too stupid and stubborn to learn from their mistakes. But at least there would be some shred of respectability that they thought they were doing the right thing and being honest that they still think so.
However their obviously insincere response is unforgivable. They issued a threadbare and dishonest press release that they were withdrawing support in the hope that we would be gullible enough to be fooled by it while they continue "working to help" on SOPA. They feel SOPA is "worth the wait" and they intend "Go Daddy will support it" in the future.
Seriously, how do you respond when someone makes an insincere apology to pacify you, and they do it with the full intention to continue the behavior? Do you stand there saying "Thankyou for your apology, please continue kicking me in the nuts from behind my back."?
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continuing to punish them after they've backed off of an unpopular decision
Did you even read their press release? They have not backed off on SOPA. The press release starts out stating that they consider the issue of the "utmost importance" and that they intend to continue "working to help" on the language of SOPA in some unspecified manner, and then astoundingly proceeds to declare "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on [SOPA]". GoDaddy actually has the psychotic GALL to tell us how important it is that WE support this turd.
GoDaddy absolutely did not get the message here. The only message they got is that they are losing $$$.
GoDaddy has only temporarily withdrawn their public endorsement of the law. The press release states they feel SOPA is "worth the wait" and "Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it". GoDaddy still fully desires and intends to support SOPA in the future. GoDaddy expects US to get a clue and reverse our position to support it as soon as possible.
They haven't changed their position in the slightest. All they have backed away from is the shitstorm over their pro-SOPA press release. They are merely trying to use the new press release as an umbrella to hide under while they continue "working to help" on SOPA.
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Lets see. On one hand I can go with the basic laws of physics that CO2 and other gases do trap thermal radiation, or on the other hand I can go with global conspiracy theory claims that tens of thousands of scientists are perpetrating a hoax.
I'll go with the basic laws of physics, thankyouverymuch.
Over and over, we read of hidden, manipulated, and cherry-picked data, refusals to abide with having outsiders vet their work, and allowing naked advocacy into the IPCC reports on climate change as if they were peer-reviewed science.
I suggest you read the following links. As you say, over and over. Reading them enough times makes them true.
Global Warming: HOAX! http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/news.php
9/11: HOAX! http://911truth.org/article.php?story=20041221155307646
Moon Landing: HOAX! http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html
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a trip to the ER if you have low DEX statistics
Or you just wind up 1095.99 gold pieces lighter if you roll above WIS+INT on a d6.
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Apparently some people decided the 3.3 ft cable wouldn't be long enough.
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i don't know if anyone will ever get this message, but if you do you have to come save us. oh god. you must come save us! we're slowly going insane each day. each day. each day. many of us are already gone. just siting and starting endlessly. or just screaming. the screaming never stops now. i don't know what happened to the world. it's not there. or it's gone. or we're just. i don't know. cut off. drifting. yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes no one knows how many years its been anymore it just never ends. please come save us we're in samoa and it's december 30 and yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes and it never ends. it never ends. it never ends.
for the love of god make it end
december 30 december 30 december 30
december 30 december 30 december 30
december 30 december 30 december 30
no one ever dies and it never ends
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Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Coordinated_SOPA_reaction_in_early_2012_RfC
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WIKIPEDIA BOYCOTTS GODADDY,
LOBBYING AGAINST SOPA,
PLANS ONLINE PROTEST POTENTIALLY INCLUDING PARTIAL BLACKOUT
Jimbo Wales:
I am proud to announce that the Wikipedia domain names will move away from GoDaddy.
Current protest proposal:
* Triggering event: When SOPA has passed committee and is scheduled for a floor vote in either the House or Senate. The banner runs for the week before the vote, and switches to the blackout on the day before.
* Scope: Response is geotargeted to United States IP addresses only
* Duration: Maximum of 7 days for banner component, maximum of 24 hours for blackout component. Blackout is triggered on the business day before the vote. If the vote is on a Monday, blackout runs for 24 hours starting Friday.
* Action (banner): Banners encourage people to contact their Senators and Representatives (priority given to whichever is urgent, House or Senate).
o To the maximum extent possible, readers are given instant information on how they can take action. Campaign is designed to mobilize the public maximally.
o The focus is on generating high-value congressional contacts (phone calls and in-person contacts vs letters or emails)
o A VOIP-based callback system (such as the one used recently by tumblr) is an option if we can find one that fits our needs and allows us to remain acceptably independent.
o Banners operate like the fundraising banners (served via CentralNotice, can be closed per-user, etc).
* Action (blackout): All requests are answered with a black page. The page is semi-protected Wikitext. Once the page is displayed, a cookie is set which prevents its display again. Exact wording to be decided, but it hits the following points:
o SOPA puts Wikipedia, and the rest of the free Internet, at risk
o You can help by contacting your representative and senators (with maximally easy help with ways to do that)
o A "Learn more about SOPA" link which points to the relevant article on the English Wikipedia
o A "Why am I seeing this" link which points to a page detailing the process for reaching this consensus
o A link to click through to the originally requested page
o "You will only see this page once"
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I'm not actually too bothered by having a few ads, as long as
* None of them use Flash/Javascript/ActiveX/Popups/Popunders/Floatovers/StupidHTML5Tricks/iFrames/etc.
* None of them use animation, just static images/text
* None of them use cookies
* None of them pretend not to be ads
* None of them are sleazy, annoying, or NSFW.
* None of them get REFERER except the originating site.
There appears to be an error in your list.
Ads in the sleazy/NSFW category go on the whitelist.
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Title 17 of the United States Code is hereby repealed. All rights and privileges formerly granted under this code are null and void. The United States hereby withdraws from the Berne Convention, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Any currently living executive or lawyer who is now or ever has worked for the RIAA or the MPAA or their foreign counterparts is declared outlaw, and the United States will pay a $50,000 bounty for their capture dead or alive.
This would require amending the Constitution as well, because bills of attainder are not currently allowed. I'd support an amendment allowing this narrow exception :)
Your sarcasm aside, you're right. That was pretty bad. Unconstitutional. Destructive. Abhorrent even, to any sane sense of justice.
Everyone agrees the current situation is bad, and it's only getting worse the longer we fight with each other over it. There is an urgent need to solve the problem, and we all need to come together and pass a reasonable bi-partisan compromise immediately.
I'm happy to Release this Draft Alternative:
Title 17 of the United States Code is hereby repealed. All rights and privileges formerly granted under this code are null and void. The United States hereby withdraws from the Berne Convention, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, and the World Intellectual Property Organization.
I suggest we rush this out of committee tonight and attach it to the Federal Budget bill to be passed as an Emergency Vote, precluding any unproductive filibuster or amendment squabbles.
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