Acting to trim spending during the recession, many local stations cut back their news staffs, resulting in a decline in the caliber and depth of their coverage
That's odd, the caliber and depth of news coverage seem exactly the same as before.
However now it is possible to accelerate this "artificial sex" to rates that far exceed the norm. Plant-Animal hybrids here we come -- and let's use our imagination. Plant a seed, up grows the plant, a flower fruits, a butterfly emerges which lays -- seeds. Pretty kewl huh.
Pfffft!
Plant a seed and out pops a horny green babe with three tits. Just let her lie in the sun all day, water her twice a week, and as you said "it is possible to accelerate this 'artificial sex' to rates that far exceed the norm".
the days when a lot of people genuinely believed that computers were malevolent "thinking machines" that would try to take the world away from their human creators.
Interesting, your post does not have an origin IP address. It appears to come..... {DUM dum dum!} from the network itself.
I agree that it is unsurprising in that it has long been obvious that we could and eventually would be able to create synthetic life passing any arbitrary bar anyone wanted to set on defining "creating synthetic life". Or at least, it has long been obvious to anyone familiar with science and who is not blinded by some ideology that life involves some magik essence beyond the reach of science.
This story is both a trivial step and enormous progress. It reminds me of Neil Armstrong's "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" line when stepping onto the moon. Or at least that was supposed to be the quote. Armstrong either flubbed the word "a" or the transmission dropped out for a moment:D
Scientists have demonstrated that they can write arbitrary "DNA text" at will and assemble it into a functioning DNA molecule, and that that manufactured DNA is completely successful at establishing living and reproducing life defined by that DNA when it placed into an effectively "dead" cell membrane and cytoplasm.
In this case, yes just proved they could do it and work out the kinks by strictly copying the genetic text from an existing species. However we have also long proven that we are perfectly capable of designing things like artificial enzymes and other molecules and writing entirely new DNA code to make those new molecules, and we have in fact inserted that entirely novel DNA into living cells and proven that it does work and does produce what we designed it to produce.
Any reasonable person can immediately see that the above two paragraphs logically combine like 2+2 and establish 4, that we can obviously code and manufacture novel synthetic DNA and insert it into a non-living cell membrane+cytoplasm producing novel synthetic life. Obviously the next thing they are going to do is copy the full working DNA from existing life and insert just a chunk of novel DNA. And of course they will then tackle the task piece by piece writing new DNA chunk by chunk replacing an increasing percentage of novel DNA involved. It is obvious that we are eventually going to be able to be able to do it with 100% synthetic code.
We are also already able to create completely synthetic cell membranes. And while I'm no expert on cell cytoplasm, that too is just a bunch of molecules that we are obviously going to be able to manufacture. It is obvious that synthetic genetics will work equally well whether you insert them into a "dead" natural cell or if you insert them into an identical manufactured membrane and cytoplasm. And it is again obvious that we can and will start rewriting the makeup of the cytoplasm and cell membrane too.
This story is a small but important step in the fact that we will fairly soon be able to dig up some cold dead rocks and manufacture them into a purely synthetic living organism.
To anyone with an interest in science is cool (but expected) news. To anyone who views God as the Creator of the Universe and who views science as a fully compatible exploration into how God's universe works, this is pretty much irrelevant news. And to certain religious fundamentalists who believe themselves infallible, who believe themselves to have perfect infallible understanding of how the universe was created and how God did things, who are waging a war against science, who are busy presuming to tell God how He is and is-not permitted to run His universe, well this story is about the twelve billionth hole punched in their nonsense, and they will of course either completely ignore it or they will engage in yet more ludicrous mental gymnastics trying to deny it.
So, really, nothing new. Science progresses, exactly as expected. Most people say "cool". And a couple of people continue on their illiterate anti-science crusade.
Welcome to tomorrow. Exactly the same as yesterday, plus the standard assortment of cool new toys.
Does anyone else see the irony having literally listing the races you believe to be superior to falling under the sway of any racist thoughts
No irony there because I did not do what you claim. I have no illusions that any race, religion, or other group is immune to racism.
In some parts of Asia it is not uncommon to find seriously shockingly degrees of racism against all outsiders. Racism can become particularly pervasive and intense when "majority" rises the level of an effective monoculture. People who have lived their entire lives in a racial monoculture can be grossly unprepared and severely distressed when faced with an "outsider".
making snap judgments on a person and their character based upon the color of their skin
Oh don't worry. I didn't make any judgments based on the color of people's skin.
My judgment and my reasoning was based strictly on the unbiased facts of majority circumstances and minority circumstances. My reasoning was based on a rational consideration of the very real differences in the social dynamics that apply in those differing circumstances. Differences that have a very real impact on the sustainability of racist ideology.
It is only in majority dynamics where racist ideology can have any expectation of authority and power and control. An expectation of authority and power and control that justifies discrimination. That justifies and fuels an expectation of superiority.
It is only in majority dynamics where the most common skin color and the most common religion and the most common style of speaking and the most common style of dress and the most common behavior can be implicitly accepted as a definition for "the social norm". And it is only in majority dynamics where that majority-defined "social norm" can be silently assumed to be "right" and "superior".
If Christians want a holiday off from work and school for Christmas, and Jews want a holiday off from work and school for Hanukkah, it is only by majority dynamics that one group can silently assume to place the blame on the other for being "weird" or "wrong" or "disruptive" when those dates are two weeks apart.
And most importantly, is only in majority dynamics where unfamiliarity and discomfort can fuel a reinforcing cycle of isolation and unfamiliarity. A cycle that breeds depersonalization and dehumanization and blame against the group causing the racial distress.
In American any minority is going to be familiar and accustomed with whites being around. Even where a racial or ethnic or religious minority forms a localized community, that minority is going to to have an avoidable degree of contact and experience with the surrounding majority. The minority will have an unavoidably larger experience familiarizing them with the majority, an unavoidably larger experience personalizing and humanizing individuals from the majority.
While people in a minority may have some racial self-identification, they will also possess a national self-identification. In this case, self-identifying as Americans. That common national identity with the majority produces leads to an counter-racist expectation for equality. It is only in a majority dynamic were a racial self-identification can bleed into a national-racial identity. Only the majority can support a racist ideology that "America is white". And note that it's a completely irrelevant incidental fact that the majority in America happen to be white. Only the majority can view others as "alien" or "intruders" or "illegitimate". Well, actually I guess Native Americans could stake a rather rational claim on that one. Chuckle.
There are several very real differences in social dynamics at work regarding majorities of minorities. There are very real differences in what ideologies are viable and what ideologies are unsustainable. There are a many dynamics that only support or reinforce racist ideology under a majority dynamic. There are many racist ideologies that completely fail or wither under a minority dynamic.
What would the US a Christian nation (or not one)? Is there a clear definition of the term?
Multiple definitions are possible, but words are generally accepted to have the the meaning of their most common actual usage. It is quite clear the people who actually use the phase do not merely mean "the majority of the population are Christian". If that were what they meant then there would be zero controversy over the phase, as even the most rabid atheist while acknowledge the fact that the majority of the US population is Christian.
I would essentially define Christian Nation as a tagline for wannabe theocrats. For example Sara Palin was on O'Reilly's show talking about the Christian Nation thing and referred to America's founding documents saying "They're quite clear -- that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments." That is theocracy. Palin is a wannabe theocrat. Of course I'm sure most of them would bristle at being called theocrats.
On the other hand I think most of the people using the term would largely accept it as meaning that the United States was, at least in some sense, founded on Christianity.
And the lie of that position is pretty blatantly refuted by the fact that less than ten years after passing the constitution the government (largely still the exact same Founding Fathers) UNANIMOUSLY passed the following statement "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion". It is also notable that this was printed in several of the Nation's newspapers, and there is was not a single report of anyone considering it the least bit controversial.
The Christians Nationers would throw an absolute shitstorm if the same text were to be passed today. They are historical revisionsists who believe this crap to justify their theocratic aspirations.
the confederate south was largely democratic. Those were the guys with the slave economy. Lincoln, a republican, issued the emancipation proclamation.
Those facts are correct, but you are getting the point wrong because you are confusing Republican with conservative.
As he said "The modern Republican party is the party of sexism and racism, of homophobia and xenophobia, of fear-mongers and war-mongers, of liars and hypocrites, of systemic incompetence and systemic corruption. They are anti-environment, anti-education, anti-science". And he was correct.
And he later wrote "Never mind the simple fact that conservatives have never been right about anything, or on the right side of any issue... they've been on the wrong side of slavery, the wrong side of allowing women the vote, the wrong side labor rights, the wrong side of civil rights, the wrong side of gay rights, the wrong side of the torture issue". And he was correct.
He got it right both times. If you note that he specifically referred to the modern Republican party and later to conservatives. Around the time of the civil war Lincoln and the Republicans were the more liberal party and the Democrats were the more conservative party. Hell, the democrats of that time were trying to conserve the traditional institution of slavery and segregation
The positions of both parties have varied quite substantially over time, but around the time of FDR and WWII there was a particularly historic reversal between the two parties.
The plain fact is that almost 100% of blacks today have joined the Democrats, as have a majority of Jews, Asians, Latinos, and any other minority you care to name. And the undeniable fact is that virtually all racists have joined the Republican party, if only to get away from the huge number of blacks and other minorities "infesting" the Democratic party. Not all Republicans are racist, but virtually all of the racists infest the Republican party. And it's absolutely hysterical when Republicans constantly reach back a HUNDRED AND FIFTY FREAKING YEARS pointing to Lincoln as a Republican over and over again, trying to deny Republicans are The Racist Party. The fact that you have to reach back a hundred and fifty years for a defense just demonstrates how pathetic that defense is.
there are primarily two opposing political forces vying for control.
Some people say the sun rises in the east, some people say the sun rises in the west. Obviously the truth must be somewhere in the middle
These people are purging science from science class, purging Thomas freaking Jefferson from American history, purging slavery from American history, and trying hold up motherfucking segregationists as heroes of the civil war and heroes of the civil rights movement.
But yeah, you're right. There are "two sides" therefore both sides are guilty of trying to hijack children as pawns in some political battle. You're right, there are two sides therefore the truth must lie half way in the middle. You're right, the sun rises over the North Pole.
Why wait for a full scale model to be built and tested? I didn't study the images and video very closely but I got the impression that there was sufficient information available to piece together a computer model. Doesn't one of us have some handy gear modeling software that can accurately simulate it and tell us what sort of power efficiencies we'll get and what sort of power is needed in the "control input"?
The crackers job is to remove that decryption layer and CD dependency, essentially restoring the exe file back to what the devs originally gave to the publisher. So in the end, a properly cracked exe looks just like what the devs wrote. Therefore, there's no extra code added by the crackers to claim copyright on.
In theory that is possible. However in reality it is never true. A crack usually adds code to make it work. And even if a crack managed not to add any code, and even in the simplest case, it is astronomically improbable that the final cracked version will be identical to the pre-DRM software. That wouldn't happen unless a specific program were created to reversibly add/remove that DRM system. The DRM-company itself might create such a thing, but that is a million miles away from how independent cracks work. The cracked software will almost inevitably be a novel form. The law is very aggressive in granting copyrights to anyone creates anything novel. The final program can only be legally distributed with the permission of all copyrights involved, both the game copyright holders and the crack copyright holders.
And in any case we know for a fact that doesn't apply here. The article linked to screenshots showing the elaborate Myth logo embedded into the executables. Even without looking at the code we already see that, at minimum, this copyrighted work of the crack authors is in fact copied in the software that Rockstar is distributing. Q.E.D.
fail to meet the necessary originality requirements. as such, no copyright is attached
Copyright places a very low creative authorship threshold for a valid copyright to exist. A programmer who authors any meaningful chunk of code will sail a million miles above that threshold. A copyright will exist and he will be the owner of that copyright.
The courts have ruled that someone who preforms fairly modest creative formatting and layout on a copyrighted work (or on a public domain work, or on uncopyrightable facts) does obtain a copyright for his creative authorship of that formatting and layout. The law is very aggressive in issuing copyrights to anyone who does anything involving any creativity. The crack authors absolutely own the copyright on the chunk of code that they authored.
You read the derivative works clause backwards. I'll walk it through step by step:
(a) The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works
This says that derivative works are included in things-that-get-a-copyright. Derivatives do get a copyright. That copyright is owned by the author. The cracker is the author here, he owns this copyright.
but protection for a work
The work here is the game+crack. We are about to address the the "protection", the copyright, on this work...
employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists
The pre-existing material would be the original game. So we're about to address the copyright on the game+crack, where the game is already copyrighted.
does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
The game is the part being used unlawfully.
So we're talking about the the copyright on the game+crack, and it says this copyright does not extend to the crack author any rights over the unlawfully used game.
The crack author owns the copyright to his separate code. The crack author also owns the copyright on the game+code combination, but this obviously doesn't grant the cracker any right to reproduce or distribute the game portion.
Copyright is often complex and confusing but this part is actually very simple and very logical. When you have a work with multiple authors it is simple and obvious that you are going to need permission from ALL of the of the authors involved.
I have no idea why so many people seem to have so much (mistaken) certainty for this idea that the game authors somehow gain ownership of other people's code.
I am having a hard time finding any relevant case law on whether or not a patch that does not include the original is a derivative work.
That is an extremely messy legal situation. It is a gray zone of argument and interpretation. If you write a program that patches a specific location with a specific value then you're probably fine claiming it as an independent program. If you write a patch that gets substantially entangled with particular code of the program you're targeting then it probably will be considered a derivative work.
Several areas in copyright come down to human judgment, which pretty much means that if the judge thinks you're a good guy doing a good thing then the judge cuts you some slack. And if the judge thinks you're teh evilz person doing teh evilz stuffs that harm teh good people on the other side of the case, then you're probably screwed.
the fact is Rockstar owns the rights to the cracks because it owns the rights to any non-fair use derivative of their product
That is legally false. Rockstar does have the right to prohibit the reproduction and distribution of the derivative work because it contains their copyrighted code, but the new crack code is also copyrighted, and that copyright is owned by the crack authors. The law does NOT transfer ownership of that crack copyright to Rockstar. The law does not grant Rockstar any rights at all to copy or distributed that copyrighted code.
I can make it completely obvious by involving three people instead of two. Microsoft owns the copyright to their operating system. Apple owns the copyright to their operating system. Now lets say I'm cracking the piracy protections on the latest release of Windows. And in the process I discover that there's already a file in the Apple operating system that happens to do exactly what I need. So I just grab the windows code and I just drop in the Apple file which just so happens to work as a crack. I then distribute this cracked version of windows. Under your reasoning, you just said that Microsoft magically gains some legal right to copy and redistribute APPLE'S copyrighted code. No, Microsoft does not gain any rights to the derivative work just because I committed copyright infringement. It does not matter whether Apple owned the copyright to the crack or if I wrote it myself. The law doesn't grant Microsoft (or Rockstar) any rights to the crack code.
The only way this is legal is if Rockstar obtained a license to use the crack code. And that would probably be an even bigger even more embarrassing and more amusing story. "Rockstar steals crack code" is bad, but "Rockstar pays teh evilz piratez to license crack code" is a total howler.
since all derivatives that are not fair use are owned by the original copyright owner
That is wrong, or at best it's oversimplified to the point of being misleading.
Copyright law is often bizarre and complicated, but this part of the law is pretty simple. Every author owns the copyright to whatever they write or create. A derivative work contains content from multiple authors, and each author holds the the rights to their own portions. A derivative work with multiple authors cannot be copied or redistributed unless you have permission from ALL of the rightsholders.
The Myth group would (and presumably did) infringe Rockstar's copyright by distributing the combined work. Rockstar would (and presumably is) violating the Myth member's copyright by distributing the combined work.
Unless Rockstar actually signed some legal agreement with the crack creators, there is no real doubt that this is copyright infringement and that the Myth people could step forward and sue. There is little doubt that the Myth people could get an immediate court injunction prohibiting any further distribution of their work (shutting down sales), and in addition the two sides could sue each other for damages.
In fact Rockstar could quite easily wind up on the massively losing side of the situation. Rockstar's infringement is indisputably commercial-infringement-for-financial-gain and falls under criminal copyright infringement statutes. Depending on the circumstances Myth might easily avoid the financial-gain statutes and stay under purely civil infringement. And again depending on circumstances, it is at least conceivable that Myth could cite Steam sale numbers to establish the larger actual damages. Myth could, at least conceivably, wind up winning the larger award in a lawsuit crossfire.
In general Rockstar has far more to lose. This was an incredibly STUPID move unless Rockstar actually licensed the crack from Myth. And even if they did license it would still be incredibly stupid just for the public relations disaster of it. Stupid stupid stupid stooooopid.
The one thing that might seriously threaten the Myth side is that they might get nailed under the criminal circumvention DMCA provisions. That can mean up to five years in prison, however in the 12 years the law has been on the books it has never once been successfully used in court. And the five year maximum DMCA sentence happens to be the exact same five year maximum that the Rockstar side could face with under the commercial criminal copyright infringement statutes.
Both sides are legally wrong (unless the crack was licensed), but the company probably has more to lose. If Myth were to step forward Rockstar would have to chose between the better business decision of coming to a settlement with Myth or taking a principled but bad-business stand against the evilz piratez. The very first thing that would happen in a fight is that a court would issue an injunction shutting down sales.
Personally, watching such a situation play out would be most entertaining. It would certainly provide a windfall for Slashdot page views:) I bet Groklaw would enjoy a similar surge:)
Distribution (uploading) is a criminal offense which carries a significantly stiffer punishment.
The law is written in terms of "infringement". The law as written almost never mentions goes into different categories of infringement. Infringement is infringement and criminal infringement is criminal infringement, regardless of weather if it is distribution-infringement, reproduction-infringement, or public-performance-infringement.
There are many reasons far more focus is placed on uploading, but those reasons have little to nothing to do with anything written in law. The reasons are largely due to perceptions and public relations and practical and financial. It is far easier to find and prove unloading over the internet. It is extremely difficult to to find and prove someone downloads unless you specifically upload to them, which itself would either be infringement or would make the entire transfer authorized and non-infringement. There's also the fact that the number of uploaders is often smaller than the number of downloaders making it more efficient to target that side. And that also fits in with the copyright industry ideology of "shutting off the tap", especially in terms of targeting the extremely small number of individuals who rip and upload the one initial copy of a movie or song. In their mind the "supply" is the problem but they love the "demand" side. Probably the largest factor is financial and public relations. Both the minimum and maximum statutory damages for copyright infringement are obscenely large. The minimum is $750 per copyright infringed. If someone has a single infringing song it is a public relations disaster to be seen hitting someone for $750 in damages over a single ninety-nine-cent song. It is an equal or larger relations disaster to be seen hitting some ordinary kid for $millions in damages for having a music collection. It can quickly run into the millions of dollars when you multiply the number of files on the hard drive by $750. When it comes to uploads however, they can use imaginary and fictional damages. They can start tossing around the $150,000 maximum statutory damages by saying "gee, we don't know how many times it was uploaded, it could have been uploaded thousands of times and each of those uploads could potentially be re-uploaded by other people thousands of times each". They can say gee, we have no idea how big the actual damages are. They can raise the theory that the single uploader is responsible for millions of dollars in actual damages over any given song. In downloading there are obviously small actual damages of less than a dollar per song, but in uploading that can hang their hat on unlimited imagined actual damages. It lets them get away with asking for the statutory maximum damages, and it avoids the problem of them looking insane, and the law looking insane, when they demand and receive even just the minimum statutory damages from some ordinary person who committed trivial actual damages.
Not in Canada; it's de facto legal to download mp3s in Canada due to a CD tariff the CRIA pushed for some years back.
Ah, good point. Under the Berne convention downloading falls under the "global" definition of infringement, but it is possible for countries to make exceptions. I don't know the exact details of the Canadian situation, but as I understand it the status of downloads is an extremely muddled gray area. They might be technically infringing, but be de facto impossible or almost impossible to sue over. Copyright law can sometimes create strange situations where one law makes a copy unlawful, a second law says the copyright holder can't sue over it, but some third law still applies authorizing the government to seize and destroy unlawful copies, and some fourth law that gives you the right to do ordinary stuff with your "lawful copies" does NOT apply. I think Canadian downloads exist in some mixed-status legal limbo.
And people need to remember than any logic or morality about CD tariffs legitimizing downloads is irrelevant. Logic doesn't matter. What is right or wrong doesn't matter. What is fair or reasonable or moral doesn't matter. Those are only relevant when you are discussing about what the law should say and how the law should work. They are irrelevant when discussing what the law actually says and how the law actually works. If you use logic or morality trying to conclude what the law says, you will often be wrong. Especially when it comes to copyright law.
For who isn't a lawyer and doesn't speak Latin, mens rea means "guilty intent". It's the difference between deliberately stabbing someone verses accidentally dropping a dinner knife that lands in someone's foot. One is a crime, the other isn't.
And the answer is nope. Copyright is strict liability. If you sneeze and drop a knife in someone's foot, copyright law says you are guilty of stabbing them. If a meteor comes down from the sky and vaporizes your arm from shoulder to elbow and your disconnected hand holding the knife falls to the ground and hits someone in the foot, copyright law says you are guilty of stabbing them.
The closest you get to the principal of mens rea in copyright is claiming innocent infringer status which lowers the minimum liability to $200 per copyright infringed. And in the modern digital world it's not hard for a completely innocent person to wind up with multi-million dollar liability.
The one good thing is that judges do not like such blatantly unjust situations. They can usually find some excuse to toss the case or otherwise ignore or subvert the law when it gets so grossly unjust.
Show me one quote anywhere in the law where it says 'downloading' is illegal. It does not exist - every single law is related to distribution.
The law obviously does not use the word "downloading", it uses the broader term "reproduce".Title 17 Section 106 (1) 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works38 Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
And here's is a court ruling that explicitly states on page 6 that any question about the distribution-infringement angle is irrelevant because of "the district court's finding that she had infringed Plaintiff's copyrights by downloading, and hence reproducing, the audio files."
There ya go. A court ruling explicitly stating downloading is legally considered to be reproduction, explicitly stating downloading is legally infringement.
Forgot about what is logical, forget how the law should work, this discussion is about what current existing law says and how current existing law works. The fact is that the law uses imposes an extremely broad definition for infringement and has an extremely strict application of copying. Hell, I can dig up a case for you where a court ruled that it was copyright infringement for someone to run software because running the software copied the program into RAM. Yes, I agree with you that that is an idiotic result, but that is how copyright law works. And as a result of that court ruling the US Congress had to pass a new law, Title 17 Section 117, which creates a special case making copying non-infringement when you install software you bought, and to also make it non-infringement when you run that software.
Forget about reasonable, forget about rational, forget about any sort of "should". The REALITY is that copyright law takes the concept of copying so strictly that Congress had to pass a specific law allowing you to install and freaking RUN a program you bought. Copyright law is so fucked up that if you try to download a perfectly legal file and some other guilty party sends you some different infringing file, that under the law you are still technically and infringer, and in order to deal with this situation the law creates something called Innocent Infringer status to cover it. And the law is so fucked up that when you do prove your Innocent Infringer status in that situation, the law declared that the judge may, if he feels like it, lower the statutory minimum damages you have to pay from the standard $750 down to a $200 minimum. Copyright law is so fucked up that the NET act technically makes virtually all P2P infringement into a felony crime subject to several years in prison. Copyright law is so fucked up that if you buy a DVD and then write your own media player software to view it you are a felon under the DMCA and subject to a 5 years felony sentence. Copyright law is so fucked up that the AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act) forced DAT (Digital Audio Tape) manufactures to so fuck-up DAT devices that people couldn't make copies of recordings of their own band.... note that this was prohibiting the very COPYRIGHT HOLDERS from making copies of their own tapes of their own bands. Copyright law is so fucked up that the only reason MP3 players survived on the market is because they slipped through a loophole in the AHRA, the first MP3 players all came with idiotic little software applications just to ensure they qualified as "general computing devices" rather than as "audio recording devices". Copyright law is so fucked up that the Supreme Court was one vote away from making VCRs illegal in the 5 vs 4 Betamax case. Copyright law is so fucked up that not a single work has falling into the public domain in the last decade and not a single work will fall into the public d
Sorry for the double reply. I meant include this in the previous reply:
A downloader is not responsible to know whether the place he is downloading from owns/licensed proper copyright. Moralely perhaps, but legally he should not, if for nothing else because it would be impossible to ascertain all the elements are owned by said parties and in many cases impossible to know beforehand.
I completely agree with your logic, but you are using logic to conclude what the law should say.
You then jumped from logic and "should" to a false assumption of what the law is, followed by a false assertion of what the law is. Silly rabbit. You assumed copyright law was logical, reasonable, or even sane.
Slashdot Mirror
Acting to trim spending during the recession, many local stations cut back their news staffs, resulting in a decline in the caliber and depth of their coverage
That's odd, the caliber and depth of news coverage seem exactly the same as before.
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However now it is possible to accelerate this "artificial sex" to rates that far exceed the norm. Plant-Animal hybrids here we come -- and let's use our imagination. Plant a seed, up grows the plant, a flower fruits, a butterfly emerges which lays -- seeds. Pretty kewl huh.
Pfffft!
Plant a seed and out pops a horny green babe with three tits.
Just let her lie in the sun all day, water her twice a week, and as you said "it is possible to accelerate this 'artificial sex' to rates that far exceed the norm".
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the days when a lot of people genuinely believed that computers were malevolent "thinking machines" that would try to take the world away from their human creators.
Interesting, your post does not have an origin IP address.
It appears to come..... {DUM dum dum!} from the network itself.
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purple hair with green skin
You really shouldn't say things like that on Slashdot.
Now a whole bunch of slashdotters are going to have to go wash off their sticky keyboards.
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I agree that it is unsurprising in that it has long been obvious that we could and eventually would be able to create synthetic life passing any arbitrary bar anyone wanted to set on defining "creating synthetic life". Or at least, it has long been obvious to anyone familiar with science and who is not blinded by some ideology that life involves some magik essence beyond the reach of science.
This story is both a trivial step and enormous progress. It reminds me of Neil Armstrong's "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" line when stepping onto the moon. Or at least that was supposed to be the quote. Armstrong either flubbed the word "a" or the transmission dropped out for a moment :D
Scientists have demonstrated that they can write arbitrary "DNA text" at will and assemble it into a functioning DNA molecule, and that that manufactured DNA is completely successful at establishing living and reproducing life defined by that DNA when it placed into an effectively "dead" cell membrane and cytoplasm.
In this case, yes just proved they could do it and work out the kinks by strictly copying the genetic text from an existing species. However we have also long proven that we are perfectly capable of designing things like artificial enzymes and other molecules and writing entirely new DNA code to make those new molecules, and we have in fact inserted that entirely novel DNA into living cells and proven that it does work and does produce what we designed it to produce.
Any reasonable person can immediately see that the above two paragraphs logically combine like 2+2 and establish 4, that we can obviously code and manufacture novel synthetic DNA and insert it into a non-living cell membrane+cytoplasm producing novel synthetic life. Obviously the next thing they are going to do is copy the full working DNA from existing life and insert just a chunk of novel DNA. And of course they will then tackle the task piece by piece writing new DNA chunk by chunk replacing an increasing percentage of novel DNA involved. It is obvious that we are eventually going to be able to be able to do it with 100% synthetic code.
We are also already able to create completely synthetic cell membranes. And while I'm no expert on cell cytoplasm, that too is just a bunch of molecules that we are obviously going to be able to manufacture. It is obvious that synthetic genetics will work equally well whether you insert them into a "dead" natural cell or if you insert them into an identical manufactured membrane and cytoplasm. And it is again obvious that we can and will start rewriting the makeup of the cytoplasm and cell membrane too.
This story is a small but important step in the fact that we will fairly soon be able to dig up some cold dead rocks and manufacture them into a purely synthetic living organism.
To anyone with an interest in science is cool (but expected) news. To anyone who views God as the Creator of the Universe and who views science as a fully compatible exploration into how God's universe works, this is pretty much irrelevant news. And to certain religious fundamentalists who believe themselves infallible, who believe themselves to have perfect infallible understanding of how the universe was created and how God did things, who are waging a war against science, who are busy presuming to tell God how He is and is-not permitted to run His universe, well this story is about the twelve billionth hole punched in their nonsense, and they will of course either completely ignore it or they will engage in yet more ludicrous mental gymnastics trying to deny it.
So, really, nothing new. Science progresses, exactly as expected. Most people say "cool". And a couple of people continue on their illiterate anti-science crusade.
Welcome to tomorrow. Exactly the same as yesterday, plus the standard assortment of cool new toys.
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The sheer fact that you think Republicans are racist
No, I said Racists are Republican. Big difference.
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Do you have freakishly small arms, or do you date pachyderms?
Either way, I hope never to find myself in bed with one of your ex-girlfriends.
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Does anyone else see the irony having literally listing the races you believe to be superior to falling under the sway of any racist thoughts
No irony there because I did not do what you claim. I have no illusions that any race, religion, or other group is immune to racism.
In some parts of Asia it is not uncommon to find seriously shockingly degrees of racism against all outsiders. Racism can become particularly pervasive and intense when "majority" rises the level of an effective monoculture. People who have lived their entire lives in a racial monoculture can be grossly unprepared and severely distressed when faced with an "outsider".
making snap judgments on a person and their character based upon the color of their skin
Oh don't worry. I didn't make any judgments based on the color of people's skin.
My judgment and my reasoning was based strictly on the unbiased facts of majority circumstances and minority circumstances. My reasoning was based on a rational consideration of the very real differences in the social dynamics that apply in those differing circumstances. Differences that have a very real impact on the sustainability of racist ideology.
It is only in majority dynamics where racist ideology can have any expectation of authority and power and control. An expectation of authority and power and control that justifies discrimination. That justifies and fuels an expectation of superiority.
It is only in majority dynamics where the most common skin color and the most common religion and the most common style of speaking and the most common style of dress and the most common behavior can be implicitly accepted as a definition for "the social norm". And it is only in majority dynamics where that majority-defined "social norm" can be silently assumed to be "right" and "superior".
If Christians want a holiday off from work and school for Christmas, and Jews want a holiday off from work and school for Hanukkah, it is only by majority dynamics that one group can silently assume to place the blame on the other for being "weird" or "wrong" or "disruptive" when those dates are two weeks apart.
And most importantly, is only in majority dynamics where unfamiliarity and discomfort can fuel a reinforcing cycle of isolation and unfamiliarity. A cycle that breeds depersonalization and dehumanization and blame against the group causing the racial distress.
In American any minority is going to be familiar and accustomed with whites being around. Even where a racial or ethnic or religious minority forms a localized community, that minority is going to to have an avoidable degree of contact and experience with the surrounding majority. The minority will have an unavoidably larger experience familiarizing them with the majority, an unavoidably larger experience personalizing and humanizing individuals from the majority.
While people in a minority may have some racial self-identification, they will also possess a national self-identification. In this case, self-identifying as Americans. That common national identity with the majority produces leads to an counter-racist expectation for equality. It is only in a majority dynamic were a racial self-identification can bleed into a national-racial identity. Only the majority can support a racist ideology that "America is white". And note that it's a completely irrelevant incidental fact that the majority in America happen to be white. Only the majority can view others as "alien" or "intruders" or "illegitimate". Well, actually I guess Native Americans could stake a rather rational claim on that one. Chuckle.
There are several very real differences in social dynamics at work regarding majorities of minorities. There are very real differences in what ideologies are viable and what ideologies are unsustainable. There are a many dynamics that only support or reinforce racist ideology under a majority dynamic. There are many racist ideologies that completely fail or wither under a minority dynamic.
What would the US a Christian nation (or not one)? Is there a clear definition of the term?
Multiple definitions are possible, but words are generally accepted to have the the meaning of their most common actual usage. It is quite clear the people who actually use the phase do not merely mean "the majority of the population are Christian". If that were what they meant then there would be zero controversy over the phase, as even the most rabid atheist while acknowledge the fact that the majority of the US population is Christian.
I would essentially define Christian Nation as a tagline for wannabe theocrats. For example Sara Palin was on O'Reilly's show talking about the Christian Nation thing and referred to America's founding documents saying "They're quite clear -- that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments." That is theocracy. Palin is a wannabe theocrat. Of course I'm sure most of them would bristle at being called theocrats.
On the other hand I think most of the people using the term would largely accept it as meaning that the United States was, at least in some sense, founded on Christianity.
And the lie of that position is pretty blatantly refuted by the fact that less than ten years after passing the constitution the government (largely still the exact same Founding Fathers) UNANIMOUSLY passed the following statement "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion". It is also notable that this was printed in several of the Nation's newspapers, and there is was not a single report of anyone considering it the least bit controversial.
The Christians Nationers would throw an absolute shitstorm if the same text were to be passed today. They are historical revisionsists who believe this crap to justify their theocratic aspirations.
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the confederate south was largely democratic. Those were the guys with the slave economy. Lincoln, a republican, issued the emancipation proclamation.
Those facts are correct, but you are getting the point wrong because you are confusing Republican with conservative.
As he said "The modern Republican party is the party of sexism and racism, of homophobia and xenophobia, of fear-mongers and war-mongers, of liars and hypocrites, of systemic incompetence and systemic corruption. They are anti-environment, anti-education, anti-science". And he was correct.
And he later wrote "Never mind the simple fact that conservatives have never been right about anything, or on the right side of any issue... they've been on the wrong side of slavery, the wrong side of allowing women the vote, the wrong side labor rights, the wrong side of civil rights, the wrong side of gay rights, the wrong side of the torture issue". And he was correct.
He got it right both times. If you note that he specifically referred to the modern Republican party and later to conservatives. Around the time of the civil war Lincoln and the Republicans were the more liberal party and the Democrats were the more conservative party. Hell, the democrats of that time were trying to conserve the traditional institution of slavery and segregation
The positions of both parties have varied quite substantially over time, but around the time of FDR and WWII there was a particularly historic reversal between the two parties.
The plain fact is that almost 100% of blacks today have joined the Democrats, as have a majority of Jews, Asians, Latinos, and any other minority you care to name. And the undeniable fact is that virtually all racists have joined the Republican party, if only to get away from the huge number of blacks and other minorities "infesting" the Democratic party. Not all Republicans are racist, but virtually all of the racists infest the Republican party. And it's absolutely hysterical when Republicans constantly reach back a HUNDRED AND FIFTY FREAKING YEARS pointing to Lincoln as a Republican over and over again, trying to deny Republicans are The Racist Party. The fact that you have to reach back a hundred and fifty years for a defense just demonstrates how pathetic that defense is.
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there are primarily two opposing political forces vying for control.
Some people say the sun rises in the east, some people say the sun rises in the west.
Obviously the truth must be somewhere in the middle
These people are purging science from science class, purging Thomas freaking Jefferson from American history, purging slavery from American history, and trying hold up motherfucking segregationists as heroes of the civil war and heroes of the civil rights movement.
But yeah, you're right. There are "two sides" therefore both sides are guilty of trying to hijack children as pawns in some political battle. You're right, there are two sides therefore the truth must lie half way in the middle. You're right, the sun rises over the North Pole.
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Why wait for a full scale model to be built and tested? I didn't study the images and video very closely but I got the impression that there was sufficient information available to piece together a computer model. Doesn't one of us have some handy gear modeling software that can accurately simulate it and tell us what sort of power efficiencies we'll get and what sort of power is needed in the "control input"?
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You misinterpreted the meaning there. To avoid redundancy I'll link my post where I dissected the purpose of that clause for someone else.
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The crackers job is to remove that decryption layer and CD dependency, essentially restoring the exe file back to what the devs originally gave to the publisher. So in the end, a properly cracked exe looks just like what the devs wrote. Therefore, there's no extra code added by the crackers to claim copyright on.
In theory that is possible. However in reality it is never true. A crack usually adds code to make it work. And even if a crack managed not to add any code, and even in the simplest case, it is astronomically improbable that the final cracked version will be identical to the pre-DRM software. That wouldn't happen unless a specific program were created to reversibly add/remove that DRM system. The DRM-company itself might create such a thing, but that is a million miles away from how independent cracks work. The cracked software will almost inevitably be a novel form. The law is very aggressive in granting copyrights to anyone creates anything novel. The final program can only be legally distributed with the permission of all copyrights involved, both the game copyright holders and the crack copyright holders.
And in any case we know for a fact that doesn't apply here. The article linked to screenshots showing the elaborate Myth logo embedded into the executables. Even without looking at the code we already see that, at minimum, this copyrighted work of the crack authors is in fact copied in the software that Rockstar is distributing. Q.E.D.
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fail to meet the necessary originality requirements. as such, no copyright is attached
Copyright places a very low creative authorship threshold for a valid copyright to exist. A programmer who authors any meaningful chunk of code will sail a million miles above that threshold. A copyright will exist and he will be the owner of that copyright.
The courts have ruled that someone who preforms fairly modest creative formatting and layout on a copyrighted work (or on a public domain work, or on uncopyrightable facts) does obtain a copyright for his creative authorship of that formatting and layout. The law is very aggressive in issuing copyrights to anyone who does anything involving any creativity. The crack authors absolutely own the copyright on the chunk of code that they authored.
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You read the derivative works clause backwards. I'll walk it through step by step:
(a) The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works
This says that derivative works are included in things-that-get-a-copyright.
Derivatives do get a copyright.
That copyright is owned by the author.
The cracker is the author here, he owns this copyright.
but protection for a work
The work here is the game+crack.
We are about to address the the "protection", the copyright, on this work...
employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists
The pre-existing material would be the original game.
So we're about to address the copyright on the game+crack, where the game is already copyrighted.
does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
The game is the part being used unlawfully.
So we're talking about the the copyright on the game+crack, and it says this copyright does not extend to the crack author any rights over the unlawfully used game.
The crack author owns the copyright to his separate code. The crack author also owns the copyright on the game+code combination, but this obviously doesn't grant the cracker any right to reproduce or distribute the game portion.
Copyright is often complex and confusing but this part is actually very simple and very logical. When you have a work with multiple authors it is simple and obvious that you are going to need permission from ALL of the of the authors involved.
I have no idea why so many people seem to have so much (mistaken) certainty for this idea that the game authors somehow gain ownership of other people's code.
I am having a hard time finding any relevant case law on whether or not a patch that does not include the original is a derivative work.
That is an extremely messy legal situation. It is a gray zone of argument and interpretation. If you write a program that patches a specific location with a specific value then you're probably fine claiming it as an independent program. If you write a patch that gets substantially entangled with particular code of the program you're targeting then it probably will be considered a derivative work.
Several areas in copyright come down to human judgment, which pretty much means that if the judge thinks you're a good guy doing a good thing then the judge cuts you some slack. And if the judge thinks you're teh evilz person doing teh evilz stuffs that harm teh good people on the other side of the case, then you're probably screwed.
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Software Pillagers, Murderers, Rapists, and Generally Really Bad People
Hmmmm..... that might not be so bad.
Are any of them Really Hot Chicks?
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Yes, because it's fairly easy to compete against people that redistribute your product for free.
Yes, because it's some much easier to compete when you use DRM to make the competition free and better!
Brilliant!
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the fact is Rockstar owns the rights to the cracks because it owns the rights to any non-fair use derivative of their product
That is legally false. Rockstar does have the right to prohibit the reproduction and distribution of the derivative work because it contains their copyrighted code, but the new crack code is also copyrighted, and that copyright is owned by the crack authors. The law does NOT transfer ownership of that crack copyright to Rockstar. The law does not grant Rockstar any rights at all to copy or distributed that copyrighted code.
I can make it completely obvious by involving three people instead of two. Microsoft owns the copyright to their operating system. Apple owns the copyright to their operating system. Now lets say I'm cracking the piracy protections on the latest release of Windows. And in the process I discover that there's already a file in the Apple operating system that happens to do exactly what I need. So I just grab the windows code and I just drop in the Apple file which just so happens to work as a crack. I then distribute this cracked version of windows. Under your reasoning, you just said that Microsoft magically gains some legal right to copy and redistribute APPLE'S copyrighted code. No, Microsoft does not gain any rights to the derivative work just because I committed copyright infringement. It does not matter whether Apple owned the copyright to the crack or if I wrote it myself. The law doesn't grant Microsoft (or Rockstar) any rights to the crack code.
The only way this is legal is if Rockstar obtained a license to use the crack code. And that would probably be an even bigger even more embarrassing and more amusing story. "Rockstar steals crack code" is bad, but "Rockstar pays teh evilz piratez to license crack code" is a total howler.
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since all derivatives that are not fair use are owned by the original copyright owner
That is wrong, or at best it's oversimplified to the point of being misleading.
Copyright law is often bizarre and complicated, but this part of the law is pretty simple. Every author owns the copyright to whatever they write or create. A derivative work contains content from multiple authors, and each author holds the the rights to their own portions. A derivative work with multiple authors cannot be copied or redistributed unless you have permission from ALL of the rightsholders.
The Myth group would (and presumably did) infringe Rockstar's copyright by distributing the combined work. Rockstar would (and presumably is) violating the Myth member's copyright by distributing the combined work.
Unless Rockstar actually signed some legal agreement with the crack creators, there is no real doubt that this is copyright infringement and that the Myth people could step forward and sue. There is little doubt that the Myth people could get an immediate court injunction prohibiting any further distribution of their work (shutting down sales), and in addition the two sides could sue each other for damages.
In fact Rockstar could quite easily wind up on the massively losing side of the situation. Rockstar's infringement is indisputably commercial-infringement-for-financial-gain and falls under criminal copyright infringement statutes. Depending on the circumstances Myth might easily avoid the financial-gain statutes and stay under purely civil infringement. And again depending on circumstances, it is at least conceivable that Myth could cite Steam sale numbers to establish the larger actual damages. Myth could, at least conceivably, wind up winning the larger award in a lawsuit crossfire.
In general Rockstar has far more to lose. This was an incredibly STUPID move unless Rockstar actually licensed the crack from Myth. And even if they did license it would still be incredibly stupid just for the public relations disaster of it. Stupid stupid stupid stooooopid.
The one thing that might seriously threaten the Myth side is that they might get nailed under the criminal circumvention DMCA provisions. That can mean up to five years in prison, however in the 12 years the law has been on the books it has never once been successfully used in court. And the five year maximum DMCA sentence happens to be the exact same five year maximum that the Rockstar side could face with under the commercial criminal copyright infringement statutes.
Both sides are legally wrong (unless the crack was licensed), but the company probably has more to lose. If Myth were to step forward Rockstar would have to chose between the better business decision of coming to a settlement with Myth or taking a principled but bad-business stand against the evilz piratez. The very first thing that would happen in a fight is that a court would issue an injunction shutting down sales.
Personally, watching such a situation play out would be most entertaining. It would certainly provide a windfall for Slashdot page views :) I bet Groklaw would enjoy a similar surge :)
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Distribution (uploading) is a criminal offense which carries a significantly stiffer punishment.
The law is written in terms of "infringement". The law as written almost never mentions goes into different categories of infringement. Infringement is infringement and criminal infringement is criminal infringement, regardless of weather if it is distribution-infringement, reproduction-infringement, or public-performance-infringement.
There are many reasons far more focus is placed on uploading, but those reasons have little to nothing to do with anything written in law. The reasons are largely due to perceptions and public relations and practical and financial. It is far easier to find and prove unloading over the internet. It is extremely difficult to to find and prove someone downloads unless you specifically upload to them, which itself would either be infringement or would make the entire transfer authorized and non-infringement. There's also the fact that the number of uploaders is often smaller than the number of downloaders making it more efficient to target that side. And that also fits in with the copyright industry ideology of "shutting off the tap", especially in terms of targeting the extremely small number of individuals who rip and upload the one initial copy of a movie or song. In their mind the "supply" is the problem but they love the "demand" side. Probably the largest factor is financial and public relations. Both the minimum and maximum statutory damages for copyright infringement are obscenely large. The minimum is $750 per copyright infringed. If someone has a single infringing song it is a public relations disaster to be seen hitting someone for $750 in damages over a single ninety-nine-cent song. It is an equal or larger relations disaster to be seen hitting some ordinary kid for $millions in damages for having a music collection. It can quickly run into the millions of dollars when you multiply the number of files on the hard drive by $750. When it comes to uploads however, they can use imaginary and fictional damages. They can start tossing around the $150,000 maximum statutory damages by saying "gee, we don't know how many times it was uploaded, it could have been uploaded thousands of times and each of those uploads could potentially be re-uploaded by other people thousands of times each". They can say gee, we have no idea how big the actual damages are. They can raise the theory that the single uploader is responsible for millions of dollars in actual damages over any given song. In downloading there are obviously small actual damages of less than a dollar per song, but in uploading that can hang their hat on unlimited imagined actual damages. It lets them get away with asking for the statutory maximum damages, and it avoids the problem of them looking insane, and the law looking insane, when they demand and receive even just the minimum statutory damages from some ordinary person who committed trivial actual damages.
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Not in Canada; it's de facto legal to download mp3s in Canada due to a CD tariff the CRIA pushed for some years back.
Ah, good point. Under the Berne convention downloading falls under the "global" definition of infringement, but it is possible for countries to make exceptions. I don't know the exact details of the Canadian situation, but as I understand it the status of downloads is an extremely muddled gray area. They might be technically infringing, but be de facto impossible or almost impossible to sue over. Copyright law can sometimes create strange situations where one law makes a copy unlawful, a second law says the copyright holder can't sue over it, but some third law still applies authorizing the government to seize and destroy unlawful copies, and some fourth law that gives you the right to do ordinary stuff with your "lawful copies" does NOT apply. I think Canadian downloads exist in some mixed-status legal limbo.
And people need to remember than any logic or morality about CD tariffs legitimizing downloads is irrelevant. Logic doesn't matter. What is right or wrong doesn't matter. What is fair or reasonable or moral doesn't matter. Those are only relevant when you are discussing about what the law should say and how the law should work. They are irrelevant when discussing what the law actually says and how the law actually works. If you use logic or morality trying to conclude what the law says, you will often be wrong. Especially when it comes to copyright law.
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Mens rea?
For who isn't a lawyer and doesn't speak Latin, mens rea means "guilty intent". It's the difference between deliberately stabbing someone verses accidentally dropping a dinner knife that lands in someone's foot. One is a crime, the other isn't.
And the answer is nope. Copyright is strict liability. If you sneeze and drop a knife in someone's foot, copyright law says you are guilty of stabbing them. If a meteor comes down from the sky and vaporizes your arm from shoulder to elbow and your disconnected hand holding the knife falls to the ground and hits someone in the foot, copyright law says you are guilty of stabbing them.
The closest you get to the principal of mens rea in copyright is claiming innocent infringer status which lowers the minimum liability to $200 per copyright infringed. And in the modern digital world it's not hard for a completely innocent person to wind up with multi-million dollar liability.
The one good thing is that judges do not like such blatantly unjust situations. They can usually find some excuse to toss the case or otherwise ignore or subvert the law when it gets so grossly unjust.
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Show me one quote anywhere in the law where it says 'downloading' is illegal. It does not exist - every single law is related to distribution.
The law obviously does not use the word "downloading", it uses the broader term "reproduce".Title 17 Section 106 (1)
106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works38
Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
And here's is a court ruling that explicitly states on page 6 that any question about the distribution-infringement angle is irrelevant because of "the district court's finding that she had infringed Plaintiff's copyrights by downloading, and hence reproducing, the audio files."
There ya go. A court ruling explicitly stating downloading is legally considered to be reproduction, explicitly stating downloading is legally infringement.
Forgot about what is logical, forget how the law should work, this discussion is about what current existing law says and how current existing law works. The fact is that the law uses imposes an extremely broad definition for infringement and has an extremely strict application of copying. Hell, I can dig up a case for you where a court ruled that it was copyright infringement for someone to run software because running the software copied the program into RAM. Yes, I agree with you that that is an idiotic result, but that is how copyright law works. And as a result of that court ruling the US Congress had to pass a new law, Title 17 Section 117, which creates a special case making copying non-infringement when you install software you bought, and to also make it non-infringement when you run that software.
Forget about reasonable, forget about rational, forget about any sort of "should". The REALITY is that copyright law takes the concept of copying so strictly that Congress had to pass a specific law allowing you to install and freaking RUN a program you bought. Copyright law is so fucked up that if you try to download a perfectly legal file and some other guilty party sends you some different infringing file, that under the law you are still technically and infringer, and in order to deal with this situation the law creates something called Innocent Infringer status to cover it. And the law is so fucked up that when you do prove your Innocent Infringer status in that situation, the law declared that the judge may, if he feels like it, lower the statutory minimum damages you have to pay from the standard $750 down to a $200 minimum. Copyright law is so fucked up that the NET act technically makes virtually all P2P infringement into a felony crime subject to several years in prison. Copyright law is so fucked up that if you buy a DVD and then write your own media player software to view it you are a felon under the DMCA and subject to a 5 years felony sentence. Copyright law is so fucked up that the AHRA (Audio Home Recording Act) forced DAT (Digital Audio Tape) manufactures to so fuck-up DAT devices that people couldn't make copies of recordings of their own band.... note that this was prohibiting the very COPYRIGHT HOLDERS from making copies of their own tapes of their own bands. Copyright law is so fucked up that the only reason MP3 players survived on the market is because they slipped through a loophole in the AHRA, the first MP3 players all came with idiotic little software applications just to ensure they qualified as "general computing devices" rather than as "audio recording devices". Copyright law is so fucked up that the Supreme Court was one vote away from making VCRs illegal in the 5 vs 4 Betamax case. Copyright law is so fucked up that not a single work has falling into the public domain in the last decade and not a single work will fall into the public d
Sorry for the double reply. I meant include this in the previous reply:
A downloader is not responsible to know whether the place he is downloading from owns/licensed proper copyright. Moralely perhaps, but legally he should not, if for nothing else because it would be impossible to ascertain all the elements are owned by said parties and in many cases impossible to know beforehand.
I completely agree with your logic, but you are using logic to conclude what the law should say.
You then jumped from logic and "should" to a false assumption of what the law is, followed by a false assertion of what the law is. Silly rabbit. You assumed copyright law was logical, reasonable, or even sane.
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