I'm exploring here... but wouldn't decrimilization of copyright violations place the burden on the corporations to shoulder the initial legal burden to sue the copyright infringers? If so... what if the big corporation is the copyright infringer and I'm just some guy who happened to write a pretty decent novel, piece of music, etc. I'm going to lose, just about every single time... or I guess we'd end up with a bunch of ambulance chasing copyright lawyers.
"Private copying"... what does that mean? That I can make copies for myself (I can do that today I think?). That I can make copies for my friends and family? That I can distribute copies via bittorrent? That I can purchase one copy of Microsoft Office 2003 and distribute it to all 12,000 of my employees.
Depending on the definitions employed the economic consequences would vary. If you define personal copying to include bittorrent the consequences would be severe. No one in their right mind would buy music from a store when they can download it for free. Especially if it was legal because all of the supporting services that would help catalog and rate the quality of the media would flourish. Mainstream music and movies would die (no?) or at least DVD and CD sales would b/c the returns and risk would most likely not justify the cost of spending $145 million to produce a movie. The standard argument is that these media suck anyway... and I dont disagree, but that $145 million does go into real people's pockets.
Muddle headed? That's funny... have you read any of these posts supporting copying? I think there is fair share of muddle headedness on either side of this debate.
The basic fact is that we can copy material whether we have authorization or not.
So because we can that justifies the activity? Is that what you're saying? If not please elaborate. If I can steal from you, beat you, murder you and you have never done anything for me... does the same principle apply, because I have the power to do these things? (this is not a threat, I'm just trying to understand your arguments).
If corporations base all their decisions entirely on their own personal profit, how can they ever expect us to sacrifice our personal profit for their good?
When you go to Best Buy to buy a new CD you don't weigh the merits of each production company's corporate contribution to society. You find the best movie for the lowest price and buy it. You could care less about the company you bought it from, you care about the profits. And even when you care about the company you bought it from... you act because it's in your interest to act because YOU care about the company.
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell lays out some very interesting points about outrageous prices and the evil greedy corporations that charge them. Everyone should read it.
But I was wondering about the bigger picture here. If the public at large condones such behavior and doesn't see it as a crime, should it NOT be a crime in the legal sense?
What exactly are you proposing? That we abolish copyrights? Patents? Cut their time limits? Enable use right that allow for unlimited copying of music, software, books and movies? Do you understand that there will be economic consequences to the industries that produce these media?
Someone actually make a real proposal for a solution and explain all of the consequences.
Works Originally Created on or after January 1, 1978
A work that is created (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1, 1978, is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life plus an additional 70 years after the author's death. In the case of "a joint work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire," the term lasts for 70 years after the last surviving author's death. For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is revealed in Copyright Office records), the duration of copyright will be 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.
So it must be legal then (according to your logic). Legal, whether you like it or not, is defined by the law defined by government and courts action in respect to that law. Copyright law has been upheld and as of today you have no rights to copy movies, music, software w/o the owners permission. Therefore you violate their rights of ownership and steal the media when you copy it.
If the court has ruled otherwise (I'm sure there are some exceptions) or there are specific laws allowing this please cite them.
Dueteronomy 24:19-20: "When you are harvesting your crops and forget to bring in a bundle of grain from your field, don't go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigners, orphans, and widows. Then the LORD your God will bless you in all you do.
When you beat the olives from your olive trees, don't go over the boughs twice. Leave some of the olives for the foreigners, orphans, and widows.
In all cases this law makes it clear that the owner has first claim to all of their farm's produce, but that they should not pick them clean but should leave whatever was missed during the first harvest for the poor. The poor don't have first rights to any of the owner's property.
For a practical example of how this actually worked see Ruth 2.
Also note that this was for basic sustance. These people would have faced starvation or out-and-out begging (and potential exploitation) if this type of law wasn't in place. Copying music, movies, or video games has absolutely no impact on your ability to survive, it's for pure entertainment.
Piracy isn't theft. Theft is the action in wich one denies others acces to the stolen goods. Piracy doesn't deny anoyne acces to the pirated goods. So piracy is per definition not theft.
You're making up definitions of words to suit your argument.
Piracy - The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material: software piracy.
Theft - The act or an instance of stealing; larceny.
Stealing - To take (the property of another) without right or permission
Property - Something tangible or intangible to which its owner has legal title: properties such as copyrights and trademarks.
A social, not technical, analysis of your proposal.
With the Sonos solution party goers attending parties at your house will think you're a bastard with too much money on his hands, but at the same time be impressed with how sweet the system works. They'll linger around drinking your booze and bouncing between Infected Mushroom beats in the Living Room and the smooth sounds of Stereolab in the guest bedroom.
With the Dell solution party goers will think you're a cheap rich bastard with too much time on his hands to develop custom home audio solutions. They'll quickly leave your "party" by logging out of their IM client, and turning on their favorite Dr. Who episodes. Many, will consider killing yoru character in Everquest or at your next live action D&D group, if you don't seek forgiveness for your sins and allow those systems to be properly used as a home beowulf cluster.
Why do we even bother voting anymore w/ Diebold and hanging chads and all that bullshit. Let's just have the statisticians tell us what we think. It'd be so much easier.
Does anyone really believe that this mission failed, or for that matter that this solar sail aircraft was only intended to "orbit the earth". Yeah right. We all know the Russians have developed a solar sail space craft capable of faster-than-light travel but don't want to let the rest of the world know about it yet.
joshv kindly asked me to address his argument w/o using "false" analogies. Fair enough.
The term "hackers" is being used to mean those who would exploit and IT system for their own personal gain, whether that be fame, fotune, or personal satisfaction. The point is they are acting against something that is not theirs without permission to do so.
Josh's argument that this activity makes the Internet ecosystem more secure is accurate. Risk of data theft or service interruption is causing customers to expect more from their vendors. Those who make mistakes pay for it with lost revenus (bad press, downtime, lost data, corrupt data, etc.) and ultimately are put out of business.
Hackers play a part, but still deserve blame for the actions. They steal credit cards, hijack computers, deface websites, and interrupt services and although the side affect of increased vigiliance against exploitation is good, the actions themselves are deplorable and wrong. The ends do not justify the means on the aggregate. Josh makes no value judgement, and my original response attirbuted one to him... implying that he thought hacking was "good". That was incorrect.
My original analogy was not false. Criminals make our governmental security structures stronger. No one would sanely argue that 9/11 didn't result in more scrutiny on security, but that added security does not justify the actions of the terrorists who caused the planes to crash. The underlying principle is that violations of a system will result in increased security, this applies both to physical security and computer security equally. Obviously the moral (if you believe in such things) is different for killing hundreds of people and stealing 64,000 credit cards, but the principles remain the same.
So in a round-about way, a I agree w/ Josh's post as it stand w/o reading any value judgements into it, and responded a bit too hastily.
Are you saying that if you are able to do something it is not your fault for doing it? Because you've either reached the Nirvana of modern thought (e.g. might makes right) or you're just a stupid idiot.
To rant on... one argument out there is that hacking isn't wrong b/c the businesses that built the systems are "lazy" and don't properly secure their systems so hackers need to point this out. This is a bullshit argument if you're trying to sell hackers as do-gooders. If I break into your house and burn your stuff and grind your dog up in a blender because your bolt locks aren't strong enough and your security system is pretty easy to bypass w/ the right information am I doing anyone a favor? No! I'm a criminal. Hackers like to paint themselves as all high and might do-gooders. They're just criminals. Sure, businesses need to do a better job of securing their software and information systems... not because good hackers are going to point out their flaws, but because there are people out there trying to destroy the systems or steal the information on them.
For those offended by my use of the term 'hacker' please do a mental substitution with the word 'cracker'... now go about your merry way.
The article is actually pretty interesting. Sure, this guy is very opinionated, but it's an interesting read (the post made that point). His point about who needs to be blamed for the security issues was taken out of out context.
If we consider the Internet as a big local network, we will see that some of our neighbours keep getting exploited by spyware, virus, and so on. Who should we blame? OS producers? Or our neighbours that chose that particular software and then run it without an appropriate secure setup?
There's enough blame for everyone.
Blame the users who don't secure their systems and applications.
Blame the vendors who write and distribute insecure shovel-ware.
Blame the sleazebags who make their living infecting innocent people with spyware, or sending spam.
Blame Microsoft for producing an operating system that is bloated and has an ineffective permissions model and poor default configurations.
Blame the IT managers who overrule their security practitioners' advice and put their systems at risk in the interest of convenience. Etc.
Truly, the only people who deserve a complete helping of blame are the hackers. Let's not forget that they're the ones doing this to us. They're the ones who are annoying an entire planet. They're the ones who are costing us billions of dollars a year to secure our systems against them. They're the ones who place their desire for fun ahead of everyone on earth's desire for peace and [the] right to privacy.
I'll take the logic behind the previous post and apply it to another popular security topic... --- Jihadists, whacko environmentalists, right-wing extremists and their ilk are the predators and pathogens of the modern global ecosystem. They kill off the weak and make the rest stronger.
What would you prefer? A world full of weak hosts, with a wealth of unexploited security holes and weakly organized government systems, where your security is left up to the good will of others (everybody just play nice now)? Or one where leary politicos and government agencies stand in constant vigilance over security issues, because they have to. The wolves are circling the herd.
What would happen if all the 'terrorists' just went away? Everyone would get complacent. Security holes would proliferate, until the temptation just became too large and someone takes it all down in one fell swoop. ---- Summary: "What doesn't kill us makes us strong" is good enough justification for anything.
Why is this being modded funny? This is an accurate analysis. IBM has a strong software services business and has dedicated significant resources to developing and releasing open source software and building solutions on Open Source and Linux. HP does that, but not to the exten IBM does, but HP sells a great server product that runs Linux exceptionally well so they lead in that part of the market.
When did slashdot become a political action group? Posting senators numbers? I thought this was a purely a tech/geek-news site. They are doing this more and more, and are starting to instead become another lame lobbying group.
I object to the word "action" unless by action you mean ranting and bitching about the aforementioned post. We here at Slashdot refuse to impede our rights to bitch by taking any form of action.
Couldn't someone write a program that you could feed the text of a bill into and it would simplify the language, making it easier to find stuff like this so it could be removed?
#include <stdio> void main(void) {
printf("Screw over general populace.\n");
return; }
Email is routinely ignored by congressional staffers. Signing a paper petition is a little more useful. A phone call is better still. A written letter is far superiour. Saying what you think in person is better still.
Chaining yourself to a 64-inch flat panel TV while going on a hunger-protest against the broadcast flag... priceless.
The name Level 5 refers to the network protocol stack where level 5 delivers data from the network to the application, according to Karr. The company isn't concerned about any potential confusion with Internet Protocol telecom Level 3 Communications Inc. On the contrary, he quipped, "It's working in our favor. People say, 'Yes, we've heard of you. You're a big company.'"
As lawyers at Level 3 begin salivating at thought of all of the potential lawsuits.
In a major media blunder the US Government and major media corporations are denying the resuscitation of the broadcast flag. Despite wide reports, Doug Herzog, President of SpikeTV (the First Network for Men) has confirmed that he along with other media executives have decided to abandon all attempts to push the broadcast flag through congress. In a press release Herzong noted,
"After looking at our summer lineup of movies, and previewing 48 Hours, starring Eddie Murphey and Nick Nolte, it was pretty clear that we wouldn't need a broadcast flag to keep people from recording our programming. I and a few others, hoping to promote our July 4th weekend of 48 Hours of 48 Hours, only on Spike TV also watched Another 48 Hours. After we finished the film, we were confident that we had done the right thing to abandon the broadcast flag and honestly were considering abandoning television altogether."
Slashdot Mirror
I'm exploring here... but wouldn't decrimilization of copyright violations place the burden on the corporations to shoulder the initial legal burden to sue the copyright infringers? If so... what if the big corporation is the copyright infringer and I'm just some guy who happened to write a pretty decent novel, piece of music, etc. I'm going to lose, just about every single time... or I guess we'd end up with a bunch of ambulance chasing copyright lawyers.
"Private copying"... what does that mean? That I can make copies for myself (I can do that today I think?). That I can make copies for my friends and family? That I can distribute copies via bittorrent? That I can purchase one copy of Microsoft Office 2003 and distribute it to all 12,000 of my employees.
Depending on the definitions employed the economic consequences would vary. If you define personal copying to include bittorrent the consequences would be severe. No one in their right mind would buy music from a store when they can download it for free. Especially if it was legal because all of the supporting services that would help catalog and rate the quality of the media would flourish. Mainstream music and movies would die (no?) or at least DVD and CD sales would b/c the returns and risk would most likely not justify the cost of spending $145 million to produce a movie. The standard argument is that these media suck anyway... and I dont disagree, but that $145 million does go into real people's pockets.
Muddle headed? That's funny... have you read any of these posts supporting copying? I think there is fair share of muddle headedness on either side of this debate.
The basic fact is that we can copy material whether we have authorization or not.
So because we can that justifies the activity? Is that what you're saying? If not please elaborate. If I can steal from you, beat you, murder you and you have never done anything for me... does the same principle apply, because I have the power to do these things? (this is not a threat, I'm just trying to understand your arguments).
If corporations base all their decisions entirely on their own personal profit, how can they ever expect us to sacrifice our personal profit for their good?
When you go to Best Buy to buy a new CD you don't weigh the merits of each production company's corporate contribution to society. You find the best movie for the lowest price and buy it. You could care less about the company you bought it from, you care about the profits. And even when you care about the company you bought it from... you act because it's in your interest to act because YOU care about the company.
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell lays out some very interesting points about outrageous prices and the evil greedy corporations that charge them. Everyone should read it.
Interesting argument, cite your sources for definitions and legal argument so we can validate.
But I was wondering about the bigger picture here. If the public at large condones such behavior and doesn't see it as a crime, should it NOT be a crime in the legal sense?
What exactly are you proposing? That we abolish copyrights? Patents? Cut their time limits? Enable use right that allow for unlimited copying of music, software, books and movies? Do you understand that there will be economic consequences to the industries that produce these media?
Someone actually make a real proposal for a solution and explain all of the consequences.
From the US Copyright Office FAQ
So it must be legal then (according to your logic). Legal, whether you like it or not, is defined by the law defined by government and courts action in respect to that law. Copyright law has been upheld and as of today you have no rights to copy movies, music, software w/o the owners permission. Therefore you violate their rights of ownership and steal the media when you copy it.
If the court has ruled otherwise (I'm sure there are some exceptions) or there are specific laws allowing this please cite them.
Dueteronomy 24:19-20: "When you are harvesting your crops and forget to bring in a bundle of grain from your field, don't go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigners, orphans, and widows. Then the LORD your God will bless you in all you do.
When you beat the olives from your olive trees, don't go over the boughs twice. Leave some of the olives for the foreigners, orphans, and widows.
In all cases this law makes it clear that the owner has first claim to all of their farm's produce, but that they should not pick them clean but should leave whatever was missed during the first harvest for the poor. The poor don't have first rights to any of the owner's property.
For a practical example of how this actually worked see Ruth 2.
Also note that this was for basic sustance. These people would have faced starvation or out-and-out begging (and potential exploitation) if this type of law wasn't in place. Copying music, movies, or video games has absolutely no impact on your ability to survive, it's for pure entertainment.
Piracy isn't theft. Theft is the action in wich one denies others acces to the stolen goods. Piracy doesn't deny anoyne acces to the pirated goods. So piracy is per definition not theft.
You're making up definitions of words to suit your argument.
Piracy - The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material: software piracy.
Theft - The act or an instance of stealing; larceny.
Stealing - To take (the property of another) without right or permission
Property - Something tangible or intangible to which its owner has legal title: properties such as copyrights and trademarks.
A social, not technical, analysis of your proposal.
With the Sonos solution party goers attending parties at your house will think you're a bastard with too much money on his hands, but at the same time be impressed with how sweet the system works. They'll linger around drinking your booze and bouncing between Infected Mushroom beats in the Living Room and the smooth sounds of Stereolab in the guest bedroom.
With the Dell solution party goers will think you're a cheap rich bastard with too much time on his hands to develop custom home audio solutions. They'll quickly leave your "party" by logging out of their IM client, and turning on their favorite Dr. Who episodes. Many, will consider killing yoru character in Everquest or at your next live action D&D group, if you don't seek forgiveness for your sins and allow those systems to be properly used as a home beowulf cluster.
Why do we even bother voting anymore w/ Diebold and hanging chads and all that bullshit. Let's just have the statisticians tell us what we think. It'd be so much easier.
Does anyone really believe that this mission failed, or for that matter that this solar sail aircraft was only intended to "orbit the earth". Yeah right. We all know the Russians have developed a solar sail space craft capable of faster-than-light travel but don't want to let the rest of the world know about it yet.
My tinfoil hat is itchy... that means I'm right.
joshv kindly asked me to address his argument w/o using "false" analogies. Fair enough.
The term "hackers" is being used to mean those who would exploit and IT system for their own personal gain, whether that be fame, fotune, or personal satisfaction. The point is they are acting against something that is not theirs without permission to do so.
Josh's argument that this activity makes the Internet ecosystem more secure is accurate. Risk of data theft or service interruption is causing customers to expect more from their vendors. Those who make mistakes pay for it with lost revenus (bad press, downtime, lost data, corrupt data, etc.) and ultimately are put out of business.
Hackers play a part, but still deserve blame for the actions. They steal credit cards, hijack computers, deface websites, and interrupt services and although the side affect of increased vigiliance against exploitation is good, the actions themselves are deplorable and wrong. The ends do not justify the means on the aggregate. Josh makes no value judgement, and my original response attirbuted one to him... implying that he thought hacking was "good". That was incorrect.
My original analogy was not false. Criminals make our governmental security structures stronger. No one would sanely argue that 9/11 didn't result in more scrutiny on security, but that added security does not justify the actions of the terrorists who caused the planes to crash. The underlying principle is that violations of a system will result in increased security, this applies both to physical security and computer security equally. Obviously the moral (if you believe in such things) is different for killing hundreds of people and stealing 64,000 credit cards, but the principles remain the same.
So in a round-about way, a I agree w/ Josh's post as it stand w/o reading any value judgements into it, and responded a bit too hastily.
Are you saying that if you are able to do something it is not your fault for doing it? Because you've either reached the Nirvana of modern thought (e.g. might makes right) or you're just a stupid idiot.
To rant on... one argument out there is that hacking isn't wrong b/c the businesses that built the systems are "lazy" and don't properly secure their systems so hackers need to point this out. This is a bullshit argument if you're trying to sell hackers as do-gooders. If I break into your house and burn your stuff and grind your dog up in a blender because your bolt locks aren't strong enough and your security system is pretty easy to bypass w/ the right information am I doing anyone a favor? No! I'm a criminal. Hackers like to paint themselves as all high and might do-gooders. They're just criminals. Sure, businesses need to do a better job of securing their software and information systems... not because good hackers are going to point out their flaws, but because there are people out there trying to destroy the systems or steal the information on them.
For those offended by my use of the term 'hacker' please do a mental substitution with the word 'cracker'... now go about your merry way.
The article is actually pretty interesting. Sure, this guy is very opinionated, but it's an interesting read (the post made that point). His point about who needs to be blamed for the security issues was taken out of out context.
If we consider the Internet as a big local network, we will see that some of our neighbours keep getting exploited by spyware, virus, and so on. Who should we blame? OS producers? Or our neighbours that chose that particular software and then run it without an appropriate secure setup?
There's enough blame for everyone.
Blame the users who don't secure their systems and applications.
Blame the vendors who write and distribute insecure shovel-ware.
Blame the sleazebags who make their living infecting innocent people with spyware, or sending spam.
Blame Microsoft for producing an operating system that is bloated and has an ineffective permissions model and poor default configurations.
Blame the IT managers who overrule their security practitioners' advice and put their systems at risk in the interest of convenience. Etc.
Truly, the only people who deserve a complete helping of blame are the hackers. Let's not forget that they're the ones doing this to us. They're the ones who are annoying an entire planet. They're the ones who are costing us billions of dollars a year to secure our systems against them. They're the ones who place their desire for fun ahead of everyone on earth's desire for peace and [the] right to privacy.
I'll take the logic behind the previous post and apply it to another popular security topic...
---
Jihadists, whacko environmentalists, right-wing extremists and their ilk are the predators and pathogens of the modern global ecosystem. They kill off the weak and make the rest stronger.
What would you prefer? A world full of weak hosts, with a wealth of unexploited security holes and weakly organized government systems, where your security is left up to the good will of others (everybody just play nice now)? Or one where leary politicos and government agencies stand in constant vigilance over security issues, because they have to. The wolves are circling the herd.
What would happen if all the 'terrorists' just went away? Everyone would get complacent. Security holes would proliferate, until the temptation just became too large and someone takes it all down in one fell swoop.
----
Summary: "What doesn't kill us makes us strong" is good enough justification for anything.
he has shifted from total-crackpot mode to state-the-painfully-obvious mode. Or, rather, a combination of the two.
Painfully-obvious-only-to-total-crackpot's mode?
Why is this being modded funny? This is an accurate analysis. IBM has a strong software services business and has dedicated significant resources to developing and releasing open source software and building solutions on Open Source and Linux. HP does that, but not to the exten IBM does, but HP sells a great server product that runs Linux exceptionally well so they lead in that part of the market.
When did slashdot become a political action group? Posting senators numbers? I thought this was a purely a tech/geek-news site. They are doing this more and more, and are starting to instead become another lame lobbying group.
I object to the word "action" unless by action you mean ranting and bitching about the aforementioned post. We here at Slashdot refuse to impede our rights to bitch by taking any form of action.
Email is routinely ignored by congressional staffers. Signing a paper petition is a little more useful. A phone call is better still. A written letter is far superiour. Saying what you think in person is better still.
Chaining yourself to a 64-inch flat panel TV while going on a hunger-protest against the broadcast flag... priceless.
The name Level 5 refers to the network protocol stack where level 5 delivers data from the network to the application, according to Karr. The company isn't concerned about any potential confusion with Internet Protocol telecom Level 3 Communications Inc. On the contrary, he quipped, "It's working in our favor. People say, 'Yes, we've heard of you. You're a big company.'"
As lawyers at Level 3 begin salivating at thought of all of the potential lawsuits.
In a major media blunder the US Government and major media corporations are denying the resuscitation of the broadcast flag. Despite wide reports, Doug Herzog, President of SpikeTV (the First Network for Men) has confirmed that he along with other media executives have decided to abandon all attempts to push the broadcast flag through congress. In a press release Herzong noted,
"After looking at our summer lineup of movies, and previewing 48 Hours, starring Eddie Murphey and Nick Nolte, it was pretty clear that we wouldn't need a broadcast flag to keep people from recording our programming. I and a few others, hoping to promote our July 4th weekend of 48 Hours of 48 Hours, only on Spike TV also watched Another 48 Hours. After we finished the film, we were confident that we had done the right thing to abandon the broadcast flag and honestly were considering abandoning television altogether."
the right to bare arms
I am in total 100% agreement w/ the second amendment. If you support it... get the t-shirt.
See the senators flee in terror as hundreds of thousands of /.'ers email "In Soviet Russia the bill rides you".
(Note... many are confused as they believe this may be a reference to the previous administration.)
Is Congress susceptible to the Slashdot effect?
Apparently, it's full of a bunch of media-whoring trolls and flamebait artists.