Are you sure? I don't have any citations to back this up, but I doubt it was legal fifty years ago for someone to copy a book and distrbute it without having permission from the author/publisher.
50 years ago you could copy a book by hand or with a large expensive printing press. Private individuals did not normally have access to a large printing press. Copying books by hand, however, had a long exemption from copyright--at least in Europe--though it died out in modern times, so I'm not sure if there is any notice of the exemption in American law.
You're exactly right, and that's why someone who steals a car is probably going to prison for a short period, while someone who illegally copies a CD will most likely get a very minor punishment.
I was trying to say that the 'very minor punishment' is a new thing.
This is new, so pay attention to what's happening. A truly new crime has been invented--that isn't something that happens often.
Copyright infringement has never before been a crime committed by individuals procuring their own entertainment. Always before it has been a crime that could only be comitted by major distributors. After all, those were the only people copyright law applied to 50 years ago.
Stealing a song is not like stealing a car. One involves the deprivation of a personal property, and the other involves breaking a social contract.
This is new, and I wonder how long this new crime will be with us.
This has buttons, but...a keyboard attached to a Linux box with some good speakers attached. Make a program that delivers a loud alarm when the buttons are mashed.
I took a second look, and I'm pretty sure about it. To complete this algorithm for n, for every prime rn, you will need to find the largest prime factor of r-1.
I'm dead tired and will look at the paper in the morning. But right now I have a problem with step 6: "Let q be the largest prime factor of r-1" Won't getting q boost the thing back into power n complexity?
Neff, for instance, predicted Apple, which uses chips from Motorola and IBM that currently top out at 1GHz, will switch to Intel, whose chips run at 2.5GHz, to get a performance boost and gain more customers. There's a better than 80 percent chance Apple will make the jump in two to four years, he said.
I'd like to make a brief, stunningly persuasive, riposte to his argument: Yeah, right.
You completely ignored the reason I gave for the piracy: It is good advertising which results in more sales.
You got hooked on HH because of free books. You bought more because of free books. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, piracy accomplishes the same thing, especially when a better version is available at some cost. People who acquire the inferior version for free will often spend money for the better version. If those people would never have bought the book in the first place without the piracy, you have made a sale because of piracy.
These books are being made available on CD because Weber knows that he is no longer making a great deal of money from older books. He feels that any resultant priacy will actually result in a net gain for him.
They make a very big point about how everything is in rtf format. Pretty amazing. Sounds like they're trying to get the nudge, nudge, wink, wink, piracy thing going -- a la Adobe and Microsoft.
I see two things happening because of this. Weber gets a lot more popular because of his books being plastered all over Kazaa. His sales go way up. Frankly, it sucks to read a book on a computer screen, so people will go out and buy a copy if they like it. It's even better than the mp3 quality vs. audio quality CD thing.
Number 2, a lot of people get used to books being in an electronic, computer-readable format. Just like they got used to mp3s. Will help the e-book industry take off -- if book publishers are smarter than the RIAA. And they are, don't kid yourself about that.
There is a point you all are missing. Someone has to write the click-through agreements. That someone is a lawyer. He gets paid to write them.
Now, giving consideration to human nature, what do you expect that same lawyer to suggest when you ask whether or not you should have a click-through agreement?
In fact, I would even suggest that is the main reason for click-through agreements on most commercial software, which is already adequately protected by copyright. The lawyers who tell you whether you need a click-through don't make as much money when you don't need one. (As well as the natural herd tendency that keeps businesses from standing out from the crowd.)
Most companies have the same problem with the legal department of a company as they have with the engineering and other technical departments. Mangement does not understand them: "Oh, you need a GeForce 4 for every computer to run MS VC.NET? Let me just order some on up for you all." Mangement is just as clueless when it comes to lawyers, who are just as self-serving and greedy as the rest of us.
Really? Have you ever installed a pci card in your computer? Notice how more ports magically appear? Now go out and buy an internal "router" -- stupid name, I know, but that will solve your port problem.
If you mod the box into something black with LEDs, it might not look so out of place. Especially if you tape a while piece of paper with "67...2 Router:Smurphy" to the top (well not look out of place to the peons, anyway). Everyone will be afraid to touch it.
Re:Technology is part of the reason for the change
on
Copyright as Cudgel
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· Score: 2
I don't think that I made my point clearly, then. I was suggesting that it had become that way, not because of the DMCA, but because copyright infringement had become an issue of personal morality. When it is just a corporate regulation, then due process is all you need. When you start regulating morality, things get tricky.
Technology is part of the reason for the change
on
Copyright as Cudgel
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· Score: 5, Insightful
In the 20th century it was hard to be a copyright infringer. You had to have a lot of publishing equipment and junk. You had to make that money back by selling pirated goods. The people you sold the goods to weren't thought of as copyright infringers. They weren't thought about at all.
Today, your average home internet user can be a copyright infringer simply by using a P2P network. It is trivally easy to copy information. Copyright infringement has moved from a public corporate regulation to a private morality issue.
When copyright law was created, copying was expensive. It was hard to maintain a printing press. That only really changed with the advent of the internet. Even previous technologies such as tape recording could be ignored by lawmakers (more or less) because they did not unite the possibility of easy copying with easy mass distribution. That has changed. Modern law is struggling to keep up.
Veeck v. SBCCI refers to law passed by a legislature. As law, it must be public. For that reason, the higher court overturned the ruling. A contract is a different beast, being an agreement between two parties, and may be private. A contract is not a law. Copyright applies.
You can't use the same contract text for your own contracts -- there are actually people who have sued over that. And fair use almost always applies to using only part of the whole. This would copy the whole thing.
Has anybody counted up how many pages of EULAs you are obligated to read in order to install Windows XP with full updates? I think I'll put a running total on my webpage.
Students have no money to buy stuff. However, if they get a good education, they get a lot of money to buy the things that they like. Hmmm...
I'm sorry for that last comment, I had a moment of temporary insanity. Bad Malaysia. Bad. We here in the U.S. should extend our copyright terms another 90 years in retalitation!
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Are you sure? I don't have any citations to back this up, but I doubt it was legal fifty years ago for someone to copy a book and distrbute it without having permission from the author/publisher.
50 years ago you could copy a book by hand or with a large expensive printing press. Private individuals did not normally have access to a large printing press. Copying books by hand, however, had a long exemption from copyright--at least in Europe--though it died out in modern times, so I'm not sure if there is any notice of the exemption in American law.
You're exactly right, and that's why someone who steals a car is probably going to prison for a short period, while someone who illegally copies a CD will most likely get a very minor punishment.
I was trying to say that the 'very minor punishment' is a new thing.
This is new, so pay attention to what's happening. A truly new crime has been invented--that isn't something that happens often.
Copyright infringement has never before been a crime committed by individuals procuring their own entertainment. Always before it has been a crime that could only be comitted by major distributors. After all, those were the only people copyright law applied to 50 years ago.
Stealing a song is not like stealing a car. One involves the deprivation of a personal property, and the other involves breaking a social contract.
This is new, and I wonder how long this new crime will be with us.
This has buttons, but...a keyboard attached to a Linux box with some good speakers attached. Make a program that delivers a loud alarm when the buttons are mashed.
It could even be GPLed.
You are right. I was just reading the algorithm down in order. I shouldn't have gotten ahead of myself.
"for every prime r less than n"
Thank you, lameness filter. I think. I am tired and could have missed it.
I took a second look, and I'm pretty sure about it. To complete this algorithm for n, for every prime rn, you will need to find the largest prime factor of r-1.
I'm dead tired and will look at the paper in the morning. But right now I have a problem with step 6:
"Let q be the largest prime factor of r-1"
Won't getting q boost the thing back into power n complexity?
Yeah, right.
You keep dodging the main point--that piracy of electronic versions of these books will actually increase sales.
To put it as simply as possible:
Piracy -> Free Advertising (like the Baen free book library) -> David Weber making more money.
You completely ignored the reason I gave for the piracy: It is good advertising which results in more sales.
You got hooked on HH because of free books. You bought more because of free books. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, piracy accomplishes the same thing, especially when a better version is available at some cost. People who acquire the inferior version for free will often spend money for the better version. If those people would never have bought the book in the first place without the piracy, you have made a sale because of piracy.
These books are being made available on CD because Weber knows that he is no longer making a great deal of money from older books. He feels that any resultant priacy will actually result in a net gain for him.
They make a very big point about how everything is in rtf format. Pretty amazing. Sounds like they're trying to get the nudge, nudge, wink, wink, piracy thing going -- a la Adobe and Microsoft.
I see two things happening because of this. Weber gets a lot more popular because of his books being plastered all over Kazaa. His sales go way up. Frankly, it sucks to read a book on a computer screen, so people will go out and buy a copy if they like it. It's even better than the mp3 quality vs. audio quality CD thing.
Number 2, a lot of people get used to books being in an electronic, computer-readable format. Just like they got used to mp3s. Will help the e-book industry take off -- if book publishers are smarter than the RIAA. And they are, don't kid yourself about that.
There is a point you all are missing. Someone has to write the click-through agreements. That someone is a lawyer. He gets paid to write them.
.NET? Let me just order some on up for you all." Mangement is just as clueless when it comes to lawyers, who are just as self-serving and greedy as the rest of us.
Now, giving consideration to human nature, what do you expect that same lawyer to suggest when you ask whether or not you should have a click-through agreement?
In fact, I would even suggest that is the main reason for click-through agreements on most commercial software, which is already adequately protected by copyright. The lawyers who tell you whether you need a click-through don't make as much money when you don't need one. (As well as the natural herd tendency that keeps businesses from standing out from the crowd.)
Most companies have the same problem with the legal department of a company as they have with the engineering and other technical departments. Mangement does not understand them: "Oh, you need a GeForce 4 for every computer to run MS VC
Really? Have you ever installed a pci card in your computer? Notice how more ports magically appear? Now go out and buy an internal "router" -- stupid name, I know, but that will solve your port problem.
How did this story get past the lameness filter?
LOL! I thought that you had written 'Crisco', and couldn't understand what you meant until I read my own reply to the guy above.
I'm not sure, but those Cisco routers keep getting infected by Code Red...
Damn, though, that is a good way to infiltrate a network. Simply replace a router while no one is looking, and they're owned.
If you mod the box into something black with LEDs, it might not look so out of place. Especially if you tape a while piece of paper with "67...2 Router:Smurphy" to the top (well not look out of place to the peons, anyway). Everyone will be afraid to touch it.
I don't think that I made my point clearly, then. I was suggesting that it had become that way, not because of the DMCA, but because copyright infringement had become an issue of personal morality. When it is just a corporate regulation, then due process is all you need. When you start regulating morality, things get tricky.
In the 20th century it was hard to be a copyright infringer. You had to have a lot of publishing equipment and junk. You had to make that money back by selling pirated goods. The people you sold the goods to weren't thought of as copyright infringers. They weren't thought about at all.
Today, your average home internet user can be a copyright infringer simply by using a P2P network. It is trivally easy to copy information. Copyright infringement has moved from a public corporate regulation to a private morality issue.
When copyright law was created, copying was expensive. It was hard to maintain a printing press. That only really changed with the advent of the internet. Even previous technologies such as tape recording could be ignored by lawmakers (more or less) because they did not unite the possibility of easy copying with easy mass distribution. That has changed. Modern law is struggling to keep up.
Don't be a dumbass.
Veeck v. SBCCI refers to law passed by a legislature. As law, it must be public. For that reason, the higher court overturned the ruling. A contract is a different beast, being an agreement between two parties, and may be private. A contract is not a law. Copyright applies.
You can't use the same contract text for your own contracts -- there are actually people who have sued over that. And fair use almost always applies to using only part of the whole. This would copy the whole thing.
Has anybody counted up how many pages of EULAs you are obligated to read in order to install Windows XP with full updates? I think I'll put a running total on my webpage.
This is illegal. A EULA is covered under copyright. And stealing IP from lawyers is just asking for trouble.
Students have no money to buy stuff. However, if they get a good education, they get a lot of money to buy the things that they like. Hmmm...
I'm sorry for that last comment, I had a moment of temporary insanity. Bad Malaysia. Bad. We here in the U.S. should extend our copyright terms another 90 years in retalitation!