> You don't for exmaple, call the US a non-free country because you can't (without
> penalty) yell "Fire!" in a movie hall.
No, but you're less free than you would be were you allowed to do so.
The problem with the logical extension of this argument is that it results in all possible freedom concentrated in one individual. If one individual has the freedom to harm all others and their property, that individual would be a totalitarian dictator. This would also mean that relative to him, no one else would have any freedom at all. So by guaranteeing every individuals' freedom, society also limits freedom. That is the difference between a free society and a free individual. Complete and absolute freedom for all individuals is logically impossible.
"You don't for exmaple, call the US a non-free country because you can't"
take someone else's car (without their permission) and keep it.
It would be easy to make a long list of things one could not do because it limited the freedom of another. A free society must guarantee equal freedom for all citizens. All individuals' freedom is thus in balance.
The GPL creates this sort of balance: You are free to use, copy, modify, and distribute the software, but you cannot restrict other individuals' freedom to use, copy, modify, or distribute. This protects everyone from monopolism. Monopolies are the opposite of freedom. They are equivalent to dictatorships. And, yes, copyright is a monopoly, but it was supposed to be limited.
Therefore the parent was absolutely correct when he said, "The software is indeed free..."
It seems from the article that the "hidden costs" that apply to the cheap models also apply to the expensive ones. The expensive ones are even manufactured in the same factories. So, even if one were to buy an expensive model, that extra money would just go into the pocket of the person owning the expensive label and "slave labor" would continue in China. Also, we all know that Walmart is never going to pay their employees better.
In the end, the only ones that cost more are the ones with the higher price tag. Unless everyone buys expensive ones exclusively. Even then, it is more likely that such a practice will just lead the electronics companies to spend more money on trademark litigation in order to milk their brands for all they are worth.
Low profit margins are a sign of a healthy capitalist market (as opposed to an unhealthy monopolist market) and strong competition.
A life of forced regret could certainly be classified as torture. Also, if you are unfairly convicted, does it really matter which sentence you get? Your life as you know it is over either way.
but anyone know of any others, either online or physical dropoff points in major metropolitan areas?
What about a school?
It seems to me that children might benefit from having spare computer parts. Even broken parts can be used to teach computer assembly.
Low end parts might not be the best, but they can certainly run science projects or make good platforms for learning programming.
Since Linux runs on anything, you could toss in a couple of Linux or FreeBSD CDs, too. Of course, this last one depends entirely on the ignorance of the teachers involved, but I think the picture is clear.
Computer parts should be used until they do not work, not until their Windoze licence or support runs out!
Wow, this is timely. I just posted a
GrepLaw article about the subject of region codes.
Unfortunately, the CEO of Blockbuster was not interested in whether or not region codes were fundamentally evil. He was only concerned with the fact that their implementation caused an increase in piracy and a decrease in his revenues. I like the irony of the fact that a system that the MPAA created to impose unfair pricing has actually benefitted their illicit competitors. Here is hoping the MPAA continues to shoot itself in the foot.
Look at a region map, and yes there's only so much room on a disk, so a language has to be picked.
I just have been looking at a region map, actually. Language could not be the only factor in choosing regions. Australia is in the same region as Latin America. Japan is in the same region as Europe. The DVD consortium was definitely choosing the Asians it liked better.
If, on the other hand, that statement was meant to refer to languages on a disk, you are also wrong. Most DVDs can carry as many as five soundtracks in addition to subtitles for ten countries. In Region3: Southeast Asia, DVDs typcially have an English and two Chinese soundtracks and subtitles in Thai, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, Korean (North and South Korea use the same writing system even though they are in two different regions -- maybe Region5 is the Communist region), Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Malay, Vietnamese, and of course English. Sometimes these disks have other features like extra soundtracks. Really, though, the subtitles can be considered unlimited. Text storage for subtitles will never be a significant portion of 4.7GB even if they included Ancient Mayan. So, if that was your question, no, they do not have to choose a language.
There is only so much space on a disk for what? Segregation? There should not be any space on a disk for such a thing. People should be able to buy DVDs anywhere in the world and watch them anywhere else. When you buy something it is your possession. You own it (and before anyone considers it, I do not even want to hear the licensing argument -- it is pure BS). You should be able to access the information on it until you break it, throw it away, or sell it. No one should have the right to tell you what to do with your movie that you purchased.
Does it upset you mightly if all the actors aren't a generic gray, and we all don't speak a universal language?
Perhaps you missed my point. I am precisely against this. I want access to all DVDs in the world. I should be able to buy movies from India over the Internet if I like and watch them on a DVD player in Europe or on the freaking moon. My intellectual explorations should not be restricted by some fat, cigar smoking, Harvard graduated executive who thinks he is my father and knows whats best for me. I am spending my money, and I will not be told what to spend it on.
Your post is an insult to all the people who truely suffered and died (of all races) bringing equality to the world, just so you can fulfil your personal vendeta against an individual.
Nice flamebait. This is not a "personal vendeta against an individual". Far from it. I am against all that would restrict my freedom to learn and think. As far as freedom goes, those are the two most fundamental freedoms of all. Jack Valenti is merely one of those who is working actively to keep the people of the US, if not the people of the world, ignorant for his own profit. I am not personally against him. If you had said I had a vendetta against copyright, you might have had a halfway reasonable argument.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Quite the contrary, actually. Your post has proved to me how right I actually am.
This is a good example of the censorship that copyright produces. Copyright was created to increase the amount of information available to everyone. Instead, it is being used to keep people from accessing information that they would legitimately pay for.
The movies studios want to coerce fans into seeing the movie when and where the studios choose. Rather than allowing true fans to appreciate these movies when and where the fans, the customers, might want, they block their distribution. The movie studios do this whether or not the expect to release this movie in a given market. In the end, this leaves a minority of fans who have the interest and the financial means to see a movie locked out of it.
Whether or not the copyright holders of these movies believe they can make money in a given market, they will refuse to let people watch it. If they cannot make money, there is no incentive. If the information is not distributed, the incentive is not working for society and should not be granted to the rights holders. Either way, the movie studios are blatantly misusing their legal rights. Their legal rights exist to give enough incentive to get information to be disseminated, not to stand as a barrier to the dissemination of that information.
An individual should be able to purchase any movie from any market that person might desire to purchase from. Just because the majority of people in one area like some given thing does not mean everybody has to. Even if the movie is released in the US market, and most Asian movies are not, it still forces the US version on people, which in many cases has parts cut out of it and may be dubbed. An individual may want to watch the movie with subtitles or in its original language or in its original state.
The practice of restricting people by region is racist. Regionalizing is saying that because you live in such and such a country, you will pay such and such a price or watch movies in such and such a language. Because you live in such and such a country, you will know such information. What is the difference between this and bathrooms marked Colored and White? I guess Jack Valenti is more of a good-'ol-boy than we thought.
This could hurt Top 40 listenership as many people listen to those songs when they think that no one knows what they are listening to.
People still listen to radio? I thought it was the dinosaurs. I thought they went exctinct because of radio.
What if you are listening to a CD or mp3s? Will newer versions use a laser to pick up vibrations from the windshield? Will they be able to check your credit card records to determine whether or not you have paid for that particular song? "RIAA Sues Motorists"
What is the demographic for Britany Spears? Retarded? "K-mart doesn't suck!"
I guess Big Brother really is watching me, and those eyes do not seem to follow me. They actually do follow me.
Will Big Brother change race for different demographics? Will Big Brother ever be Big Sister? Will Big Sister have a moustache?
if a compnay makes a substantial commitment to a piece of open source software that then gets abandoned, there could be real consequences.
What real consequences are you talking about?
First of all, forking has nothing to do with projects being abandoned. Forking is the opposite of abandonment. It is the equivalent of a cell division. Where you had one cell, now you have two. This reduces the possibility of abandonment as there are two projects that have to be abandoned where there was formerly only one.
Secondly, and even more importantly, with Open Source or Free Software, if a project is abandoned, you still have the source code. If you still need the project's functionality, you can maintain the code. Projects can only be abandoned if you and everybody else abandones the project (i.e. if nobody wants it). Therefore, "abandonment" is not really abandonment in Free Software.
This stands in large contrast to closed source software. If Microsoft decides to kill a project, you are SOL. You do not have access to the source code, and even if you did, you would lack the right to modify it or even use it. In fact, MS can even revoke your right to use code that they have already distributed and that you have already paid for if they decide to.
Open Source or Free Software protect you from being locked out. You can use Free Software forever. Long after there is no market for a particular application, you can still have it for your purposes and customize it to your preferences.
Free Software is synonymous with free choice and customization. Free Software is software individualism.
The only way that Free Software would raise the TCO is if you wanted the features of two or more forks and expended resources to create your own fork of the forked projects. However, this would be equivalent to writing a closed source tool that did not exist with no market for your own use, except that in this case, you would already have 99% of the work done for you. You would just have to combine the code you wanted instead of writing it from scratch. In the end, it would cost a fraction of writing your own tool from scratch.
Claiming that forking is bad for Free Software is the same thing as saying that competition is bad for capitalism.
Then again, I suppose monopolists like MicroSuck think that competition is a bad thing to have in the market place. It reduces their control over the consumer.
...a worldwide coalition of computer enthusiasts, worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) "DES Cracker," a specially designed supercomputer, and a worldwide network of nearly 100,000 PCs on the Internet...
it was not a "high-end desktop" (in response to Carnildo's post),
...the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) "DES Cracker," a specially designed supercomputer...
the time where desktop computers pose a threat to DES is not yet upon us (also in response to Carnildo's post).
"As today's demonstration shows, we are
quickly reaching the time when anyone with a standard desktop PC can potentially pose a real threat to systems relying on such vulnerable security," said Jim Bidzos, president of RSA Data Security, Inc.
Therefore, while it is not military grade encryption, it is still good enough for some purposes. It will not protect you from a government or a corporation (if it so happens that they are interested enough in you commit the necessary resources), but it will probably protect you from your next door neighbor.
Dell cites the possibility that removing spyware might violate user agreements between the user and some other company. ...
NOTICE: Use of spyware removal software may conflict with user license agreements of other applications installed on your system.
Since when does copyright protect the "right" to restrict people from removing information? I would think ripping an unwanted page out of a book and throwing it away would be unquestionably fair use.
What are we going to have next? Is McDonald's tell us not to remove the pickles on their hamburgers because they have an agreement with some unknown pickle vendor?
By design, Phoenix's CSS transfers digital security, network management and disaster recovery away from the control of software to hardware...
Shouldnt it be "away from the control of software to firmware"? The BIOS can still be rewritten. Time to contribute that extra cash to
the LinuxBIOS project.
... That is unless you would like your computer to lock up the way Win95 used to make it lock up...
General Acess Error!
You have no Right to use your computer. If you feel you have received this message in error, please return computer unit to your nearest vendor for a reset for a small fee. Please remember to bring biometrically enabled identification for proof of your identity and right to access this computer. We apologize sincerely for any inconvenience caused and wish you a nice day.
It appears that Darl has finally come up with an accurate analogy:
Similar to analogous efforts underway in the music industry, we are prepared to take all actions necessary to stop the ongoing violation of our intellectual property or other rights.
I could not think of a better comparison. Both the music industry and SCO are abusing copyright and lending futher credence to the idea that copyright is just a tool for opression and censorship.
I cannot wait until they claim "ownership" over the speech that comes out of my mouth.
If copyright was still limited to its original term of 14 years, this would not be a problem. Thank you Congress for selling out.
if the majority of games are on consoles, I can just get one and be relieved of the last reason to have Windoze running on anything (obviously, that console would not be an X-Box then). If games move away from the PC, there is truly no reason to use MS products. I guess Sony is doing us all a favor (us all = people who believe in freedom).
Now, if we could just stop MS from suing mod chip makers, all would be golden.
if this cabling could not be used to set up some sort of ExtraNet.
Linking old/unused/unowned cables might make for a really cool hobbyists network if the locations of the cables could be known and the cables could be linked cheaply. Of course, a bunch of serial and coax cables would make for a fairly slow ExtraNet, but it would still be cool to route around the controls currently being imposed by our corporate masters.
The average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days.
Copyright was claimed to be created for the creation and dissemination of knowledge. At that time, creation of books was easier than their wholesale destruction. A printed book would last for years unless actively destroyed.
Those days are over.
Today, a book that is thrown away -- unlinked -- is effectively destroyed. When a server is turned off, that information is rendered inaccessible to the world at large. A DRM'd work is similarly useless. If only one person has the right to store and disseminate a given piece or set of information, that information is vulnerable to complete destruction, and everybody stands to lose. Still copyright protects people's "right" to hide and destroy information.
Why should information (which we cannot judge to be valuable or not until we have encountered it) be allowed to be destroyed? Can We, as a society, afford this?
We are misusing the Internet, which was designed to replicate information in a fault tolerant way. Whether or not any given information is valuable to business should not be our question. Our question should be: How can We allow laws originally conceived to increase the volume and newness of information to prevent Our access to information? Instead of making Us more educated, copyright is making Us more ignorant, and putting some people in court and stealing their hard earned cash (this is actual theft, be it legal or not, because the person is actually deprived of real money, as opposed to the "theft" of P2P which deprives copyright holders of fictitious money -- they call it "potential profit").
Ignorance has profited many regimes from the book burnings of China's First Emperor to the prohibitions on education in the Indonesia of the Dutch. However, today, it is supposed to be We The People who rule. If that is so, why do we allow a few scattered monopolists to steal from Us the information that empowers Us to be the rulers of Our elected representatives? If government censorship is wrong, why is corporate censorship right (especially when corporations have so much influence over governments)?
Access and copy restrictions should be illegal for all intellectual material, since, if it is "intellectual property" at all, it is the property of Us The People for Whom the Constitution of United States and all similar documents were written. It is every individual's responsibility to replicate as much information as possible to ensure the information is available to everyone even after the publisher's fickle breezes have changed course.
I thank the Internet Archive for its humble attempt at fulfilling this responsibility. Where are the rest of Us The People who are willing and able to defend their right to learn, nay, their right to think?
Now the RIAA and/or its members can kill off all of their top selling artists and raise the prices of the late artists' albums and perpetually discover "previously unreleased tracks".
Artists will sing more than the exhaustion of all the breath given to them for the spans of their lives, and the RIAA will have the copyrights until their great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren die... or longer.
I am certain that the investors' board will be happy.
Neo is contacted, discovers "the truth", and wakes up in the real world.
Scene two:
Neo trains on a Linux (in the "real world" MS products do not exist or are too expensive) box with Morpheus and visits the Oracle.
Scene three:
Neo gets shot by Agent Smith but does not die. The resulting glitch causes an unrecoverable error and crashing MSMatrix killing every member of the human race and bringing down all of the machines, as well. The war is over. Both sides have lost everything.
Scenario Two: Plague of Totality
A virus goes rampant trying to insert spam directly into individuals brains. MSMatrix helps the virus by prohibiting the machines from patching exploits until MS gets around to it (the machines, of course, do not have access to the source code of MSMatrix). No patch is issued because every human being's connection to MSMatrix is severed before anything can be done. All humans and machines die.
Slashdot Mirror
A better analogy:
It would be easy to make a long list of things one could not do because it limited the freedom of another. A free society must guarantee equal freedom for all citizens. All individuals' freedom is thus in balance.
The GPL creates this sort of balance: You are free to use, copy, modify, and distribute the software, but you cannot restrict other individuals' freedom to use, copy, modify, or distribute. This protects everyone from monopolism. Monopolies are the opposite of freedom. They are equivalent to dictatorships. And, yes, copyright is a monopoly, but it was supposed to be limited.
Therefore the parent was absolutely correct when he said, "The software is indeed free..."
It seems from the article that the "hidden costs" that apply to the cheap models also apply to the expensive ones. The expensive ones are even manufactured in the same factories. So, even if one were to buy an expensive model, that extra money would just go into the pocket of the person owning the expensive label and "slave labor" would continue in China. Also, we all know that Walmart is never going to pay their employees better.
In the end, the only ones that cost more are the ones with the higher price tag. Unless everyone buys expensive ones exclusively. Even then, it is more likely that such a practice will just lead the electronics companies to spend more money on trademark litigation in order to milk their brands for all they are worth.
Low profit margins are a sign of a healthy capitalist market (as opposed to an unhealthy monopolist market) and strong competition.
Japanese ads that will never air in the US (works in Xine).
The real question is:
A life of forced regret could certainly be classified as torture. Also, if you are unfairly convicted, does it really matter which sentence you get? Your life as you know it is over either way.It seems to me that children might benefit from having spare computer parts. Even broken parts can be used to teach computer assembly.
Low end parts might not be the best, but they can certainly run science projects or make good platforms for learning programming.
Since Linux runs on anything, you could toss in a couple of Linux or FreeBSD CDs, too. Of course, this last one depends entirely on the ignorance of the teachers involved, but I think the picture is clear.
Computer parts should be used until they do not work, not until their Windoze licence or support runs out!
Wow, this is timely. I just posted a GrepLaw article about the subject of region codes.
Unfortunately, the CEO of Blockbuster was not interested in whether or not region codes were fundamentally evil. He was only concerned with the fact that their implementation caused an increase in piracy and a decrease in his revenues. I like the irony of the fact that a system that the MPAA created to impose unfair pricing has actually benefitted their illicit competitors. Here is hoping the MPAA continues to shoot itself in the foot.
If, on the other hand, that statement was meant to refer to languages on a disk, you are also wrong. Most DVDs can carry as many as five soundtracks in addition to subtitles for ten countries. In Region3: Southeast Asia, DVDs typcially have an English and two Chinese soundtracks and subtitles in Thai, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, Korean (North and South Korea use the same writing system even though they are in two different regions -- maybe Region5 is the Communist region), Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, Malay, Vietnamese, and of course English. Sometimes these disks have other features like extra soundtracks. Really, though, the subtitles can be considered unlimited. Text storage for subtitles will never be a significant portion of 4.7GB even if they included Ancient Mayan. So, if that was your question, no, they do not have to choose a language.
There is only so much space on a disk for what? Segregation? There should not be any space on a disk for such a thing. People should be able to buy DVDs anywhere in the world and watch them anywhere else. When you buy something it is your possession. You own it (and before anyone considers it, I do not even want to hear the licensing argument -- it is pure BS). You should be able to access the information on it until you break it, throw it away, or sell it. No one should have the right to tell you what to do with your movie that you purchased.
Perhaps you missed my point. I am precisely against this. I want access to all DVDs in the world. I should be able to buy movies from India over the Internet if I like and watch them on a DVD player in Europe or on the freaking moon. My intellectual explorations should not be restricted by some fat, cigar smoking, Harvard graduated executive who thinks he is my father and knows whats best for me. I am spending my money, and I will not be told what to spend it on. Nice flamebait. This is not a "personal vendeta against an individual". Far from it. I am against all that would restrict my freedom to learn and think. As far as freedom goes, those are the two most fundamental freedoms of all. Jack Valenti is merely one of those who is working actively to keep the people of the US, if not the people of the world, ignorant for his own profit. I am not personally against him. If you had said I had a vendetta against copyright, you might have had a halfway reasonable argument. Quite the contrary, actually. Your post has proved to me how right I actually am.This is a good example of the censorship that copyright produces. Copyright was created to increase the amount of information available to everyone. Instead, it is being used to keep people from accessing information that they would legitimately pay for.
The movies studios want to coerce fans into seeing the movie when and where the studios choose. Rather than allowing true fans to appreciate these movies when and where the fans, the customers, might want, they block their distribution. The movie studios do this whether or not the expect to release this movie in a given market. In the end, this leaves a minority of fans who have the interest and the financial means to see a movie locked out of it.
Whether or not the copyright holders of these movies believe they can make money in a given market, they will refuse to let people watch it. If they cannot make money, there is no incentive. If the information is not distributed, the incentive is not working for society and should not be granted to the rights holders. Either way, the movie studios are blatantly misusing their legal rights. Their legal rights exist to give enough incentive to get information to be disseminated, not to stand as a barrier to the dissemination of that information.
An individual should be able to purchase any movie from any market that person might desire to purchase from. Just because the majority of people in one area like some given thing does not mean everybody has to. Even if the movie is released in the US market, and most Asian movies are not, it still forces the US version on people, which in many cases has parts cut out of it and may be dubbed. An individual may want to watch the movie with subtitles or in its original language or in its original state.
The practice of restricting people by region is racist. Regionalizing is saying that because you live in such and such a country, you will pay such and such a price or watch movies in such and such a language. Because you live in such and such a country, you will know such information. What is the difference between this and bathrooms marked Colored and White? I guess Jack Valenti is more of a good-'ol-boy than we thought.
That is what one gets when one keeps crying wolf!
Unfortunately, the number of words in that sentence did not exhaust the immense volume of even the big lies told by SCO.
I hope the wolf is IBM.
That sounds like GPS.
Are you suggesting a Stack Positioning System where 5 or more sensors would determine the position of the book?
First of all, forking has nothing to do with projects being abandoned. Forking is the opposite of abandonment. It is the equivalent of a cell division. Where you had one cell, now you have two. This reduces the possibility of abandonment as there are two projects that have to be abandoned where there was formerly only one.
Secondly, and even more importantly, with Open Source or Free Software, if a project is abandoned, you still have the source code. If you still need the project's functionality, you can maintain the code. Projects can only be abandoned if you and everybody else abandones the project (i.e. if nobody wants it). Therefore, "abandonment" is not really abandonment in Free Software.
This stands in large contrast to closed source software. If Microsoft decides to kill a project, you are SOL. You do not have access to the source code, and even if you did, you would lack the right to modify it or even use it. In fact, MS can even revoke your right to use code that they have already distributed and that you have already paid for if they decide to.
Open Source or Free Software protect you from being locked out. You can use Free Software forever. Long after there is no market for a particular application, you can still have it for your purposes and customize it to your preferences.
Free Software is synonymous with free choice and customization. Free Software is software individualism.
The only way that Free Software would raise the TCO is if you wanted the features of two or more forks and expended resources to create your own fork of the forked projects. However, this would be equivalent to writing a closed source tool that did not exist with no market for your own use, except that in this case, you would already have 99% of the work done for you. You would just have to combine the code you wanted instead of writing it from scratch. In the end, it would cost a fraction of writing your own tool from scratch.
Claiming that forking is bad for Free Software is the same thing as saying that competition is bad for capitalism.
Then again, I suppose monopolists like MicroSuck think that competition is a bad thing to have in the market place. It reduces their control over the consumer.
However, according to the article you posted:
Therefore, while it is not military grade encryption, it is still good enough for some purposes. It will not protect you from a government or a corporation (if it so happens that they are interested enough in you commit the necessary resources), but it will probably protect you from your next door neighbor.
Could Darl be sued for libel?
The article says:
Since when does copyright protect the "right" to restrict people from removing information? I would think ripping an unwanted page out of a book and throwing it away would be unquestionably fair use.What are we going to have next? Is McDonald's tell us not to remove the pickles on their hamburgers because they have an agreement with some unknown pickle vendor?
It appears that Darl has finally come up with an accurate analogy:
I could not think of a better comparison. Both the music industry and SCO are abusing copyright and lending futher credence to the idea that copyright is just a tool for opression and censorship.I cannot wait until they claim "ownership" over the speech that comes out of my mouth.
If copyright was still limited to its original term of 14 years, this would not be a problem. Thank you Congress for selling out.
if the majority of games are on consoles, I can just get one and be relieved of the last reason to have Windoze running on anything (obviously, that console would not be an X-Box then). If games move away from the PC, there is truly no reason to use MS products. I guess Sony is doing us all a favor (us all = people who believe in freedom).
Now, if we could just stop MS from suing mod chip makers, all would be golden.
MS = MacroSlavery
if this cabling could not be used to set up some sort of ExtraNet.
Linking old/unused/unowned cables might make for a really cool hobbyists network if the locations of the cables could be known and the cables could be linked cheaply. Of course, a bunch of serial and coax cables would make for a fairly slow ExtraNet, but it would still be cool to route around the controls currently being imposed by our corporate masters.
Those days are over.
Today, a book that is thrown away -- unlinked -- is effectively destroyed. When a server is turned off, that information is rendered inaccessible to the world at large. A DRM'd work is similarly useless. If only one person has the right to store and disseminate a given piece or set of information, that information is vulnerable to complete destruction, and everybody stands to lose. Still copyright protects people's "right" to hide and destroy information.
Why should information (which we cannot judge to be valuable or not until we have encountered it) be allowed to be destroyed? Can We, as a society, afford this?
We are misusing the Internet, which was designed to replicate information in a fault tolerant way. Whether or not any given information is valuable to business should not be our question. Our question should be: How can We allow laws originally conceived to increase the volume and newness of information to prevent Our access to information? Instead of making Us more educated, copyright is making Us more ignorant, and putting some people in court and stealing their hard earned cash (this is actual theft, be it legal or not, because the person is actually deprived of real money, as opposed to the "theft" of P2P which deprives copyright holders of fictitious money -- they call it "potential profit").
Ignorance has profited many regimes from the book burnings of China's First Emperor to the prohibitions on education in the Indonesia of the Dutch. However, today, it is supposed to be We The People who rule. If that is so, why do we allow a few scattered monopolists to steal from Us the information that empowers Us to be the rulers of Our elected representatives? If government censorship is wrong, why is corporate censorship right (especially when corporations have so much influence over governments)?
Access and copy restrictions should be illegal for all intellectual material, since, if it is "intellectual property" at all, it is the property of Us The People for Whom the Constitution of United States and all similar documents were written. It is every individual's responsibility to replicate as much information as possible to ensure the information is available to everyone even after the publisher's fickle breezes have changed course.
I thank the Internet Archive for its humble attempt at fulfilling this responsibility. Where are the rest of Us The People who are willing and able to defend their right to learn, nay, their right to think?
Now the RIAA and/or its members can kill off all of their top selling artists and raise the prices of the late artists' albums and perpetually discover "previously unreleased tracks".
Artists will sing more than the exhaustion of all the breath given to them for the spans of their lives, and the RIAA will have the copyrights until their great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren die... or longer.
I am certain that the investors' board will be happy.
It is such a great time to be a monopolist!
Scenario One: Blue Screen of Apocalypse
Scene one:
Scene two: Scene three:Scenario Two: Plague of Totality
"Where do you want to go tomorrow?"