There's another really nice tool that has the advantage that EVERY car already has one: Odometer
That would be all well and good if a mileage tax was really what they were after. It should be obvious to anyone who is familiar with the events over the past decade or so, however, that this is hardly the case. Now that they have identified where everybody is going on airplanes, cars are an unknown variable. This system, pawned off as a "tax" is like using the "drinking age" to get everybody to carry ID. It identifies cars -- and by extension their drivers -- with locations constantly. It is just one step further toward Big Brother and a Federal government knows where you are and what you are doing at all times.
How the crap do you do that? Lets see, Intel makes a top of the line CPU called the Core i7, however within 3 years, that CPU will be considered mid to low end.
Well, maybe if Intel were not colluding with MS to trick people into believing that 3 year old computers were obsolete, this problem might not exist. Intel wants to sell processors, so they deliberately create the illusion of obsolescence to accelerate the upgrade cycle. In truth, anything that is fast enough to play DVDs (any computer faster than about 5~700MHz for i386 processors) is fast enough for the average user. But people are still conned into the "faster == better" mentality.
So, if they were not purposefully trying to make their older products obsolete, I would totally agree, but as a poster above said: "Yea, a lot of crap makes it past the three year mark, but most of it is DESIGNED to be thrown out. i.e. they are engineering waste." He was right on. Intel is "engineering waste", and they should pay for it.
This is already being done, and it is part of the problem. Much if not most of the electronic waste from the US is sent to China where it poisons rivers and people.
This is different than the outsourcing problem, though, as it is based in hardware. It probably will not be cheap to ship tons and tons of electronic waste across an ocean. Local businesses could profit quite a great deal from the fact that it costs more to ship than to process at home. If this incentive is not enough, go after the materials. Create a large export duty for electronic waste. I really doubt the governments of the world will complain that the US is too protectionist for keeping its garbage at home.
Why should a manufacturer that has created a product and sold it on to a new owner be held responsible for its disposal.
I think this idea is the product of two things in modern markets: "disposable" products and control of materials.
In the olden days, as we are all told by our grand and great grandparents, things were built to last. People purchased things and used them for years. Many things were handed down through families for generations. There were no concepts like "planned obsolescence" where manufacturers would deliberately create flawed products so those products could be sold multiple times. Restaurants did not cut costs by using single use utensils, napkins, and cups. These things were washed. Glass bottles when not broken could be reused. When broken, they could be melted down and made into more glass bottles. This process was relatively simple.
Today, things are very clearly different. When we eat in a restaurant and often even at home, we use disposable utensils, bottles, cups and plates. Nobody carries a handkerchief anymore. Instead people use tons of tissues every day to wipe their noses and mouths. In fact, it is getting almost impossible to purchase drinks in glass bottles anywhere these days.
Who is responsible for this? Obviously the people manufacturing these things. It cannot be the buyers because they do not have a choice. Nobody asks "glass or plastic" at 7-11. McDonald's does not offer washable cups instead of paper. How can the purchaser be called responsible when the purchaser is not the one making the choice?
The materials problem is obviously another facet of this disposable trend. Materials used to be relatively simple. Glass was glass. Metal was metal. When disposing of simpler substances, processes are easier. Glass and metal can be melted and reshaped, for instance. Wood can be reused for other purposes. If not, it naturally breaks down.
Plastic, on the other hand, and many paper products do not break down easily or quickly. These materials are lighter and easier to handle than traditional materials, but the cost savings comes at the expense of the environment. From the standpoint of the average human lifespan, these things last forever. Food containers, almost universally, are now made of plastic which will not decompose on anything but a geologic time scale.
As I said above, the choice of these materials is not made by the people who purchase these products. The choice is made by the manufacturers. If McDonald's sold drinks in glasses, they would bear the burden of washing and disposing of the cups. It would be more economically advantageous for them to keep the cups and reuse them. When they pass the buck by using disposable materials -- even for meals inside the restaurant -- they are pushing their costs off to other parts of society.
What is so unreasonable about returning the costs to the people who created them? The environmental impact will cost society sooner or later. Claiming that the pollution of the world is not one's problem while using materials and manufacturing processes that obviously and rapidly increase the pollution of the world to cut costs is criminal. These people are taking money and energy from the future to enrich themselves for the present. When you use a credit card, do you just charge and never pay the bill?
Your attitude is hardly Libertarian. If the premise of Libertariansim is -- as every one says -- to allow any given individual to do whatever that individual wants as long as it does not harm another individual or another individual's property, then it should be fairly obvious that poisoning everybody else or the Earth -- from which we all derive our food, lives, and property -- is violating other people's rights. If you own a factory and it spews noxious gasses that poison a neighbouring town and even one person dies, are you guilty of murder? Is it Libertarian to allow this?
I honestly cannot see where this Libertarian ideal can claim poisoning villages in China is not a crime. Poisoning people is harming them. Polluting their land is harming their property. Just because they live half way around the world does not make them any less human.
How does poisoning the world and potentially harming everyone fit into this picture? Even good Libertarians must see that in cases where everyone is involved, like global air and water supplies, individuals who pollute are harming people and their property.
The Feds should stop beating up on the industry and instead beat up on the Municipal governements.
Dealing with trash is what they are supposed to be responsible for.
Why, precisely, should the manufacturers not be responsible for toxic waste that they generate? This is especially true since if they manufacture things to have a short lifetime so they can sell more products, they are deliberately generating more trash and profiting from it. These manufacturers are profiting at the expense of our health.
Wow, from that, it really sounds like New Orleans really is a part of the Third World;-) I cannot think of a time in my life -- going back to the 80's -- when throwing a computer in the trash seemed like socially or ethically permissible behaviour. Before the 80's, there were not really computers to toss, but TVs and VCRs and other electronic devices always seemed to be something that needed some sort of special disposal.
Do people in your community also frequently toss small trash on the sidewalks and streets? I am talking about things like gum wrappers, bottles, and other small garbage. Did you never get angry at your friends for this sort of behaviour?
Free Speech is not limited to "political speech" by any means. It means governments do not have the right to restrict speech. Exceptions are supposed to be limited and few. The Berne Convention -- and by extrapolation any copyright law that implements it (in other words, almost all current copyright laws) -- has two portions that are very hostile to Free Speech.
The first is the lack of formalities (applications for copyright and documentation upon precisely what materials are copyrighted). Basically, by making all written communication copyrighted, speech cannot be Free. If I write you a letter, can I sue you when you copy a portion of it? How large a portion? Online speech is all subject to copyright because of this badly designed legislation. Every IM conversation is a copyrighted work. Because servers cache everything, even voice conversations on the Internet could be considered copyrighted works.
The second is derivative works. Derivative works rights give authors the power not only to censor reproduction of their original speech, but also any speech that was a "derivative" of it. You could technically claim that a response to a Slashdot comment you made was a derivative work even if your comment was not quoted in the response. How is that not a threat to Free Speech?
Copyright used to apply to a small fraction of a percent of speech. Now, it applies to all non-face-to-face communication. I will ask my old question once again: How can speech be Free when all speech is "owned"?
The other point is where you get these rights from? GOD? This is scary, as the move to make this country secular puts your rights on thin ice.
Just because the source of these inalienable Rights is unknown or, better yet, undefined does not mean that they are dependent upon such a source. I do not believe that Jehova had a deal with the Founding Fathers to strike anybody with lightning who willingly violated the Constitution. The reason these rights are inalienable is this: These are in many ways the minimum Rights necessary for the system to function. By threatening any of these Rights for any individual, everybody's Rights are threatened. These Rights come from nature as there is no way to guarantee Rights for some but not for all without tyranny.
Therefore, you can assign any origin to these Rights you want: physics (it is a property of reality), logic (it does make sense to do it any other way), God (if a being created everything, that being should be able to take credit for the properties within that creation), the Tao (it is impossible to enforce Rights for some in the absence of Rights for all), or even Jefferson (smart guy). I think the reason the terms "inalienable" and "natural" were chosen for a reason. They avoid this fixation on a specific creed and allow people of all faiths or no faith to have the same belief in Freedom.
I'd also go further and require that any software shipping with DRM that restricts any fair use rights should be required to have exactly what rights it restricts, and how it restricts them, labelled on the outside of the box.
What about future Fair Use rights? Fair Use, until very recently, was not codified, and even today, the enumeration in Title 17 is not a complete listing of all Fair Use rights (for instance, most people consider copying mp3s to a portable player or a phone to be Fair Use, but nowhere in the codified law does it say this is Fair Use, and a strict reading of the law would lead one to the conclusion that this activity was certainly illegal). Before codification and even now, many Fair Use rights are decided by precedent in the courts. How could a label cover all that?
Still, I like the direction your thoughts are taking:-) A Surgeon General's style warning might be nice: "DRM has been known to cause fits of rage and even strokes in some individuals."
It's going to take a while before my £200 e-reader, with it's actually not any cheaper electronic copies of books, with lesser availability (pirate makes more available, but all too often the formatting is rubbish, and I do _want_ to pay for my books).
However there's one killer - I can drop a paperback, and it'll still be fine. Ebook readers have a long way to go before they stop being fragile and expensive to repair.
I do not have that problem as I usually use my phone. With a 2GB card, I can store all the books I want, but they have to be HTML or text because I have to use Opera or FBReader. DRM makes buying books impossible. I find it interesting that their attempts to profit from books keeps me from buying them. I usually just read Project Gutenberg files instead. And because the screen is backlit, I can read in the dark. Who needs a dedicated an crippled e-book reader, anyway;-)
Another difference might be with target market. Someone trying to appeal to children or teens, a tech-savvy but fairly cost sensitive(and often credit-cardless) demographic, might worry more about piracy, since if downloading or copying from a friend at school is easier than whining for mom's credit card, they lose a sale. Someone trying to appeal to twenty-something techies with online buying power might not face the same hurdles.
I think the problem with this argument is the point of view. Looking at individual sales seems absurd to me. One by one, one might say, "I lost a sale there and gained a sale here." The balance will always be negative. However, if you gain 100 fans and lose 10 sales, you are sure to profit. Teenagers actually have a lot of disposable cash -- often more than their parents. No one is ever going to get 100% of their fan base to pay. This is just a fact of nature. However, another fact of nature is: The bigger the fan base, the more money will be paid. More fans, more money.
This is just like the problem with the First Law of Robotics in I Robot. When taken individually, the law was excellent. When applied to the human race as a whole, the law required (even increasing) tyranny. "Lost sales" are the same: When taken individually, they seem catastrophic. When taken as a whole, they are more likely profitable (as advertising expenditures are).
Yeah, that and currently, at least, the publishers often decide who is popular and who is not. The traditional filtration works for some and not for others. It is entirely possible and indeed probable that a great number of excellent authors have been passed over or buried because of publishers' perception of current market tastes. The Internet provides a way out for these authors.
I still fail to see how subjectively judged prowess as an author has anything to do with these two authors' views on copyright. What does it matter if they write good books or bad? Popular or not? How does this have any relation to their opinions on how the law affects them? They are just the opinions of two people.
For the record, I think I should mention that I do not in the slightest like any of Doctorow's works. I agree with many if not most of the things he says about copyright, though.
This comparison is an irrelevant Red Herring. Being more read or having more degrees does not make one speaker (yes, authors are speakers -- just because their words are "fixed in a tangible medium" does not mean they are not words) better than another. The point of Free Speech is that each speaker has an equal right to express his or her opinion. These opinions should be judged upon their merits, not upon from whence they originated.
How do you expect there to be equal rights if people are judged in such a prejudicial way?
I think his point is that they are still making a profit despite their constant claims that they are being destroyed by "piracy". The RIAA is a dishonest organization, and they are not suffering from file sharing the way they say they are. They just see the possibility that they could have 10 times more sales than they have ever had by forcing people to pay for actions that were formerly deemed Fair Use.
In other words, let us hope there is a worse fate for the book publishers because despite their whining, the RIAA and its members have not suffered near so much as they deserve. They hate the Constitution and they love money, and their greed is paying off. This is all while thousands of families lose their life savings to the RIAA's political agenda.
That is about the most perfect summary of why e-books have not taken off that I have ever heard. Excellent really. As usual, publisher greed is ruining something that could be nice.
For instance, considering that e-books cost next to nothing to produce or copy, why are the publishers not offering free electronic copies of any paper books that one buys? I have bought the book, right? Why should I not get the added convenience of having it on any device that is handy?
Unfortunately, the publishers are probably thinking that I would pay for the same book many times over -- and that they could force me to do so somehow.
If we gave author lifetime plus a billion years, it'd still be limited.
Okay, Mr. Bono. Limited? Limited how? The copyright in such a case would exist longer than the work in question. From the standpoint of evolution that would be unlimited because it would be greater than the entire existence of the species Homo sapiens. For creationists, such a copyright term would be longer than existence itself.
There is a zero percent chance that the author's family will even exist as long as that term, so it is unlimited with respect to the author's familial obligations as well.
Let us face it: Any terms longer than the average human lifespan are unlimited with respect to individual Rights. This means that since a given individual will not be able to exercise his Right during his lifetime, he might as well not have the Right at all. Remember, Free Speech is a natural, inalienable Right. Copyright is not.
They shouldn't abolish copyright... they should simply read a little bit of history and understand that it wasn't an idea created to create a corporate cash cow.
It was meant to give creative ARTISTS an incentive to WRITE MORE. Set the copyright expiry at a reasonable level. Let them release a new edition of a work and get a new copyright as new derivative work. Doing something like that is closer to what the framers of Constitution really had in mind.
Okay, that is a bit idealistic. While those are the ideals the publishers of the time put forth, they had the current situation in mind: a monopoly on all speech for their exclusive profit at the expense of the artists. Unfortunately, the artists have also bought into this absurd lie as well. Many artists honestly believe that, without a monopoly, they could not profit from their ideas and that their ideas are their "property". As a result, they are slaves defending their masters and their masters' privilege to abuse them.
The People. The ultimate holders of authority. If they decide to amend the Constitution to abolish your and everyone else's copyright, they can, so I suggest you show them some respect.
The Constitution does not have to be amended. All that is needed is a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress. A single act could repeal patent, copyright, trademark, and probably even trade secret law in one fell swoop. The Constitution says that "Congress shall have the power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts . .." The Constitution does not say that "Congress is required to . .." This means that Congress can pass these laws at its discretion and, I have read, that Congress has no obligation to the beneficiaries of these laws if they are repealed. If Congress takes away someone's land, that person is entitled to compensation. If Congress takes away someone's copyright, no compensation is necessary.
Also, since copyright is a Constitutionally granted Federal power, the States may not be able to enact copyright laws of their own.
I am shocked at Slashdot's headline for this post. The Washington Post's title "Force Behind Copyright" is much more appropriate. Anyone involved with bringing the 1976 Copyright Act into existence should be jailed, not commended. It is the most significant blow to Free Speech since the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, Barbara A. Ringer is a traitor, a modern day Benedict Arnold, for helping to draft this legislation.
Long before 1976, Fair Use was recognised in common law (decisions based on precedent rather than legal code). However, until 1976, Fair Use was not codified in any laws. This meant that the scope of Fair Use was up to the judges to decide. This also meant that it was virtually unlimited because any judicial decision could expand its scope as people understood it. By codifying Fair Use, it became possible to restrict the boundaries of Fair Use by limiting it to the encoded law. This means future actions that might be deemed Fair Use by the courts would be limited or avoided by the law (as for future uses, P2P and other file sharing comes to mind). This was precisely the argument used by the opponents of the codification of Fair Use, and it is obvious today that they were right. If ordinary citizens can be sued for hundreds of millions of dollars for having a few mp3s on their computers, Fair Use clearly is not protecting the public enough.
The second reason that Fair Use was codified in the 1976 Copyright Act is also insidious. The copyright lobby wanted this law to appear fair and balanced when presenting it to Congress. Including Fair Use allowed them to claim that they had conceded something to the public. This is disgusting because it was something that the public already had, and the copyright lobby took it away, crippled it, and returned it saying, "Look, we have given you a gift!" This is as if your neighbor took your car out for a drive without your permission, destroyed the transmission, and returned it to you saying, "Here is a new car for you!"
Finally, by keeping the different interested parties together, she brought into being a horrible law which we have all suffered from ever since. If the law had failed, as it should of, I certainly would not be calling copyright unconstitutional today. Unfortunately, though, the law did pass, and so today we have no system to show what copyrights exist (the 1976 Copyright Act abolished the requirement for copyright applications and certificates -- the very copyrights themselves -- eliminating the creation of all records of which copyrights covered which information and who the copyright holders actually were), "limited Times" that are longer than the average human lifespan (obviously unlimited from the perspective of and given human and, thus, unconstitutional), and derivative works rights (allowing copyright holders or even claimants to expand their monopoly to speech that the holders themselves did not create just because it was similar to what they created).
All of these additions to copyright created massive legal uncertainty. Which words are whose copyright? No one knows. Which works are a derivative? No one knows. Which authors are living or dead, and how do we contact them? No one knows.
Since 1976, it is nearly impossible to distinguish copyrighted speech from Free Speech, and because of automatic copyrights, all speech recorded in any medium (any server, any computer, any phone with memory) is a copyrighted work. Before 1978, when the 1976 Copyright Act took effect, copyright affected a very small percentage of speech. Today, nearly all speech is copyrighted. I ask the question again: If all speech is "owned", how can there be Free Speech?
Barbara A. Ringer was a criminal, and enemy of the Freedom enshrined in the Constitution of the United States, and an opponent of Free People everywhere in the world. She does not deserve anyone's praise.
Slashdot Mirror
There's another really nice tool that has the advantage that EVERY car already has one: Odometer
That would be all well and good if a mileage tax was really what they were after. It should be obvious to anyone who is familiar with the events over the past decade or so, however, that this is hardly the case. Now that they have identified where everybody is going on airplanes, cars are an unknown variable. This system, pawned off as a "tax" is like using the "drinking age" to get everybody to carry ID. It identifies cars -- and by extension their drivers -- with locations constantly. It is just one step further toward Big Brother and a Federal government knows where you are and what you are doing at all times.
How the crap do you do that? Lets see, Intel makes a top of the line CPU called the Core i7, however within 3 years, that CPU will be considered mid to low end.
Well, maybe if Intel were not colluding with MS to trick people into believing that 3 year old computers were obsolete, this problem might not exist. Intel wants to sell processors, so they deliberately create the illusion of obsolescence to accelerate the upgrade cycle. In truth, anything that is fast enough to play DVDs (any computer faster than about 5~700MHz for i386 processors) is fast enough for the average user. But people are still conned into the "faster == better" mentality.
So, if they were not purposefully trying to make their older products obsolete, I would totally agree, but as a poster above said: "Yea, a lot of crap makes it past the three year mark, but most of it is DESIGNED to be thrown out. i.e. they are engineering waste." He was right on. Intel is "engineering waste", and they should pay for it.
This is already being done, and it is part of the problem. Much if not most of the electronic waste from the US is sent to China where it poisons rivers and people.
This is different than the outsourcing problem, though, as it is based in hardware. It probably will not be cheap to ship tons and tons of electronic waste across an ocean. Local businesses could profit quite a great deal from the fact that it costs more to ship than to process at home. If this incentive is not enough, go after the materials. Create a large export duty for electronic waste. I really doubt the governments of the world will complain that the US is too protectionist for keeping its garbage at home.
If the manufacturers used non-toxic, biodegradable materials, I doubt there would even be a discussion. However, we all know that is not the case.
Lucky you.
Why should a manufacturer that has created a product and sold it on to a new owner be held responsible for its disposal.
I think this idea is the product of two things in modern markets: "disposable" products and control of materials.
In the olden days, as we are all told by our grand and great grandparents, things were built to last. People purchased things and used them for years. Many things were handed down through families for generations. There were no concepts like "planned obsolescence" where manufacturers would deliberately create flawed products so those products could be sold multiple times. Restaurants did not cut costs by using single use utensils, napkins, and cups. These things were washed. Glass bottles when not broken could be reused. When broken, they could be melted down and made into more glass bottles. This process was relatively simple.
Today, things are very clearly different. When we eat in a restaurant and often even at home, we use disposable utensils, bottles, cups and plates. Nobody carries a handkerchief anymore. Instead people use tons of tissues every day to wipe their noses and mouths. In fact, it is getting almost impossible to purchase drinks in glass bottles anywhere these days.
Who is responsible for this? Obviously the people manufacturing these things. It cannot be the buyers because they do not have a choice. Nobody asks "glass or plastic" at 7-11. McDonald's does not offer washable cups instead of paper. How can the purchaser be called responsible when the purchaser is not the one making the choice?
The materials problem is obviously another facet of this disposable trend. Materials used to be relatively simple. Glass was glass. Metal was metal. When disposing of simpler substances, processes are easier. Glass and metal can be melted and reshaped, for instance. Wood can be reused for other purposes. If not, it naturally breaks down.
Plastic, on the other hand, and many paper products do not break down easily or quickly. These materials are lighter and easier to handle than traditional materials, but the cost savings comes at the expense of the environment. From the standpoint of the average human lifespan, these things last forever. Food containers, almost universally, are now made of plastic which will not decompose on anything but a geologic time scale.
As I said above, the choice of these materials is not made by the people who purchase these products. The choice is made by the manufacturers. If McDonald's sold drinks in glasses, they would bear the burden of washing and disposing of the cups. It would be more economically advantageous for them to keep the cups and reuse them. When they pass the buck by using disposable materials -- even for meals inside the restaurant -- they are pushing their costs off to other parts of society.
What is so unreasonable about returning the costs to the people who created them? The environmental impact will cost society sooner or later. Claiming that the pollution of the world is not one's problem while using materials and manufacturing processes that obviously and rapidly increase the pollution of the world to cut costs is criminal. These people are taking money and energy from the future to enrich themselves for the present. When you use a credit card, do you just charge and never pay the bill?
Your attitude is hardly Libertarian. If the premise of Libertariansim is -- as every one says -- to allow any given individual to do whatever that individual wants as long as it does not harm another individual or another individual's property, then it should be fairly obvious that poisoning everybody else or the Earth -- from which we all derive our food, lives, and property -- is violating other people's rights. If you own a factory and it spews noxious gasses that poison a neighbouring town and even one person dies, are you guilty of murder? Is it Libertarian to allow this?
I honestly cannot see where this Libertarian ideal can claim poisoning villages in China is not a crime. Poisoning people is harming them. Polluting their land is harming their property. Just because they live half way around the world does not make them any less human.
How does poisoning the world and potentially harming everyone fit into this picture? Even good Libertarians must see that in cases where everyone is involved, like global air and water supplies, individuals who pollute are harming people and their property.
The Feds should stop beating up on the industry and instead beat up on the Municipal governements.
Dealing with trash is what they are supposed to be responsible for.
Why, precisely, should the manufacturers not be responsible for toxic waste that they generate? This is especially true since if they manufacture things to have a short lifetime so they can sell more products, they are deliberately generating more trash and profiting from it. These manufacturers are profiting at the expense of our health.
Wow, from that, it really sounds like New Orleans really is a part of the Third World ;-) I cannot think of a time in my life -- going back to the 80's -- when throwing a computer in the trash seemed like socially or ethically permissible behaviour. Before the 80's, there were not really computers to toss, but TVs and VCRs and other electronic devices always seemed to be something that needed some sort of special disposal.
Do people in your community also frequently toss small trash on the sidewalks and streets? I am talking about things like gum wrappers, bottles, and other small garbage. Did you never get angry at your friends for this sort of behaviour?
Free Speech is not limited to "political speech" by any means. It means governments do not have the right to restrict speech. Exceptions are supposed to be limited and few. The Berne Convention -- and by extrapolation any copyright law that implements it (in other words, almost all current copyright laws) -- has two portions that are very hostile to Free Speech.
The first is the lack of formalities (applications for copyright and documentation upon precisely what materials are copyrighted). Basically, by making all written communication copyrighted, speech cannot be Free. If I write you a letter, can I sue you when you copy a portion of it? How large a portion? Online speech is all subject to copyright because of this badly designed legislation. Every IM conversation is a copyrighted work. Because servers cache everything, even voice conversations on the Internet could be considered copyrighted works.
The second is derivative works. Derivative works rights give authors the power not only to censor reproduction of their original speech, but also any speech that was a "derivative" of it. You could technically claim that a response to a Slashdot comment you made was a derivative work even if your comment was not quoted in the response. How is that not a threat to Free Speech?
Copyright used to apply to a small fraction of a percent of speech. Now, it applies to all non-face-to-face communication. I will ask my old question once again: How can speech be Free when all speech is "owned"?
The other point is where you get these rights from? GOD? This is scary, as the move to make this country secular puts your rights on thin ice.
Just because the source of these inalienable Rights is unknown or, better yet, undefined does not mean that they are dependent upon such a source. I do not believe that Jehova had a deal with the Founding Fathers to strike anybody with lightning who willingly violated the Constitution. The reason these rights are inalienable is this: These are in many ways the minimum Rights necessary for the system to function. By threatening any of these Rights for any individual, everybody's Rights are threatened. These Rights come from nature as there is no way to guarantee Rights for some but not for all without tyranny.
Therefore, you can assign any origin to these Rights you want: physics (it is a property of reality), logic (it does make sense to do it any other way), God (if a being created everything, that being should be able to take credit for the properties within that creation), the Tao (it is impossible to enforce Rights for some in the absence of Rights for all), or even Jefferson (smart guy). I think the reason the terms "inalienable" and "natural" were chosen for a reason. They avoid this fixation on a specific creed and allow people of all faiths or no faith to have the same belief in Freedom.
I'd also go further and require that any software shipping with DRM that restricts any fair use rights should be required to have exactly what rights it restricts, and how it restricts them, labelled on the outside of the box.
What about future Fair Use rights? Fair Use, until very recently, was not codified, and even today, the enumeration in Title 17 is not a complete listing of all Fair Use rights (for instance, most people consider copying mp3s to a portable player or a phone to be Fair Use, but nowhere in the codified law does it say this is Fair Use, and a strict reading of the law would lead one to the conclusion that this activity was certainly illegal). Before codification and even now, many Fair Use rights are decided by precedent in the courts. How could a label cover all that?
Still, I like the direction your thoughts are taking :-) A Surgeon General's style warning might be nice: "DRM has been known to cause fits of rage and even strokes in some individuals."
It's going to take a while before my £200 e-reader, with it's actually not any cheaper electronic copies of books, with lesser availability (pirate makes more available, but all too often the formatting is rubbish, and I do _want_ to pay for my books).
However there's one killer - I can drop a paperback, and it'll still be fine. Ebook readers have a long way to go before they stop being fragile and expensive to repair.
I do not have that problem as I usually use my phone. With a 2GB card, I can store all the books I want, but they have to be HTML or text because I have to use Opera or FBReader. DRM makes buying books impossible. I find it interesting that their attempts to profit from books keeps me from buying them. I usually just read Project Gutenberg files instead. And because the screen is backlit, I can read in the dark. Who needs a dedicated an crippled e-book reader, anyway ;-)
Another difference might be with target market. Someone trying to appeal to children or teens, a tech-savvy but fairly cost sensitive(and often credit-cardless) demographic, might worry more about piracy, since if downloading or copying from a friend at school is easier than whining for mom's credit card, they lose a sale. Someone trying to appeal to twenty-something techies with online buying power might not face the same hurdles.
I think the problem with this argument is the point of view. Looking at individual sales seems absurd to me. One by one, one might say, "I lost a sale there and gained a sale here." The balance will always be negative. However, if you gain 100 fans and lose 10 sales, you are sure to profit. Teenagers actually have a lot of disposable cash -- often more than their parents. No one is ever going to get 100% of their fan base to pay. This is just a fact of nature. However, another fact of nature is: The bigger the fan base, the more money will be paid. More fans, more money.
This is just like the problem with the First Law of Robotics in I Robot. When taken individually, the law was excellent. When applied to the human race as a whole, the law required (even increasing) tyranny. "Lost sales" are the same: When taken individually, they seem catastrophic. When taken as a whole, they are more likely profitable (as advertising expenditures are).
Yeah, that and currently, at least, the publishers often decide who is popular and who is not. The traditional filtration works for some and not for others. It is entirely possible and indeed probable that a great number of excellent authors have been passed over or buried because of publishers' perception of current market tastes. The Internet provides a way out for these authors.
I still fail to see how subjectively judged prowess as an author has anything to do with these two authors' views on copyright. What does it matter if they write good books or bad? Popular or not? How does this have any relation to their opinions on how the law affects them? They are just the opinions of two people.
For the record, I think I should mention that I do not in the slightest like any of Doctorow's works. I agree with many if not most of the things he says about copyright, though.
This comparison is an irrelevant Red Herring. Being more read or having more degrees does not make one speaker (yes, authors are speakers -- just because their words are "fixed in a tangible medium" does not mean they are not words) better than another. The point of Free Speech is that each speaker has an equal right to express his or her opinion. These opinions should be judged upon their merits, not upon from whence they originated.
How do you expect there to be equal rights if people are judged in such a prejudicial way?
I think his point is that they are still making a profit despite their constant claims that they are being destroyed by "piracy". The RIAA is a dishonest organization, and they are not suffering from file sharing the way they say they are. They just see the possibility that they could have 10 times more sales than they have ever had by forcing people to pay for actions that were formerly deemed Fair Use.
In other words, let us hope there is a worse fate for the book publishers because despite their whining, the RIAA and its members have not suffered near so much as they deserve. They hate the Constitution and they love money, and their greed is paying off. This is all while thousands of families lose their life savings to the RIAA's political agenda.
That is about the most perfect summary of why e-books have not taken off that I have ever heard. Excellent really. As usual, publisher greed is ruining something that could be nice.
For instance, considering that e-books cost next to nothing to produce or copy, why are the publishers not offering free electronic copies of any paper books that one buys? I have bought the book, right? Why should I not get the added convenience of having it on any device that is handy?
Unfortunately, the publishers are probably thinking that I would pay for the same book many times over -- and that they could force me to do so somehow.
If we gave author lifetime plus a billion years, it'd still be limited.
Okay, Mr. Bono. Limited? Limited how? The copyright in such a case would exist longer than the work in question. From the standpoint of evolution that would be unlimited because it would be greater than the entire existence of the species Homo sapiens. For creationists, such a copyright term would be longer than existence itself.
There is a zero percent chance that the author's family will even exist as long as that term, so it is unlimited with respect to the author's familial obligations as well.
Let us face it: Any terms longer than the average human lifespan are unlimited with respect to individual Rights. This means that since a given individual will not be able to exercise his Right during his lifetime, he might as well not have the Right at all. Remember, Free Speech is a natural, inalienable Right. Copyright is not.
They shouldn't abolish copyright... they should simply read a little bit of history and understand that it wasn't an idea created to create a corporate cash cow.
It was meant to give creative ARTISTS an incentive to WRITE MORE. Set the copyright expiry at a reasonable level. Let them release a new edition of a work and get a new copyright as new derivative work. Doing something like that is closer to what the framers of Constitution really had in mind.
Okay, that is a bit idealistic. While those are the ideals the publishers of the time put forth, they had the current situation in mind: a monopoly on all speech for their exclusive profit at the expense of the artists. Unfortunately, the artists have also bought into this absurd lie as well. Many artists honestly believe that, without a monopoly, they could not profit from their ideas and that their ideas are their "property". As a result, they are slaves defending their masters and their masters' privilege to abuse them.
Absolutely correct except for one small thing:
The Constitution does not have to be amended. All that is needed is a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress. A single act could repeal patent, copyright, trademark, and probably even trade secret law in one fell swoop. The Constitution says that "Congress shall have the power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts . . ." The Constitution does not say that "Congress is required to . . ." This means that Congress can pass these laws at its discretion and, I have read, that Congress has no obligation to the beneficiaries of these laws if they are repealed. If Congress takes away someone's land, that person is entitled to compensation. If Congress takes away someone's copyright, no compensation is necessary.
Also, since copyright is a Constitutionally granted Federal power, the States may not be able to enact copyright laws of their own.
I am shocked at Slashdot's headline for this post. The Washington Post's title "Force Behind Copyright" is much more appropriate. Anyone involved with bringing the 1976 Copyright Act into existence should be jailed, not commended. It is the most significant blow to Free Speech since the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, Barbara A. Ringer is a traitor, a modern day Benedict Arnold, for helping to draft this legislation.
Long before 1976, Fair Use was recognised in common law (decisions based on precedent rather than legal code). However, until 1976, Fair Use was not codified in any laws. This meant that the scope of Fair Use was up to the judges to decide. This also meant that it was virtually unlimited because any judicial decision could expand its scope as people understood it. By codifying Fair Use, it became possible to restrict the boundaries of Fair Use by limiting it to the encoded law. This means future actions that might be deemed Fair Use by the courts would be limited or avoided by the law (as for future uses, P2P and other file sharing comes to mind). This was precisely the argument used by the opponents of the codification of Fair Use, and it is obvious today that they were right. If ordinary citizens can be sued for hundreds of millions of dollars for having a few mp3s on their computers, Fair Use clearly is not protecting the public enough.
The second reason that Fair Use was codified in the 1976 Copyright Act is also insidious. The copyright lobby wanted this law to appear fair and balanced when presenting it to Congress. Including Fair Use allowed them to claim that they had conceded something to the public. This is disgusting because it was something that the public already had, and the copyright lobby took it away, crippled it, and returned it saying, "Look, we have given you a gift!" This is as if your neighbor took your car out for a drive without your permission, destroyed the transmission, and returned it to you saying, "Here is a new car for you!"
Finally, by keeping the different interested parties together, she brought into being a horrible law which we have all suffered from ever since. If the law had failed, as it should of, I certainly would not be calling copyright unconstitutional today. Unfortunately, though, the law did pass, and so today we have no system to show what copyrights exist (the 1976 Copyright Act abolished the requirement for copyright applications and certificates -- the very copyrights themselves -- eliminating the creation of all records of which copyrights covered which information and who the copyright holders actually were), "limited Times" that are longer than the average human lifespan (obviously unlimited from the perspective of and given human and, thus, unconstitutional), and derivative works rights (allowing copyright holders or even claimants to expand their monopoly to speech that the holders themselves did not create just because it was similar to what they created).
All of these additions to copyright created massive legal uncertainty. Which words are whose copyright? No one knows. Which works are a derivative? No one knows. Which authors are living or dead, and how do we contact them? No one knows.
Since 1976, it is nearly impossible to distinguish copyrighted speech from Free Speech, and because of automatic copyrights, all speech recorded in any medium (any server, any computer, any phone with memory) is a copyrighted work. Before 1978, when the 1976 Copyright Act took effect, copyright affected a very small percentage of speech. Today, nearly all speech is copyrighted. I ask the question again: If all speech is "owned", how can there be Free Speech?
Barbara A. Ringer was a criminal, and enemy of the Freedom enshrined in the Constitution of the United States, and an opponent of Free People everywhere in the world. She does not deserve anyone's praise.
I could not possibly agree more.