But that is just the point. This is not and never was about the artists. The "artists" are the ultimate red herring. The fat cat businessmen trump "artists" out every time someone threatens their profits. "Oh, the poor artists!! They will starve! (But my steak cost a hundred bucks, and I live in a palace -- Suckers!!!)" They know very well that nobody is going to pass a law to defend their $10,000 suit or their million dollar paycheck.
Copyright supports the crooks: plain and simple. All this stuff about artists is just smoke and mirrors.
Piracy != lost profits because the author has no right to reap profits from the work in the first place. If "piracy" were limited to commercial piracy, then there would definitely be lost profits: money paid for the information but not to the legitimate recipients.
However, authors or other copyright holders have no right to impose fees on transactions of information. Nor do they have a right to receive money for every use of their works. Libraries are case in point. Are authors victims of "unauthorised" borrowing at libraries? Is each time a person reads a book at the library and does not buy it a "lost sale"?
The "lost sale" argument is just stupid, and I wish people would stop brining it up.
On a side note, as much as I disagree with the parent, I think he should not have been modded a troll. That is quite unfair, and it was a legitimate question.
Do not forget Federal Income Tax. That is how they got the money to withhold. And do not forget the universal 21 drinking age which was also forced down states' throats with the same fiscal threat.
The only way we're going to improve anything, regardless of what side of the aisle we're on, is to somehow educate the voters.
I have heard this many times, and I think it is backwards. The precise reason that there is a problem is that the voters are educated. They do not think for themselves but instead believe what they are told to believe by their intellectual masters: Big media.
If the news says someone is paedophile, people believe it. If the news says the Internet is dangerous, people believe it. If the news says Dubuya screwed his goat, people believe it.
The funny thing is that so many of these things are totally irrational, and if people took a step back and properly considered them, they would realise the absurdity of the situation.
Taking medicine is okay but doing drugs is not. What is the difference? They are all drugs. Wonder Bread is healthier than whole wheat bread because it has added vitamins. So, does that mean Mother Nature, with billions of years to develop these things and evolution working to correct all anomalies, somehow got it wrong? Animals should get cancer like people. Name me one instance of a wild animal -- in any habitat that has not been poisoned by human waste -- that has developed cancer.
Really. Things are green and the news says they are purple, and most people buy it. And we all pay for the laziness of others. This "Intellectual Property Czar" is case in point. Here they are -- supposedly a democracy -- appointing a "czar". The word Czar comes from Caesar (as in Julius), the first Emperor of Rome, and the destroyer of the Roman Republic. "Intellectual property" is equally ludicrous. Ideas cannot be property in a Free Society. If ideas can be "property", how can speech be Free? A better term for our new usurper would be "Intellectual Tyrant".
Personally, it seems to me that the founders of the US wanted the government to be weaker than the power of the masses...
Not exactly. Government is too general a term for this discussion. The Founding Fathers wanted the Federal Government to be weaker than the state governments. Part of Freedom was allowing people to choose their own set of rules (precisely what globalism seeks to take away). Unfortunately, that all ended in the early 1900's when Federal income tax was instituted and senators became popularly elected. The "masses", as you put it, are much easier to manipulate than 50 state governments. People believe the news when they see it.
So, what are all the users of TPB considering doing to support
the folks behind TPB, who have supported them, in some way, in
past?
I agree that this is noble, but that would be a bad thing for TPB creators. The evil media lawyers would just claim it was a "global conspiracy" and get more damages. I think TPB lawyers have this situation well in hand. This decision is an anomaly. The media industry usually loses in court because their claims are fictitious and frivolous.
If you want to do something useful, convince all your offline friends to stop using "authorized" media. Maybe you could even refuse to speak to anyone who owns or uses an iPod.
My CS prof was like that, too. He would forget what he was saying in the middle of a sentence. It was entertaining once or twice, but his lectures were too boring for the amusement to last.
I agree that SATs are virtually valueless, but I have to disagree about the weight universities place on them. I had a roommate in college who was exceptionally good at taking standardised tests. He could pass tests that were well above his ability and knowledge (Do not ask me for an explanation -- I have not the slightest idea how this extraordinary talent worked!). As a result of this talent, he got to pretty much pick whatever university he liked, and he chose a very good one (no, I do not remember which). He flunked out within a year having nowhere near the intelligence or aptitude for his courses even though he studied constantly. Therefore, I do think universities take those tests rather seriously.
I am not so sure quality will suffer any more than it would by expanding it to more people. Popularity always reduces quality, but using to do the heavy lifting has a lot of advantages over the current system.
Way back in the Stone Age when I went to school, I took an "A/V course". It was probably the most complete educational experience I ever received in any class. It was at a community college, but it was better than anything I experience subsequently at a full university.
The astronomy course consisted of renting hour long video tapes and watching them whenever convenient. Unlike lectures, the tapes contained a wealth of other information, such as re-enactments, comments by actual astronomers about their own research, pictures taken by the Hubble telescope and other telescopes, graphs and charts with explanations and demonstrations, and much more. Of course with video tapes it was always possible to rewind parts that seemed unclear (try to do that with your professor;-).
There were class meetings: about three or four discussion meetings and two examinations. Every section had a quiz that had to be turned in to the school. The discussions were very informative because everybody had a very good command of the information by the time they showed up. Turning in homework late was impossible because of the way the system worked.
My retention from that class was easily 10 times what I got in a classroom with a lecturing professor. I was amazed at how much I learned, and if I had had the option, I would have chosen to take all my courses that way.
As I have said elsewhere (including a comment in this very discussion), I think the purpose of professors is to facilitate discussion and practice, and to answer students' questions and correct -- or at least point out -- perceived errors in students' thinking or understanding of the subject. This is too subjective to be done by machines. Lectures have been obsolete since the invention of the book.
Books and lectures are going to be digitised, but the one thing we truly need teachers and professors for will not change: Answering questions. Everybody understands information in their own way, and therefore, it takes a human being to pick up where the books and lectures leave off.
Unfortunately, most college professors do not interact with students. Lectures were made obsolete by the invention of the book thousands of years ago, but still today we have professors lecturing from yellowed notes.
I hope technology will finally force them to change their ways, but I doubt it will.
Then please explain how the Berne Convention derivative work "rights" implemented in the 1976 Copyright Act do not violate the First Amendment as these "rights" apply to speech that has yet to be uttered. If I read a book and tell my friend about it on AIM, I may not get sued for it, but technically speaking, it is a derivative work -- especially if I mention the characters and the plot.
Also, since everything on the Internet is, for the purposes of copyright law "fixed in tangible form", how can I quote someone on the Internet without creating a derivative work? The length of works is not set in any law. A single sentence will carry its own copyright.
In the online world, is there any place nowadays where I can speak without being subject to copyright? If not, how does that not violate the First Amendment?
Please do not talk to me about court challenges. There is not a court in existence, including SCOTUS, that would strike down the 1976 Copyright Act as unconstitutional -- even though it plainly is. Even Lawrence Lessig, a lawyer who advocates copyright reform, warned us of the power of the copyright holders to do what most thought was impossible, and conceived and implemented Creative Commons, answered "no" why asked if he wanted to question the constitutionality of the 1976 Copyright Act. If Lessig is not up to such a challenge, who is? You?
Should I get half your house just because you and your wife split it?
If you are the general public -- the We the People of the Constitution -- and I and my wife acquired the house by fraud, yes.
I call creating anti-Constitutional international treaties and tricking Congress into implementing them in violation of the Bill of Rights fraud. If you do not, you should seriously consider getting a new dictionary. "Harmonization" is always anti-Constitutional, and the Berne Convention is anti-Free Speech.
With "orphaned" works, you should also consider that they are the worst of both worlds. Copyrights for these works protect no authors, but they still harm society in the same way as all other copyrights: They limit Free Speech, impose monopolies, suppress free expression, and create unnecessary legal action. All of these things harm society and the Progress that copyright was intended to support. It is, quite frankly, absurd that these works are protected at all, and the Author's Guild are a band of brigands for attempting to hold hostage the public's intellectual environment for their personal enrichment through the collection of monopoly rents (suppressing competition by limiting distribution of unprofitable "orphaned" works allows publishers to keep prices high).
Google is equally culpable in seeking to completely monopolise this information for their sole profit.
This is great news, but why is it that there appears to be no link to download the PDF of the document. On the linked site, that is annoying enough, but on the Open Content Alliance website, it seems purely hypocritical. How can the "Open" Content Alliance link to a proprietary, display only website? Where is the text? How annoying.
Because of the mentioned annoyance, I did not read the brief, but if it was not included in there, I think they should have asked for the protection to extended to all libraries globally, as well. I see no reason why such a database of orphaned works should not be available to the general public. In fact, it is really hard to imagine why they do not void the copyrights for all authorless works. It is bad enough that society has to pay for author's monopolies. Do we have to support the monopolies of phantasms as well?
After reading that post and subsequent comments including the Amazon letter he received, there is no question in my mind: Amazon is guilty of theft.
The facts are these: He returned some items (that were not books or e-books) and had his account banned. Along with his purchase account, his Kindle account was also banned. If that meant he could continue using the books he already had, fine. But because of DRM, he cannot access the books he already purchased!
3) I am now unable to access archived copies of the Kindle books I've purchased legally, and have no other way to legally purchase DRM'ed books on the device.
4) I also have no access to videos I have purchased from Amazon.
By making legitimately purchased information unavailable to him, Amazon is stealing (this is traditional theft -- taking something away from someone without the person's permission).
If you do not agree with this, consider this scenario: Barnes & Noble is dissatisfied with your behaviour as a customer, so they ban you from all of their stores. And then they come to your house and take away all the books in your library because they claim you no longer have a right to access them.
Be very afraid of the cloud. Companies will be able to do anything they want with your information.
If the summary is correct, then "unlimited" bandwidth can be had for $104.95. The lowest tier is $29.95, and the maximum overcharge for any tier is $75. When you get unlimited refills, always buy the smallest cup.
Any way you slice it, though, it is still a rip off.
There is no innate rule that someone who creates something has any right to exclude others from it.
I agree with everything you said, but I do not agree with the implication of this statement. There is no rule period that someone who creates something has any right to exclude others from it. No one has a right to restrict access, and nowhere in copyright law does it say that people can be prohibited from accessing a given work. In fact, libraries exist for the precise purpose of guaranteeing access to works that might be too expensive for ordinary or poor people to afford.
The only reason that access can be restricted on the internet is that every action on the internet -- and even on digital devices in general -- requires copying to perform. To read a website, you have to copy it and cause others to copy it. To turn ones and zeros on a CD to music, you have to copy it into memory. So, copyright is not an NDA, and does not regulate access. It only regulates reproduction and distribution.
There is a very simple and very obvious solution to all of this.
Let orphan works fall into the public domain.
Yeah, copyright run amok causes problems. We could have told you that before any of this business.
So add book publishers to the list of greedy idiots that handed a technology company a monopoly on a silver platter.
This is the perfect solution. Copyright is a monopoly after all, and Google had no more right to restrict access to those works than you or I do. If there is no copyright holder, how can there be a copyright, anyway?
On the bright side, I think watching the monopolists complain about someone else's monopoly is always entertaining.
I read about the discharging thing on the website, but with my FreeRunner, I have not experienced this problem. Perhaps this is due to the fact that batteries recover their charge a little after some time (maybe an hour). After completely discharging the phone, I have always been able to charge it again by the time I got within range of an outlet.
By the way, in most cases, a good test of your idea is if others are doing similar things as you. If you are trying to create a business or product and nobody else is doing anything even close, odds are pretty good something is wrong with your idea.
[sarcasm]
You are absolutely right. We should all copy Symbian. Phone innovation is absolutely worthless. Why would anybody buy a phone that was different? The iPhone was obviously popular because it was just like all other phones available in the US at that time.
[/sarcasm]
Copying what is out there just leads to cheap knock-offs. Technology and even art only progress through the appearance of new ideas, and in the mobile phone arena, new ideas are desperately needed. The cellphone OS industry is stagnating, and the iPhone has begun to drive it in the wrong direction, and Android is proving to be as locked up -- or nearly so -- as the iPhone (not that Apple ever cared about user Freedom or "Think[ing] Different[ly]").
OpenMoko's problems mean that there will once again be no alternative to secretive, closed handset manufacturers. This is a sad day for Freedom.
P2P file sharing is not Fair Use. It is First Amendment protected Free Speech. All data is speech. All speech is Free.
The Internet is the world's global conversation, and ones are zeros are the words. We need to defend our speech from the "intellectual property" zealots, the thought police, before they destroy all Freedom.
Yeah, but if you are going to get technical, every time you listen to a CD you purchased on any CD player, you are creating an actionable copy of the music (Mai v. Peak). That also goes for viewing web pages, watching rented or purchased DVDs with any software or hardware, displaying the text -- including email -- of any file that was written by someone else without explicit written permission for each work in question. According to Mai v. Peak, copies in memory are actionable, and digital devices cannot play audio or video or display text or images without making copies into memory. So, everybody is a "pirate", arrr. . .
If you are going to argue Fair Use, you should realize that Fair Use is determined by the courts and no one can predict the decisions that might be made with absolute certainty. So, by the law, we are all criminals. And copyright is a guilty until proven innocent system.
Therefore, until "piracy" is limited to monetary transactions, every one is a "pirate". In fact, it would nearly be impossible to not be a "pirate" under the current copyright statutes in the US. This is why I am making a political statement. I refuse to refer to non-monetary transactions as "piracy", and I refuse to use the term "intellectual property". Further, I will argue with anyone who misuses these terms. I am resisting the definitions the news media have given me, and you should too. Have the strength to resist your indoctrination.
Slashdot Mirror
But that is just the point. This is not and never was about the artists. The "artists" are the ultimate red herring. The fat cat businessmen trump "artists" out every time someone threatens their profits. "Oh, the poor artists!! They will starve! (But my steak cost a hundred bucks, and I live in a palace -- Suckers!!!)" They know very well that nobody is going to pass a law to defend their $10,000 suit or their million dollar paycheck.
Copyright supports the crooks: plain and simple. All this stuff about artists is just smoke and mirrors.
Piracy != lost profits because the author has no right to reap profits from the work in the first place. If "piracy" were limited to commercial piracy, then there would definitely be lost profits: money paid for the information but not to the legitimate recipients.
However, authors or other copyright holders have no right to impose fees on transactions of information. Nor do they have a right to receive money for every use of their works. Libraries are case in point. Are authors victims of "unauthorised" borrowing at libraries? Is each time a person reads a book at the library and does not buy it a "lost sale"?
The "lost sale" argument is just stupid, and I wish people would stop brining it up.
On a side note, as much as I disagree with the parent, I think he should not have been modded a troll. That is quite unfair, and it was a legitimate question.
Do not forget Federal Income Tax. That is how they got the money to withhold. And do not forget the universal 21 drinking age which was also forced down states' throats with the same fiscal threat.
The only way we're going to improve anything, regardless of what side of the aisle we're on, is to somehow educate the voters.
I have heard this many times, and I think it is backwards. The precise reason that there is a problem is that the voters are educated. They do not think for themselves but instead believe what they are told to believe by their intellectual masters: Big media.
If the news says someone is paedophile, people believe it. If the news says the Internet is dangerous, people believe it. If the news says Dubuya screwed his goat, people believe it.
The funny thing is that so many of these things are totally irrational, and if people took a step back and properly considered them, they would realise the absurdity of the situation.
Taking medicine is okay but doing drugs is not. What is the difference? They are all drugs. Wonder Bread is healthier than whole wheat bread because it has added vitamins. So, does that mean Mother Nature, with billions of years to develop these things and evolution working to correct all anomalies, somehow got it wrong? Animals should get cancer like people. Name me one instance of a wild animal -- in any habitat that has not been poisoned by human waste -- that has developed cancer.
Really. Things are green and the news says they are purple, and most people buy it. And we all pay for the laziness of others. This "Intellectual Property Czar" is case in point. Here they are -- supposedly a democracy -- appointing a "czar". The word Czar comes from Caesar (as in Julius), the first Emperor of Rome, and the destroyer of the Roman Republic. "Intellectual property" is equally ludicrous. Ideas cannot be property in a Free Society. If ideas can be "property", how can speech be Free? A better term for our new usurper would be "Intellectual Tyrant".
Personally, it seems to me that the founders of the US wanted the government to be weaker than the power of the masses...
Not exactly. Government is too general a term for this discussion. The Founding Fathers wanted the Federal Government to be weaker than the state governments. Part of Freedom was allowing people to choose their own set of rules (precisely what globalism seeks to take away). Unfortunately, that all ended in the early 1900's when Federal income tax was instituted and senators became popularly elected. The "masses", as you put it, are much easier to manipulate than 50 state governments. People believe the news when they see it.
I agree that this is noble, but that would be a bad thing for TPB creators. The evil media lawyers would just claim it was a "global conspiracy" and get more damages. I think TPB lawyers have this situation well in hand. This decision is an anomaly. The media industry usually loses in court because their claims are fictitious and frivolous.
If you want to do something useful, convince all your offline friends to stop using "authorized" media. Maybe you could even refuse to speak to anyone who owns or uses an iPod.
And so the exception proves the rule.
My CS prof was like that, too. He would forget what he was saying in the middle of a sentence. It was entertaining once or twice, but his lectures were too boring for the amusement to last.
Just to be pedantic: that is "yellow" not "yellowed", so only one counts.
This statement is just depressing. I am going to try to avoid believing it.
"Search your feelings, Luke . . ."
"Nnnoooooooo!!!!!"
I agree that SATs are virtually valueless, but I have to disagree about the weight universities place on them. I had a roommate in college who was exceptionally good at taking standardised tests. He could pass tests that were well above his ability and knowledge (Do not ask me for an explanation -- I have not the slightest idea how this extraordinary talent worked!). As a result of this talent, he got to pretty much pick whatever university he liked, and he chose a very good one (no, I do not remember which). He flunked out within a year having nowhere near the intelligence or aptitude for his courses even though he studied constantly. Therefore, I do think universities take those tests rather seriously.
Mod the parent up!
The quality of university professors can in no way be guaranteed.
I am not so sure quality will suffer any more than it would by expanding it to more people. Popularity always reduces quality, but using to do the heavy lifting has a lot of advantages over the current system.
Way back in the Stone Age when I went to school, I took an "A/V course". It was probably the most complete educational experience I ever received in any class. It was at a community college, but it was better than anything I experience subsequently at a full university.
The astronomy course consisted of renting hour long video tapes and watching them whenever convenient. Unlike lectures, the tapes contained a wealth of other information, such as re-enactments, comments by actual astronomers about their own research, pictures taken by the Hubble telescope and other telescopes, graphs and charts with explanations and demonstrations, and much more. Of course with video tapes it was always possible to rewind parts that seemed unclear (try to do that with your professor ;-).
There were class meetings: about three or four discussion meetings and two examinations. Every section had a quiz that had to be turned in to the school. The discussions were very informative because everybody had a very good command of the information by the time they showed up. Turning in homework late was impossible because of the way the system worked.
My retention from that class was easily 10 times what I got in a classroom with a lecturing professor. I was amazed at how much I learned, and if I had had the option, I would have chosen to take all my courses that way.
As I have said elsewhere (including a comment in this very discussion), I think the purpose of professors is to facilitate discussion and practice, and to answer students' questions and correct -- or at least point out -- perceived errors in students' thinking or understanding of the subject. This is too subjective to be done by machines. Lectures have been obsolete since the invention of the book.
Books and lectures are going to be digitised, but the one thing we truly need teachers and professors for will not change: Answering questions. Everybody understands information in their own way, and therefore, it takes a human being to pick up where the books and lectures leave off.
Unfortunately, most college professors do not interact with students. Lectures were made obsolete by the invention of the book thousands of years ago, but still today we have professors lecturing from yellowed notes.
I hope technology will finally force them to change their ways, but I doubt it will.
Then please explain how the Berne Convention derivative work "rights" implemented in the 1976 Copyright Act do not violate the First Amendment as these "rights" apply to speech that has yet to be uttered. If I read a book and tell my friend about it on AIM, I may not get sued for it, but technically speaking, it is a derivative work -- especially if I mention the characters and the plot.
Also, since everything on the Internet is, for the purposes of copyright law "fixed in tangible form", how can I quote someone on the Internet without creating a derivative work? The length of works is not set in any law. A single sentence will carry its own copyright.
In the online world, is there any place nowadays where I can speak without being subject to copyright? If not, how does that not violate the First Amendment?
Please do not talk to me about court challenges. There is not a court in existence, including SCOTUS, that would strike down the 1976 Copyright Act as unconstitutional -- even though it plainly is. Even Lawrence Lessig, a lawyer who advocates copyright reform, warned us of the power of the copyright holders to do what most thought was impossible, and conceived and implemented Creative Commons, answered "no" why asked if he wanted to question the constitutionality of the 1976 Copyright Act. If Lessig is not up to such a challenge, who is? You?
If you are the general public -- the We the People of the Constitution -- and I and my wife acquired the house by fraud, yes.
I call creating anti-Constitutional international treaties and tricking Congress into implementing them in violation of the Bill of Rights fraud. If you do not, you should seriously consider getting a new dictionary. "Harmonization" is always anti-Constitutional, and the Berne Convention is anti-Free Speech.
With "orphaned" works, you should also consider that they are the worst of both worlds. Copyrights for these works protect no authors, but they still harm society in the same way as all other copyrights: They limit Free Speech, impose monopolies, suppress free expression, and create unnecessary legal action. All of these things harm society and the Progress that copyright was intended to support. It is, quite frankly, absurd that these works are protected at all, and the Author's Guild are a band of brigands for attempting to hold hostage the public's intellectual environment for their personal enrichment through the collection of monopoly rents (suppressing competition by limiting distribution of unprofitable "orphaned" works allows publishers to keep prices high).
Google is equally culpable in seeking to completely monopolise this information for their sole profit.
This is great news, but why is it that there appears to be no link to download the PDF of the document. On the linked site, that is annoying enough, but on the Open Content Alliance website, it seems purely hypocritical. How can the "Open" Content Alliance link to a proprietary, display only website? Where is the text? How annoying.
Because of the mentioned annoyance, I did not read the brief, but if it was not included in there, I think they should have asked for the protection to extended to all libraries globally, as well. I see no reason why such a database of orphaned works should not be available to the general public. In fact, it is really hard to imagine why they do not void the copyrights for all authorless works. It is bad enough that society has to pay for author's monopolies. Do we have to support the monopolies of phantasms as well?
After reading that post and subsequent comments including the Amazon letter he received, there is no question in my mind: Amazon is guilty of theft.
The facts are these: He returned some items (that were not books or e-books) and had his account banned. Along with his purchase account, his Kindle account was also banned. If that meant he could continue using the books he already had, fine. But because of DRM, he cannot access the books he already purchased!
Ian says:
By making legitimately purchased information unavailable to him, Amazon is stealing (this is traditional theft -- taking something away from someone without the person's permission). If you do not agree with this, consider this scenario: Barnes & Noble is dissatisfied with your behaviour as a customer, so they ban you from all of their stores. And then they come to your house and take away all the books in your library because they claim you no longer have a right to access them.
Be very afraid of the cloud. Companies will be able to do anything they want with your information.
If the summary is correct, then "unlimited" bandwidth can be had for $104.95. The lowest tier is $29.95, and the maximum overcharge for any tier is $75. When you get unlimited refills, always buy the smallest cup.
Any way you slice it, though, it is still a rip off.
There is no innate rule that someone who creates something has any right to exclude others from it.
I agree with everything you said, but I do not agree with the implication of this statement. There is no rule period that someone who creates something has any right to exclude others from it. No one has a right to restrict access, and nowhere in copyright law does it say that people can be prohibited from accessing a given work. In fact, libraries exist for the precise purpose of guaranteeing access to works that might be too expensive for ordinary or poor people to afford.
The only reason that access can be restricted on the internet is that every action on the internet -- and even on digital devices in general -- requires copying to perform. To read a website, you have to copy it and cause others to copy it. To turn ones and zeros on a CD to music, you have to copy it into memory. So, copyright is not an NDA, and does not regulate access. It only regulates reproduction and distribution.
There is a very simple and very obvious solution to all of this.
Let orphan works fall into the public domain.
Yeah, copyright run amok causes problems. We could have told you that before any of this business.
So add book publishers to the list of greedy idiots that handed a technology company a monopoly on a silver platter.
This is the perfect solution. Copyright is a monopoly after all, and Google had no more right to restrict access to those works than you or I do. If there is no copyright holder, how can there be a copyright, anyway?
On the bright side, I think watching the monopolists complain about someone else's monopoly is always entertaining.
I read about the discharging thing on the website, but with my FreeRunner, I have not experienced this problem. Perhaps this is due to the fact that batteries recover their charge a little after some time (maybe an hour). After completely discharging the phone, I have always been able to charge it again by the time I got within range of an outlet.
By the way, in most cases, a good test of your idea is if others are doing similar things as you. If you are trying to create a business or product and nobody else is doing anything even close, odds are pretty good something is wrong with your idea.
[sarcasm]
You are absolutely right. We should all copy Symbian. Phone innovation is absolutely worthless. Why would anybody buy a phone that was different? The iPhone was obviously popular because it was just like all other phones available in the US at that time.
[/sarcasm]
Copying what is out there just leads to cheap knock-offs. Technology and even art only progress through the appearance of new ideas, and in the mobile phone arena, new ideas are desperately needed. The cellphone OS industry is stagnating, and the iPhone has begun to drive it in the wrong direction, and Android is proving to be as locked up -- or nearly so -- as the iPhone (not that Apple ever cared about user Freedom or "Think[ing] Different[ly]").
OpenMoko's problems mean that there will once again be no alternative to secretive, closed handset manufacturers. This is a sad day for Freedom.
P2P file sharing is not Fair Use. It is First Amendment protected Free Speech. All data is speech. All speech is Free.
The Internet is the world's global conversation, and ones are zeros are the words. We need to defend our speech from the "intellectual property" zealots, the thought police, before they destroy all Freedom.
Yeah, but if you are going to get technical, every time you listen to a CD you purchased on any CD player, you are creating an actionable copy of the music (Mai v. Peak). That also goes for viewing web pages, watching rented or purchased DVDs with any software or hardware, displaying the text -- including email -- of any file that was written by someone else without explicit written permission for each work in question. According to Mai v. Peak, copies in memory are actionable, and digital devices cannot play audio or video or display text or images without making copies into memory. So, everybody is a "pirate", arrr. . .
If you are going to argue Fair Use, you should realize that Fair Use is determined by the courts and no one can predict the decisions that might be made with absolute certainty. So, by the law, we are all criminals. And copyright is a guilty until proven innocent system.
Therefore, until "piracy" is limited to monetary transactions, every one is a "pirate". In fact, it would nearly be impossible to not be a "pirate" under the current copyright statutes in the US. This is why I am making a political statement. I refuse to refer to non-monetary transactions as "piracy", and I refuse to use the term "intellectual property". Further, I will argue with anyone who misuses these terms. I am resisting the definitions the news media have given me, and you should too. Have the strength to resist your indoctrination.