I can see this story can be spun many different ways, depending on which details you're presented with. Who decided to delete the chromed barrel and substitute the ammo? Was it still claimed to be "self-cleaning" after that?
Isn't it more anti-military to say the problem lay with the military using cheaper ammo, than to say it lay with Colt for promising more than they could keep?
Precisely. The legal concept of work-for-hire means that the employer is considered the author of the work, and therefore owns the copyright automatically - that's why it sometimes called "corporate authorship".
In Sweden and most of the world, the authors are always considered to be the actual creator(s) of the work. There's no such thing as "corporate authorship" - the authors have to be real persons. The authors can sign over the right to manufacture and sell copies to someone else, but they always retain the moral rights to their work (like the right to not have it used in a context which violates its artistic integrity).
No, in the USA the employer owns the copyrighted work by default. It's only if the creator works on commission they need to agree that it's "Work for hire". From Wikipedia:
The circumstances in which a work is considered a "work made for hire" is determined by the language of the United States Copyright Act of 1976:
A "work made for hire" is— (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. (17 U.S.C. 101)
Here in Sweden, we don't have the concept of "work-for-hire". Copyrights and patents are owned by the creator by default. The employer needs to specify in the employment contract if the rights are to be signed over to them, and usually this is handled through collective bargaining.
I'm not sure how it works in the rest of Europe, but AFAIK, "work-for-hire" is a concept specific to the USA.
Seems like this could be in the same realm as an SQL injection attempt. It's just using JSON instead.
The hack only allows people to share their own files with others more easily. It's not like it would allow them to take over the web server or access other people's files without permission.
I don't see how this could compete with BitTorrent - everything a pirate uploads onto Dropbox is logged and can easily be used against them in a trial.
... I'd like to point out that the researchers are not claiming to have settled the issue of video game violence by counting the credentials. They're merely pointing out that there is more scientific credentials behind one of the two briefs delivered to the court.
"The justices were presented with two briefs, arguing opposite sides, and they may think the contradictory briefs simply cancel each other out," Bushman said.
Still, I don't think it's a very strong argument, and it can easily be misused.
I'm sad to hear that. The Swedish Pirate Party has had more success. They've managed to agree on an a party line, built up an organisation, arranged funding from the government as a non-profit political organisation, won two seats in the European Parliament, won a number of seats in local (county) elections, and so on. I wish Canadians luck in the future.
Oh please, 90% of the people who copy things haven't built anything, much less something that could be described as magnificent.
True, but many of the people who are most active in the filesharing community build things, like...
* Translating comics for free (scanlation) * Translating video for free (fansubbing) * Building web sites * Writing filesharing software * Defining useful technology standards
To read summaries like this you get the sense there isn't any value to intellectual property at all. If content producers know that anything they produce is "up for grabs", what incentive do they have to keep producing?
Pardoxically, it's perfectly possible to earn money by giving things away for free.
For example, TV and radio stations have been giving away entertainment and news for free for half a century, and earned their revenue from advertising.
The printed Metro newspaper is given away for free in a number of European cities, and, once again, earn their money from advertising.
The last decade, a lot of musicians have started giving away their music for free, and instead earn their revenue from concerts and merchandising. The free music acts as advertising.
Online game publishers have started giving away the game itself for free, and instead earn money from selling virtual items within the game, for example, Everquest 2 Extended and Lord of the Rings Online.
This guy has some interesting ideas about how filesharing can be a much more cost-effective way to earn money from TV content than sending it over traditional networks. (YouTube).
Red Hat, Ubuntu, Truecrypt and many other software products are given away for free, and the producers earn their revenue on support and customisation.
It's not clear that copyright is needed in order for creators and distributors to earn money. It may be needed in some areas, but we have to ask ourselves if it's worth the cost. Every time someone abstains from a digital product because it's illegal to copy it, the utility he/she would have gained from it is lost for society.
Also, let's not forget that even the Pirate Party does not advocate a complete abolishment of copyright. They only want private, non-commercial use to be free. The creator will still have a monopoly on commercial copying and distribution.
1) Use smarter screeners. We don't need better scanners or more of them, just screeners able to stay alert and recognize a problem.
That's like saying we can solve our problems by only hiring intelligent police officers, or incorruptible civil servants. We can't change human nature, and the few people who are really fit for the job are unlikely to work for the pay we're prepared to give them.
I can't spek for the GP, but isn't the point that the security measures haven't prevented any actual terrorist attacks, regardless of how many illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and "suspicious" people it has caught?
The security measures are very costly (both in terms of budget and the time they cost for the airline passengers), so costly that they have to be justified by the threat of terrorism. If they are only good for catching a few illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, is it really worth it?
Have you considered emigrating? It's easy to get a work permit here in Sweden if someone wants to employ you, and after five or ten years (don't remember exactly) it's easy to be naturalised and get a citizenship. We can always use more competent people.
Actually, more importantly, it shows that a large percentage of people we _consider to be moral_ will do immoral things, under the guise of or with the supervision of authority.
The part about the whiskey bottles was a good point. I'd support that before supporting the requirement to take off your shoes before going through the security control (which you need to do here in Europe; I presume it's the same in the States).
Fascism is characterised, among other things, by a belief in the police state. While other totalitarian systems may support this idea through their actions, fascism supports it explicitly in their ideology.
If, for example, the doctor warned you what could happen to your health, and that scared you and made you sober up, it means your survival instinct caused you to change your choice.
I agree that personal responsibility is important too, though. It's one of the many drives which push us around. But to change one's life, I think it's important to find a way to let your instincts and drives work for you instead of against you. You can't conquer them by will-power alone.
If you are going into "energy saving mode," you're cutting too many calories.
The problem (well, one of them) is that different people seem to have a different threshold to go into energy saving mode. You don't need to have a glandular disease - it's a part of the normal variation between individuals. For some people, this seems to be the reason it's much harder to lose weight than for others.
You seem to be reading things into my text that I didn't put there.
Also, you need to be careful when you interpret statistics. The increase in obesity over time may be caused by changes to life-style, but that doesn't say anything about what causes the differences between individuals.
You must also be careful when you apply statistical truths to the individual. If obesity is caused by life-style 70% of the time, it means it's not caused by life-style 30% of the time, so telling fat people to stop complaining and shape up is not really prudent.
I'd say there is a balance that needs to be there, as per the (US) Constitutional basis for IP protections. Creators need to pull a profit to keep creating, and thus need legal protections. Legal protections must be limited, to provide further incentive to make more money, and thus create more. Etc... Further, and moving beyond the document; it isn't about efficiency, its about creators getting paid, and the public having access. high prices is good for the former, low for the latter. Thus there is a balance somewhere between.
I'm counting that balance as a form of economic efficiency. The revenues provided by copyright to creators and publishers need to be so large that it's profitable for them to produce their works - but no larger. If they're larger than necessary, it means consumers are paying an unnecessarily high price, which means fewer people can afford to benefit from the works.
Having the wrong balance is less economically efficient, since it means that either too few artistic and literary works are produced, or they don't benefit as many people as they could.
Since most of the profits from most of the works have already been collected five years after publication, it's hard to argue for longer copyright than that. A longer copyright term provides very little added incentive to the creators and publishers, while still hindering the public's access to a large number of works.
Slashdot Mirror
I can see this story can be spun many different ways, depending on which details you're presented with. Who decided to delete the chromed barrel and substitute the ammo? Was it still claimed to be "self-cleaning" after that?
Isn't it more anti-military to say the problem lay with the military using cheaper ammo, than to say it lay with Colt for promising more than they could keep?
Precisely. The legal concept of work-for-hire means that the employer is considered the author of the work, and therefore owns the copyright automatically - that's why it sometimes called "corporate authorship".
In Sweden and most of the world, the authors are always considered to be the actual creator(s) of the work. There's no such thing as "corporate authorship" - the authors have to be real persons. The authors can sign over the right to manufacture and sell copies to someone else, but they always retain the moral rights to their work (like the right to not have it used in a context which violates its artistic integrity).
Someone pls mod parent Informative or Insightful. It's one of the few posts that actually has anything useful to say about this article...
No, in the USA the employer owns the copyrighted work by default. It's only if the creator works on commission they need to agree that it's "Work for hire". From Wikipedia:
The circumstances in which a work is considered a "work made for hire" is determined by the language of the United States Copyright Act of 1976:
A "work made for hire" is— (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. (17 U.S.C. 101)
Here in Sweden, we don't have the concept of "work-for-hire". Copyrights and patents are owned by the creator by default. The employer needs to specify in the employment contract if the rights are to be signed over to them, and usually this is handled through collective bargaining.
I'm not sure how it works in the rest of Europe, but AFAIK, "work-for-hire" is a concept specific to the USA.
Seems like this could be in the same realm as an SQL injection attempt. It's just using JSON instead.
The hack only allows people to share their own files with others more easily. It's not like it would allow them to take over the web server or access other people's files without permission.
I don't see how this could compete with BitTorrent - everything a pirate uploads onto Dropbox is logged and can easily be used against them in a trial.
... I'd like to point out that the researchers are not claiming to have settled the issue of video game violence by counting the credentials. They're merely pointing out that there is more scientific credentials behind one of the two briefs delivered to the court.
"The justices were presented with two briefs, arguing opposite sides, and they may think the contradictory briefs simply cancel each other out," Bushman said.
Still, I don't think it's a very strong argument, and it can easily be misused.
I'm sad to hear that. The Swedish Pirate Party has had more success. They've managed to agree on an a party line, built up an organisation, arranged funding from the government as a non-profit political organisation, won two seats in the European Parliament, won a number of seats in local (county) elections, and so on. I wish Canadians luck in the future.
Oh please, 90% of the people who copy things haven't built anything, much less something that could be described as magnificent.
True, but many of the people who are most active in the filesharing community build things, like...
* Translating comics for free (scanlation)
* Translating video for free (fansubbing)
* Building web sites
* Writing filesharing software
* Defining useful technology standards
First, Ayn Rand supported intellectual property.
Ayn Rand didn't consider herself a libertarian, though. She thought the libertarians had stolen her ideas.
To read summaries like this you get the sense there isn't any value to intellectual property at all. If content producers know that anything they produce is "up for grabs", what incentive do they have to keep producing?
Pardoxically, it's perfectly possible to earn money by giving things away for free.
For example, TV and radio stations have been giving away entertainment and news for free for half a century, and earned their revenue from advertising.
The printed Metro newspaper is given away for free in a number of European cities, and, once again, earn their money from advertising.
The last decade, a lot of musicians have started giving away their music for free, and instead earn their revenue from concerts and merchandising. The free music acts as advertising.
Online game publishers have started giving away the game itself for free, and instead earn money from selling virtual items within the game, for example, Everquest 2 Extended and Lord of the Rings Online.
This guy has some interesting ideas about how filesharing can be a much more cost-effective way to earn money from TV content than sending it over traditional networks. (YouTube).
Red Hat, Ubuntu, Truecrypt and many other software products are given away for free, and the producers earn their revenue on support and customisation.
It's not clear that copyright is needed in order for creators and distributors to earn money. It may be needed in some areas, but we have to ask ourselves if it's worth the cost. Every time someone abstains from a digital product because it's illegal to copy it, the utility he/she would have gained from it is lost for society.
Also, let's not forget that even the Pirate Party does not advocate a complete abolishment of copyright. They only want private, non-commercial use to be free. The creator will still have a monopoly on commercial copying and distribution.
I laughed out loud for half a minute. Too bad I've run out of mod points!
1) Use smarter screeners. We don't need better scanners or more of them, just screeners able to stay alert and recognize a problem.
That's like saying we can solve our problems by only hiring intelligent police officers, or incorruptible civil servants. We can't change human nature, and the few people who are really fit for the job are unlikely to work for the pay we're prepared to give them.
I can't spek for the GP, but isn't the point that the security measures haven't prevented any actual terrorist attacks, regardless of how many illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and "suspicious" people it has caught?
The security measures are very costly (both in terms of budget and the time they cost for the airline passengers), so costly that they have to be justified by the threat of terrorism. If they are only good for catching a few illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, is it really worth it?
Have you considered emigrating? It's easy to get a work permit here in Sweden if someone wants to employ you, and after five or ten years (don't remember exactly) it's easy to be naturalised and get a citizenship. We can always use more competent people.
They have a flawed incentive system... if you get killed trying to blow something up, you get into heaven!
Actually, more importantly, it shows that a large percentage of people we _consider to be moral_ will do immoral things, under the guise of or with the supervision of authority.
There, fixed it for ya.
The part about the whiskey bottles was a good point. I'd support that before supporting the requirement to take off your shoes before going through the security control (which you need to do here in Europe; I presume it's the same in the States).
Don't feed the troll ^
Fascism is characterised, among other things, by a belief in the police state. While other totalitarian systems may support this idea through their actions, fascism supports it explicitly in their ideology.
What made you change your choice?
If, for example, the doctor warned you what could happen to your health, and that scared you and made you sober up, it means your survival instinct caused you to change your choice.
I agree that personal responsibility is important too, though. It's one of the many drives which push us around. But to change one's life, I think it's important to find a way to let your instincts and drives work for you instead of against you. You can't conquer them by will-power alone.
If you are going into "energy saving mode," you're cutting too many calories.
The problem (well, one of them) is that different people seem to have a different threshold to go into energy saving mode. You don't need to have a glandular disease - it's a part of the normal variation between individuals. For some people, this seems to be the reason it's much harder to lose weight than for others.
You seem to be reading things into my text that I didn't put there.
Also, you need to be careful when you interpret statistics. The increase in obesity over time may be caused by changes to life-style, but that doesn't say anything about what causes the differences between individuals.
You must also be careful when you apply statistical truths to the individual. If obesity is caused by life-style 70% of the time, it means it's not caused by life-style 30% of the time, so telling fat people to stop complaining and shape up is not really prudent.
I'd say there is a balance that needs to be there, as per the (US) Constitutional basis for IP protections. Creators need to pull a profit to keep creating, and thus need legal protections. Legal protections must be limited, to provide further incentive to make more money, and thus create more. Etc... Further, and moving beyond the document; it isn't about efficiency, its about creators getting paid, and the public having access. high prices is good for the former, low for the latter. Thus there is a balance somewhere between.
I'm counting that balance as a form of economic efficiency. The revenues provided by copyright to creators and publishers need to be so large that it's profitable for them to produce their works - but no larger. If they're larger than necessary, it means consumers are paying an unnecessarily high price, which means fewer people can afford to benefit from the works.
Having the wrong balance is less economically efficient, since it means that either too few artistic and literary works are produced, or they don't benefit as many people as they could.
Since most of the profits from most of the works have already been collected five years after publication, it's hard to argue for longer copyright than that. A longer copyright term provides very little added incentive to the creators and publishers, while still hindering the public's access to a large number of works.