Here in Sweden, government documents are specifically exempted from copyright. The law doesn't state anything about who the government documents belong to; it simply states that copyright law does not apply to them, and therefore they are free to copy.
There are, of course, laws regulating which documents can and can't be released to the public.
I think the strategy is to raise the expected costs of piracy. It doesn't matter if you have such a low probability if there is a high cost and low benefit. The expected value is equal to the sum of the probability and its corresponding outcome.
That would work if people were rational and had an intuitive grasp of probability. Unfortunately, people tend to ignore very small risks, even if the cost is very high. That's one of the reasons harsher punishments is not an effective way to decrease crime. You need to increase the "risk of getting caught" side of the equation to make it work.
There's also a purely rational reason fines beyond a certain point tend to be ignored. Once you slap an average citizen with a fine of more than, say, a few hundred thousand dollars, they have no way to pay it back in their lifetime. So a fine of $500 000 or $500 000 000 makes no difference; the defendant will be living under the same minimum conditions the rest of their lives anyway.
But I suspect also that, even if DRM ceased to exist tomorrow, and copyright terms were scaled back to the original 14 years, some other variation of the general "fighting for good by sticking it to the Man" would still be used as an excuse for all the folk who, ultimately, just want to have their cake without paying for it.
That's most likely true. But I'm glad people find excuses to pirate, since pirating seems to be beneficial to the market as a whole. It not only enables more people to enjoy the content without hurting the artists financially, it even seems to stimulate the production of new content.
To get more to choose from. A lot of people buy what they can afford, and pirate the rest. That way, the industry gets just as many sales as they would have got without pirating.
Pirating is not primarily used as a money-saver; it's used as a way to get access to more content for the same price. That's one of the reasons the music, movie and gaming industries' revenues have continued to increase despite massive filesharing.
Actually, the CDs you copied to tape were legal. You paid for making that copy with the special tax on tapes which goes directly into the music producers' pockets.
Copying the games was illegal, but I'm glad you did it. I think it's silly that kids, students and poor people should abstain from watching/listening to something they couldn't afford to buy anyway.
Oh, and your story, about your pirating stimulating your music interest and causing you to buy even more music, is not an unusual one.
Let's use GGP's example of someone being naughty and spoofing your address on a torrent. It is a ridiculous claim; there is no evidence that this kind of spoofing is even remotely likely to occur.
Actually, a kind of spoofing occurs all the time. Some BitTorrent trackers insert a small percentage of false IP adresses in the list of participants in a torrent, for the very reason to provide plausible deniability to the actual torrent users. I also think the "hijacked router" scenario is plausible, since it's easy to break into many routers and can be used by someone to hide their own downloading.
I agree with you, though, that the main issue is the laws being insane in the first place. But I think the core of the problem is that private copying of copyrighted material is outlawed. There's no need for it; artists and writers are able to make money on their work without copyright protection.
Plus, there's the content that doesn't get translated to your market. Lots and lots of animé and manga, which would otherwise have been inaccessible to the English-speaking public, is fansubbed and scanlated. This is technically illegal, but fortunately, most of the Japanese producers have the economic sense to turn their blind eye towards it, since they ultimately benefit from the increased explosure.
Do you think that, if we moved our copyright laws all the way back to where they were at the time of the Founding Fathers (particularly terms), most people who pirate media today would stop doing so? When I see at the most popular items at, say, TPB, I see stuff that was released in the last year or two. The original copyright term was 14 years. Do the math.
You're right. 14 years is far too long for copyright to last. The purpose of copyright is to "promote the arts and sciences", so it is only possible to justify as long a copyright term as is needed to "promote the arts and sciences". Specifically, a copyright term which is longer than the economic life of a work doesn't provide any additional incentive to the artist.
It turnes out that the vast majority of novels are only commercially viable through their first printing, so copyright protection after the first printing is not really needed. A small number of books are so successful they get reprinted - but if you think about it, if they're so successful, their authors should be motivated enough to continue writing by the money they earned on the first printing. After all, lots of authors who *don't* get reprinted are motivated to continue writing.
It turns out that even huge, expensive productions like movies rarely make any money to speak of five years after their release, so it's very hard to justify a copyright longer than five years, if our main concern is to "promote the arts and sciences".
So should people wait five years before they download movies, so they don't cut into the producers' and distributors' profits? No, I don't think so. It turns out that, on the average, people spend at least as much money on movies and music even if they pirate. There's now research which shows that those who pirate the most, are also those who spend the most money on things like concerts and merchandise. Pirating creates interest in movies and music, and helps consumers weed out the good from the bad. Pirating is beneficial for the market. See, for example, the recent study from the Japanese government which concludes that piracy boosts anime sales. (TorrentFreak)
In fact, except for just after the global economic crisis, the total revenues of both the movie industry and the music industry have continued to increase since filesharing took off in the late 1990's. Unfortunately for the record companies, a larger percentage of the revenues are now ending up in the artists' pockets.
It's time to face facts - Torrenting copywritten videos and audio files is eventually going to get you bitten - And you can make all the academic arguements you want about 'data wanting to be free' and blah blah blah but the fact remains that as things sit today the law isn't on your side.
How about protesting unjust laws by breaking them?
Copyright benefits the distributors, but not the majority of the artists.
It's not the content *creators* (the artists and writers) who are using DRM and suing people. It's the content *distributors* (like record companies) who do, because they are the ones who gain from the existence of copyright.
The artists are surprisingly often okay with pirating, even those who signed a contract with record companies. Watch this cool clip, for example: Joss Stone on piracy.
Sharing content over the Internet enables more people to enjoy it, without damaging the artists - the music industry's revenues have continued to increase strongly since filesharing became popular in the late 1990's. The problem (for the record companies) is that a larger percentage of the revenues are going directly to the artists.
By downloading music, you don't deprive any other person use of the music. Those who are for copyright have argued that you deprive the artist of potential profits from music sales, but this has turned out to be false; the music industry's revenues have continued to increase since filesharing became popular in the late 1990's. But a larger part of the revenue now goes to the artists directly, instead of through the record companies, which is why we see CD sales plumetting and the record companies complaining loudly.
I agree with your technical analysis, but I'm note sure that what Microsoft is doing is "immoral" or "cheating". They're certainly benefiting from Google's efforts by re-using information Google has gathered - but haven't businessmen, artists and scientists been doing that for thousands of years, and the world has been better for it? Businessmen copy each other's business models, scientists copy data gathered by other scientists, artists borrow ideas from, are inspired by, and sample each other's work, and so on.
From a more economic point of view, the consumers may benefit from search providers copying each other. That way, they can get reliable search results from more than one provider, and the providers can compete by offering different user interfaces and value-added services, like online storage of bookmarks, natural language questions, database searches, and so on.
The provider with the best page ranking algorithm (i.e, Google) will still have an edge since they are the first to update the rankings to reflect reality, and the copied information is slightly less reliable than the original.
Copying information, experiences and ideas from others is a fundamental mechanism behind human progress, which has been in use since before the first Cro Magnon learnt to make fire. It's rather ironic that it today is referred derisively to as "piracy".
Well, I don't think the important issue here is who is factually right. No matter how bad Mr. Cox's engineering solution may be, he shouldn't be prohibited by law to voice his opinion, nor should a government official try to use the law to prevent him from voicing it. Free speech includes the right to be wrong, or it's not very free at all.
And in this specific case, Mr. Lacy's argument for reporting Mr. Cox was that the solution was too professional, not that it was amateurish.
... which is eerily similar to how scared corporations are of citizens who provide similar services for free. And I'm not just talking about piracy, media corporations are threatened by movements like Creative Commons too.
I think you're missing the grandparent's point... which is that without regulation of the engineering profession, the government employee would have no legal basis for acting like a petty tyrant.
Or more generally, as soon as an area of society is regulated, it gives the bureaucrats in charge of the regulation power to use or abuse.
I'm not saying that less regulation is always better, though. If it's an area that should be regulated, and the laws are well thought-out, the benefits may be much larger than the damage.
If the universe started with a big bang, with all matter originated in an extremely compact volume, and if it's radius can't expand faster than light, then there should be no points in the universe beyond what we can see (as limited by light speed.) What am I missing?
The universe can expand faster than the speed of light. The universe's expansion is not an explosion - it's not caused by the galaxies travelling apart from each other with high speed. It's caused by the expansion of space itself - new space is being "inserted" between the galaxies, so to speak.
The theory of relativity prohibits objects to move relative each other with speeds greater than that of light, but a galaxy which is so distant it recedes with more than the speed of light, will effectively be in another universe - it's not possible to observe it or reach it in any way. As far as the theory of relativity is concerned, it doesn't exist. It's hidden behind an event horizon, somewhat similar to the event horizon around a black hole.
As the universe slows down, the event horizon around us expands, and distant galaxies become visible again.
For a European like me, the difference between Democratic and Republican presidents seems minimal with regards to electronic surveillance and censorship.
In my own country, Sweden, the parties conveniently switch to criticising surveillance and censorship when they're out of power, only to conveniently switch back when they're in power again.
The number of Egyptians connecting to the internet over Tor rose more than five-fold after protests broke out last week before crashing when the Government severed links to the global internet.
The number of Egyptians connecting to the internet over Tor rose more than five-fold after protests broke out last week before crashing when the Government severed links to the global internet.
I.e, the Egyptians used Tor a lot right before they shut down the Internet.
The important thing is conceptual simplicity. A model where there are an infinite number of parallel universes existing side by side is not conceptually more complex than a model with rules for when a wave function collapses, since it's at least as simple to define mathematically.
Our current model of our universe states that it's at least billions of light years big and contains at least trillions of stars, which would have sounded extremely complex and unlikely to an 18th century astronomer. But conceptually, a large universe is not more complex than a small one.
The principle of conservation of mass has only ever been confirmed within a single universe - the very concept of mass is dependent on the presence of a space-time continuum, so it's meaningless outside the universe.
Slashdot Mirror
Here in Sweden, government documents are specifically exempted from copyright. The law doesn't state anything about who the government documents belong to; it simply states that copyright law does not apply to them, and therefore they are free to copy.
There are, of course, laws regulating which documents can and can't be released to the public.
I think the strategy is to raise the expected costs of piracy. It doesn't matter if you have such a low probability if there is a high cost and low benefit. The expected value is equal to the sum of the probability and its corresponding outcome.
That would work if people were rational and had an intuitive grasp of probability. Unfortunately, people tend to ignore very small risks, even if the cost is very high. That's one of the reasons harsher punishments is not an effective way to decrease crime. You need to increase the "risk of getting caught" side of the equation to make it work.
There's also a purely rational reason fines beyond a certain point tend to be ignored. Once you slap an average citizen with a fine of more than, say, a few hundred thousand dollars, they have no way to pay it back in their lifetime. So a fine of $500 000 or $500 000 000 makes no difference; the defendant will be living under the same minimum conditions the rest of their lives anyway.
But I suspect also that, even if DRM ceased to exist tomorrow, and copyright terms were scaled back to the original 14 years, some other variation of the general "fighting for good by sticking it to the Man" would still be used as an excuse for all the folk who, ultimately, just want to have their cake without paying for it.
That's most likely true. But I'm glad people find excuses to pirate, since pirating seems to be beneficial to the market as a whole. It not only enables more people to enjoy the content without hurting the artists financially, it even seems to stimulate the production of new content.
To get more to choose from. A lot of people buy what they can afford, and pirate the rest. That way, the industry gets just as many sales as they would have got without pirating.
Pirating is not primarily used as a money-saver; it's used as a way to get access to more content for the same price. That's one of the reasons the music, movie and gaming industries' revenues have continued to increase despite massive filesharing.
Actually, the CDs you copied to tape were legal. You paid for making that copy with the special tax on tapes which goes directly into the music producers' pockets.
Copying the games was illegal, but I'm glad you did it. I think it's silly that kids, students and poor people should abstain from watching/listening to something they couldn't afford to buy anyway.
Oh, and your story, about your pirating stimulating your music interest and causing you to buy even more music, is not an unusual one.
"Trivial"? You mean "arbitrary"?
Let's use GGP's example of someone being naughty and spoofing your address on a torrent. It is a ridiculous claim; there is no evidence that this kind of spoofing is even remotely likely to occur.
Actually, a kind of spoofing occurs all the time. Some BitTorrent trackers insert a small percentage of false IP adresses in the list of participants in a torrent, for the very reason to provide plausible deniability to the actual torrent users.
I also think the "hijacked router" scenario is plausible, since it's easy to break into many routers and can be used by someone to hide their own downloading.
I agree with you, though, that the main issue is the laws being insane in the first place. But I think the core of the problem is that private copying of copyrighted material is outlawed. There's no need for it; artists and writers are able to make money on their work without copyright protection.
Plus, there's the content that doesn't get translated to your market. Lots and lots of animé and manga, which would otherwise have been inaccessible to the English-speaking public, is fansubbed and scanlated. This is technically illegal, but fortunately, most of the Japanese producers have the economic sense to turn their blind eye towards it, since they ultimately benefit from the increased explosure.
Do you think that, if we moved our copyright laws all the way back to where they were at the time of the Founding Fathers (particularly terms), most people who pirate media today would stop doing so? When I see at the most popular items at, say, TPB, I see stuff that was released in the last year or two. The original copyright term was 14 years. Do the math.
You're right. 14 years is far too long for copyright to last. The purpose of copyright is to "promote the arts and sciences", so it is only possible to justify as long a copyright term as is needed to "promote the arts and sciences". Specifically, a copyright term which is longer than the economic life of a work doesn't provide any additional incentive to the artist.
It turnes out that the vast majority of novels are only commercially viable through their first printing, so copyright protection after the first printing is not really needed. A small number of books are so successful they get reprinted - but if you think about it, if they're so successful, their authors should be motivated enough to continue writing by the money they earned on the first printing. After all, lots of authors who *don't* get reprinted are motivated to continue writing.
It turns out that even huge, expensive productions like movies rarely make any money to speak of five years after their release, so it's very hard to justify a copyright longer than five years, if our main concern is to "promote the arts and sciences".
So should people wait five years before they download movies, so they don't cut into the producers' and distributors' profits? No, I don't think so. It turns out that, on the average, people spend at least as much money on movies and music even if they pirate. There's now research which shows that those who pirate the most, are also those who spend the most money on things like concerts and merchandise. Pirating creates interest in movies and music, and helps consumers weed out the good from the bad. Pirating is beneficial for the market.
See, for example, the recent study from the Japanese government which concludes that piracy boosts anime sales. (TorrentFreak)
In fact, except for just after the global economic crisis, the total revenues of both the movie industry and the music industry have continued to increase since filesharing took off in the late 1990's. Unfortunately for the record companies, a larger percentage of the revenues are now ending up in the artists' pockets.
It's time to face facts - Torrenting copywritten videos and audio files is eventually going to get you bitten - And you can make all the academic arguements you want about 'data wanting to be free' and blah blah blah but the fact remains that as things sit today the law isn't on your side.
How about protesting unjust laws by breaking them?
Copyright benefits the distributors, but not the majority of the artists.
It's not the content *creators* (the artists and writers) who are using DRM and suing people. It's the content *distributors* (like record companies) who do, because they are the ones who gain from the existence of copyright.
The artists are surprisingly often okay with pirating, even those who signed a contract with record companies. Watch this cool clip, for example: Joss Stone on piracy.
Sharing content over the Internet enables more people to enjoy it, without damaging the artists - the music industry's revenues have continued to increase strongly since filesharing became popular in the late 1990's. The problem (for the record companies) is that a larger percentage of the revenues are going directly to the artists.
By downloading music, you don't deprive any other person use of the music. Those who are for copyright have argued that you deprive the artist of potential profits from music sales, but this has turned out to be false; the music industry's revenues have continued to increase since filesharing became popular in the late 1990's. But a larger part of the revenue now goes to the artists directly, instead of through the record companies, which is why we see CD sales plumetting and the record companies complaining loudly.
I think the grandparent was referring to the Swiss procedure.
I agree with your technical analysis, but I'm note sure that what Microsoft is doing is "immoral" or "cheating". They're certainly benefiting from Google's efforts by re-using information Google has gathered - but haven't businessmen, artists and scientists been doing that for thousands of years, and the world has been better for it? Businessmen copy each other's business models, scientists copy data gathered by other scientists, artists borrow ideas from, are inspired by, and sample each other's work, and so on.
From a more economic point of view, the consumers may benefit from search providers copying each other. That way, they can get reliable search results from more than one provider, and the providers can compete by offering different user interfaces and value-added services, like online storage of bookmarks, natural language questions, database searches, and so on.
The provider with the best page ranking algorithm (i.e, Google) will still have an edge since they are the first to update the rankings to reflect reality, and the copied information is slightly less reliable than the original.
Copying information, experiences and ideas from others is a fundamental mechanism behind human progress, which has been in use since before the first Cro Magnon learnt to make fire. It's rather ironic that it today is referred derisively to as "piracy".
It's easy to laugh at other people's ignorance, because you're not aware of your own.
Well, I don't think the important issue here is who is factually right. No matter how bad Mr. Cox's engineering solution may be, he shouldn't be prohibited by law to voice his opinion, nor should a government official try to use the law to prevent him from voicing it. Free speech includes the right to be wrong, or it's not very free at all.
And in this specific case, Mr. Lacy's argument for reporting Mr. Cox was that the solution was too professional, not that it was amateurish.
Stop that immediately, you're practising politics without being an elected politician.
... which is eerily similar to how scared corporations are of citizens who provide similar services for free. And I'm not just talking about piracy, media corporations are threatened by movements like Creative Commons too.
I think you're missing the grandparent's point... which is that without regulation of the engineering profession, the government employee would have no legal basis for acting like a petty tyrant.
Or more generally, as soon as an area of society is regulated, it gives the bureaucrats in charge of the regulation power to use or abuse.
I'm not saying that less regulation is always better, though. If it's an area that should be regulated, and the laws are well thought-out, the benefits may be much larger than the damage.
True.
If the universe started with a big bang, with all matter originated in an extremely compact volume, and if it's radius can't expand faster than light, then there should be no points in the universe beyond what we can see (as limited by light speed.) What am I missing?
The universe can expand faster than the speed of light. The universe's expansion is not an explosion - it's not caused by the galaxies travelling apart from each other with high speed. It's caused by the expansion of space itself - new space is being "inserted" between the galaxies, so to speak.
The theory of relativity prohibits objects to move relative each other with speeds greater than that of light, but a galaxy which is so distant it recedes with more than the speed of light, will effectively be in another universe - it's not possible to observe it or reach it in any way. As far as the theory of relativity is concerned, it doesn't exist. It's hidden behind an event horizon, somewhat similar to the event horizon around a black hole.
As the universe slows down, the event horizon around us expands, and distant galaxies become visible again.
For a European like me, the difference between Democratic and Republican presidents seems minimal with regards to electronic surveillance and censorship.
In my own country, Sweden, the parties conveniently switch to criticising surveillance and censorship when they're out of power, only to conveniently switch back when they're in power again.
The summary actually says that:
The number of Egyptians connecting to the internet over Tor rose more than five-fold after protests broke out last week before crashing when the Government severed links to the global internet.
From the summary:
The number of Egyptians connecting to the internet over Tor rose more than five-fold after protests broke out last week before crashing when the Government severed links to the global internet.
I.e, the Egyptians used Tor a lot right before they shut down the Internet.
The important thing is conceptual simplicity. A model where there are an infinite number of parallel universes existing side by side is not conceptually more complex than a model with rules for when a wave function collapses, since it's at least as simple to define mathematically.
Our current model of our universe states that it's at least billions of light years big and contains at least trillions of stars, which would have sounded extremely complex and unlikely to an 18th century astronomer. But conceptually, a large universe is not more complex than a small one.
The principle of conservation of mass has only ever been confirmed within a single universe - the very concept of mass is dependent on the presence of a space-time continuum, so it's meaningless outside the universe.