Only the Supreme Court can rule a law unconstitutional. This delusional judge is just a stumbling block. Freedom of Expression has nothing to do with forcing your speech on somebody else. I have the freedom not to listen to you. A Do Not Call list is just that. Only if congress passed a law making telemarketing calls illegal would free speech be an issue.
You are comparing shutting down a few hundred websites (if even that many) with shutting down at least 5 million file sharers? Websites are easy targets because they make not effort to be anonymours. They don't even have to subpoena ISP's to reveal anonymous users.
Also, Movie88 started out of Taiwan and was shut down by the Tiawanese government so they moved to Iran. The only problem was that their servers were actually in the Netherlands. It seems that Iran doesn't have a very consistent pipeline. It was easy for the MPA (which is the international arm of the MPAA) to shut them down there.
In all of those cases you were dealing with centralized, easy to track servers. There is no comparison with P2P, especially with anonymous P2P like Freenet.
Scale - 261 out of 5,000,000 is 0.005%. Those are slim enough odds for most people to think it won't ever happen to them.
Small-Timers - If 5,000,000 people each share one different song that leaves still 5,000,000 songs available. The RIAA would never be able to go after these small-timers. Even if they did the fines would be far less than the legal fees.
International - P2P exists outside of the US. All you need is few guys in Kazakhstan with a fat pipeline to share every song he can get his hands on.
Downloading - The biggest change that has occured since these lawsuits is that people are just clicking off the upload option and becoming leeches. This would shut down the system if not for the few that still don't realize they are sharing and the international users (see above).
Anger - People are never going to get over the anger they feel towards the record industry. Years of overpricing and the current war against the little guy have destroyed any goodwill they had.
Alternatives - When they shut down Napster they didn't kill file-sharing. It evolved. They can fight and fight but it will continue to evolve. People will move to something more secure, more anonymous - perhaps Freenet or something like it (and hopefully better).
The truth is that until a viable alternative is created people will continue to share. And $1 per song from a limited selection is not an alternative. People want variety, they want a fair price, and the want the freedom to do what they want once they pay.
I am not sure I agree 100% with the gun thing but you made a good point with:
I bet almost 100% of murderers played "Cowboys and Indians" and "Cops and Robbers" when they were kids.
That is how some of these studies work. They take violent kids and ask them what they were doing, what they were watching, what influenced them, etc. Invariably these kids come back with violent movies, games, etc. They take that as a indication that these movies and games caused the violence. I'd be more surprised if these kids came out and said they were reading Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."
The other thing they do is take a bunch of kids and put them in a room and have them watch a violent movie and another group of kids and have them watch something calm. Then they are surprised when the kids from the violent movie are more active, more hyped up. They take that to mean that these kids are now ready to go out and kill.
Neither type of study is anywhere near scientific. In the first group you have no control to measure against and in the second group you have no real indication that the kids would be violent. Yet these studies get released and everybody gets riled up and lawsuits flow but nothing has ever really been proven.
I have been dealing with this nonsense since I was 8 years old and playing AD&D. Luckily my parents always knew that I was not a violent person and that if anything these games made me more social (if not as athletic at the time). 22 years later I am still a responsible person who enjoys digital slash and killing. My girlfriend teases me about it but she know that I am not about to act out scenes from Warcraft on her (even though she can be quite an Orc at times).
Splitting off a company is not as easy as you think. For a publicly traded company it is a HUGE undertaking that costs way more than the savings you would ever receive.
To determine whether someone is an employee or independent contractor I assume they would use the IRS guidelines which includes how much specific behavior control the company has over the persons and financial controls such as benefits, unreimbursed employee expenses, etc.
So to answer your question (and yes I am a CPA) the 10-K would not include temps and contract workers because they would not qualify as employees under the IRS guidelines.
What's interesting is that it is based on the number of employees per the company's annual report and not based on actual users. I would imagine that companies with large workforces that don't actually go anywhere near a computer would lose out on a deal like this. Manufacturing companies come to mind. I work for a company of 1700 employees. That means $170,000 in license fees. Anybody know what that would hav translate to under the old scheme?
Obviously things are different depending on where you live. In NY $40,000 is reasonable for someone with experience but of course the cost of living is much higher. To give a comparison - I made more than $30K fresh out of college and that was over 8 years ago.
There are plenty of low paying jobs both IT and not but it is sometimes hard for people with a lot of experience to get them. If you were a VP making $120,000 at your last job and you are applying for a Help Desk job at $40,000 I can tell you that no one is going to hire you because they know you will be gone in a heartbeat when the market improves. They would much rather hire somebody with little to no experience and train them because they know that they will have some loyalty.
This isn't hypothetical by the way. It is exactly the scenario my friend is going through for the last two years. Go out to Monster and do a search on Help Desk.
The last thing we need is for America to become an intolerant, isolationist country again. I don't know about you but my I am not Native-American and I have descended from immigrants. I am very glad that they had the opportunity to come here and work.
I work with several individuals who were not born in this country and I can tell you that they every bit as talented (if not more so) as the people who were born here.
5.7% is still insignificant and board members exercise very little control over the day to day operation of a company. The ~65% owner/employees wield far more power. Based on my experience from working for a Big 6 (now Big 4) accounting firm, most board members are just figureheads. Think of someone like Ted Turner. He can bitch and moan and whine all he wants and maybe even a couple of heads rolled because of him but the divisions of AOL TW still do business as they always have.
Either way, why should they speak out against SCO? It's not their code that is being called into question. There are plenty of spokespeople defending Linux. If Trolltech spoke up the best they could offer is another "me too."
Did you read those other articles? They are much less sensationalistic. They talk about the various people getting sued but don't outright attack the RIAA. Only Fox chose to go exclusively with the 12 yr old and turned it into an attack.
We can blame Fox all we want but they are really the only ones who could do an article like this. Who else:
CNN - Owned by AOL Time Warner (Warner Music, etc.). MSNBC - Joint Venture with Microsoft (not about to attacked RIAA). ABC News - Owned by Disney (we know how they feel about Copyrights). CBS News - Owned by Viacom (also owns MTV)
Fox, as far as I can tell, is the only one not totally in bed with the RIAA and if there is anybody who can piss them off and get away with it it is Rupert Murdoch.
In reality they are suing the mother. She is the one who owns the computer and who paid for Kazaa. Whether the mother did any downloading or not doesn't make a difference. I hate the RIAA as much as anybody but this is really just sensationalistic reporting.
Selling is only part of it. Here is the whole law:
(1) Any person who shall, without the consent of the registrant--
(a) use in commerce any reproduction, counterfeit, copy, or colorable imitation of a registered mark in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of any goods or services on or in connection with which such use is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive; or
Now I am not sure that it causes confusion but it clearly covers distribution also. Otherwise the open-source community wouldn't have to care about infringment, would they?
You're right. But check out this one from TEKNEKRON. There's is from 1995 and it says:
br. "Computer software and associated documentation to assist in data communication in networked computing systems using client-server and peer-to-peer communication techniques."
You really don't understand how trademarks work do you? You can trademark anything as it pertains to a particular specific business. Apple has a trademark and I think Apple is a pretty common word. So are Ford, Dodge, Gulf, Sears, Target, etc. Trademarks exist to help protect both the consumer and the company from confusion. The company doesn't have to worry about its rebutation being soiled by somebody selling a inferior product under their name and a consumer can be secure in knowing that if it has the name of the company then it belongs to that company.
That's wrong. Microsoft lost the case because the phrase windows was already a common term in user interfaces BEFORE Microsoft received their trademark. It is similar to prior art with patents. You are very much allowed to trademark ordinary words. By it's very definition - "A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others (source: USPTO.
I caught you. Where did I say you can own an idea? Read all of my posts. You cannot own an idea but you can own a book. Copyrights do not exist on ideas. It actually says VERY clearly in Copyright law that is has to be tangible. When I write a book I own the book. Not the idea. Not the overall story but the book. I can sell you the book. I can sell you the write to sell copies of the book.
I would also challenge you to find an instance of two identical songs being created at the same instance or even in history without any knowledge of the other. If you calculate the odds for just 4 bars of music (16 beats in 4/4) you can have some astronomical numbers. Even if constrained to the 2 octaves of the well-tempered scale and only quarter notes you end up with like 1e22 possibilities. Forget the addition of 3 more octaves, whole, half, eight, etc. notes, rests, different keys and scales, chords, etc.
You still haven't addressed any of my questions from any of my posts. Until you do I will not bother responding to silliness like this last one of yours.
I just have to attack you again. Here is the definition of property:
a : something owned or possessed; specifically : a piece of real estate b : the exclusive right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of a thing : OWNERSHIP c : something to which a person or business has a legal title d : one (as a performer) under contract whose work is especially valuable
When I write a book I own it. When I write a song I own it. If I create something I own it. I have the exclusive right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of it. BUT I also have the freedom to sell what I create. The belief that human creativity has no value is just plain scary. Do you believe that the only things to have value are physical things? I mean do you think that this coffee mug here is more valuable then say "Snow Crash"?
How do copyrights, trademarks, and patents restrict your liberty to think? That is just plain bullshit. Talk about hopeless. Here it is as simple as I can get:
If I spend 3 years of my life writing a book about the Civil War so that thousands of people can read and enjoy it should be my FREEDOM to be able to sell it. That is freedom and that is capitalism. If I do not have any protection of copyright then I have no defense against somebody else taking that work and calling it their own. I have no defense against somebody else taking it and distributing it to the world. That work IS my property. I created it. I did the research. I put the pieces together. I was the creative force behind its creation.
How does my selling my book infringe upon any of your liberties? You can read the book, you can discuss the book, you can quote the book, you can even make a million copies for your own use but you can not call it your own and you can not distribute it until I have received my just compensation for the work I put in. Now in my opionion - 30 years alive or dead is plenty but I don't make the laws.
How does protecting my brand image infringe on your liberties? Do you think you should be able to sell soft drinks under the name Coca Cola? Do you think it is fair to the consumer for you to do that? If I buy a Coke or a Pepsi then I am assuming that I am buying a soft drink made by those companies because they have trademarks on the names. Without trademarks I can sell Coca Cola brand Birch Beer and people would think - oh this is made by Coca Cola company when it is really made by Joe Schmo in Bumblefuck, WV.
Can you rebut either of those? I have yet to read one post of yours that clearly addresses those issues. What are you alternatives? You can't just spew shit out without thinking it through.
I also think that most libertarians would be very surprised to hear you say that they believe in the entire abolishment of copyrights, trademarks, and patents. I don't speak for them though and neither should you.
communism - a theory advocating elimination of private property b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
libertarianism - 1 : an advocate of the doctrine of free will 2 a : a person who upholds the principles of absolute and unrestricted liberty especially of thought and action
Not sure how libertarianism fits into this. Can you clarify?
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Only the Supreme Court can rule a law unconstitutional. This delusional judge is just a stumbling block. Freedom of Expression has nothing to do with forcing your speech on somebody else. I have the freedom not to listen to you. A Do Not Call list is just that. Only if congress passed a law making telemarketing calls illegal would free speech be an issue.
You are comparing shutting down a few hundred websites (if even that many) with shutting down at least 5 million file sharers? Websites are easy targets because they make not effort to be anonymours. They don't even have to subpoena ISP's to reveal anonymous users.
Also, Movie88 started out of Taiwan and was shut down by the Tiawanese government so they moved to Iran. The only problem was that their servers were actually in the Netherlands. It seems that Iran doesn't have a very consistent pipeline. It was easy for the MPA (which is the international arm of the MPAA) to shut them down there.
In all of those cases you were dealing with centralized, easy to track servers. There is no comparison with P2P, especially with anonymous P2P like Freenet.
Here is why this won't happen:
Scale - 261 out of 5,000,000 is 0.005%. Those are slim enough odds for most people to think it won't ever happen to them.
Small-Timers - If 5,000,000 people each share one different song that leaves still 5,000,000 songs available. The RIAA would never be able to go after these small-timers. Even if they did the fines would be far less than the legal fees.
International - P2P exists outside of the US. All you need is few guys in Kazakhstan with a fat pipeline to share every song he can get his hands on.
Downloading - The biggest change that has occured since these lawsuits is that people are just clicking off the upload option and becoming leeches. This would shut down the system if not for the few that still don't realize they are sharing and the international users (see above).
Anger - People are never going to get over the anger they feel towards the record industry. Years of overpricing and the current war against the little guy have destroyed any goodwill they had.
Alternatives - When they shut down Napster they didn't kill file-sharing. It evolved. They can fight and fight but it will continue to evolve. People will move to something more secure, more anonymous - perhaps Freenet or something like it (and hopefully better).
The truth is that until a viable alternative is created people will continue to share. And $1 per song from a limited selection is not an alternative. People want variety, they want a fair price, and the want the freedom to do what they want once they pay.
I am not sure I agree 100% with the gun thing but you made a good point with:
I bet almost 100% of murderers played "Cowboys and Indians" and "Cops and Robbers" when they were kids.
That is how some of these studies work. They take violent kids and ask them what they were doing, what they were watching, what influenced them, etc. Invariably these kids come back with violent movies, games, etc. They take that as a indication that these movies and games caused the violence. I'd be more surprised if these kids came out and said they were reading Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."
The other thing they do is take a bunch of kids and put them in a room and have them watch a violent movie and another group of kids and have them watch something calm. Then they are surprised when the kids from the violent movie are more active, more hyped up. They take that to mean that these kids are now ready to go out and kill.
Neither type of study is anywhere near scientific. In the first group you have no control to measure against and in the second group you have no real indication that the kids would be violent. Yet these studies get released and everybody gets riled up and lawsuits flow but nothing has ever really been proven.
I have been dealing with this nonsense since I was 8 years old and playing AD&D. Luckily my parents always knew that I was not a violent person and that if anything these games made me more social (if not as athletic at the time). 22 years later I am still a responsible person who enjoys digital slash and killing. My girlfriend teases me about it but she know that I am not about to act out scenes from Warcraft on her (even though she can be quite an Orc at times).
Splitting off a company is not as easy as you think. For a publicly traded company it is a HUGE undertaking that costs way more than the savings you would ever receive.
I KNOW that I closed that anchor tag. I knew that I should have done preview but somebody came into my office. Damn work screwing up my posts.
The 10-K filing regulations (see Item 101(c)(1)(xiii)), which is the government filing I assume they are referring to, only says that the narrative description of the company should include "The number of persons employed by the registrant."
To determine whether someone is an employee or independent contractor I assume they would use the IRS guidelines which includes how much specific behavior control the company has over the persons and financial controls such as benefits, unreimbursed employee expenses, etc.
So to answer your question (and yes I am a CPA) the 10-K would not include temps and contract workers because they would not qualify as employees under the IRS guidelines.
What's interesting is that it is based on the number of employees per the company's annual report and not based on actual users. I would imagine that companies with large workforces that don't actually go anywhere near a computer would lose out on a deal like this. Manufacturing companies come to mind. I work for a company of 1700 employees. That means $170,000 in license fees. Anybody know what that would hav translate to under the old scheme?
OK - Listen to this - Ford Escape Hybrid. Summer 2004, though.
Obviously things are different depending on where you live. In NY $40,000 is reasonable for someone with experience but of course the cost of living is much higher. To give a comparison - I made more than $30K fresh out of college and that was over 8 years ago.
There are plenty of low paying jobs both IT and not but it is sometimes hard for people with a lot of experience to get them. If you were a VP making $120,000 at your last job and you are applying for a Help Desk job at $40,000 I can tell you that no one is going to hire you because they know you will be gone in a heartbeat when the market improves. They would much rather hire somebody with little to no experience and train them because they know that they will have some loyalty.
This isn't hypothetical by the way. It is exactly the scenario my friend is going through for the last two years. Go out to Monster and do a search on Help Desk.
The last thing we need is for America to become an intolerant, isolationist country again. I don't know about you but my I am not Native-American and I have descended from immigrants. I am very glad that they had the opportunity to come here and work.
I work with several individuals who were not born in this country and I can tell you that they every bit as talented (if not more so) as the people who were born here.
Take your hate rhetoric elsewhere.
5.7% is still insignificant and board members exercise very little control over the day to day operation of a company. The ~65% owner/employees wield far more power. Based on my experience from working for a Big 6 (now Big 4) accounting firm, most board members are just figureheads. Think of someone like Ted Turner. He can bitch and moan and whine all he wants and maybe even a couple of heads rolled because of him but the divisions of AOL TW still do business as they always have.
Either way, why should they speak out against SCO? It's not their code that is being called into question. There are plenty of spokespeople defending Linux. If Trolltech spoke up the best they could offer is another "me too."
Canopy owns 4.1% according to Trolltech. I hardly consider that a significant influence even with one guy on the board.
Did you read those other articles? They are much less sensationalistic. They talk about the various people getting sued but don't outright attack the RIAA. Only Fox chose to go exclusively with the 12 yr old and turned it into an attack.
We can blame Fox all we want but they are really the only ones who could do an article like this. Who else:
CNN - Owned by AOL Time Warner (Warner Music, etc.).
MSNBC - Joint Venture with Microsoft (not about to attacked RIAA).
ABC News - Owned by Disney (we know how they feel about Copyrights).
CBS News - Owned by Viacom (also owns MTV)
Fox, as far as I can tell, is the only one not totally in bed with the RIAA and if there is anybody who can piss them off and get away with it it is Rupert Murdoch.
In reality they are suing the mother. She is the one who owns the computer and who paid for Kazaa. Whether the mother did any downloading or not doesn't make a difference. I hate the RIAA as much as anybody but this is really just sensationalistic reporting.
Selling is only part of it. Here is the whole law:
(1) Any person who shall, without the consent of the registrant--
(a) use in commerce any reproduction, counterfeit, copy, or colorable imitation of a registered mark in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of any goods or services on or in connection with which such use is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive; or
Now I am not sure that it causes confusion but it clearly covers distribution also. Otherwise the open-source community wouldn't have to care about infringment, would they?
You're right. But check out this one from TEKNEKRON. There's is from 1995 and it says:
br.
"Computer software and associated documentation to assist in data communication in networked computing systems using client-server and peer-to-peer communication techniques."
You really don't understand how trademarks work do you? You can trademark anything as it pertains to a particular specific business. Apple has a trademark and I think Apple is a pretty common word. So are Ford, Dodge, Gulf, Sears, Target, etc. Trademarks exist to help protect both the consumer and the company from confusion. The company doesn't have to worry about its rebutation being soiled by somebody selling a inferior product under their name and a consumer can be secure in knowing that if it has the name of the company then it belongs to that company.
That's wrong. Microsoft lost the case because the phrase windows was already a common term in user interfaces BEFORE Microsoft received their trademark. It is similar to prior art with patents. You are very much allowed to trademark ordinary words. By it's very definition - "A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others (source: USPTO.
I caught you. Where did I say you can own an idea? Read all of my posts. You cannot own an idea but you can own a book. Copyrights do not exist on ideas. It actually says VERY clearly in Copyright law that is has to be tangible. When I write a book I own the book. Not the idea. Not the overall story but the book. I can sell you the book. I can sell you the write to sell copies of the book.
I would also challenge you to find an instance of two identical songs being created at the same instance or even in history without any knowledge of the other. If you calculate the odds for just 4 bars of music (16 beats in 4/4) you can have some astronomical numbers. Even if constrained to the 2 octaves of the well-tempered scale and only quarter notes you end up with like 1e22 possibilities. Forget the addition of 3 more octaves, whole, half, eight, etc. notes, rests, different keys and scales, chords, etc.
You still haven't addressed any of my questions from any of my posts. Until you do I will not bother responding to silliness like this last one of yours.
I just have to attack you again. Here is the definition of property:
a : something owned or possessed; specifically : a piece of real estate b : the exclusive right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of a thing : OWNERSHIP c : something to which a person or business has a legal title d : one (as a performer) under contract whose work is especially valuable
When I write a book I own it. When I write a song I own it. If I create something I own it. I have the exclusive right to possess, enjoy, and dispose of it. BUT I also have the freedom to sell what I create. The belief that human creativity has no value is just plain scary. Do you believe that the only things to have value are physical things? I mean do you think that this coffee mug here is more valuable then say "Snow Crash"?
How do copyrights, trademarks, and patents restrict your liberty to think? That is just plain bullshit. Talk about hopeless. Here it is as simple as I can get:
If I spend 3 years of my life writing a book about the Civil War so that thousands of people can read and enjoy it should be my FREEDOM to be able to sell it. That is freedom and that is capitalism. If I do not have any protection of copyright then I have no defense against somebody else taking that work and calling it their own. I have no defense against somebody else taking it and distributing it to the world. That work IS my property. I created it. I did the research. I put the pieces together. I was the creative force behind its creation.
How does my selling my book infringe upon any of your liberties? You can read the book, you can discuss the book, you can quote the book, you can even make a million copies for your own use but you can not call it your own and you can not distribute it until I have received my just compensation for the work I put in. Now in my opionion - 30 years alive or dead is plenty but I don't make the laws.
How does protecting my brand image infringe on your liberties? Do you think you should be able to sell soft drinks under the name Coca Cola? Do you think it is fair to the consumer for you to do that? If I buy a Coke or a Pepsi then I am assuming that I am buying a soft drink made by those companies because they have trademarks on the names. Without trademarks I can sell Coca Cola brand Birch Beer and people would think - oh this is made by Coca Cola company when it is really made by Joe Schmo in Bumblefuck, WV.
Can you rebut either of those? I have yet to read one post of yours that clearly addresses those issues. What are you alternatives? You can't just spew shit out without thinking it through.
I also think that most libertarians would be very surprised to hear you say that they believe in the entire abolishment of copyrights, trademarks, and patents. I don't speak for them though and neither should you.
communism - a theory advocating elimination of private property b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
libertarianism - 1 : an advocate of the doctrine of free will
2 a : a person who upholds the principles of absolute and unrestricted liberty especially of thought and action
Not sure how libertarianism fits into this. Can you clarify?