Specifically immunizing investors from secondary copyright infringement suits is putting a band-aid on a festering wound. Number one, they're already covered by the corporate veil anyway, unless the RIAA buys the judges (in which case the laws won't help). Number two, the whole concept of secondary copyright infringement is something made up out of whole cloth by the courts; it doesn't appear in the statutes. So how about explicitly eliminating the doctrine of secondary copyright infringement entirely? It's pretty much used only for evil.
Actually, that goes for copyright period. So here's my suggested draft legislation
1) The United States denounces the Berne Convention and denounces and withdraws from all other organizations, treaties, and/or agreements which would require it to enforce any provisions of Title 17 of the United States Code. 2) Title 17 of the United States Code is hereby repealed, as of thirteen months from date of enactment of this legislation, or when all denunciations and withdrawals in paragraph 1 have taken effect, whichever comes sooner.
What happens when an artist is inspired by a story when he doesn't remember where he heard the original? Is he obliged to search out the source of his inspiration before he can publish his work? What if he is unable to find it? What if he doesn't consciously know what it was that inspired him? What if by pure coincidence his story resembles some other story that he's never even heard of? Will he be liable for infringement?
Ask James Cameron, who Harlan Ellison successfully sued over the opening sequence to "Terminator", claiming it was based on a short story called "The Warriors".
Of course, this means that if you are widely read, you pretty much can't produce anything original, and you're liable to be sued by just about anyone who preceded you.
I think this is the key point, especially going forward. The "Tivo-ization" of GPL software is something that is critical for the success of the companies building the devices, but it is detrimental to the OSS "movement" since it seems to be a loophole to take from OSS without giving back.
Tivo-ization isn't critical at all. It wouldn't hurt Tivo a bit if anyone could load software onto their device. What would hurt Tivo is if someone could reproduce their device, then use Tivo's software on it. But provided they are careful to keep their actual proprietary stuff and GPL stuff separate, they can prevent that.
If times are tough, you've been through all the job boards and applied for anything relevant, shaked down all your friends and contacts asking if they know of any job offers, gone to every interview you've been invited to then yes. Keeping up with the daily new offers isn't really that much work, it's not a day's worth of work.
In fact, nowadays, all that is downright trivial. Because there won't be any interviews to go to, your friends are probably worrying about getting laid off themselves, and any new offers will look suspiciously similar to the old offers you applied to and didn't hear back about.
I think everyone should have to change their name to a unique number. (a 64 bit number should be enough for future expansion at least until we discover FTL.) The number 6 is reserved for Patrick McGoohan, and of courde 666 is for Bill Gates.
McGoohan would refuse 6 (I'm not sure if he'd accept 1, but he'd have to fight with Samuel L. Jackson and Chuck Norris for it), and Dick Cheney is not going to let Gates have 666 without a fight.
Maybe Gates can get 0x666 and Cheney the decimal version.
Isn't diesel cheaper than gasoline in the U.S., as is the case here in Brazil
Diesel is almost always more expensive than regular gasoline in my area. It goes up even more during heating season (since diesel and home heating oil are pretty much the same thing).
The fact of the matter is that open source, at least in the eyes of European policy makers, is about kicking the Americans out of the software business in Europe.
The name "European Digital Independence" would seem to indicate that, yes. Which makes it especially dumb for them to accept input from Microsoft.
Definitely, am supporting protectionist candidates in the United States.
Because it's always good for the US to cut its own throat just because the Europeans are cutting theirs.
I've just been labeling my works "Copyright 1821 by The Joseph Wind Publishing Company, All Rights Reserved". Retroactive copyright extension has a while before it gets back that far.
First of all, the issue here is not that reading aloud is copyright infringement - it isn't, and Blount explicitly says so. The issue here is as follows:
1. Audiobook rights constitute a separate right from e-book rights in copyright law.
There's nothing in the statutes specifically about audio books. The usual audiobook right is a combination of the right to create an audio recording based on a literary work (by having someone read it), and to then reproduce and distribute that recording, which is a derivative work of the original literary work.
2. Amazon is advertising that the Kindle 2 has the ability to effectively generate an audiobook from the e-book, and using that as a major selling point.
No. They are advertising that the Kindle 2 can perform text to speech on the books, thus reading them out loud. No audiobook is generated in the process, unless you record the output from the Kindle (and that's your responsibility, not Amazon's)
3. Amazon is not buying audiobook rights, even though they are generating an audiobook performance for commercial gain.
A) Amazon is not generating a performance. The user of the Kindle is. B) Private performance rights are not reserved to the author of a copyrighted work, not even when the private performance is done for commercial gain. If I can pay Patrick Stewart to come to my house and read my copy of "The Lord of The Rings" to my family, neither he nor I has to pay the Tolkein estate a thing, no matter how much I pay him.
All of this was clarified in the article - which apparently nobody read. Now, whether a computer-read book constitutes a full audiobook is a tricky matter,
No, it's a simple matter. A computer-read book is not "fixed", therefore it is not a copy nor a phonorecord nor a derivative work. If it isn't done in public, it isn't a public performance. Therefore it is not an exercise of the rights reserved to the owner of the copyright.
Suppose the cops want to search my house without a warrant. Stupidly, I let them, and they don't find anything. Now a week later they want to search again, and I deny them entry. Following this decision, since I waived my rights when I co-operated once, I have to co-operate again. WTF?
I consider myself a pretty die-hard pro-choicer but I'm extremely disturbed by the notion of aborting your embryo because it doesn't have the eye color you wanted.........
I'm actually amused, but mostly because I have this image of two blond(e) blue-eyed people wanting a brown-eyed baby and sorting through their embryos. And one says to the other: "Darn it, another blue-eyed one. That's the 353rd. What are the odds, honey?"
People are so egotistical about how important it is for their kids to be their biological product, even if it means knowingly putting those kids at risk.
It's inherent. Genes whose phenotype is expressed as a desire to have one's own biological children are selected for automatically.
If Microsoft has just a small handful of core computing patents like that, they are set for as long as people are using computers to organize and share their data.
The problem is that most of those really core ideas, like your "retrieving data from a database", were done in the '60s if not earlier... yet the patent system allows companies to dress them up in new language, maybe add an "on the internet" or "in a car", and re-patent the whole thing.
Patent 6,175,789 is exactly this: It's a patent on a computer system... IN A CAR. The other patents are on driving directions (I don't know enough to judge this one), the infamous FAT32 long-name patents, and one on flash memory file systems (which I simply do not believe Microsoft was first to invent).
I don't know about her not looking like a goddess. Granted, more Athena than Aphrodite, but were she a geek her looks would not disqualify her from geek goddess-dom.
Except as provided in subdivision (h), any person who commits any of the following acts is guilty of a public offense:
(6) Knowingly and without permission provides or assists in providing a means of accessing a computer, computer system, or computer network in violation of this section.
OK, "knowingly" makes sense, but "without permission"? The man was the network administrator; he was authorized to make decisions about how the network is accessed, it goes along with the job. Who was he to get permission from, himself? If he made bad decisions, by all means dismiss him, but prosecuting him is unreasonable.
And since they dropped the most serious charge, can we admit his 8th amendment rights were stomped and pissed-upon by the 5 million dollar bail requirement?
My point was that "free speech" is not as universally held dear and timeless as we'd like to imagine.
Of course it's not universally held dear; if it was, we wouldn't need that pesky First Amendment, because there wouldn't be bastards passing laws to abridge it in the first place.
While India has a similar right in its constitution, it's also got a few "notwithstanding" clauses which render it worthless.
If you're dogmatic about a product, you're putting your religious beliefs (those that tack 'good' and 'evil' labels on things such as Microsoft, GNU or the open-source community) before the interests of your employer, and we wouldn't touch you with a 10-meter pole.
Not surprising. Your employer is a big bank; they know they're getting the 'evil' label.
(BTW, I prefer not to work with Microsoft technology not because MS is evil or Linus et al are good, but because Microsoft technology is unpleasant to work with. That said, my current job requires it. Eh, it's a living.)
_Slumdog Millionaire_, the version which won the Oscars, which apparently you haven't seen, is mostly in English. The writer was from the UK, the director was from the UK, and the novel it was based on was in English. I don't know which of the Indian languages the main character spoke; Wikipedia suggests it should have been a local patois. In any case, it was subtitled in English.
No it doesn't. With software development the default is that software developers have great fun refactoring, improving architecture and so on. And they produce something which is appalling for usability. If you ever worked inside a software comapany you know how much work it is to be able to even build the latest code. From the perspective of developers once it builds and there aren't any showstopper bugs, everything is fine.
The reason it's difficult to build the latest code in many software companies has little to do with developers not being able to produce usable products. It's more an issue of the shoemaker's daughter going barefoot -- there's no time allocated to improve the build process and >100% of the time allocated to everything else. Personally, I can't stand that and I will take the time to make a usable build process, because I _know_ it'll pay me back in time manyfold. A lot of people just don't get that.
The problem is more that software developers don't know how to make the product usable for the audience of their software. Why should they? Neither usability nor whatever group their software is meant to be used by is their area of expertise. It _should_ fall on someone else to design the interface so it's usable. Unfortunately, in most companies either there is no someone else, so the developers do it, or marketing does it (which is even worse -- I think that's the case for Microsoft). Personally I blame Apple for this situation; I think they've almost cornered the market on good UI engineers.
Open source hits the same problem, of course. Software written by and for developers can be quite usable by developers. Software written by people in another field who know how to program tends to be usable for the particular problem the person was trying to solve, but inflexible and often fragile.
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Specifically immunizing investors from secondary copyright infringement suits is putting a band-aid on a festering wound. Number one, they're already covered by the corporate veil anyway, unless the RIAA buys the judges (in which case the laws won't help). Number two, the whole concept of secondary copyright infringement is something made up out of whole cloth by the courts; it doesn't appear in the statutes. So how about explicitly eliminating the doctrine of secondary copyright infringement entirely? It's pretty much used only for evil.
Actually, that goes for copyright period. So here's my suggested draft legislation
1) The United States denounces the Berne Convention and denounces and withdraws from all other organizations, treaties, and/or agreements which would require it to enforce any provisions of Title 17 of the United States Code.
2) Title 17 of the United States Code is hereby repealed, as of thirteen months from date of enactment of this legislation, or when all denunciations and withdrawals in paragraph 1 have taken effect, whichever comes sooner.
Ask James Cameron, who Harlan Ellison successfully sued over the opening sequence to "Terminator", claiming it was based on a short story called "The Warriors".
Of course, this means that if you are widely read, you pretty much can't produce anything original, and you're liable to be sued by just about anyone who preceded you.
Tivo-ization isn't critical at all. It wouldn't hurt Tivo a bit if anyone could load software onto their device. What would hurt Tivo is if someone could reproduce their device, then use Tivo's software on it. But provided they are careful to keep their actual proprietary stuff and GPL stuff separate, they can prevent that.
In fact, nowadays, all that is downright trivial. Because there won't be any interviews to go to, your friends are probably worrying about getting laid off themselves, and any new offers will look suspiciously similar to the old offers you applied to and didn't hear back about.
McGoohan would refuse 6 (I'm not sure if he'd accept 1, but he'd have to fight with Samuel L. Jackson and Chuck Norris for it), and Dick Cheney is not going to let Gates have 666 without a fight.
Maybe Gates can get 0x666 and Cheney the decimal version.
Diesel is almost always more expensive than regular gasoline in my area. It goes up even more during heating season (since diesel and home heating oil are pretty much the same thing).
The name "European Digital Independence" would seem to indicate that, yes. Which makes it especially dumb for them to accept input from Microsoft.
Because it's always good for the US to cut its own throat just because the Europeans are cutting theirs.
I've just been labeling my works "Copyright 1821 by The Joseph Wind Publishing Company, All Rights Reserved". Retroactive copyright extension has a while before it gets back that far.
There's nothing in the statutes specifically about audio books. The usual audiobook right is a combination of the right to create an audio recording based on a literary work (by having someone read it), and to then reproduce and distribute that recording, which is a derivative work of the original literary work.
No. They are advertising that the Kindle 2 can perform text to speech on the books, thus reading them out loud. No audiobook is generated in the process, unless you record the output from the Kindle (and that's your responsibility, not Amazon's)
A) Amazon is not generating a performance. The user of the Kindle is.
B) Private performance rights are not reserved to the author of a copyrighted work, not even when the private performance is done for commercial gain. If I can pay Patrick Stewart to come to my house and read my copy of "The Lord of The Rings" to my family, neither he nor I has to pay the Tolkein estate a thing, no matter how much I pay him.
No, it's a simple matter. A computer-read book is not "fixed", therefore it is not a copy nor a phonorecord nor a derivative work. If it isn't done in public, it isn't a public performance. Therefore it is not an exercise of the rights reserved to the owner of the copyright.
Suppose the cops want to search my house without a warrant. Stupidly, I let them, and they don't find anything. Now a week later they want to search again, and I deny them entry. Following this decision, since I waived my rights when I co-operated once, I have to co-operate again. WTF?
I'm actually amused, but mostly because I have this image of two blond(e) blue-eyed people wanting a brown-eyed baby and sorting through their embryos. And one says to the other: "Darn it, another blue-eyed one. That's the 353rd. What are the odds, honey?"
It's inherent. Genes whose phenotype is expressed as a desire to have one's own biological children are selected for automatically.
The problem is that most of those really core ideas, like your "retrieving data from a database", were done in the '60s if not earlier... yet the patent system allows companies to dress them up in new language, maybe add an "on the internet" or "in a car", and re-patent the whole thing.
Patent 6,175,789 is exactly this: It's a patent on a computer system... IN A CAR. The other patents are on driving directions (I don't know enough to judge this one), the infamous FAT32 long-name patents, and one on flash memory file systems (which I simply do not believe Microsoft was first to invent).
I don't know about her not looking like a goddess. Granted, more Athena than Aphrodite, but were she a geek her looks would not disqualify her from geek goddess-dom.
He didn't set up the modems after he was let go, and these charges are for "providing a means of accessing", not "accessing".
Section 502(c) states in part
OK, "knowingly" makes sense, but "without permission"? The man was the network administrator; he was authorized to make decisions about how the network is accessed, it goes along with the job. Who was he to get permission from, himself? If he made bad decisions, by all means dismiss him, but prosecuting him is unreasonable.
And since they dropped the most serious charge, can we admit his 8th amendment rights were stomped and pissed-upon by the 5 million dollar bail requirement?
It's common law. Which is a fancy way of saying the latter.
Of course it's not universally held dear; if it was, we wouldn't need that pesky First Amendment, because there wouldn't be bastards passing laws to abridge it in the first place.
While India has a similar right in its constitution, it's also got a few "notwithstanding" clauses which render it worthless.
A) Americans, learn a foreign language? You must be joking.
B) Taking over French things is the Germans' job.
Err, all of the above were repealed or overturned.
Not surprising. Your employer is a big bank; they know they're getting the 'evil' label.
(BTW, I prefer not to work with Microsoft technology not because MS is evil or Linus et al are good, but because Microsoft technology is unpleasant to work with. That said, my current job requires it. Eh, it's a living.)
I wouldn't need a job. Just a stake which I could get by picking up broken-off wheel weights.
_Slumdog Millionaire_, the version which won the Oscars, which apparently you haven't seen, is mostly in English. The writer was from the UK, the director was from the UK, and the novel it was based on was in English. I don't know which of the Indian languages the main character spoke; Wikipedia suggests it should have been a local patois. In any case, it was subtitled in English.
It's not the current standard nomenclature, but it's a historically correct name still in common use outside formal papers.
The reason it's difficult to build the latest code in many software companies has little to do with developers not being able to produce usable products. It's more an issue of the shoemaker's daughter going barefoot -- there's no time allocated to improve the build process and >100% of the time allocated to everything else. Personally, I can't stand that and I will take the time to make a usable build process, because I _know_ it'll pay me back in time manyfold. A lot of people just don't get that.
The problem is more that software developers don't know how to make the product usable for the audience of their software. Why should they? Neither usability nor whatever group their software is meant to be used by is their area of expertise. It _should_ fall on someone else to design the interface so it's usable. Unfortunately, in most companies either there is no someone else, so the developers do it, or marketing does it (which is even worse -- I think that's the case for Microsoft). Personally I blame Apple for this situation; I think they've almost cornered the market on good UI engineers.
Open source hits the same problem, of course. Software written by and for developers can be quite usable by developers. Software written by people in another field who know how to program tends to be usable for the particular problem the person was trying to solve, but inflexible and often fragile.