There is a good reason that celebrities are treated differently under defamation law, and that is to protect the public's freedom of speech and right to know. The public figure stuff was the Supreme Court's way of balancing the constitution and defamation.
The biggest difference between how a public figure and a regular individual are handled with regard to defamation is in the necessary burden of proof. For a public figure, you must prove actual malice, which is basically that the person said something untrue about you, that they knew it was untrue, and purposely said it to harm you. It is similar to the difference between proving negligence,and proving recklessness. Kind of funny seeing people getting worked up over the law upholding freedom of speech.
You have an incomplete understanding of why things are done the way they are done. The reason the US government has been pushing so heavily to have other countries respect our intellectual property is to prevent what you are describing. In short, because our IP isn't respected, other countries are able to wait for American companies to develop something, and then pirate it or otherwise produce unlicensed copies.
For example, not too long ago India announced that they were going to start producing unlicensed generic US medicines for their people. This story was lauded pretty highly on this site. The issue is, when this happens, they make no contribution to help pay for past or future research, development, and testing. This results directly in higher prices in the United States. The same is true for almost all intellectual property. The biggest issue with replacing our manufacturing base with an intellectual base is that with physical goods you have a lot more assurance that you'll be paid for your production. It's a lot easier to say if you don't pay, I won't ship, than it is to say you can't continue making copies if you don't pay. If you have 30 million people using a product, but only 10 million are obligated to pay for it, they are going to be paying much more than if all 30 million were paying.
That's actually a local government problem. In the very republican area that I live in, we don't require ridiculous franchise agreements, so we do have a second cable company which competes against Comcast. In addition to that, we had Fios installed years ago, and were offered TV as soon as it was available, so we can get internet, tv, and phone bundles from three seperate companies. The end result is lower rates, higher speeds, and better perks.
By April of 2003 the 737 fleet had logged over 124 million hours. In comparison, by December of 2007 the A320 family had logged just under 70 million hours. You're comparing apples to oranges. The Boeing fleet is 20 years older, and has many, many more hours than the Airbus fleet.
When the collection agency files against your victim using their social security number for you not paying your bill. It's definitely identity theft, and I bet you would find that if it did effect them, they would try to have you prosecuted.
You know from June 2000 to February 2004 Google was the backend for the Yahoo web page search. That was back when Yahoo was a web site "human directory" search first and foremost, and only secondarily a machine-powered internet search. Sort of like how Yahoo search is going to be powered by Bing in the future, and was powered by Inktomi before Google.
Sounds kind of like global warming, where the people screaming most loudly about scientific consensus are also the ones that stand to benefit the most greatly financially. Just look at Al Gore and his carbon trading investments. It all screams conflict of interest.
So it's OK to spend trillions on a sham because it promotes environmentalism. That's the problem with this whole thing, it's not about a problem, it's about an agenda.
Bullshit. I was unable to get three monitors working correctly on Ubuntu in under four hours. And I know my way around Linux, I have seven servers that all run Debian. I had those same monitors working on Windows XP, and Windows 7, which I switched to after I gave up on Linux on the desktop, after 5 minutes.
Having had a go at GTA4 and thinking it was just rubbish - and a big step down in fun factor from the lower budget GTA3, I'm moving away from a lot of the AAA games. Maybe the fact is these publishers shouldn't be taking a big risk spending $15M on a game...
Obviously the risk isn't too big if the publishers are profitable.
I'm going to take GTA 4, and show you exactly why you are wrong.
If no one wants to pay for them, no one wants them produced. So if no one wants them to be produced... why should you produce them? (Kinda obvious, isn't it?)
GTA 4 sold over 13 million copies. Obviously, people did want it produced. The issue is, of those 13 million people, how many people would individually have the $100 million it cost to produce, and would be willing to spend $100 million to have a game produced, if after it was produced anyone could copy it. Probably none.
They dont have to be produced if theres no market for them. (Kinda obvious, isn't it?)
But there is a market for them, so long as they can't be freely copied so that the investors can get their money back. How else do games sell millions of copies.
How about stopping the production of the product until the people realize (all by themselves, with no censorship and mass punishment laws needed) that they really really really have to pay you to get it?
You should follow that up by wishing really really hard that you can really really alter human nature.
And by the way, the law absolutely doesnt prevent anybody to "duplicate" your product, it just fuck ups the lives (really badly) of the few poor fellas who happen to get caught. The silent majority just keeps copying because nobody, really nobody outside of the circles directly profiting from copying prohibition considers sharing, copying and passing on of culture even remotely wrong or illegal.
Bullshit. How many commercial vendors selling copied media exist and openly operate in the United States. None. How about in China? So the law doesn't work? You might want to reevaluate your notions.
I'll even go so far as to help you out with your next most obvious line of reasoning, and why that won't work.
You don't need one guy to fund it man. Everybody could throw in a little bit of money, man, like a coop, man, and people that had talent could add a little time, and they could work on a game idea. So there wouldn't be any profit man, it would just be totally community driven.
And what happens if the game sucks.
They could all just keep working on it.
Or in the alternative, you could allow investors to shoulder that risk, and in exchange be allowed the exclusive right to distribute and charge for the produced material. This way, if the game sucks, you don't have to spend any money on it. But if the game is good, you've got to give the investor some money to cover his cost, plus some to cover his risk, plus some to provide a return on his investment to encourage him to take the risk to begin with. Of course, if people could just copy it, the investor wouldn't be able to recoup the investment, so he wouldn't be able to do it. So maybe there could be some kind of law for that. But that kind of brings us full circle doesn't it.
Like what, Frets on Fire, the shitty clone of Guitar Hero? Please. Or the Battle for Wesnoth, which is based, and looks like, a Sega Genesis game, that console from 1988. Or OpenArena, a game with a 10 year old engine. There are probably games that have been purchased more than all of the free games you list have ever been downloaded, combined.
So who is going to produce these multi-million dollar games when anyone can copyright and distribute them without restriction? You do realize there have been more than a few games that have cost over $40M to produce. The average PS3 game costs $15M before marketing. Hell, even Pacman cost $100K to develop in the 80s. Which business do you think is going to invest $15M in a product that they can't protect. I guess you could point to all the wonderful F/OSS games that are out there, like... wait.
The only way copyright will be reformed is if considerably more restrictive DRM is developed, so you don't need the law to prevent people from duplicating your product. You'll probably see that anyway with online distribution to hurt the resale market.
Your signature says it all about you. Your freedom isn't negotiable, and neither should be the freedom of anyone else to choose what becomes of their work. Who cares if it takes someone a few hundred hours to design a font, you deserve it. They don't need to eat or pay bills.
Not to mention the fact that there have only been three cases of mad cow disease in the United States in the last 16 years. One of which was imported from Canada.
You need to learn how to do a cost benefit analysis. There have only ever been 3 cases of mad cow disease in cows (1 of which was imported from Canada), and 3 in people (one of which contracted the disease while living in Saudi Arabia) in the United States since 1993. There were 104.8 Million head of cattle in the United States on July 1, 2007. So by your estimate, it will only cost $15.7B upfront, then another $15.7B every year. That's the equivalent of spending almost $84B per diseased cow, quite unnecessarily, since we're only detecting, on average, one diseased cow every 64 months. It makes no sense to piss away over $170B over the next 10 years when current measures are already effective.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a good reason that celebrities are treated differently under defamation law, and that is to protect the public's freedom of speech and right to know. The public figure stuff was the Supreme Court's way of balancing the constitution and defamation. The biggest difference between how a public figure and a regular individual are handled with regard to defamation is in the necessary burden of proof. For a public figure, you must prove actual malice, which is basically that the person said something untrue about you, that they knew it was untrue, and purposely said it to harm you. It is similar to the difference between proving negligence,and proving recklessness. Kind of funny seeing people getting worked up over the law upholding freedom of speech.
You have an incomplete understanding of why things are done the way they are done. The reason the US government has been pushing so heavily to have other countries respect our intellectual property is to prevent what you are describing. In short, because our IP isn't respected, other countries are able to wait for American companies to develop something, and then pirate it or otherwise produce unlicensed copies. For example, not too long ago India announced that they were going to start producing unlicensed generic US medicines for their people. This story was lauded pretty highly on this site. The issue is, when this happens, they make no contribution to help pay for past or future research, development, and testing. This results directly in higher prices in the United States. The same is true for almost all intellectual property. The biggest issue with replacing our manufacturing base with an intellectual base is that with physical goods you have a lot more assurance that you'll be paid for your production. It's a lot easier to say if you don't pay, I won't ship, than it is to say you can't continue making copies if you don't pay. If you have 30 million people using a product, but only 10 million are obligated to pay for it, they are going to be paying much more than if all 30 million were paying.
That's actually a local government problem. In the very republican area that I live in, we don't require ridiculous franchise agreements, so we do have a second cable company which competes against Comcast. In addition to that, we had Fios installed years ago, and were offered TV as soon as it was available, so we can get internet, tv, and phone bundles from three seperate companies. The end result is lower rates, higher speeds, and better perks.
By April of 2003 the 737 fleet had logged over 124 million hours. In comparison, by December of 2007 the A320 family had logged just under 70 million hours. You're comparing apples to oranges. The Boeing fleet is 20 years older, and has many, many more hours than the Airbus fleet.
When the collection agency files against your victim using their social security number for you not paying your bill. It's definitely identity theft, and I bet you would find that if it did effect them, they would try to have you prosecuted.
You know from June 2000 to February 2004 Google was the backend for the Yahoo web page search. That was back when Yahoo was a web site "human directory" search first and foremost, and only secondarily a machine-powered internet search. Sort of like how Yahoo search is going to be powered by Bing in the future, and was powered by Inktomi before Google.
So it's a pyramid scheme then.
Sounds kind of like global warming, where the people screaming most loudly about scientific consensus are also the ones that stand to benefit the most greatly financially. Just look at Al Gore and his carbon trading investments. It all screams conflict of interest.
You are Completely wrong.
Looks like he was right to me... dogs and liberals both need someone's time and money to support them.
I'm surprised you're still able to breathe, with your head so far up your ass and all.
So it's OK to spend trillions on a sham because it promotes environmentalism. That's the problem with this whole thing, it's not about a problem, it's about an agenda.
Bullshit. I was unable to get three monitors working correctly on Ubuntu in under four hours. And I know my way around Linux, I have seven servers that all run Debian. I had those same monitors working on Windows XP, and Windows 7, which I switched to after I gave up on Linux on the desktop, after 5 minutes.
Now try it with three monitors. Linux multi-monitor support is the pits.
Having had a go at GTA4 and thinking it was just rubbish - and a big step down in fun factor from the lower budget GTA3, I'm moving away from a lot of the AAA games. Maybe the fact is these publishers shouldn't be taking a big risk spending $15M on a game ...
Obviously the risk isn't too big if the publishers are profitable.
Hint: Why were the dark ages so called? Your idea won't work.
[Use Google Dipshit]
Don't forget inflation.
I'm going to take GTA 4, and show you exactly why you are wrong.
If no one wants to pay for them, no one wants them produced. So if no one wants them to be produced... why should you produce them? (Kinda obvious, isn't it?)
GTA 4 sold over 13 million copies. Obviously, people did want it produced. The issue is, of those 13 million people, how many people would individually have the $100 million it cost to produce, and would be willing to spend $100 million to have a game produced, if after it was produced anyone could copy it. Probably none.
They dont have to be produced if theres no market for them. (Kinda obvious, isn't it?)
But there is a market for them, so long as they can't be freely copied so that the investors can get their money back. How else do games sell millions of copies.
How about stopping the production of the product until the people realize (all by themselves, with no censorship and mass punishment laws needed) that they really really really have to pay you to get it?
You should follow that up by wishing really really hard that you can really really alter human nature.
And by the way, the law absolutely doesnt prevent anybody to "duplicate" your product, it just fuck ups the lives (really badly) of the few poor fellas who happen to get caught. The silent majority just keeps copying because nobody, really nobody outside of the circles directly profiting from copying prohibition considers sharing, copying and passing on of culture even remotely wrong or illegal.
Bullshit. How many commercial vendors selling copied media exist and openly operate in the United States. None. How about in China? So the law doesn't work? You might want to reevaluate your notions.
I'll even go so far as to help you out with your next most obvious line of reasoning, and why that won't work.
You don't need one guy to fund it man. Everybody could throw in a little bit of money, man, like a coop, man, and people that had talent could add a little time, and they could work on a game idea. So there wouldn't be any profit man, it would just be totally community driven.
And what happens if the game sucks.
They could all just keep working on it.
Or in the alternative, you could allow investors to shoulder that risk, and in exchange be allowed the exclusive right to distribute and charge for the produced material. This way, if the game sucks, you don't have to spend any money on it. But if the game is good, you've got to give the investor some money to cover his cost, plus some to cover his risk, plus some to provide a return on his investment to encourage him to take the risk to begin with. Of course, if people could just copy it, the investor wouldn't be able to recoup the investment, so he wouldn't be able to do it. So maybe there could be some kind of law for that. But that kind of brings us full circle doesn't it.
Like what, Frets on Fire, the shitty clone of Guitar Hero? Please. Or the Battle for Wesnoth, which is based, and looks like, a Sega Genesis game, that console from 1988. Or OpenArena, a game with a 10 year old engine. There are probably games that have been purchased more than all of the free games you list have ever been downloaded, combined.
My point exactly, F/OSS gaming is so pathetic you actually put TuxRacer on the list.
So who is going to produce these multi-million dollar games when anyone can copyright and distribute them without restriction? You do realize there have been more than a few games that have cost over $40M to produce. The average PS3 game costs $15M before marketing. Hell, even Pacman cost $100K to develop in the 80s. Which business do you think is going to invest $15M in a product that they can't protect. I guess you could point to all the wonderful F/OSS games that are out there, like... wait.
The only way copyright will be reformed is if considerably more restrictive DRM is developed, so you don't need the law to prevent people from duplicating your product. You'll probably see that anyway with online distribution to hurt the resale market.
Your signature says it all about you. Your freedom isn't negotiable, and neither should be the freedom of anyone else to choose what becomes of their work. Who cares if it takes someone a few hundred hours to design a font, you deserve it. They don't need to eat or pay bills.
Just like how we refer to people from Spain as Kingdom of Spainians? Get over yourself.
I'm glad Obama promised not to raise taxes on those making under $250k/year. This obviously wouldn't fly.
Not to mention the fact that there have only been three cases of mad cow disease in the United States in the last 16 years. One of which was imported from Canada.
You need to learn how to do a cost benefit analysis. There have only ever been 3 cases of mad cow disease in cows (1 of which was imported from Canada), and 3 in people (one of which contracted the disease while living in Saudi Arabia) in the United States since 1993. There were 104.8 Million head of cattle in the United States on July 1, 2007. So by your estimate, it will only cost $15.7B upfront, then another $15.7B every year. That's the equivalent of spending almost $84B per diseased cow, quite unnecessarily, since we're only detecting, on average, one diseased cow every 64 months. It makes no sense to piss away over $170B over the next 10 years when current measures are already effective.