Its all well and good until the local sperm bank and/or blood donation center gets broken into. Or maybe some labels on some little vials get switched. How do you counter DNA evidence in this day and age?
Umm, you mention to the jury that the local sperm bank and/or blood donation center got broken into?
How long do you have to ordinarily hold a stock before receiving a dividend?
No time. You just have to own it at the close of the day that the dividend is paid.
Could I buy M$ stock now and get the dividend?
Yep.
What I'm wondering is if I could make better profits from buying and selling at dividend time than the crappy 3% I get from the bank.
No. The price of the stock will drop by $1 after the dividend of $1 is paid. So you get the $1 dividend, but lose $1 on the stock. This would create a huge loophole if dividends weren't taxed, so it's a good thing that Bush didn't get his way on that one.
Widely adopted? The link you gave says that 26 of the state attorney generals actively opposed it. How many states have actually adopted the UCITA? Two?
Free speach would mean putting up a website, then anyone can see it. But theres a diffrence between that, and forcing their speach upon you.
Sure, but what if the person wants the speech? A spam law which doesn't involve a do-not-email list stops a willing receiver from receiving spam from a willing buyer. That's a violation of free speech. It would be like saying that people don't like reading usenet posts containing porn, so porn is banned from usenet. After all, usenet posts are "forced upon" people just like email, right?
To me, an unsolicited email from anyone would be the equivalent of someone breaking into your home, and disturbing your relaxing bath with a speach about something totally irrelavent to you.
To me it would be more like walking through a wooded area which happens to be owned by someone else, but isn't marked with any "Do not trespass" signs. Or walking into a store, or some other place which appears to be open to the public.
Dont get me wrong, I dont want to trample on free speach, but there is a difference between just announcing it(like a website), and being intrusive even aggresive about it - forcing your opinion, however inane upon someone.
There is nothing forced about the situation. Your mail server can disconnect at any time.
Its not what they say I always dispute, its the fact that my mail box is a private mailbox for use of me and my associates(friends or business), and the web is used for public broadcasts.
That's just the way you happen to treat your mailbox. How am I supposed to know you don't want me to be allowed to send you email? If it is a private mailbox, put a password on it, or some other form of access control.
Imagine if somebody cut into your mobile phone conversation, and charged you to tell you something completely irrelevant (like double glazing, herbal viagra or such).
If my mobile phone provider set up the situation so that anyone could do that, then there wouldn't be very much I could do about it, now would there? Likewise with email, it is up to the ISPs who set up the system to police it, not the FBI.
Well, if your school offers it directly, with no taxes, then maybe that's a good idea. But otherwise, taxes are probably more expensive than shipping, and you can usually get a better deal online.
Wow. Thank you for the compliment. I wish I really could compare myself to RMS. I don't agree with him all the time, but his combination of practicality with stubborness has been inspirational:).
Yep, me. We each have to decide for ourselves what is moral and immoral.
Copyright is a well-established legal principle
So was slavery.
and there are very good reasons for it.
I disagree.
The fact that you don't like it doesn't make it unjust.
You're right. But the fact that it is unjust makes me not like it.
Perhaps you have a better idea for how to make laws?
Yes. You should never go to jail for breaking a law which does not cause direct physical harm to someone.
Or should we dispense with them altogether, since no doubt someone thinks every illegal thing should be legal, typically those who want to break the law and get away with it.
The law is the law. I just don't think people should always follow laws which they don't agree with, especially when those laws are not enforced. This is already what people do. As you see, copyright infringement, drug abuse, and speeding run rampant.
I'll gloss over the tooting thing; how exactly can an anonymous posting on an Internet bulletin board refuting a critical comment possibly be tooting my own horn?
You're not anonymous. You're pseudonymous. What was the critical comment you were refuting? I simply told you you should release your works into the public domain.
I do have a real job. I'm looking to make some extra money by doing some extra work. Do you have a problem with that?
I don't have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with your methods of going about it. Further, you keep talking about paying the rent. Obviously you already have enough to pay the rent. You're looking for extra money for something else, not for paying the rent.
And no, I'm not threatening anyone with copyright infringement lawsuits
You don't have a copyright notice on any of your works?
I'm looking to make extra money by doing some honest work making use of my other skills.
There's nothing honest about threatening people with copyright infringement lawsuits.
The only time action over copyright infringement would become relevant is if somebody like you tried to take advantage of my hard work for his own benefit
Yeah, I should go sue all the people who have benefited from my blood donations, cause they're taking advantage of my hard work for their own benefit. Please. No one forced you to do that hard work. You chose to do it.
If everyone read Slashdot via web caches that didn't pass on relevant information, they would make no money from either of those sources. Then how would they support themselves?
They wouldn't. They'd go out of business, and people would move on to some other site which isn't trying to make a profit off other people's words. Despite what you believe, I believe the world would be a better place without VA Software, not worse.
Those two statements aren't in any way equivalent.
Ah, but they are. When the government tries to force an unjust law on the people, the people are under no obligation to accept it. Now sometimes it's in our own best interests to follow it anyway, just as we would sometimes give up certain freedoms under other gunpoint situations, but it's not always the best idea.
Just to be clear, I do not volunteer my time just to toot my horn or make a profit. I have given thousands of hours over the past 5-6 years helping out in very technical forums (not just writing amusing anecdotes on Slashdot for my own entertainment, which is hardly the same thing) and never made a penny from it.
Toot toot.
However, what you're proposing would mean that I could no longer volunteer my time to help in some ways, because doing so would directly affect my ability to take part in other activities that are rent-paying.
I thought you already had a job. Do you do any real work, or do you make all your money by threatening people with copyright infringement lawsuits?
How do they do that, if you're not paying subscription fees?
Two ways. 1) Advertising, and 2) Subscription fees from others.
After money is worthless how do we pay the police?
After the banks fall I'm sure new ones would form. And the downfall of banks doesn't imply the downfall of money.
What incentive do they have to continue "fighting crime?" Moral responsibility?
What incentive do they have now? It's much easier to steal money than to earn it by being a cop. Their incentive is the law.
If the dollar is suddenly devalued to 0, much looting & chaos would ensue, leading to the police being harassed, killed, or quitting out of fear. Hence anarchy.
If all the banks suddenly went bankrupt, the dollar would not be devalued to 0. In fact, the value of the dollar would most likely increase. But that's neither here nor there. When I say "down with the banks" I don't really mean that literally every bank should come tumbling down in a pile of rubble. I mean, it makes a nice ending to fight club, but it's not going to happen in reality. On the other hand, if a few criminals steal money from a bunch of credit card companies, you're not going to see me crying for the credit card companies.
WTF? In that case, can I have yours, as mine appears to be broken.
5403024332383829
No, they are stealing from people. Have you ever had your CC stolen?
Yes.
Many CC companies will harass you to no end to pay the charge you didn't make (unless, of course, you are rich enough to actually pay for the false charges -- then the CC company will take it off ASAP), or else file charges.
All you have to do is call them up and tell them that you did not make the charge, and they have to take it off immediately. That's required by law.
Dumbass. I love when people make stupid remarks like this. It proves you haven't got a fucking clue. If the banks are "brought down," your money is worthless.
And so is everyone elses. Everyone else has a lot more than I do, so I see that as a good thing.
Welcome to anarchy, and you'll be one of the first to die (what's your address again?).
Anarchy? Die? I said down with the banks, not down with the police.
Ah, I see. You're one of the people who, instead of discussing the issue on merits, decides unilaterally that he is above the law. So much for your credibility in any discussions around here, then.
We're all above the law. The government derives its power from the people, not the other way around.
That remark was pretty crass considering the state of the industry and the number of good people who currently aren't in employment in spite of having useful skills.
I'm unemployed despite having useful skills. I fail to see how my remark was crass.
If I were one of those people, and I went and flipped burgers rather than writing a book that will hopefully help thousands of newbies to improve their skills, who loses out? Everyone.
If no one was willing to pay you to write a book, then apparently you aren't a very good writer. Maybe you're better at burger flipping.
If people like me listened to people like you, open source and many other good things would be dead.
How so?
Tell me, how often do you volunteer 10+ hours of your spare time in a week, to help out others with your knowledge, experience or skills?
Quite often.
20+ hours?
Not really.
Do you run a high traffic information web site?
I help run one... Well, it's more of an entertainment web site.
Do you answer questions on bulletin boards or Usenet?
No, but I answer questions on slashdot... Same difference.
Do you contribute to open projects?
A little. Not much. Usually my help isn't wanted.
From the tone of your comments, it doesn't sound like it, or you might have a little more respect for those who do.
From your tone it sounds like you do, only you don't do it voluntarily, but in order to toot your horn or make a profit.
Now tell me how often you personally use those resources.
Very often. I'd say I've put in my own fair share, though.
(You do subscribe to Slashdot, right? And you don't run any free or open source software, nor visit freely available web sites run by volunteers to get some information you wanted?)
Slashdot is not a volunteer organization. They make money off me, not the other way around. Sure, I run free and open source software. I've contributed patches to some, and bug reports to others. I do what I can when I can. Most people don't like my coding style, so I'm not usually asked to help.
What I'm sick of is the duality of people who volunteer and then demand to get something back. That's not the way volunteering works. If you want to demand to get something back, then you get a job, you don't volunteer. Most of the time you will get something back, but it's almost never the same thing you gave. We each have different skills, after all.
How did not renting to you lessen competition, particularly in light of the fact that you almost surely had other options that you declined to exercise?
Well for one thing, I didn't exercise those other options. For another, those other options would not have caused as direct of competition.
And the contractual obligations of your prospective landlord aren't a legitimate reason to refuse you? Why on earth not?
Because the contract itself is the vertical restraint of free trade! If the bank made a contract with blockbuster agreeing not to lend money to other video stores, then it too would have been in restraint of free trade.
That guy has a "monopoly" in the same sense that I have a "monopoly" on my own apartment building.
Yep.
You should sue your investor - under this theory you're developing, he's more directly responsible for any restriction of competition than the landowner is.
There's no intent.
Actually, it's beginning to sound to me like your key investor was looking for an excuse to bail on you, and demanding that particular piece of real-estate - no, not the one across the street and down the block; that one, right there, next to the Blockbuster - was as good as any...
It's beginning to sound to me that you're sure that you're right and you'll come up with any argument you can to try to show it to me. God forbid you admit that the landowner and the Blockbuster were in a collusive agreement which was in restraint of free trade.
There was no available real estate across the street and/or down the block.
I'm too lazy to look up California statutes at the moment, but taking Robinson-Patman as canonical for the moment, you get "...nothing herein contained shall prevent persons engaged in selling goods, wares, or merchandise in commerce from selecting their own customers in bona fide transactions and not in restraint of trade". (15 USC 13(a)) If they agree to do business with you, you can force them to provide you with the same terms that they provide others with, but unless you're a member of a protected class, businesses still retain the right to refuse service to people.
You forgot the not in restraint of trade part. Sometimes you do have the right to force other people to do business with you. Sometimes, not always.
Maybe you're thinking that you can demonstrate that "the effect of such discrimination may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce", but I'm rather skeptical that you can show a substantial lessening of competition based on the non-existence of a purely imaginary video rental outlet - which is, after all, what you're putting forth.
The whole point is to less competition. And that's not what I was putting forth. Like I said, my purpose in bringing up Robinson-Patman was to show that sometimes you do have the right to force other people to do business with you. Robinson-Patman may apply to the case of the video store, or it may not. Perhaps some other law applies. My opinion is that it should be unlawful, and that it is a restraint of free trade. I also suspect that it is unlawful. But Robinson-Patman is probably not the law which is being broken. After all, Robinson-Patman deals with goods, not real estate.
I guess I can go to the bank on Monday and ask them to loan me a billion dollars to start my own automobile manufacturing company. And when they refuse me, I'll simply sue them for restricting competition in the automaking arena.
No, the bank has a legitimate reason to refuse you. Their purpose is not to restrict competition, that is merely a side-effect.
The fact that you can't find anyone to take your case on a contingency basis should tell you something about its relative strength;)
No, it has to do much more with the fact that I have not suffered any terribly large damages. Not to mention the fact that I haven't looked for anyone to take my case on a contingency basis.
Specifically, I said "Maybe we should do more to encourage people to open up their own businesses. Stopping monopolies from creating entry-barriers would be a good start."
But then you went on to post an anecdote that really didn't have much to do with monopolies or entry barriers that I can see.
I think the relationship to monopolies and entry barriers is obvious. The land owner is a monopoly, and the inability to rent that store is an entry barrier.
Was this storefront really your only option for rental property?
Well, it was the only option which was acceptable to one of the key investors. So to a large extent, yes.
Of course, neither you nor your prospective landlord were engaging in interstate commerce when renting out a storefront, and so Robinson-Patman doesn't apply.
Well, first of all I was merely using Robinson-Patman as an example. You claimed that "Just because you have the right to try to conduct a business of some sort, that doesn't give you the right to force other people to do business with you." I showed that that is not always true. Sometimes you do have the right to force other people to do business with you.
As for the interstate commerce bit, I live in New Jersey, and the storefront is in California.
but then you're still looking at the burden of proving that refusing to rent that particular space to you served to restrict competition.
Of course it did. That's the whole point. It may not have eliminated competition, but it certainly restricted it. And I wouldn't have to prove this, I'd merely have to show a preponderance of the evidence.
That said, I don't plan on suing. Like I said, that would require way too much money.
When did anyone say it was supposed to be easy?
I did, at the top of this thread. At least, I said it is supposed to be easier. Specifically, I said "Maybe we should do more to encourage people to open up their own businesses. Stopping monopolies from creating entry-barriers would be a good start."
Sorry if I'm going against the conventional Slashbot wisdom here, but what exactly about building a standard PC (note the original question - comparable specs, not an exact replica) is illegal under the DMCA?
I was referring to the potential illegality of modding an X-box to run Linux.
At what point do I give up ownership of my address? My name?
You don't own your address or your name (unless you're a celebrity who owns limited trademark rights on the commercial use of your name, anyway).
Does ebay have the right to come and say "Your name belongs to us now, and we like it very much. So much, in fact, we're going to keep it. We've assigned you your new name, Number Three-Five-Five-Two-Seven-Zero. Have a nice day."
Sure, why not? You can ignore them, of course, but they can say whatever they want.
And lets assume it does belong to ebay, then does that mean that its ebay's responsibility to maintain that information on their own?
eBay has no responsibility to maintain the information in its database. They could be responsible for negligence in certain cases if they provide false information, I guess.
Can I sue them if I move into an ex-ebay-con's apartment and the feds come-a-knocking with their big metal doorknocker because their personal possessions caused the event?
eBay's possessions didn't cause the event. The feds big metal doorknocker caused the event. Whether or not eBay acted negligently depends on a lot of details, like exactly what information they provided the police with. If all they did was tell the police that the criminal claimed to live at whatever address and that was verified by them by whatever method at whatever time... Well, I bet the police would have double-checked the information before knocking down the door. I bet the judge providing the search warrant would have forced them to.
Can I sue them if I move to an apartment and an ebay seller ships goods to my old address because PayPal (now part of ebay, remember) didn't update its address records?
No. Of course not.
Besides, outside of a case concerning fraud using ebay, what legitimate interest would the police have in my information as a seller?
Lots... Maybe they want to see if you're declaring the income on your taxes, for instance.
Oh wait, I might have bought or sold something "fishy". A book maybe? Or maybe the MPAA or RIAA buys a few cops to hunt down people selling DVDs and CDs on ebay. Crack down on those peons exercising their so-called right of first sale. Terrorists the whole lot of them!
Or maybe you're just paranoid. The FBI have a lot of better things to do with their time than crack down on people exercising their first sale rights or buying books. Maybe you'll get an FBI file if you buy a whole lot of "fishy" books. But so what? Believe it or not, you're not important enough for the FBI to care about.
Finally, to the people who reject the idea of peoples' rights
I'm all for peoples' rights. What right are you talking about that is being violated here?
Which would you rather have? Some innocent person behind bars, case closed, DA pats himself on the back and calls it a day? Or nobody behind bars, police officers working the case and looking for the real criminal?
I'd rather not have someone innocent behind bars, of course. And allowing police to gather as much information they can get from sources who are willing to give it is the best way to ensure that someone innocent is not put behind bars.
All in all, if that is the exemption I was referred to earlier in this thread, it looks as though the web caches are skating on very thin ice. If they did something like cloning material on a web site that was later removed in order to publish it in a book, I imagine they could wind up having a serious dispute with the publisher, or perhaps the author himself, either of whom might have a strong case that they suffered financially because of the actions of the caching site.
I'm not sure you're talking about this thread, so I'll assume you're talking about the exemption I referred to. Specifically, I was referring to Google, who removes content from its cache after a short period of time.
Because if you're smart, you respect reasonable laws of other countries with which yours deals regularly, and not just your own.
I don't think copyright is a reasonable law. I only respect it to the extent I think I might get caught.
Why do I give a shit about the US? Many of these sites aren't based there any more than they are in the UK.
I never said you had to give a shit about the US.
Unfortunately, it won't pay my rent.
So why don't you get a job?
There comes a point, however, when I feel reasonably entitled to something more than a grateful newbie's "thank you", particularly when we're talking about the result of months of hard work. According to the law in my country and probably in yours, I'm entitled to do that without some freeloading commercial entity nicking my work and giving it away for free.
You're entitled to try, anyway. But I'm not going to feel sorry for you if you fail.
Whether there is or is not implied consent for such things is a legal question that really doesn't depend on what you as an individual believe.
True. But courts have so far agreed with me.
That's really starting to drift, but there is clearly a difference between forcing somebody's stuff to be actively used in a particular way - particularly when this is done for personal gain - and requiring them not to use their stuff in a particular way that is otherwise morally objectionable.
Yes, clearly there is. But it is sufficient to prove my point that strict ownership is not a moral necessity. Like I said, I agree that most spamming is clearly immoral, especially when done for personal gain. But even that isn't enough of an argument for a law. Just because something is immoral doesn't mean it should be illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
Its all well and good until the local sperm bank and/or blood donation center gets broken into. Or maybe some labels on some little vials get switched. How do you counter DNA evidence in this day and age?
Umm, you mention to the jury that the local sperm bank and/or blood donation center got broken into?
The DMCA doesn't require there to be encryption. exploiting a buffer is a circumvention in and of itself.
He can do what ever he wants with the hardware once he has the sales receipt in his hand.
You're new here, aren't you? See, there's this law called the DMCA... Eh, nevermind, I'll let someone else explain it.
Bush might just get to see the Laffer curve in action.
Of course, to put things into perspective, the debt increases by $1.59 billion every day, on average.
How long do you have to ordinarily hold a stock before receiving a dividend?
No time. You just have to own it at the close of the day that the dividend is paid.
Could I buy M$ stock now and get the dividend?
Yep.
What I'm wondering is if I could make better profits from buying and selling at dividend time than the crappy 3% I get from the bank.
No. The price of the stock will drop by $1 after the dividend of $1 is paid. So you get the $1 dividend, but lose $1 on the stock. This would create a huge loophole if dividends weren't taxed, so it's a good thing that Bush didn't get his way on that one.
Widely adopted? The link you gave says that 26 of the state attorney generals actively opposed it. How many states have actually adopted the UCITA? Two?
Free speach would mean putting up a website, then anyone can see it. But theres a diffrence between that, and forcing their speach upon you.
Sure, but what if the person wants the speech? A spam law which doesn't involve a do-not-email list stops a willing receiver from receiving spam from a willing buyer. That's a violation of free speech. It would be like saying that people don't like reading usenet posts containing porn, so porn is banned from usenet. After all, usenet posts are "forced upon" people just like email, right?
To me, an unsolicited email from anyone would be the equivalent of someone breaking into your home, and disturbing your relaxing bath with a speach about something totally irrelavent to you.
To me it would be more like walking through a wooded area which happens to be owned by someone else, but isn't marked with any "Do not trespass" signs. Or walking into a store, or some other place which appears to be open to the public.
Dont get me wrong, I dont want to trample on free speach, but there is a difference between just announcing it(like a website), and being intrusive even aggresive about it - forcing your opinion, however inane upon someone.
There is nothing forced about the situation. Your mail server can disconnect at any time.
Its not what they say I always dispute, its the fact that my mail box is a private mailbox for use of me and my associates(friends or business), and the web is used for public broadcasts.
That's just the way you happen to treat your mailbox. How am I supposed to know you don't want me to be allowed to send you email? If it is a private mailbox, put a password on it, or some other form of access control.
Imagine if somebody cut into your mobile phone conversation, and charged you to tell you something completely irrelevant (like double glazing, herbal viagra or such).
If my mobile phone provider set up the situation so that anyone could do that, then there wouldn't be very much I could do about it, now would there? Likewise with email, it is up to the ISPs who set up the system to police it, not the FBI.
Well, if your school offers it directly, with no taxes, then maybe that's a good idea. But otherwise, taxes are probably more expensive than shipping, and you can usually get a better deal online.
OK, I give up. You're worse than RMS.
Wow. Thank you for the compliment. I wish I really could compare myself to RMS. I don't agree with him all the time, but his combination of practicality with stubborness has been inspirational :).
And who is to say that it is unjust? You?
Yep, me. We each have to decide for ourselves what is moral and immoral.
Copyright is a well-established legal principle
So was slavery.
and there are very good reasons for it.
I disagree.
The fact that you don't like it doesn't make it unjust.
You're right. But the fact that it is unjust makes me not like it.
Perhaps you have a better idea for how to make laws?
Yes. You should never go to jail for breaking a law which does not cause direct physical harm to someone.
Or should we dispense with them altogether, since no doubt someone thinks every illegal thing should be legal, typically those who want to break the law and get away with it.
The law is the law. I just don't think people should always follow laws which they don't agree with, especially when those laws are not enforced. This is already what people do. As you see, copyright infringement, drug abuse, and speeding run rampant.
I'll gloss over the tooting thing; how exactly can an anonymous posting on an Internet bulletin board refuting a critical comment possibly be tooting my own horn?
You're not anonymous. You're pseudonymous. What was the critical comment you were refuting? I simply told you you should release your works into the public domain.
I do have a real job. I'm looking to make some extra money by doing some extra work. Do you have a problem with that?
I don't have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with your methods of going about it. Further, you keep talking about paying the rent. Obviously you already have enough to pay the rent. You're looking for extra money for something else, not for paying the rent.
And no, I'm not threatening anyone with copyright infringement lawsuits
You don't have a copyright notice on any of your works?
I'm looking to make extra money by doing some honest work making use of my other skills.
There's nothing honest about threatening people with copyright infringement lawsuits.
The only time action over copyright infringement would become relevant is if somebody like you tried to take advantage of my hard work for his own benefit
Yeah, I should go sue all the people who have benefited from my blood donations, cause they're taking advantage of my hard work for their own benefit. Please. No one forced you to do that hard work. You chose to do it.
If everyone read Slashdot via web caches that didn't pass on relevant information, they would make no money from either of those sources. Then how would they support themselves?
They wouldn't. They'd go out of business, and people would move on to some other site which isn't trying to make a profit off other people's words. Despite what you believe, I believe the world would be a better place without VA Software, not worse.
Those two statements aren't in any way equivalent.
Ah, but they are. When the government tries to force an unjust law on the people, the people are under no obligation to accept it. Now sometimes it's in our own best interests to follow it anyway, just as we would sometimes give up certain freedoms under other gunpoint situations, but it's not always the best idea.
Just to be clear, I do not volunteer my time just to toot my horn or make a profit. I have given thousands of hours over the past 5-6 years helping out in very technical forums (not just writing amusing anecdotes on Slashdot for my own entertainment, which is hardly the same thing) and never made a penny from it.
Toot toot.
However, what you're proposing would mean that I could no longer volunteer my time to help in some ways, because doing so would directly affect my ability to take part in other activities that are rent-paying.
I thought you already had a job. Do you do any real work, or do you make all your money by threatening people with copyright infringement lawsuits?
How do they do that, if you're not paying subscription fees?
Two ways. 1) Advertising, and 2) Subscription fees from others.
After money is worthless how do we pay the police?
After the banks fall I'm sure new ones would form. And the downfall of banks doesn't imply the downfall of money.
What incentive do they have to continue "fighting crime?" Moral responsibility?
What incentive do they have now? It's much easier to steal money than to earn it by being a cop. Their incentive is the law.
If the dollar is suddenly devalued to 0, much looting & chaos would ensue, leading to the police being harassed, killed, or quitting out of fear. Hence anarchy.
If all the banks suddenly went bankrupt, the dollar would not be devalued to 0. In fact, the value of the dollar would most likely increase. But that's neither here nor there. When I say "down with the banks" I don't really mean that literally every bank should come tumbling down in a pile of rubble. I mean, it makes a nice ending to fight club, but it's not going to happen in reality. On the other hand, if a few criminals steal money from a bunch of credit card companies, you're not going to see me crying for the credit card companies.
WTF? In that case, can I have yours, as mine appears to be broken.
5403024332383829
No, they are stealing from people. Have you ever had your CC stolen?
Yes.
Many CC companies will harass you to no end to pay the charge you didn't make (unless, of course, you are rich enough to actually pay for the false charges -- then the CC company will take it off ASAP), or else file charges.
All you have to do is call them up and tell them that you did not make the charge, and they have to take it off immediately. That's required by law.
Dumbass. I love when people make stupid remarks like this. It proves you haven't got a fucking clue. If the banks are "brought down," your money is worthless.
And so is everyone elses. Everyone else has a lot more than I do, so I see that as a good thing.
Welcome to anarchy, and you'll be one of the first to die (what's your address again?).
Anarchy? Die? I said down with the banks, not down with the police.
Ah, I see. You're one of the people who, instead of discussing the issue on merits, decides unilaterally that he is above the law. So much for your credibility in any discussions around here, then.
We're all above the law. The government derives its power from the people, not the other way around.
That remark was pretty crass considering the state of the industry and the number of good people who currently aren't in employment in spite of having useful skills.
I'm unemployed despite having useful skills. I fail to see how my remark was crass.
If I were one of those people, and I went and flipped burgers rather than writing a book that will hopefully help thousands of newbies to improve their skills, who loses out? Everyone.
If no one was willing to pay you to write a book, then apparently you aren't a very good writer. Maybe you're better at burger flipping.
If people like me listened to people like you, open source and many other good things would be dead.
How so?
Tell me, how often do you volunteer 10+ hours of your spare time in a week, to help out others with your knowledge, experience or skills?
Quite often.
20+ hours?
Not really.
Do you run a high traffic information web site?
I help run one... Well, it's more of an entertainment web site.
Do you answer questions on bulletin boards or Usenet?
No, but I answer questions on slashdot... Same difference.
Do you contribute to open projects?
A little. Not much. Usually my help isn't wanted.
From the tone of your comments, it doesn't sound like it, or you might have a little more respect for those who do.
From your tone it sounds like you do, only you don't do it voluntarily, but in order to toot your horn or make a profit.
Now tell me how often you personally use those resources.
Very often. I'd say I've put in my own fair share, though.
(You do subscribe to Slashdot, right? And you don't run any free or open source software, nor visit freely available web sites run by volunteers to get some information you wanted?)
Slashdot is not a volunteer organization. They make money off me, not the other way around. Sure, I run free and open source software. I've contributed patches to some, and bug reports to others. I do what I can when I can. Most people don't like my coding style, so I'm not usually asked to help.
What I'm sick of is the duality of people who volunteer and then demand to get something back. That's not the way volunteering works. If you want to demand to get something back, then you get a job, you don't volunteer. Most of the time you will get something back, but it's almost never the same thing you gave. We each have different skills, after all.
I would rather they never included me in the first place unless I gave them my express permission.
Not everyone feels the same way as you do. The law should not hurt the free speech rights of the minority, no matter how small that minority is.
How did not renting to you lessen competition, particularly in light of the fact that you almost surely had other options that you declined to exercise?
Well for one thing, I didn't exercise those other options. For another, those other options would not have caused as direct of competition.
And the contractual obligations of your prospective landlord aren't a legitimate reason to refuse you? Why on earth not?
Because the contract itself is the vertical restraint of free trade! If the bank made a contract with blockbuster agreeing not to lend money to other video stores, then it too would have been in restraint of free trade.
That guy has a "monopoly" in the same sense that I have a "monopoly" on my own apartment building.
Yep.
You should sue your investor - under this theory you're developing, he's more directly responsible for any restriction of competition than the landowner is.
There's no intent.
Actually, it's beginning to sound to me like your key investor was looking for an excuse to bail on you, and demanding that particular piece of real-estate - no, not the one across the street and down the block; that one, right there, next to the Blockbuster - was as good as any...
It's beginning to sound to me that you're sure that you're right and you'll come up with any argument you can to try to show it to me. God forbid you admit that the landowner and the Blockbuster were in a collusive agreement which was in restraint of free trade.
There was no available real estate across the street and/or down the block.
I'm too lazy to look up California statutes at the moment, but taking Robinson-Patman as canonical for the moment, you get "...nothing herein contained shall prevent persons engaged in selling goods, wares, or merchandise in commerce from selecting their own customers in bona fide transactions and not in restraint of trade". (15 USC 13(a)) If they agree to do business with you, you can force them to provide you with the same terms that they provide others with, but unless you're a member of a protected class, businesses still retain the right to refuse service to people.
You forgot the not in restraint of trade part. Sometimes you do have the right to force other people to do business with you. Sometimes, not always.
Maybe you're thinking that you can demonstrate that "the effect of such discrimination may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce", but I'm rather skeptical that you can show a substantial lessening of competition based on the non-existence of a purely imaginary video rental outlet - which is, after all, what you're putting forth.
The whole point is to less competition. And that's not what I was putting forth. Like I said, my purpose in bringing up Robinson-Patman was to show that sometimes you do have the right to force other people to do business with you. Robinson-Patman may apply to the case of the video store, or it may not. Perhaps some other law applies. My opinion is that it should be unlawful, and that it is a restraint of free trade. I also suspect that it is unlawful. But Robinson-Patman is probably not the law which is being broken. After all, Robinson-Patman deals with goods, not real estate.
I guess I can go to the bank on Monday and ask them to loan me a billion dollars to start my own automobile manufacturing company. And when they refuse me, I'll simply sue them for restricting competition in the automaking arena.
No, the bank has a legitimate reason to refuse you. Their purpose is not to restrict competition, that is merely a side-effect.
The fact that you can't find anyone to take your case on a contingency basis should tell you something about its relative strength ;)
No, it has to do much more with the fact that I have not suffered any terribly large damages. Not to mention the fact that I haven't looked for anyone to take my case on a contingency basis.
Specifically, I said "Maybe we should do more to encourage people to open up their own businesses. Stopping monopolies from creating entry-barriers would be a good start."
But then you went on to post an anecdote that really didn't have much to do with monopolies or entry barriers that I can see.
I think the relationship to monopolies and entry barriers is obvious. The land owner is a monopoly, and the inability to rent that store is an entry barrier.
Was this storefront really your only option for rental property?
Well, it was the only option which was acceptable to one of the key investors. So to a large extent, yes.
Of course, neither you nor your prospective landlord were engaging in interstate commerce when renting out a storefront, and so Robinson-Patman doesn't apply.
Well, first of all I was merely using Robinson-Patman as an example. You claimed that "Just because you have the right to try to conduct a business of some sort, that doesn't give you the right to force other people to do business with you." I showed that that is not always true. Sometimes you do have the right to force other people to do business with you.
As for the interstate commerce bit, I live in New Jersey, and the storefront is in California.
but then you're still looking at the burden of proving that refusing to rent that particular space to you served to restrict competition.
Of course it did. That's the whole point. It may not have eliminated competition, but it certainly restricted it. And I wouldn't have to prove this, I'd merely have to show a preponderance of the evidence.
That said, I don't plan on suing. Like I said, that would require way too much money.
When did anyone say it was supposed to be easy?
I did, at the top of this thread. At least, I said it is supposed to be easier. Specifically, I said "Maybe we should do more to encourage people to open up their own businesses. Stopping monopolies from creating entry-barriers would be a good start."
Sorry if I'm going against the conventional Slashbot wisdom here, but what exactly about building a standard PC (note the original question - comparable specs, not an exact replica) is illegal under the DMCA?
I was referring to the potential illegality of modding an X-box to run Linux.
OK, I guess you're right.
Is this with or without the cost of defending yourself from a DMCA lawsuit?
At what point do I give up ownership of my address? My name?
You don't own your address or your name (unless you're a celebrity who owns limited trademark rights on the commercial use of your name, anyway).
Does ebay have the right to come and say "Your name belongs to us now, and we like it very much. So much, in fact, we're going to keep it. We've assigned you your new name, Number Three-Five-Five-Two-Seven-Zero. Have a nice day."
Sure, why not? You can ignore them, of course, but they can say whatever they want.
And lets assume it does belong to ebay, then does that mean that its ebay's responsibility to maintain that information on their own?
eBay has no responsibility to maintain the information in its database. They could be responsible for negligence in certain cases if they provide false information, I guess.
Can I sue them if I move into an ex-ebay-con's apartment and the feds come-a-knocking with their big metal doorknocker because their personal possessions caused the event?
eBay's possessions didn't cause the event. The feds big metal doorknocker caused the event. Whether or not eBay acted negligently depends on a lot of details, like exactly what information they provided the police with. If all they did was tell the police that the criminal claimed to live at whatever address and that was verified by them by whatever method at whatever time... Well, I bet the police would have double-checked the information before knocking down the door. I bet the judge providing the search warrant would have forced them to.
Can I sue them if I move to an apartment and an ebay seller ships goods to my old address because PayPal (now part of ebay, remember) didn't update its address records?
No. Of course not.
Besides, outside of a case concerning fraud using ebay, what legitimate interest would the police have in my information as a seller?
Lots... Maybe they want to see if you're declaring the income on your taxes, for instance.
Oh wait, I might have bought or sold something "fishy". A book maybe? Or maybe the MPAA or RIAA buys a few cops to hunt down people selling DVDs and CDs on ebay. Crack down on those peons exercising their so-called right of first sale. Terrorists the whole lot of them!
Or maybe you're just paranoid. The FBI have a lot of better things to do with their time than crack down on people exercising their first sale rights or buying books. Maybe you'll get an FBI file if you buy a whole lot of "fishy" books. But so what? Believe it or not, you're not important enough for the FBI to care about.
Finally, to the people who reject the idea of peoples' rights
I'm all for peoples' rights. What right are you talking about that is being violated here?
Which would you rather have? Some innocent person behind bars, case closed, DA pats himself on the back and calls it a day? Or nobody behind bars, police officers working the case and looking for the real criminal?
I'd rather not have someone innocent behind bars, of course. And allowing police to gather as much information they can get from sources who are willing to give it is the best way to ensure that someone innocent is not put behind bars.
All in all, if that is the exemption I was referred to earlier in this thread, it looks as though the web caches are skating on very thin ice. If they did something like cloning material on a web site that was later removed in order to publish it in a book, I imagine they could wind up having a serious dispute with the publisher, or perhaps the author himself, either of whom might have a strong case that they suffered financially because of the actions of the caching site.
I'm not sure you're talking about this thread, so I'll assume you're talking about the exemption I referred to. Specifically, I was referring to Google, who removes content from its cache after a short period of time.
Because if you're smart, you respect reasonable laws of other countries with which yours deals regularly, and not just your own.
I don't think copyright is a reasonable law. I only respect it to the extent I think I might get caught.
Why do I give a shit about the US? Many of these sites aren't based there any more than they are in the UK.
I never said you had to give a shit about the US.
Unfortunately, it won't pay my rent.
So why don't you get a job?
There comes a point, however, when I feel reasonably entitled to something more than a grateful newbie's "thank you", particularly when we're talking about the result of months of hard work. According to the law in my country and probably in yours, I'm entitled to do that without some freeloading commercial entity nicking my work and giving it away for free.
You're entitled to try, anyway. But I'm not going to feel sorry for you if you fail.
Whether there is or is not implied consent for such things is a legal question that really doesn't depend on what you as an individual believe.
True. But courts have so far agreed with me.
That's really starting to drift, but there is clearly a difference between forcing somebody's stuff to be actively used in a particular way - particularly when this is done for personal gain - and requiring them not to use their stuff in a particular way that is otherwise morally objectionable.
Yes, clearly there is. But it is sufficient to prove my point that strict ownership is not a moral necessity. Like I said, I agree that most spamming is clearly immoral, especially when done for personal gain. But even that isn't enough of an argument for a law. Just because something is immoral doesn't mean it should be illegal.