but what makes time any less valid than length, width and height?
I don't think Einstein ever said that time was any less valid than length, width, and height. All are relative, according to Einstein's theory.
"Time doesn't exist" is an inaccurate representation of what Einstein said. Of course time exists, because we define it to exist.
Re:Not all of us live in Detroit, MI, you know...
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I guess my tongue-in-cheek statement would have been more obvious if I had explicitly mentioned that I lived on the eastern coast of the U.S. Thanks for pointing this out.
Not all of us live in Detroit, MI, you know...
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· Score: 2, Funny
How west-of-Atlanta-centric of slashdot to post this story.
Not all Slashdot readers, nor even all Slashdot editors, hold the exact same opinions concerning intellectual property laws.
And it's just pure coincidence that the ones that are opposed to IP laws post when it's a big bad company like microsoft defending them and the ones that aren't opposed to IP laws post when it's a warm fuzzy company like MacSlash defending them? Slashdot editors like to hide behind "It was only the submitter that was making the statement" and "Different slashdot editors have different opinions", but why then is it all so rare to see competing opinions on the same topic? Even in the comments section the groupthinkers are generally modded up and the dissidents are generally modded down.
But as long as pudge and most of the other editors continue to post one-liners and then run away, we won't get to hear the reasons behind their opinions. And personally, if someone isn't going to defend their opinion, I'm not interested in hearing it.
The Artist Formerly Known As Prince tried your system (subscription for an album). It failed for him, I think. At least, I never heard about an album actually being released.
I'm sure at the time there were alternatives. As far as music is concerned, I don't think there's a detriment to society with eliminating the megastar and only having small-time performers in bars and such. Personally the only books I ever pay for are academic books, so I really can't say very much about that.
Another alternative to copyright law is to simply have a non-profit, government run, mass-printing-press operation (a la the USPS). Then authors won't have to worry about being undercut.
And society does value authoring books. That was the reason for the creation of copyright in the first place.
I just don't think that taking away private home copying and personal distribution is the best way to reach that goal. The law should be based on morality. Economic goods such as book authorship should be addressed through other mechanisms, such as taxation.
It's been a pretty workable system for a few hundred years, and it's probably here to stay.
I'm not so sure how workable the system is any more. When audio cassettes came out, congress gave in and made it legal to copy and distribute audio works on cassette tape for non-profit purposes (see the Audio Home Recording Act). Now that napster and the like have been discovered, I believe the same will have to be done for mp3s. As transfer speeds and storage space increases, the same will happen for video. As scanning technology and e-book technology increases, the same will happen for books. Software piracy is already rampant. Microsoft is about the only company who has discovered how to get consumers to pay for software. The workability of copyright law is falling apart, and I don't think it will survive even my lifetime, at least not unless peer-to-peer communications are outlawed completely.
Fix rather than throw out is usually the best course of action.
My major argument against copyright law is that it is immoral in the first place, so that's why I argue throwing it out rather than fixing it.
I respect your opinions on the matter, and I believe we've both pretty much exhausted our viewpoints. I think we both agree that copyright law does solve some problems, while creating some others. If you'd like to summarize your points or restate them, feel free, but I probably won't reply unless I have something drastically new to add.
Can I get there via open source, would I be more profitable going closed source, or should I forget about make money altogether?
Forget about making money altogether. Unless you're Microsoft, it's near impossible to make money selling consumer software.
If there's some way you can tie your software to a service, maybe internet gaming, then you can probably make money, and it really doesn't matter if you're open or closed source. Actually open source is probably better. I suggest you use the QingPL.
He tried, he failed. King tried to do a book "shareware" over the web. Pay by the chapter. Way too few people did, so he stopped. If Stephen King can't sell a book this way, who could?
I think it would be a different situation if all authors were forced to work this way. Assuming that King's book was any good (I didn't read it), there's still the fact that there is plenty of other competing material for which you are guaranteed a finished product for your money. Which is another flaw with King's method. I shouldn't be forced to pay $X for a book which might not even be finished. If he fails to finish the book, I should get a refund.
How is King going to afford the printing press? Where are his production costs in your $100,000 figure? Who would give him a loan to do a production run, knowing that the only collateral he has (the book) is worthless?
I think that 10,000 readers would be willing to pay $10 each to Steven King for the service of writing the book. This assumes that King presents the topic and vows to not start writing the book until he receives $100K. If he gets less than $100K after say 3 months, everyone gets a refund. The cost of running the printing press would be paid directly by those purchasing hard copies of the books. King wouldn't have to be involved at all, he is already paid for his service of writing the book.
Other less known authors could simply work through a publishing company. I pay $100/year for to Whatever Publishing to support the authors working for it. They can then distribute the profits in whatever way they want, probably based on the number of purchasers of the at-cost printed versions.
If you insist on getting the government involved, just hire the artists directly. Again, pay could be distributed based on the number of copies read.
Any why would people buy the book from King? Why not go to someone who already bought the book and copy it from that person for less money (because they're rich, already own their own printing press, so their costs are lower)?
Yeah, I think you misunderstood me there. These 10,000 people pay just to have King write the book. Nothing more, nothing less. If people want a hardcopy, they can buy them themselves, or pay publishers.
Saying "well, some sort of compensation will probably happen" isn't a solution, it's hand-waving. Provide a concrete solution that prevents exploitation of content creators in a copyright-free system.
If the market is unable to come up with a mechanism to pay the authors, and society as a whole deems that the works should still be created, then the government should hire the authors directly, possibly through public libraries. Personally I think this would be unnecessary, but without being in the situation any solutions I come up with are pure speculation.
If society doesn't value the service of authoring books high enough for the market to come up with a way to pay for them, maybe books aren't worth creating in the first place.
I'm sorry, I'm sure you're a smart guy and all, but P2P is hardly comparable to terrorism, especially in this case.
I wasn't comparing P2P to terrorism.
This is more like sueing U-Haul until they go out of business because you can carry fertilizer bombs in their trucks.
No, because napster is illegal, U-Haul is not. The point I was making is that the RIAA never claims to have stopped all copyright infringement by stopping napster. They only claim to have stopped some instances of it.
Same as Slashdot is not responsible for the comments posted because they where NOT POSTED by Slashdot, Napster was not responisble for the illegal MP3s posted on their service because they where NOT POSTED by Napster.
Whether or not napster is responsible for the content of its users is irrelevant. They broke the law, and the RIAA shut them down. The only one who seems to think that shutting down a single service equals stopping piracy is Taco.
Shouldn't slashdot be posting a retraction of the inaccurate headline "MacSlash Domain Stolen"? Or is slashdot now taking the editorial position that trademark infringement is stealing?
An artist's record label is acting as an agent for the artist.
I never meant to separate the two.
The rest of your argument goes toward the goal of copyright: to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. First I'd like to state my opinion that is the sole purpose of copyright law. This is a widely held opinion, and I can show you sources backing it up if you are not aware of that fact. Whether or not you agree is a different story, I don't think either of us can prove definitively whether there is a god given right to ownership of intellectual property.
Now, you argue a specific form of useful artistry, books, which you argue would not be created without copyright law. At least, I assume that's what you are arguing. While you claim that it is "screwing the little guy while enriching the already rich," I think you miss the point that book authors have other skills which they can put to use. If they feel that they are not deriving a benefit from writing a book, they simply won't continue to write the book.
So really the two options here are that books will continue to be written, or they won't. I feel that they will continue to be written, and that alternative methods of compensation will be found. I'm sure Stephen King could get 10,000 people to each pay $10 for him to write his next novel. $100,000 may not be as much as he would be receiving otherwise, but it's enough for him to make a living.
Comparing that to bankrupting a small unprofitable company is laughable.
I was referring to the passing of the DMCA and the CTEA, as well as the crackdown of previously unenforced copyright laws, virtually destroying the economy of the entire technology sector.
I believe in greatly shortening the time length of intellectual property rights and making those rights serve the people better, but please... get your history right.
I believe in eliminating copyright law. And while my right to live in peace without taxation by a government which does not represent me is certainly more important than my right to copy and distribute works without taxation by the copyright holder, I still believe that there are definate similarities and comparisons between the two.
I'm not attacking. I just want a source for your opinion.
I felt that your soapbox comment was an attack. Of course, that's only my opinion, and I can't find any references to back it up.
If you don't have one, then the opinion is invalid.
Just because the source of my opinion is not published on the internet does not invalidate it.
Napster is not about stealing. It's about the freedom to do whatever I want with the CD that I legally purchased.
The holder of the copyright is the one who gets to determine who can make copies and distribute them. The government, which grants the copyright, has codified a "fair use" principle from common law that puts some limits on absolute control of material by the copyright holder, but that's it. You don't get a say.
All that says is that the government has successfully taken away my freedom to do whatever I want with the CD I purchased. They have done so because they argue that it will promote the progress of science and useful arts.
If you want things to be different, petition your government to change its copyright laws and/or buy stock in the corporation whose policies towards copyrighted materials you find objectionable.
Both of which I do, and while I do not myself have the courage to ignore the unjust law which is placed upon me, I fully support the actions of those who do. I also believe that when and if copyright laws are repealed (along with the notion that sentences can be owned), companies like napster which helped form the underground resistance against copyright law will be looked upon as revolutionaries, not criminals.
And it's not a tax. It's a restriction from a corporation. There's a huge difference.
It's arguable whether or not it is literally a tax, since the beneficiary is not the government, but it certainly bears a striking resemblence. The key point being that it places a charge on two individuals engaging in voluntary trade which it gives to a third party completely unaffected by that transaction.
And for those who make a living due to intellectual property, it's quite a real concept.
I never meant to argue that the concept of intellectual property wasn't a real one. But it was one which was created by copyright holders to justify their forceful stealing of wealth from non-copyright holders.
If you create nothing of value, or if you are living off the wealth created by someone else, then you will place no value in intellectual property.
Are you trying to insinuate that I create nothing of value? In any case, just because one creates nothing of value does not imply that one places no value in intellectual property. The fact that the books we read from to learn about the concept of property are all written by copyright holders is enough to keep that notion ingrained in the minds of most Americans.
Federal copyright law is not based on property rights anyway. The Supreme Court has made numerous rulings stating this quite explicitly.
So, give a source for your opinion. Or get off the soapbox.
Attacking someone who disagrees with you probably isn't the best way to have a reasonable discussion with him.
In any case, from the article you cited, "First, it angered influential colonial merchants, who feared being replaced and bankrupted by a powerful monopoly." "More important, however, the Tea Act revived American passions about the issue of taxation without representation." Both sound like quite monetary interests to me.
If you consider licensing fees to be an unjust tax which is placed upon us by the copyright holder, as I do, then it's perfectly reasonable to applaud the efforts of Napster in fighting to free us from that tax.
I reject your assertion that copyright infringement is stealing. Stealing is when you take something from someone else. Napster is not about stealing. It's about the freedom to do whatever I want with the CD that I legally purchased. If some day we are freed from the unjust copyright laws which we now have, that will be evident to those writing, reading, and teaching the history books. Intellectual property is a concept which is taught, not one which is innate.
Actually the Boston Tea Party was as much about profit as Napster, and so far the backlash by the controlling parties have been similar as well. Only history will tell if Napster will be one of the battles in the war to free ourselves from copyright. If copyright law is overturned, Napster will be hailed as a heroic effort. If it is not, it will be nothing more than a footnote in history.
I'd have a lot more sympathy when you guys whine and moan if you'd just go ahead and say it "They suck because they're shutting down my favorite piracy outlet."
Then Taco would have to admit that he's a hypocrite who complains when others infringe on his copyright but then goes and infringes on others' works himself.
In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work
It's too late to affect de-facto standards. It's too late to have any chance of becoming the most popular browser. But overall, I'm extremely impressed by RC3. The only major problem I have with it is that plugins are very hard to install (on Win2K) compared to IE. The positives are turning off pop-ups, and turning off Doubleclick BFAs.
Actually my other problem isn't so much with the product, but with the source code. I wish it would compile without using Visual Studio. Then the fact that it was GPLed would actually mean something to me.
You get 10,000 spams a day. How do you know how much of that is spam?
Some moron faked something@my.domain as the From: address for his/her spam. So I get all the bounces. I've shut off the account, but I still write a line to a log file (in case I ever get a lawyer willing to work on a contingency basis), and I log over 10,000 bounces a day.
How much time do you think that it takes your users to delete those 10,000 e-mails?
Spammers are no more responsible for the time it takes to delete e-mails than slashdot posters are responsible for the time people waste reading posts.
It may only cost me 18 hours a year, but multiplied by the number of people that get spam, that's a big number.
You're kidding yourself if you think any but the largest businesses will have this law enforced for them. Multiply the number of FBI agents you need to enforce the law and multiply that by the average FBI agent salary and you'll get an even bigger number. That's my argument based on practicality. Because email is essentially anonymous, enforcement costs will far outweigh the benefit.
If MCI calls me and tries to get me to switch to their service, and I tell them not to call me anymore, they stop calling me. There are laws to insure that. Spam is not the same way.
If you tell a spammer to stop contacting you and they don't, it's harassment, and there certainly are laws to protect against that.
Furthermore, if you believe that there is no way to block spam without blocking legitimate e-mail, take telemarketing. Telemarketing laws seem to be working out okay for the states that have the no-call lists (such as mine). So what would be different about e-mail that would keep it from working?
Email is essentially anonymous. With phone calls there is a centralized record of every single origin and destination.
What do you have to lose if 10,000 e-mails a day didn't get to your server?
Money that I pay in taxes to enforce the law and a little bit of the feeling that I live in a free country. That said while I don't support the law I secretly hope that it gets passed anyway. I think only after seeing what a colossal failure that law will be will people be moved to start really working on technical solutions to the problem of spam.
Simply, this: why don't you support federal legislation whose goal would be to eliminate spam?
1) Practicality: Because spam is an international problem and because email is essentially anonymous, spam laws will not work, and will cost myself and all taxpayers large sums of money.
2) Morality: I don't believe that the federal government has the right to make laws applying to phenomena which occur solely on the internet. Rather I feel that internet legislation should be done through voluntary contracts.
For instance, every time an ISP peers with another, it should force that ISP to sign a contract that it will take certain steps to stop spam. When I get spam, I should be able to send it (with headers) to my ISP, who will send it to the originating ISP and ensure that the issue is taken care of. Perhaps a fee could even be charged (actual costs, or maybe three times actual costs), which could be passed down the line to the originating sender. If an ISP can't collect the fine from the originating sender, then the ISP needs to eat that cost itself, and put better mechanisms into place to stop that from happening.
The cost to prosecute spammers(1) is not going to exceed the savings in time spent deleting spam(2), the cost of the bandwidth used to transmit spam, or the equipment upgrades needed to handle spam(3), because since they can't stop it, they have to handle it.
I disagree.
You're not very persuasive, btw. I like hard facts, not speculation.
You haven't presented any either. I can tell you for myself (I run a mail server), that my costs are $0 dealing with spam, and would be much much more than $0 prosecuting it. And I get over 10,000 spams a day, and could prosecute if I wanted to.
In fact, if you want to put your money where your mouth is, pay for my lawyer and court costs and I'll pay you back, if I win, plus 75% of the remainder.
this is evidence that the whole copyright regime is a house of cards based upon fighting an unwinnable battle via an untenable strategy.
Of course it is. Where did I imply otherwise?
If everyone think it's OK, what sense or meaning does it have to call it illegal?
Well, different amounts of copyright infringement do incur different penalties. The copyright infringement that most people engage in isn't even criminal. Of course with the growing use of napster, it's becoming more and more commonplace.
Slashdot Mirror
One clock moved slower, the other moved faster, relative to the surface of the earth.
but what makes time any less valid than length, width and height?
I don't think Einstein ever said that time was any less valid than length, width, and height. All are relative, according to Einstein's theory.
"Time doesn't exist" is an inaccurate representation of what Einstein said. Of course time exists, because we define it to exist.
I guess my tongue-in-cheek statement would have been more obvious if I had explicitly mentioned that I lived on the eastern coast of the U.S. Thanks for pointing this out.
How west-of-Atlanta-centric of slashdot to post this story.
Not all Slashdot readers, nor even all Slashdot editors, hold the exact same opinions concerning intellectual property laws.
And it's just pure coincidence that the ones that are opposed to IP laws post when it's a big bad company like microsoft defending them and the ones that aren't opposed to IP laws post when it's a warm fuzzy company like MacSlash defending them? Slashdot editors like to hide behind "It was only the submitter that was making the statement" and "Different slashdot editors have different opinions", but why then is it all so rare to see competing opinions on the same topic? Even in the comments section the groupthinkers are generally modded up and the dissidents are generally modded down.
But as long as pudge and most of the other editors continue to post one-liners and then run away, we won't get to hear the reasons behind their opinions. And personally, if someone isn't going to defend their opinion, I'm not interested in hearing it.
The Artist Formerly Known As Prince tried your system (subscription for an album). It failed for him, I think. At least, I never heard about an album actually being released.
I'm sure at the time there were alternatives. As far as music is concerned, I don't think there's a detriment to society with eliminating the megastar and only having small-time performers in bars and such. Personally the only books I ever pay for are academic books, so I really can't say very much about that.
Another alternative to copyright law is to simply have a non-profit, government run, mass-printing-press operation (a la the USPS). Then authors won't have to worry about being undercut.
And society does value authoring books. That was the reason for the creation of copyright in the first place.
I just don't think that taking away private home copying and personal distribution is the best way to reach that goal. The law should be based on morality. Economic goods such as book authorship should be addressed through other mechanisms, such as taxation.
It's been a pretty workable system for a few hundred years, and it's probably here to stay.
I'm not so sure how workable the system is any more. When audio cassettes came out, congress gave in and made it legal to copy and distribute audio works on cassette tape for non-profit purposes (see the Audio Home Recording Act). Now that napster and the like have been discovered, I believe the same will have to be done for mp3s. As transfer speeds and storage space increases, the same will happen for video. As scanning technology and e-book technology increases, the same will happen for books. Software piracy is already rampant. Microsoft is about the only company who has discovered how to get consumers to pay for software. The workability of copyright law is falling apart, and I don't think it will survive even my lifetime, at least not unless peer-to-peer communications are outlawed completely.
Fix rather than throw out is usually the best course of action.
My major argument against copyright law is that it is immoral in the first place, so that's why I argue throwing it out rather than fixing it.
I respect your opinions on the matter, and I believe we've both pretty much exhausted our viewpoints. I think we both agree that copyright law does solve some problems, while creating some others. If you'd like to summarize your points or restate them, feel free, but I probably won't reply unless I have something drastically new to add.
Can I get there via open source, would I be more profitable going closed source, or should I forget about make money altogether?
Forget about making money altogether. Unless you're Microsoft, it's near impossible to make money selling consumer software.
If there's some way you can tie your software to a service, maybe internet gaming, then you can probably make money, and it really doesn't matter if you're open or closed source. Actually open source is probably better. I suggest you use the QingPL.
He tried, he failed. King tried to do a book "shareware" over the web. Pay by the chapter. Way too few people did, so he stopped. If Stephen King can't sell a book this way, who could?
I think it would be a different situation if all authors were forced to work this way. Assuming that King's book was any good (I didn't read it), there's still the fact that there is plenty of other competing material for which you are guaranteed a finished product for your money. Which is another flaw with King's method. I shouldn't be forced to pay $X for a book which might not even be finished. If he fails to finish the book, I should get a refund.
How is King going to afford the printing press? Where are his production costs in your $100,000 figure? Who would give him a loan to do a production run, knowing that the only collateral he has (the book) is worthless?
I think that 10,000 readers would be willing to pay $10 each to Steven King for the service of writing the book. This assumes that King presents the topic and vows to not start writing the book until he receives $100K. If he gets less than $100K after say 3 months, everyone gets a refund. The cost of running the printing press would be paid directly by those purchasing hard copies of the books. King wouldn't have to be involved at all, he is already paid for his service of writing the book.
Other less known authors could simply work through a publishing company. I pay $100/year for to Whatever Publishing to support the authors working for it. They can then distribute the profits in whatever way they want, probably based on the number of purchasers of the at-cost printed versions.
If you insist on getting the government involved, just hire the artists directly. Again, pay could be distributed based on the number of copies read.
Any why would people buy the book from King? Why not go to someone who already bought the book and copy it from that person for less money (because they're rich, already own their own printing press, so their costs are lower)?
Yeah, I think you misunderstood me there. These 10,000 people pay just to have King write the book. Nothing more, nothing less. If people want a hardcopy, they can buy them themselves, or pay publishers.
Saying "well, some sort of compensation will probably happen" isn't a solution, it's hand-waving. Provide a concrete solution that prevents exploitation of content creators in a copyright-free system.
If the market is unable to come up with a mechanism to pay the authors, and society as a whole deems that the works should still be created, then the government should hire the authors directly, possibly through public libraries. Personally I think this would be unnecessary, but without being in the situation any solutions I come up with are pure speculation.
If society doesn't value the service of authoring books high enough for the market to come up with a way to pay for them, maybe books aren't worth creating in the first place.
I'm sorry, I'm sure you're a smart guy and all, but P2P is hardly comparable to terrorism, especially in this case.
I wasn't comparing P2P to terrorism.
This is more like sueing U-Haul until they go out of business because you can carry fertilizer bombs in their trucks.
No, because napster is illegal, U-Haul is not. The point I was making is that the RIAA never claims to have stopped all copyright infringement by stopping napster. They only claim to have stopped some instances of it.
Same as Slashdot is not responsible for the comments posted because they where NOT POSTED by Slashdot, Napster was not responisble for the illegal MP3s posted on their service because they where NOT POSTED by Napster.
Whether or not napster is responsible for the content of its users is irrelevant. They broke the law, and the RIAA shut them down. The only one who seems to think that shutting down a single service equals stopping piracy is Taco.
Shouldn't slashdot be posting a retraction of the inaccurate headline "MacSlash Domain Stolen"? Or is slashdot now taking the editorial position that trademark infringement is stealing?
An artist's record label is acting as an agent for the artist.
I never meant to separate the two.
The rest of your argument goes toward the goal of copyright: to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. First I'd like to state my opinion that is the sole purpose of copyright law. This is a widely held opinion, and I can show you sources backing it up if you are not aware of that fact. Whether or not you agree is a different story, I don't think either of us can prove definitively whether there is a god given right to ownership of intellectual property.
Now, you argue a specific form of useful artistry, books, which you argue would not be created without copyright law. At least, I assume that's what you are arguing. While you claim that it is "screwing the little guy while enriching the already rich," I think you miss the point that book authors have other skills which they can put to use. If they feel that they are not deriving a benefit from writing a book, they simply won't continue to write the book.
So really the two options here are that books will continue to be written, or they won't. I feel that they will continue to be written, and that alternative methods of compensation will be found. I'm sure Stephen King could get 10,000 people to each pay $10 for him to write his next novel. $100,000 may not be as much as he would be receiving otherwise, but it's enough for him to make a living.
Comparing that to bankrupting a small unprofitable company is laughable.
I was referring to the passing of the DMCA and the CTEA, as well as the crackdown of previously unenforced copyright laws, virtually destroying the economy of the entire technology sector.
I believe in greatly shortening the time length of intellectual property rights and making those rights serve the people better, but please... get your history right.
I believe in eliminating copyright law. And while my right to live in peace without taxation by a government which does not represent me is certainly more important than my right to copy and distribute works without taxation by the copyright holder, I still believe that there are definate similarities and comparisons between the two.
I'm not attacking. I just want a source for your opinion.
I felt that your soapbox comment was an attack. Of course, that's only my opinion, and I can't find any references to back it up.
If you don't have one, then the opinion is invalid.
Just because the source of my opinion is not published on the internet does not invalidate it.
All that says is that the government has successfully taken away my freedom to do whatever I want with the CD I purchased. They have done so because they argue that it will promote the progress of science and useful arts.
If you want things to be different, petition your government to change its copyright laws and/or buy stock in the corporation whose policies towards copyrighted materials you find objectionable.
Both of which I do, and while I do not myself have the courage to ignore the unjust law which is placed upon me, I fully support the actions of those who do. I also believe that when and if copyright laws are repealed (along with the notion that sentences can be owned), companies like napster which helped form the underground resistance against copyright law will be looked upon as revolutionaries, not criminals.
And it's not a tax. It's a restriction from a corporation. There's a huge difference.
It's arguable whether or not it is literally a tax, since the beneficiary is not the government, but it certainly bears a striking resemblence. The key point being that it places a charge on two individuals engaging in voluntary trade which it gives to a third party completely unaffected by that transaction.
And for those who make a living due to intellectual property, it's quite a real concept.
I never meant to argue that the concept of intellectual property wasn't a real one. But it was one which was created by copyright holders to justify their forceful stealing of wealth from non-copyright holders.
If you create nothing of value, or if you are living off the wealth created by someone else, then you will place no value in intellectual property.
Are you trying to insinuate that I create nothing of value? In any case, just because one creates nothing of value does not imply that one places no value in intellectual property. The fact that the books we read from to learn about the concept of property are all written by copyright holders is enough to keep that notion ingrained in the minds of most Americans.
Federal copyright law is not based on property rights anyway. The Supreme Court has made numerous rulings stating this quite explicitly.
So, give a source for your opinion. Or get off the soapbox.
Attacking someone who disagrees with you probably isn't the best way to have a reasonable discussion with him.
In any case, from the article you cited, "First, it angered influential colonial merchants, who feared being replaced and bankrupted by a powerful monopoly." "More important, however, the Tea Act revived American passions about the issue of taxation without representation." Both sound like quite monetary interests to me.
If you consider licensing fees to be an unjust tax which is placed upon us by the copyright holder, as I do, then it's perfectly reasonable to applaud the efforts of Napster in fighting to free us from that tax.
I reject your assertion that copyright infringement is stealing. Stealing is when you take something from someone else. Napster is not about stealing. It's about the freedom to do whatever I want with the CD that I legally purchased. If some day we are freed from the unjust copyright laws which we now have, that will be evident to those writing, reading, and teaching the history books. Intellectual property is a concept which is taught, not one which is innate.
Well, according to CmdrTaco, it means the same thing as copyright infringement. "Thats totally a copyright violation... I wish people wouldn't steal."
Actually the Boston Tea Party was as much about profit as Napster, and so far the backlash by the controlling parties have been similar as well. Only history will tell if Napster will be one of the battles in the war to free ourselves from copyright. If copyright law is overturned, Napster will be hailed as a heroic effort. If it is not, it will be nothing more than a footnote in history.
I'd have a lot more sympathy when you guys whine and moan if you'd just go ahead and say it "They suck because they're shutting down my favorite piracy outlet."
Then Taco would have to admit that he's a hypocrite who complains when others infringe on his copyright but then goes and infringes on others' works himself.
Thank god the industry shut them down... now that piracy has been stopped they can all sleep much better.
Yeah and it's a good thing we caught Timothy McVeigh, cause now there's no more terrorism in America.
February 23, 2000, at 5:37 Eastern Standard Time.
It's too late to affect de-facto standards. It's too late to have any chance of becoming the most popular browser. But overall, I'm extremely impressed by RC3. The only major problem I have with it is that plugins are very hard to install (on Win2K) compared to IE. The positives are turning off pop-ups, and turning off Doubleclick BFAs.
Actually my other problem isn't so much with the product, but with the source code. I wish it would compile without using Visual Studio. Then the fact that it was GPLed would actually mean something to me.
You get 10,000 spams a day. How do you know how much of that is spam?
Some moron faked something@my.domain as the From: address for his/her spam. So I get all the bounces. I've shut off the account, but I still write a line to a log file (in case I ever get a lawyer willing to work on a contingency basis), and I log over 10,000 bounces a day.
How much time do you think that it takes your users to delete those 10,000 e-mails?
Spammers are no more responsible for the time it takes to delete e-mails than slashdot posters are responsible for the time people waste reading posts.
It may only cost me 18 hours a year, but multiplied by the number of people that get spam, that's a big number.
You're kidding yourself if you think any but the largest businesses will have this law enforced for them. Multiply the number of FBI agents you need to enforce the law and multiply that by the average FBI agent salary and you'll get an even bigger number. That's my argument based on practicality. Because email is essentially anonymous, enforcement costs will far outweigh the benefit.
If MCI calls me and tries to get me to switch to their service, and I tell them not to call me anymore, they stop calling me. There are laws to insure that. Spam is not the same way.
If you tell a spammer to stop contacting you and they don't, it's harassment, and there certainly are laws to protect against that.
Furthermore, if you believe that there is no way to block spam without blocking legitimate e-mail, take telemarketing. Telemarketing laws seem to be working out okay for the states that have the no-call lists (such as mine). So what would be different about e-mail that would keep it from working?
Email is essentially anonymous. With phone calls there is a centralized record of every single origin and destination.
What do you have to lose if 10,000 e-mails a day didn't get to your server?
Money that I pay in taxes to enforce the law and a little bit of the feeling that I live in a free country. That said while I don't support the law I secretly hope that it gets passed anyway. I think only after seeing what a colossal failure that law will be will people be moved to start really working on technical solutions to the problem of spam.
Simply, this: why don't you support federal legislation whose goal would be to eliminate spam?
1) Practicality: Because spam is an international problem and because email is essentially anonymous, spam laws will not work, and will cost myself and all taxpayers large sums of money.
2) Morality: I don't believe that the federal government has the right to make laws applying to phenomena which occur solely on the internet. Rather I feel that internet legislation should be done through voluntary contracts.
For instance, every time an ISP peers with another, it should force that ISP to sign a contract that it will take certain steps to stop spam. When I get spam, I should be able to send it (with headers) to my ISP, who will send it to the originating ISP and ensure that the issue is taken care of. Perhaps a fee could even be charged (actual costs, or maybe three times actual costs), which could be passed down the line to the originating sender. If an ISP can't collect the fine from the originating sender, then the ISP needs to eat that cost itself, and put better mechanisms into place to stop that from happening.
Was rated +4 for me... Then again, I set up slashdot to +2 upvotes but only -1 downvotes.
The cost to prosecute spammers(1) is not going to exceed the savings in time spent deleting spam(2), the cost of the bandwidth used to transmit spam, or the equipment upgrades needed to handle spam(3), because since they can't stop it, they have to handle it.
I disagree.
You're not very persuasive, btw. I like hard facts, not speculation.
You haven't presented any either. I can tell you for myself (I run a mail server), that my costs are $0 dealing with spam, and would be much much more than $0 prosecuting it. And I get over 10,000 spams a day, and could prosecute if I wanted to.
In fact, if you want to put your money where your mouth is, pay for my lawyer and court costs and I'll pay you back, if I win, plus 75% of the remainder.
this is evidence that the whole copyright regime is a house of cards based upon fighting an unwinnable battle via an untenable strategy.
Of course it is. Where did I imply otherwise?
If everyone think it's OK, what sense or meaning does it have to call it illegal?
Well, different amounts of copyright infringement do incur different penalties. The copyright infringement that most people engage in isn't even criminal. Of course with the growing use of napster, it's becoming more and more commonplace.