Well, I live in the Tampa Bay area. I'm not sure which thrift stores I've gotten the computers at though. The latest one was a no-name, it was run by some local church or something. I think I found one of them at the Goodwill in St. Petersburg. I usually go to thrift stores to look for books, but every few months or so I'll find a working computer for under 10 bucks. A couple of times I've found ones that I thought were working but turned out not to be quite in as good of shape as I thought, for instance I got one with a bad IDE controller, so I generally only buy it if the hard drive and memory alone justify the price. (As an aside, I once found a rare book for 25 cents which I later sold for $95 at half.com, that was my best find so far).
The way I see it, unless you hard-code the font in, it can't have any affect.
In the case of fonts, you're probably correct. But I'd go so far as to say that it can't have any effect in any case. Even if you embed the font in, you're only aggregating multiple works.
"Indeed, it isn't like you're changing the fonts, it's like you're using the fonts..." If I take a lot of your GPLed code and put it into a library, can I release all the changes I make to turn your code into a library and then write my own code that calls on the library, but keep it's source closed?
Well, yes, you can, and it wouldn't be direct copyright infringement. But in order to link the library with the code you'd need permission, so the end-user would have to commit copyright infringement when linking the code, and it could be argued that you are then committing contributory copyright infringement. Whether or not you'd win this argument is somewhat unclear. I don't think the GPL has ever been tested in this way.
But this analogy doesn't hold for fonts anyway, at least not in the United States, fonts aren't copyrightable in the United States (what is copyrightable is the program which makes the font).
You can't embed the font file itself or substantial pieces of the data that created it in a document (such as a PDF) without permission from the owner, and it is there that GPL exceptions may be needed to prevent the entire document from becoming GPL.
If you're just embedding the font without any changes in a document, it seems clear to me that this is an aggregation, and not the creation of a separate work. From the GPL, "mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."
When you create a document that uses a certain font, does that font get included in the document? In many cases, yes.
But that's just an aggregation, and "mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."
Simply stated, it appears that using GPL-licensed fonts in a document makes your document subject to the GPL.
No it doesn't. A derivative work which is derived from both your document and the fonts must be released under the GPL (which is different from saying that it automatically is released under the GPL), but in any case the document itself need not be released under the GPL. From the GPL:
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License.
Finally, all this needs to be combined with the fact that fonts are probably not copyrightable in the first place, at least not in the United States.
Because the only way that hardware of that level would be useful in any serious ( not router/firewall/fileserver etc. ) application would be to make it run clustered - and make it run well.
Not sure how a router, firewall, and fileserver aren't serious applications. CPU is rarely the bottleneck in an application. There are lots of other slots in a motherboard besides the one for the CPU. Netwok attached storage device, firewall, router, switch, bridge, modem/fax pool, serial console pool, usb hub, dumb terminal, test station, network monitoring station, wireless access point, the list goes on and on. I don't know about you, but I'm all out of expansion slots on my primary desktop machine. And like I said in another post, I've got 15 IDE drives hooked up to my network, try doing that using one desktop machine. I've got a 386 running off a floppy which is routing my DSL connection and providing an IPv6 tunnel. This is something which just isn't supported by my linksys. I've also got a pentium computer in another room which has a wireless NIC and a wired NIC and acts as a bridge so that I don't have to buy a wireless card for every computer in that room. The list of possibilities goes on and on - but CPU is rarely a factor.
Say you do have 12 old Pentiums laying around. 12x133 MHz each, that's only the equivalent of 1600 MHz.
Maybe, but you can still only handle 4 IDE drives (without buying additional rather expensive hardware). I've got 15 IDE drives up and running right now, on machines that I've bought for prices from $3-8 at thrift stores (most of the drives themselves I bought at pretty much full price over the course of many years). Just yesterday I got a Pentium 166 Mhz with a 6 gig hard drive and 256 megs of ram for $5. Now just add 3 more hard drives and one of the ethernet cards I've got lying around and I've got a dirt-cheap network attached storage device.
Ever run a 15GB DB in RAM instead of on a physical disk? It's very fast.
Depends on the application. If you're running a database for an internet application, then a four disk RAID-5 with 10K RPM drives are fast enough to saturate a T3 anyway (and I'm talking about random access). Actually it's hard for me to think of an app which doesn't require more than one CPU and needs faster access than a properly configured RAID can give it. Just saying "a DB application" isn't enough to justify using that much ram. Maybe if you had a multi-terabyte database, and the indexes themselves take up 16 gigs, but then the key to the architechture is going to be building that multi-terabyte disk array.
Is it possible for you to write software which can handle this application across several machines? 4 machines with 4 gigs of ram connected to each other via gigabit ethernet would probably cost less than 1 machine with 16 gigs.
If cheap is what you care about, you've gotta use scalable software. If you want to just buy something out of the box which can handle 16 gigs of ram, you can expect to pay more.
I originally signed up with Verizon because they were the only service that worked in the part of New York State that I lived in at the time. Since then I've used the service all over the place and it has met my expectations. I can't say I haven't lost signal, but generally the only time I have a problem making a call is inside a building in the middle of nowhere.
As for receiving calls, it's a lot spottier. When you've got the antenna down, and the phone in your pocket, sometimes you just don't get the call right away. Instead you'll get up from your desk or move into another room and suddenly you'll realize you have a message.
My experiences with my home wireless connection have actually been a lot worse. Unless I'm in the same room as my access point, I can pretty much count on losing my connection completely every few days. It's due to interference of some type, because if I switch channels it suddenly starts working again. But it's not a particular channel, because none of them work properly 100% of the time.
For example, let's look at "spyware." How do you define it?
Right, and if you could define it, then we wouldn't need any laws about it, because you could easily write software which automatically detects and destroys it.
I really wish the government would just stay the hell out of regulating the internet. We'd have much more innovative software if software manufacturers didn't have to fear getting sued or going to jail just for writing a program. But then again, we'd have Napster, and DeCSS, and Advanced eBook Processor. And that'd hurt all the fat cats who got the members of Congress elected.
Another CAN-SPAM? I don't see how an anti-spyware bill could be anything but another CAN-SPAM. The government already has laws against fraud and theft of services. If spam or spyware doesn't fall under either of those, the government should just stay the hell out.
I knew that would cost me a bit of karma, but this particular story just struck me as incredibly rediculous. For once I found myself agreeing 100% with the sentiment the story was trying to express. Way to go, slashdot.
I don't know, if the block is complicated enough that you want to separate out the variables used in it, then I think it would benefit from being broken out. If it's really as short as that example, and just uses a temporary variable, then I'd probably just declare the variable at the top of the function. But in the end, I guess either way is equally valid. It's just a coding style which I don't ever personally use.
I'm talking about people working for Union Carbide poisoning entire neighborhoods in India and not being held responsible for it.
Poisoning neighborhoods? Being incorporated doesn't shield you from criminal laws.
I'm talking about a drunk skipper spilling tons of crude along Alaska's coast and merely getting fired.
The doctrine of respondeat emptor applies regardless of whether or not the business is incorporated.
I've been in this situation and I can personally tell you that the contract *I* wrote didn't waive any responsibility for the corporation who signed it.
It didn't have to. That's implicit in the fact that you entered into a contract with a corporation. Sure, you could drop it as the default, and force every business to spell it out in detail, but that's just a waste of time.
The problem was that I didn't know that the individual signing the sales contract had incorporated themselves.
Well, a corporation is supposed to use certain corporate identifiers in their name. If they weren't then you could have used that fact to pierce the corporate veil.
So when I went to collect on the $5000 debt I was told that John Smith the individual didn't actually sign, but that I would have to collect from John Smith Inc. Trying to collect from John Smith Inc. was futile they claimed John Smith the individual signed.
You can't claim two contradictory things in different court cases. I have to believe you either are presenting a poorly thought out hypothetical, or your lawyer was a moron.
If a private business sends an employee to my home and they cause damages, the owners of the private business are liable. But if it's a corporation whose employee caused the damages, the corporation owners aren't liable.
The owners are liable up to their investement, but beyond that, you're right. If you don't like it, don't hire a corporation to do work in your home.
As a stockholder in Union Carbide, why should I care if the company I own one share in dumps toxic chemicals on a neighborhood in India?
If you want your stock to be worth something, you certainly should care. Not to mention that it's immoral and illegal to dump toxic chemicals on a neighborhood in India.
Be able to have its own police force? It is able to have its own police force. Anyone in the country is permitted to make a citizen's arrest.
I never said Nintendo should have it is own set of laws. I'm just saying Nintendo should pay for the enforcement of laws like copyright infringement. I'd add in any non-violent person-to-person law about money.
Well, the heirs do gain utility they personally didn't have before.
I don't mean the heirs. I mean the person giving the inheritance.
If there is a sales tax rather than an income tax/estate tax, then any of the property (real, personal, whatever) owned by the deceased was presumably paid for and taxed at the time it was purchased.
Are you suggesting that sales of intangible property be taxed, then? Do we get taxed on our stock purchases?
Any non-property assets (i.e., cash)
So, cash is a "non-property asset". Only US cash, or other currencies too? What about gold, silver, platinum, and diamonds?
In any case, I think one problem with this is that the value of so many of these things is going to go up between the purchase and the eventual resale. To tax the purchase once and then never again means generation after generation can hoard the item and use it tax free. In fact, it seems to me that the market for new products would take an immediate nosedive, which probably means the tax would have to be raised, which in turn would cause people to shift even further to used products, ad nauseum.
And then, how is one to identify a used vs. new product? What stops a store owner from opening up a box and calling the product old when in fact it is new? The ability to evade this tax would be enormous.
You can't have income without having an expenditure.
You mean an expenditure by the employer for the person's wage?
Yep.
That's the whole point here, to shift the tax burden from wage expenditures to consumer expenditures. The worker derives utility only *indirectly* from their wage, when they spend it; their employer doesn't derive utility because they aren't consuming anything, they're producing.
The employer doesn't derivy utility from his workers? I'm sorry, but that's just not true. You could argue that the utility is an intermediate service which should therefore be taxed at the point of eventual resale, but you've just opened up a huge tax shelter, as the eventual resale can be postponed indefinitely.
My assertion here is that there's a difference between "cash/stocks/bonds" and "personal property or utility derived from services consumed". Money has no intrinsic utility until it is used to purchase and consume something.
Money may not, but stocks certainly do.
I was asserting that once traditional IRAs had been created (regardless of the original intention), they effectively allowed a person to shift some of their taxation from their income to their consumption.
Well, as I pointed out, that's not entirely true, since a person must withdraw from an IRA after turning 59 1/2, even if their current income covers all their costs of consumption, so you haven't necessarily shifted any taxation all the way to the point of consumption. But anyway, a traditional IRA does allow one to shift his taxation to a later date. A traditional IRA is a tax shelter, and it's limited to $3000/year in contributions ($4000 in 2005 and rising after that), and a whole host of other limitations. To change a traditional IRA so that there were no limitations, you could just put money into it, do whatever you want with it while it's there, and take any amount out whenever you wanted as long as you paid taxes, would be devestating to the economy.
But you know what, it'd probably be a hell of a lot easier to enforce then a sales tax. So if you want to tax consumption in the way FairTax claims to be striving for, here's my proposal. Institute a flat income tax at X% with an exemption at the poverty level (no one pays any income tax on the first $Y). Then allow a traditional IRA similar in self-dealing rules to our current IRAs, which gives you a deduction from your income at the time of contribution and is taxable upon distribution. No contribution limits, no early withdrawal penalties, no forced distributions, no taxation upon transfer including inheritan
When the corporation enters into a debt with you, you agree to waive personal liability. Seems perfectly possible to handle this through contract law if you really want to.
Piracy and copyright infringement are illegal. Then again, I don't think they're felonies, so maybe Nintendo can't arrest for it. Depends on the state law of that state.
If you had to pay a yearly fee to maintain your copyright this kind of crap wouldn't happen.
I'm sure it would, unless you could somehow make the yearly fee a variable amount.
Hmm, maybe the yearly fee could be based on the declared value of the work. So if Nintendo wants to claim that pirated versions of Duck Hunt cost them a million dollars a year in revenues, then they've got to put up say 0.1%, or $1,000/year to keep it copyrighted.
Slashdot Mirror
What is your basis for saying so?
They're both completely separate works. The text makes perfect sense without the font, and the font makes perfect sense without the text.
Well, I live in the Tampa Bay area. I'm not sure which thrift stores I've gotten the computers at though. The latest one was a no-name, it was run by some local church or something. I think I found one of them at the Goodwill in St. Petersburg. I usually go to thrift stores to look for books, but every few months or so I'll find a working computer for under 10 bucks. A couple of times I've found ones that I thought were working but turned out not to be quite in as good of shape as I thought, for instance I got one with a bad IDE controller, so I generally only buy it if the hard drive and memory alone justify the price. (As an aside, I once found a rare book for 25 cents which I later sold for $95 at half.com, that was my best find so far).
The way I see it, unless you hard-code the font in, it can't have any affect.
In the case of fonts, you're probably correct. But I'd go so far as to say that it can't have any effect in any case. Even if you embed the font in, you're only aggregating multiple works.
Bitmap fonts are not copyrightable. Truetype fonts are copyrightable.
The algorithm used to create the font is copyrightable, but the font itself is not.
"Indeed, it isn't like you're changing the fonts, it's like you're using the fonts..." If I take a lot of your GPLed code and put it into a library, can I release all the changes I make to turn your code into a library and then write my own code that calls on the library, but keep it's source closed?
Well, yes, you can, and it wouldn't be direct copyright infringement. But in order to link the library with the code you'd need permission, so the end-user would have to commit copyright infringement when linking the code, and it could be argued that you are then committing contributory copyright infringement. Whether or not you'd win this argument is somewhat unclear. I don't think the GPL has ever been tested in this way.
But this analogy doesn't hold for fonts anyway, at least not in the United States, fonts aren't copyrightable in the United States (what is copyrightable is the program which makes the font).
You can't embed the font file itself or substantial pieces of the data that created it in a document (such as a PDF) without permission from the owner, and it is there that GPL exceptions may be needed to prevent the entire document from becoming GPL.
If you're just embedding the font without any changes in a document, it seems clear to me that this is an aggregation, and not the creation of a separate work. From the GPL, "mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."
When you create a document that uses a certain font, does that font get included in the document? In many cases, yes.
But that's just an aggregation, and "mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."
Simply stated, it appears that using GPL-licensed fonts in a document makes your document subject to the GPL.
No it doesn't. A derivative work which is derived from both your document and the fonts must be released under the GPL (which is different from saying that it automatically is released under the GPL), but in any case the document itself need not be released under the GPL. From the GPL:
Finally, all this needs to be combined with the fact that fonts are probably not copyrightable in the first place, at least not in the United States.
Because the only way that hardware of that level would be useful in any serious ( not router/firewall/fileserver etc. ) application would be to make it run clustered - and make it run well .
Not sure how a router, firewall, and fileserver aren't serious applications. CPU is rarely the bottleneck in an application. There are lots of other slots in a motherboard besides the one for the CPU. Netwok attached storage device, firewall, router, switch, bridge, modem/fax pool, serial console pool, usb hub, dumb terminal, test station, network monitoring station, wireless access point, the list goes on and on. I don't know about you, but I'm all out of expansion slots on my primary desktop machine. And like I said in another post, I've got 15 IDE drives hooked up to my network, try doing that using one desktop machine. I've got a 386 running off a floppy which is routing my DSL connection and providing an IPv6 tunnel. This is something which just isn't supported by my linksys. I've also got a pentium computer in another room which has a wireless NIC and a wired NIC and acts as a bridge so that I don't have to buy a wireless card for every computer in that room. The list of possibilities goes on and on - but CPU is rarely a factor.
Say you do have 12 old Pentiums laying around. 12x133 MHz each, that's only the equivalent of 1600 MHz.
Maybe, but you can still only handle 4 IDE drives (without buying additional rather expensive hardware). I've got 15 IDE drives up and running right now, on machines that I've bought for prices from $3-8 at thrift stores (most of the drives themselves I bought at pretty much full price over the course of many years). Just yesterday I got a Pentium 166 Mhz with a 6 gig hard drive and 256 megs of ram for $5. Now just add 3 more hard drives and one of the ethernet cards I've got lying around and I've got a dirt-cheap network attached storage device.
Ever run a 15GB DB in RAM instead of on a physical disk? It's very fast.
Depends on the application. If you're running a database for an internet application, then a four disk RAID-5 with 10K RPM drives are fast enough to saturate a T3 anyway (and I'm talking about random access). Actually it's hard for me to think of an app which doesn't require more than one CPU and needs faster access than a properly configured RAID can give it. Just saying "a DB application" isn't enough to justify using that much ram. Maybe if you had a multi-terabyte database, and the indexes themselves take up 16 gigs, but then the key to the architechture is going to be building that multi-terabyte disk array.
Is it possible for you to write software which can handle this application across several machines? 4 machines with 4 gigs of ram connected to each other via gigabit ethernet would probably cost less than 1 machine with 16 gigs.
If cheap is what you care about, you've gotta use scalable software. If you want to just buy something out of the box which can handle 16 gigs of ram, you can expect to pay more.
I originally signed up with Verizon because they were the only service that worked in the part of New York State that I lived in at the time. Since then I've used the service all over the place and it has met my expectations. I can't say I haven't lost signal, but generally the only time I have a problem making a call is inside a building in the middle of nowhere.
As for receiving calls, it's a lot spottier. When you've got the antenna down, and the phone in your pocket, sometimes you just don't get the call right away. Instead you'll get up from your desk or move into another room and suddenly you'll realize you have a message.
My experiences with my home wireless connection have actually been a lot worse. Unless I'm in the same room as my access point, I can pretty much count on losing my connection completely every few days. It's due to interference of some type, because if I switch channels it suddenly starts working again. But it's not a particular channel, because none of them work properly 100% of the time.
For example, let's look at "spyware." How do you define it?
Right, and if you could define it, then we wouldn't need any laws about it, because you could easily write software which automatically detects and destroys it.
I really wish the government would just stay the hell out of regulating the internet. We'd have much more innovative software if software manufacturers didn't have to fear getting sued or going to jail just for writing a program. But then again, we'd have Napster, and DeCSS, and Advanced eBook Processor. And that'd hurt all the fat cats who got the members of Congress elected.
Basically what Congress has to do is make a category of things which you CANNOT legally give consent to.
No, that's something Congress absolutely SHOULD NOT do.
The problem comes in when they try to define "spyware."
No, the problem came in when Congress tries to protect people from themselves.
Another CAN-SPAM? I don't see how an anti-spyware bill could be anything but another CAN-SPAM. The government already has laws against fraud and theft of services. If spam or spyware doesn't fall under either of those, the government should just stay the hell out.
I knew that would cost me a bit of karma, but this particular story just struck me as incredibly rediculous. For once I found myself agreeing 100% with the sentiment the story was trying to express. Way to go, slashdot.
I don't know, if the block is complicated enough that you want to separate out the variables used in it, then I think it would benefit from being broken out. If it's really as short as that example, and just uses a temporary variable, then I'd probably just declare the variable at the top of the function. But in the end, I guess either way is equally valid. It's just a coding style which I don't ever personally use.
I'm talking about people working for Union Carbide poisoning entire neighborhoods in India and not being held responsible for it.
Poisoning neighborhoods? Being incorporated doesn't shield you from criminal laws.
I'm talking about a drunk skipper spilling tons of crude along Alaska's coast and merely getting fired.
The doctrine of respondeat emptor applies regardless of whether or not the business is incorporated.
I've been in this situation and I can personally tell you that the contract *I* wrote didn't waive any responsibility for the corporation who signed it.
It didn't have to. That's implicit in the fact that you entered into a contract with a corporation. Sure, you could drop it as the default, and force every business to spell it out in detail, but that's just a waste of time.
The problem was that I didn't know that the individual signing the sales contract had incorporated themselves.
Well, a corporation is supposed to use certain corporate identifiers in their name. If they weren't then you could have used that fact to pierce the corporate veil.
So when I went to collect on the $5000 debt I was told that John Smith the individual didn't actually sign, but that I would have to collect from John Smith Inc. Trying to collect from John Smith Inc. was futile they claimed John Smith the individual signed.
You can't claim two contradictory things in different court cases. I have to believe you either are presenting a poorly thought out hypothetical, or your lawyer was a moron.
If a private business sends an employee to my home and they cause damages, the owners of the private business are liable. But if it's a corporation whose employee caused the damages, the corporation owners aren't liable.
The owners are liable up to their investement, but beyond that, you're right. If you don't like it, don't hire a corporation to do work in your home.
As a stockholder in Union Carbide, why should I care if the company I own one share in dumps toxic chemicals on a neighborhood in India?
If you want your stock to be worth something, you certainly should care. Not to mention that it's immoral and illegal to dump toxic chemicals on a neighborhood in India.
Be able to have its own police force? It is able to have its own police force. Anyone in the country is permitted to make a citizen's arrest.
I never said Nintendo should have it is own set of laws. I'm just saying Nintendo should pay for the enforcement of laws like copyright infringement. I'd add in any non-violent person-to-person law about money.
Well, the heirs do gain utility they personally didn't have before.
I don't mean the heirs. I mean the person giving the inheritance.
If there is a sales tax rather than an income tax/estate tax, then any of the property (real, personal, whatever) owned by the deceased was presumably paid for and taxed at the time it was purchased.
Are you suggesting that sales of intangible property be taxed, then? Do we get taxed on our stock purchases?
Any non-property assets (i.e., cash)
So, cash is a "non-property asset". Only US cash, or other currencies too? What about gold, silver, platinum, and diamonds?
In any case, I think one problem with this is that the value of so many of these things is going to go up between the purchase and the eventual resale. To tax the purchase once and then never again means generation after generation can hoard the item and use it tax free. In fact, it seems to me that the market for new products would take an immediate nosedive, which probably means the tax would have to be raised, which in turn would cause people to shift even further to used products, ad nauseum.
And then, how is one to identify a used vs. new product? What stops a store owner from opening up a box and calling the product old when in fact it is new? The ability to evade this tax would be enormous.
You can't have income without having an expenditure.
You mean an expenditure by the employer for the person's wage?
Yep.
That's the whole point here, to shift the tax burden from wage expenditures to consumer expenditures. The worker derives utility only *indirectly* from their wage, when they spend it; their employer doesn't derive utility because they aren't consuming anything, they're producing.
The employer doesn't derivy utility from his workers? I'm sorry, but that's just not true. You could argue that the utility is an intermediate service which should therefore be taxed at the point of eventual resale, but you've just opened up a huge tax shelter, as the eventual resale can be postponed indefinitely.
My assertion here is that there's a difference between "cash/stocks/bonds" and "personal property or utility derived from services consumed". Money has no intrinsic utility until it is used to purchase and consume something.
Money may not, but stocks certainly do.
I was asserting that once traditional IRAs had been created (regardless of the original intention), they effectively allowed a person to shift some of their taxation from their income to their consumption.
Well, as I pointed out, that's not entirely true, since a person must withdraw from an IRA after turning 59 1/2, even if their current income covers all their costs of consumption, so you haven't necessarily shifted any taxation all the way to the point of consumption. But anyway, a traditional IRA does allow one to shift his taxation to a later date. A traditional IRA is a tax shelter, and it's limited to $3000/year in contributions ($4000 in 2005 and rising after that), and a whole host of other limitations. To change a traditional IRA so that there were no limitations, you could just put money into it, do whatever you want with it while it's there, and take any amount out whenever you wanted as long as you paid taxes, would be devestating to the economy.
But you know what, it'd probably be a hell of a lot easier to enforce then a sales tax. So if you want to tax consumption in the way FairTax claims to be striving for, here's my proposal. Institute a flat income tax at X% with an exemption at the poverty level (no one pays any income tax on the first $Y). Then allow a traditional IRA similar in self-dealing rules to our current IRAs, which gives you a deduction from your income at the time of contribution and is taxable upon distribution. No contribution limits, no early withdrawal penalties, no forced distributions, no taxation upon transfer including inheritan
When the corporation enters into a debt with you, you agree to waive personal liability. Seems perfectly possible to handle this through contract law if you really want to.
Piracy and copyright infringement are illegal. Then again, I don't think they're felonies, so maybe Nintendo can't arrest for it. Depends on the state law of that state.
If Nintendo judges it can still make money off these games in a few years, then it is in their own right to arrest people who steal from them.
If Nintendo were doing the arresting, this wouldn't be nearly as bad. But instead they've got the FBI doing it for them.
If stories like this aren't a good reason for having highly progressive taxation, I don't know what is.
If you had to pay a yearly fee to maintain your copyright this kind of crap wouldn't happen.
I'm sure it would, unless you could somehow make the yearly fee a variable amount.
Hmm, maybe the yearly fee could be based on the declared value of the work. So if Nintendo wants to claim that pirated versions of Duck Hunt cost them a million dollars a year in revenues, then they've got to put up say 0.1%, or $1,000/year to keep it copyrighted.