> Copyright holders cannot restrict how any one copy of their work is used by buyers, except to make them respect the artificial scarcity of copyright law.
You might want to call King Canute and ask him how he managed with the tides. Because, somehow, that reminds me of the original 'modest' proposal...
No problem:) Saw you in the message center, too. Let me know via anon OT replies if you find any good anime, because I generally read all replies to my posts. I'll try and remember to do the same for you.
I'm getting Code Geass now, BTW, but it'll be a while before I get to watch it.
Does the UK have a FOIA now? Last I knew, that was an American law (unless they have their own, or this was somehow discovered by things received from the American government).
Well, ok, that may be the summary's fault, because the article just mentions "freedom of information" laws, not FOIA itself.
But it's STILL a story in the Daily Mail, and not what I'd call a reputable source. Can anyone confirm this with a better source, or are we being trolled here?
Actually, I've seen Mushishi (which probably translates as something like 'Bug Master', even though the 'bugs' are actually simple, but screwball supernatural creatures). It's paced a little slowly and episodic, though, but you're right that the main guy was intelligent and had to figure out how to deal with each weirdo type of mushi...
Aha! So the reason we have so many dupes are because the editors are practicing kage bunshin no jutsu, which makes crappy clones of the original stories!
It makes so much sense now!
But the subtitled version of Slashdot is STILL better. You losers should quit reading this dub by the robotic overlord and head over to the real action on http://www.slashdot.jp/
It's embarrassing to see McCain suddenly pretend to be an environmentalist, then ducking all the actual, technical questions.
It would be nice if he were actually against telecom amnesty, but McCain is for it, he just wants some "radical transparency" (the Microsoft gimmick?) to let us know exactly how they're spying on us.
I only listed anime I've watched in full. Alas, I have not seen that one, though I know of it, of course.
There's Grave of the Fireflies / anything from Studio Ghibli, too. (Have they _EVER_ made a bad movie?)
I don't want to list everything I've ever watched, though. I have seen my share of generic or derivative series (love sims turned into anime, CCGs or similar games turned into anime, sentai, robots, etc.), enjoyable things played out too long (Urusei Yatsura...), etc.
But those I listed above were a pretty diverse cross-section of series with good stories and interesting characters. Each of those has its strengths and weaknesses, but there isn't a one in that list I gave that I didn't really enjoy or look forward to watching the next episode.
And you really notice that when you watch a series in a few days and either feel like burning through them all or debating whether you'll come back to them later...
Finding really smart anime is the hardest, because the writers themselves have to be as smart or smarter than the characters:/
I've seen some good writing, and a smart section or two, but Death Note towers above most series in that category. It's simply and absolutely phenomenal how the author can keep up that level of engagement.
If you find any, let me know, too! Even just with an OT comment as an AC to some random, recent comment. I'd love to find more anime like Death Note in terms of intelligence (or suspense).
Hmm, wait. Actually, Detective Academy Q *DOES* have a number of good tricks in it. It's just not on the same level, but it's another good series I forgot to mention.
Watch out for that dumb cactus guy, too. You wouldn't think that a guy in a cactus suit (or later, a godzilla suit) could blend in until you have the fact that you didn't notice him shoved in your face:-]
And once you read enough TVTropes, you won't think of anything as 'original' ever again:]
Still, there are tons of great anime that are really creative. Death Note springs to mind. I can't think of anything else where the suspense was that strong, or where the characters were that intelligent.
I know some will say that 'anything popular is crap', but Bleach & Naruto have very engaging stories, too (the manga, not the crappy Naruto filler). I admit, those two are getting a little long in the tooth, but at the outset, they were on the top of their game.
And once you get into lesser-known series (say, Hikaru no Go, Kekkaishi, Rental Magica, REC, Hayate no Gotoku, Dennou Coil, Code-E, Bamboo Blade, or Akagi) you'll find that there's a lot more to be had than robots, sentai and tentacle porn.
So, basically, there was a misdemeanor law way back in 1897, but it would never have applied to a case like this.
They had to loosen it up a lot (as they did under the NET Act) to actually prosecute this as a criminal matter, though the change from misdemeanor to felony was pretty bad, too.
That said, I guess they actually used the conspiracy laws to get him, which would've required felonious copyright infringement. And I'm not sure they could've proven that without the NET Act...
> it requires willful infringement, plus one of either 1) financial gain
Just to be fair, the NET Act also redefines "financial gain" to include a laundry list of things. One of those things that laundry list covers is receiving other copyrighted works in return.
Yes, that's right. In theory, joining a torrent could be "financial gain" so long as the contents were valuable enough.
In practice, we don't have full-fledged copyright cops (yet), so they don't bother with small fry. But that WILL change if they can get the PRO-IP Act through congress. My sincere hope is that it never gets that far.
> I guess you didn't notice how when you mentioned something we can't both do, you started talking about rights to use the land, not the land itself.
Wait. So you're saying that we can use the land itself to build two houses on the same spot? That's beyond incoherent. Imagine there are no land rights whatsoever. How do we BOTH use the same land?
> Air to breath is there without being created by someone. Music to distribute is not.
You evaded that point nicely. The point was that we have little need for a distribution right when we have little need for distributors in the first place.
> Ah, so a right easily violated is no right at all. So for example, if your banker walks off with all your money, you won't complain. He doesn't physically need your permission, so your right to withold such permission is void.
No, an unenforceable right is not useful. I can most certainly go back to the banker with cops and take back whatever money he dares steal.
But you can't take an idea from someone's head. Or if you can, please make me forget the hex digits 09 F9 11 02 9D 41 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
> The ease of distribution is not a fundamental flaw in copyright. It is a fundamental flaw in the viability of the current music-industry business model, but that's a separate issue.
Ahh, so the law isn't flawed, the business model that relies on that law being enforced is! I'm sure the music industry will be thrilled with that useless distinction.
> You keep coming back to this, as though there were such a thing as a thing being rivalrous.
Ahh, so you mean that we can pretend a good isn't rivalrous so long as people don't use it?
That's like calling code thread-safe so long nobody uses, ever. Maybe we should coin that as "mea37's law" in computer science: "All dead code is thread safe." I'm sure the journals will be thrilled at the revelation, because that's essentially what you're asserting.
You're using some definitions you came up with a priori that simply aren't the least bit useful in the real world. We might as well discuss Plato's metaphysics at this point (and I'm not entirely sure that we're not already doing so, once we talk about things like songs existing without someone to sing them).
> And yet, take the example of land -- land being something you claim is an "inherently rivalrous". There exists land that is not property.
So, you think that something has to be owned as property before it's rivalrous? I believe I said it's the other way around.
Just because the land isn't marked as 'owned' on some deed doesn't mean that two people can build a house on the same spot (or whatever else). It wouldn't matter if we went out to Pluto or somewhere there's never been a deed, you still can't put two houses on the same spot, no matter how you try. Though with my luck, you'll try to play with what 'the same spot' means and point to multi-story buildings...
Before we can meaningfully treat something as property, there has to be some rivalry in its use to address! At least, ideally. Insofar as to say that the government can make ridiculous laws, I hope we don't disagree.
> So even if we accept your meaningless "distinction" between land and music, your definition of property is factually incorrect.
Ahh, yes, how could I miss the inherent similarity between land and music? How could I have been so blind?
I think I'll go search on the Pirate Bay for a nice 20-acre plot of land to download, now that I've seen the light...
Wait... why are there two lights with a license plate between them?
> That is no more or less correct, than the statement "With land, only the rights themselves (to use or occupy the land) are rivalrous. The actual underlying land is not." The only thing different is how accustomed you are to the relationship between the land and the rights, as opposed to the relationship between the music (or other protected item) and the rights.
That's ridiculous! You can't say that the underlying land is non-rivalrous, because we can't possibly both build a house on exactly the same spot, nor do anything else.
> You misunderstand what copyright protects. It doesn't protect an idea. It protects certain uses of an idea, which very much can be taken away.
There's no real difference between an idea and using it, because ideas that are never communicated to others in some form are useless.
> Land rights protect certain uses of the land, which can be taken away -- just like with copyright.
ALL uses of the land, actually, minus easements.
> That is because air to breath is neither like land to live on nor like music to distribute.
Actually, it is like music to distribute. Very exactly. Mostly because we don't need distributors any more.
I mean, it's not like that's the fundamental flaw of copyright today or anything. We DON'T NEED distributors, or we wouldn't have people infringing upon the distribution right of copyright at every turn.
> Funny, I would say the same about the phrase "imaginary property" -- it's a tagline meant to sway opinion without actual thought about the issues... issues like 'what really is property' and 'what does copyright actually protect', which you seem quite adept at avoiding.
That's very the point of calling it imaginary! To draw attention to that misuse of language. Because there's no difference between twisting and untwisting words, that is, ironically, the only way to make an issue of it.
What 'really is' property is anything inherently rivalrous. Nothing else is well-addressed by laws, which are founded on assumptions that they cover goods that have properties like that or are close enough. When printing presses were expensive, the enormous statutory damages made sense and there was greater need for protection. With the currently low barrier to entry, there's far less need for protection, and the law is far more onerous and far less enforceable. Thus, it requires reform.
No, I won't accept that any random "right" the government dreams up should be put on the same level of "property" as if it deserved the respect land, homes or money has. It's merely a government fiat and a bad one and it should get no respect whatsoever until such time as it is brought into line with reality.
As for the other issue I'm 'dodging': what copyright actually protects is too numerous, but the main rights I worry about are the distribution rights and fair use with respect to reusing ideas (because very nearly all the ideas of today are built upon those of others, right down to the very words we use).
You're ignoring the reasons WHY land is property. Because of the inherent rivalrousness (which was the point of all the examples you called "non sequiters" after misunderstanding them).
With IP, only the rights themselves are rivalrous. The actual underlying idea is not. You can take a copyright away from someone, but you can't take an idea away from them.
So thinking of IP in terms of "property" is dangerous because it simply doesn't work that way. It's not that I disagree that the law can make any damn thing it wants to into "property" in some sense. It's that I think that the legal rights are then the property, not that which the rights cover.
So you can declare air to be "property" (indeed, they already do a more limited form of that in terms of 'airspace'), but you can't stop people from breathing and you shouldn't even try.
With IP, that would mean that you can declare ideas to be "property", but you can't stop people from thinking and you shouldn't even try.
But I await your response telling me even more strongly that all you care about is the point that the government can make really, really stupid laws if it wants to and it's our duty to respect that "property" as somehow sacred just because it's now "property" and we need not think beyond that, but rather should attempt the foolish and futile task of making property rights for ideas work like a tangible good when they're not one and cannot be.
The reason I'm tilting at the sacred cow of "property" is because it's used to shut down rational thought on the subject. "We HAVE to do it this way, because it's property!" If you ever hope to see a free market for ideas, you're going to have to rethink every single assumption from the ground up. And "property" is just the first one on the list.
> The land, the house, the various items of chattel in the house... these can all exist independent of any concept of property or ownership. That's not to say that they should, but they can. They are not inherantly property. The law makes them property.
Yes, they are inherently property because I can guard them, I can take them back when someone takes them from me, and I can transfer them. The only part of IP that's in any sense property are the rights themselves, NOT the work they "protect"!
So we really are conjuring property out of nothing, because I can't take an idea back from someone by force. And no, I won't count clubbing them over the head until they're dead or have amnesia...
In other words, we created the rights because that's how physical objects behave. We can't just apply those properties to something that isn't rightfully property at all and expect it to work.
I wonder what they're going to do about Wallace v. FSF which already decided that the GPL does not violate any anti-trust laws?
IANAL, but it would seem that a court having already decided this exact issue would pretty much kill their case. Wallace lost on summary judgment, which means that the court in that case found that, even if everything he said was true (and that was doubtful), he could not prevail.
In other words, that claim is very likely to go nowhere, fast. The judge in the Wallace case was a well-respected anti-trust expert, too.
He was also grilled over statements in their 10-Q that were, shall we say, at odds with what he was trying to say on the stand.
Novell confronted him and he angrily accused them of calling him a liar. Their rejoinder was that he had just claimed that he told the truth on their 10-Q.
They seem to be submitting a lot, but in support of their consultancy business, instead of their blog (Roland) or the EFF (the IP guy). I notice that they have a message on there for Slashdot users if you visit the site that says they're regular readers or something.
I dunno, a few of their stories were pretty well linked, so I don't personally mind too much if it gets us better articles (and not Roland-style spam, where all submissions go to his blog, or Beatles keyword stuffing).
> Judging by your backwards understanding of Soviet invention culture, I guess I am inclined to ignore the rest of your argument as ignorant and irrelevant.
Umm, I thought I said that copyright couldn't be blamed for its fall, but rather due to running out of food, money, etc. and then falling apart.
As for the rest, I agree with you. I'm just not sure how you got that out of my post.
> Napolitano works for FOX News as a commentator. FOX News is a right-wing puppet news organization.
Add ABC to that list, too. If you don't believe me, use Google news to compare headlines sometimes. I thought their stories were being mixed in incorrectly at first, until I read them and found that they were just spinning too fast to recognize.
> I do not think YOU understand. This is not a debate, it is a conversation. I do not recall having signed anything that obligates me to defend my every comment to every poster who does not like what I say.
You may misunderstand. I understand wanting to have the other party "pony up" before you argue with them, so that you don't end up in a hit-and-run where you do a lot of work refuting them and they do none. But I don't think it worthless to be careful with one's words, and the notion that someone asking about your support for your propositions has to provide counter-examples and means of undermining them first is... not conductive to a good conversation, let alone a debate. It's just not good to throw out what seems like a clear fallacy like that (even unintentionally, due to being less than clear about your intent). You undermine the very idea you intend to support if you do, whether in conversation, debate, or anything else!
> Arts and invention were anything but "public domain" during the Renaissance. Artisans and inventors were supported by the wealthy and powerful, who kept the benefits for themselves. It only "trickled down" to the general populace at the whims of those same wealthy and powerful.
And yet, it did trickle down, did it not? I'm arguing more against the extreme notion that without copyright there is nothing worthwhile. Now, there's a good point here that the patronage model is not the greatest thing of all. However, it does support the notion that there are workable (if not superior) models that encourage innovation other than copyrights. But I see that you're arguing that copyright is the most effective we have so far. I think that's a reasonable point, if tempered by the notion that we should get rid of many of the excesses in the current model. For example, I think it's reasonable to say that Google has been innovative, but how many of its services have NOT been sued in some way? Book search, in particular, comes to mind. I really think publishers were shooting themselves in the foot trying to stop that one. So I hope we can agree that copyright (as it exists today, in the US) is at least not the best possible.
> If you want an actual example of the opposite, a place and time in which "intellectual property" automatically belonged in full to "the people", you need look no further than the former Soviet Union. And if you know much about their history, you know that this system simply did not work. In fact, all innovation ended up being controlled by the government and the military, while "the people", the ostensible owners of all the above, continually teetered on the brink of starvation and economic collapse.
I wouldn't blame the fall of the Soviet Union on copyright. I know you're not, but it sounds like it. With socialism, the inherent problem is quite often there isn't enough for everybody. Now, yes, there's a lack of incentive problem, too, but I think all those problems contribute. At least with copyright, there IS enough for everybody. I mean, that's why they're worried about piracy to begin with: too many people are copying it. They wouldn't be able to copy it if there wasn't enough to go around (and copies both legal and otherwise do, to be fair, use limited resources: disk space and bandwidth, in particular).
> Another place that does not officially recognize "intellectual property" to any degree is China. But you might notice something about their admittedly booming economy in recent years: they have been great at copying the inventions of others but really, really lousy at coming up with anything new of their own. Why? Because there is economic incentive to copy the work of others cheaply, but little or no economic incentive to innovate. There is no profit in it so people don't do it. This is not just real but obvious to those who have been paying attention.
You know, they said that about Japan not very long ago, too. In fact, Japanese goods once had a reputation for being inferior knock-offs that
Slashdot Mirror
> Copyright holders cannot restrict how any one copy of their work is used by buyers, except to make them respect the artificial scarcity of copyright law.
You might want to call King Canute and ask him how he managed with the tides. Because, somehow, that reminds me of the original 'modest' proposal...
No problem :) Saw you in the message center, too. Let me know via anon OT replies if you find any good anime, because I generally read all replies to my posts. I'll try and remember to do the same for you.
I'm getting Code Geass now, BTW, but it'll be a while before I get to watch it.
Because it's easy to predict the past via cherry picking. It's hard, if not impossible, to predict the future.
Does the UK have a FOIA now? Last I knew, that was an American law (unless they have their own, or this was somehow discovered by things received from the American government).
Well, ok, that may be the summary's fault, because the article just mentions "freedom of information" laws, not FOIA itself.
But it's STILL a story in the Daily Mail, and not what I'd call a reputable source. Can anyone confirm this with a better source, or are we being trolled here?
Yeah, but where are his wife's returns (and not a 2-page summary), if you're going that route? As we all know, they file separately.
Now, I wouldn't say he's trading votes for cash, but I would say that his stance on telecom immunity is wrong.
Actually, I've seen Mushishi (which probably translates as something like 'Bug Master', even though the 'bugs' are actually simple, but screwball supernatural creatures). It's paced a little slowly and episodic, though, but you're right that the main guy was intelligent and had to figure out how to deal with each weirdo type of mushi...
Aha! So the reason we have so many dupes are because the editors are practicing kage bunshin no jutsu, which makes crappy clones of the original stories!
It makes so much sense now!
But the subtitled version of Slashdot is STILL better. You losers should quit reading this dub by the robotic overlord and head over to the real action on http://www.slashdot.jp/
> What the heck are you saying to the nice TSA folks?
If I had to guess? "Hello! Nice day, isn't it?"
There's also this story.
It's embarrassing to see McCain suddenly pretend to be an environmentalist, then ducking all the actual, technical questions.
It would be nice if he were actually against telecom amnesty, but McCain is for it, he just wants some "radical transparency" (the Microsoft gimmick?) to let us know exactly how they're spying on us.
I only listed anime I've watched in full. Alas, I have not seen that one, though I know of it, of course.
...), etc.
There's Grave of the Fireflies / anything from Studio Ghibli, too. (Have they _EVER_ made a bad movie?)
I don't want to list everything I've ever watched, though. I have seen my share of generic or derivative series (love sims turned into anime, CCGs or similar games turned into anime, sentai, robots, etc.), enjoyable things played out too long (Urusei Yatsura
But those I listed above were a pretty diverse cross-section of series with good stories and interesting characters. Each of those has its strengths and weaknesses, but there isn't a one in that list I gave that I didn't really enjoy or look forward to watching the next episode.
And you really notice that when you watch a series in a few days and either feel like burning through them all or debating whether you'll come back to them later...
Finding really smart anime is the hardest, because the writers themselves have to be as smart or smarter than the characters :/
:-]
I've seen some good writing, and a smart section or two, but Death Note towers above most series in that category. It's simply and absolutely phenomenal how the author can keep up that level of engagement.
If you find any, let me know, too! Even just with an OT comment as an AC to some random, recent comment. I'd love to find more anime like Death Note in terms of intelligence (or suspense).
Hmm, wait. Actually, Detective Academy Q *DOES* have a number of good tricks in it. It's just not on the same level, but it's another good series I forgot to mention.
Watch out for that dumb cactus guy, too. You wouldn't think that a guy in a cactus suit (or later, a godzilla suit) could blend in until you have the fact that you didn't notice him shoved in your face
And once you read enough TVTropes, you won't think of anything as 'original' ever again :]
Still, there are tons of great anime that are really creative. Death Note springs to mind. I can't think of anything else where the suspense was that strong, or where the characters were that intelligent.
I know some will say that 'anything popular is crap', but Bleach & Naruto have very engaging stories, too (the manga, not the crappy Naruto filler). I admit, those two are getting a little long in the tooth, but at the outset, they were on the top of their game.
And once you get into lesser-known series (say, Hikaru no Go, Kekkaishi, Rental Magica, REC, Hayate no Gotoku, Dennou Coil, Code-E, Bamboo Blade, or Akagi) you'll find that there's a lot more to be had than robots, sentai and tentacle porn.
So, basically, there was a misdemeanor law way back in 1897, but it would never have applied to a case like this.
They had to loosen it up a lot (as they did under the NET Act) to actually prosecute this as a criminal matter, though the change from misdemeanor to felony was pretty bad, too.
That said, I guess they actually used the conspiracy laws to get him, which would've required felonious copyright infringement. And I'm not sure they could've proven that without the NET Act...
So we're back to "Thank you, Bill Clinton"?
> it requires willful infringement, plus one of either 1) financial gain
Just to be fair, the NET Act also redefines "financial gain" to include a laundry list of things. One of those things that laundry list covers is receiving other copyrighted works in return.
Yes, that's right. In theory, joining a torrent could be "financial gain" so long as the contents were valuable enough.
In practice, we don't have full-fledged copyright cops (yet), so they don't bother with small fry. But that WILL change if they can get the PRO-IP Act through congress. My sincere hope is that it never gets that far.
> I guess you didn't notice how when you mentioned something we can't both do, you started talking about rights to use the land, not the land itself.
Wait. So you're saying that we can use the land itself to build two houses on the same spot? That's beyond incoherent. Imagine there are no land rights whatsoever. How do we BOTH use the same land?
> Air to breath is there without being created by someone. Music to distribute is not.
You evaded that point nicely. The point was that we have little need for a distribution right when we have little need for distributors in the first place.
> Ah, so a right easily violated is no right at all. So for example, if your banker walks off with all your money, you won't complain. He doesn't physically need your permission, so your right to withold such permission is void.
No, an unenforceable right is not useful. I can most certainly go back to the banker with cops and take back whatever money he dares steal.
But you can't take an idea from someone's head. Or if you can, please make me forget the hex digits 09 F9 11 02 9D 41 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
> The ease of distribution is not a fundamental flaw in copyright. It is a fundamental flaw in the viability of the current music-industry business model, but that's a separate issue.
Ahh, so the law isn't flawed, the business model that relies on that law being enforced is! I'm sure the music industry will be thrilled with that useless distinction.
> You keep coming back to this, as though there were such a thing as a thing being rivalrous.
Ahh, so you mean that we can pretend a good isn't rivalrous so long as people don't use it?
That's like calling code thread-safe so long nobody uses, ever. Maybe we should coin that as "mea37's law" in computer science: "All dead code is thread safe." I'm sure the journals will be thrilled at the revelation, because that's essentially what you're asserting.
You're using some definitions you came up with a priori that simply aren't the least bit useful in the real world. We might as well discuss Plato's metaphysics at this point (and I'm not entirely sure that we're not already doing so, once we talk about things like songs existing without someone to sing them).
> And yet, take the example of land -- land being something you claim is an "inherently rivalrous". There exists land that is not property.
So, you think that something has to be owned as property before it's rivalrous? I believe I said it's the other way around.
Just because the land isn't marked as 'owned' on some deed doesn't mean that two people can build a house on the same spot (or whatever else). It wouldn't matter if we went out to Pluto or somewhere there's never been a deed, you still can't put two houses on the same spot, no matter how you try. Though with my luck, you'll try to play with what 'the same spot' means and point to multi-story buildings...
Before we can meaningfully treat something as property, there has to be some rivalry in its use to address! At least, ideally. Insofar as to say that the government can make ridiculous laws, I hope we don't disagree.
> So even if we accept your meaningless "distinction" between land and music, your definition of property is factually incorrect.
Ahh, yes, how could I miss the inherent similarity between land and music? How could I have been so blind?
I think I'll go search on the Pirate Bay for a nice 20-acre plot of land to download, now that I've seen the light...
Wait... why are there two lights with a license plate between them?
> That is no more or less correct, than the statement "With land, only the rights themselves (to use or occupy the land) are rivalrous. The actual underlying land is not." The only thing different is how accustomed you are to the relationship between the land and the rights, as opposed to the relationship between the music (or other protected item) and the rights.
That's ridiculous! You can't say that the underlying land is non-rivalrous, because we can't possibly both build a house on exactly the same spot, nor do anything else.
> You misunderstand what copyright protects. It doesn't protect an idea. It protects certain uses of an idea, which very much can be taken away.
There's no real difference between an idea and using it, because ideas that are never communicated to others in some form are useless.
> Land rights protect certain uses of the land, which can be taken away -- just like with copyright.
ALL uses of the land, actually, minus easements.
> That is because air to breath is neither like land to live on nor like music to distribute.
Actually, it is like music to distribute. Very exactly. Mostly because we don't need distributors any more.
I mean, it's not like that's the fundamental flaw of copyright today or anything. We DON'T NEED distributors, or we wouldn't have people infringing upon the distribution right of copyright at every turn.
> Funny, I would say the same about the phrase "imaginary property" -- it's a tagline meant to sway opinion without actual thought about the issues... issues like 'what really is property' and 'what does copyright actually protect', which you seem quite adept at avoiding.
That's very the point of calling it imaginary! To draw attention to that misuse of language. Because there's no difference between twisting and untwisting words, that is, ironically, the only way to make an issue of it.
What 'really is' property is anything inherently rivalrous. Nothing else is well-addressed by laws, which are founded on assumptions that they cover goods that have properties like that or are close enough. When printing presses were expensive, the enormous statutory damages made sense and there was greater need for protection. With the currently low barrier to entry, there's far less need for protection, and the law is far more onerous and far less enforceable. Thus, it requires reform.
No, I won't accept that any random "right" the government dreams up should be put on the same level of "property" as if it deserved the respect land, homes or money has. It's merely a government fiat and a bad one and it should get no respect whatsoever until such time as it is brought into line with reality.
As for the other issue I'm 'dodging': what copyright actually protects is too numerous, but the main rights I worry about are the distribution rights and fair use with respect to reusing ideas (because very nearly all the ideas of today are built upon those of others, right down to the very words we use).
There's nothing for me to avoid here.
You're ignoring the reasons WHY land is property. Because of the inherent rivalrousness (which was the point of all the examples you called "non sequiters" after misunderstanding them).
With IP, only the rights themselves are rivalrous. The actual underlying idea is not. You can take a copyright away from someone, but you can't take an idea away from them.
So thinking of IP in terms of "property" is dangerous because it simply doesn't work that way. It's not that I disagree that the law can make any damn thing it wants to into "property" in some sense. It's that I think that the legal rights are then the property, not that which the rights cover.
So you can declare air to be "property" (indeed, they already do a more limited form of that in terms of 'airspace'), but you can't stop people from breathing and you shouldn't even try.
With IP, that would mean that you can declare ideas to be "property", but you can't stop people from thinking and you shouldn't even try.
But I await your response telling me even more strongly that all you care about is the point that the government can make really, really stupid laws if it wants to and it's our duty to respect that "property" as somehow sacred just because it's now "property" and we need not think beyond that, but rather should attempt the foolish and futile task of making property rights for ideas work like a tangible good when they're not one and cannot be.
The reason I'm tilting at the sacred cow of "property" is because it's used to shut down rational thought on the subject. "We HAVE to do it this way, because it's property!" If you ever hope to see a free market for ideas, you're going to have to rethink every single assumption from the ground up. And "property" is just the first one on the list.
> The land, the house, the various items of chattel in the house... these can all exist independent of any concept of property or ownership. That's not to say that they should, but they can. They are not inherantly property. The law makes them property.
Yes, they are inherently property because I can guard them, I can take them back when someone takes them from me, and I can transfer them. The only part of IP that's in any sense property are the rights themselves, NOT the work they "protect"!
So we really are conjuring property out of nothing, because I can't take an idea back from someone by force. And no, I won't count clubbing them over the head until they're dead or have amnesia...
In other words, we created the rights because that's how physical objects behave. We can't just apply those properties to something that isn't rightfully property at all and expect it to work.
I wonder what they're going to do about Wallace v. FSF which already decided that the GPL does not violate any anti-trust laws?
IANAL, but it would seem that a court having already decided this exact issue would pretty much kill their case. Wallace lost on summary judgment, which means that the court in that case found that, even if everything he said was true (and that was doubtful), he could not prevail.
In other words, that claim is very likely to go nowhere, fast. The judge in the Wallace case was a well-respected anti-trust expert, too.
He was also grilled over statements in their 10-Q that were, shall we say, at odds with what he was trying to say on the stand.
:]
Novell confronted him and he angrily accused them of calling him a liar. Their rejoinder was that he had just claimed that he told the truth on their 10-Q.
In other words, he was trapped by his own words
I'm surprised his pants didn't burst into flames.
Exactly. It's not possible to create anything without using the ideas of others. Every word is someone else's idea (unless you made it up yourself).
So it's ridiculous to claim such broad ownership of derivative works.
They seem to be submitting a lot, but in support of their consultancy business, instead of their blog (Roland) or the EFF (the IP guy). I notice that they have a message on there for Slashdot users if you visit the site that says they're regular readers or something.
I dunno, a few of their stories were pretty well linked, so I don't personally mind too much if it gets us better articles (and not Roland-style spam, where all submissions go to his blog, or Beatles keyword stuffing).
> Judging by your backwards understanding of Soviet invention culture, I guess I am inclined to ignore the rest of your argument as ignorant and irrelevant.
Umm, I thought I said that copyright couldn't be blamed for its fall, but rather due to running out of food, money, etc. and then falling apart.
As for the rest, I agree with you. I'm just not sure how you got that out of my post.
> Napolitano works for FOX News as a commentator. FOX News is a right-wing puppet news organization.
Add ABC to that list, too. If you don't believe me, use Google news to compare headlines sometimes. I thought their stories were being mixed in incorrectly at first, until I read them and found that they were just spinning too fast to recognize.
> I do not think YOU understand. This is not a debate, it is a conversation. I do not recall having signed anything that obligates me to defend my every comment to every poster who does not like what I say.
You may misunderstand. I understand wanting to have the other party "pony up" before you argue with them, so that you don't end up in a hit-and-run where you do a lot of work refuting them and they do none. But I don't think it worthless to be careful with one's words, and the notion that someone asking about your support for your propositions has to provide counter-examples and means of undermining them first is... not conductive to a good conversation, let alone a debate. It's just not good to throw out what seems like a clear fallacy like that (even unintentionally, due to being less than clear about your intent). You undermine the very idea you intend to support if you do, whether in conversation, debate, or anything else!
> Arts and invention were anything but "public domain" during the Renaissance. Artisans and inventors were supported by the wealthy and powerful, who kept the benefits for themselves. It only "trickled down" to the general populace at the whims of those same wealthy and powerful.
And yet, it did trickle down, did it not? I'm arguing more against the extreme notion that without copyright there is nothing worthwhile. Now, there's a good point here that the patronage model is not the greatest thing of all. However, it does support the notion that there are workable (if not superior) models that encourage innovation other than copyrights. But I see that you're arguing that copyright is the most effective we have so far. I think that's a reasonable point, if tempered by the notion that we should get rid of many of the excesses in the current model. For example, I think it's reasonable to say that Google has been innovative, but how many of its services have NOT been sued in some way? Book search, in particular, comes to mind. I really think publishers were shooting themselves in the foot trying to stop that one. So I hope we can agree that copyright (as it exists today, in the US) is at least not the best possible.
> If you want an actual example of the opposite, a place and time in which "intellectual property" automatically belonged in full to "the people", you need look no further than the former Soviet Union. And if you know much about their history, you know that this system simply did not work. In fact, all innovation ended up being controlled by the government and the military, while "the people", the ostensible owners of all the above, continually teetered on the brink of starvation and economic collapse.
I wouldn't blame the fall of the Soviet Union on copyright. I know you're not, but it sounds like it. With socialism, the inherent problem is quite often there isn't enough for everybody. Now, yes, there's a lack of incentive problem, too, but I think all those problems contribute. At least with copyright, there IS enough for everybody. I mean, that's why they're worried about piracy to begin with: too many people are copying it. They wouldn't be able to copy it if there wasn't enough to go around (and copies both legal and otherwise do, to be fair, use limited resources: disk space and bandwidth, in particular).
> Another place that does not officially recognize "intellectual property" to any degree is China. But you might notice something about their admittedly booming economy in recent years: they have been great at copying the inventions of others but really, really lousy at coming up with anything new of their own. Why? Because there is economic incentive to copy the work of others cheaply, but little or no economic incentive to innovate. There is no profit in it so people don't do it. This is not just real but obvious to those who have been paying attention.
You know, they said that about Japan not very long ago, too. In fact, Japanese goods once had a reputation for being inferior knock-offs that