Unless, of course, you don't know how to code it yourself, either because you don't have the technical know-how or the willingness to invest time investigating and learning how it works.
either the consumers will switch in droves, or these are not really problems.
Or they (myself) won't bother owning a mobile phone.
Giving them money won't work
on
RIAA Sues a Child
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Its not going to do any good.
Well giving them money certainly won't help. DO NOT BUY FROM THE RIAA. Check RIAA radar before purchasing.
When people stop buying from RIAA labels, the labels are going to go to the government screaming piracy because they can show what they think the numbers should be they will blaim the loss of revenue from piracy. There will be no consideration of a Boycott. Then congress will start taxing things like burnable CD, digital media players, to make up for the lost revenue due to piracy. They've already tried to have laws passed allowing them to break into people's computers so they can investigate music piracy.
Congress only listens as long as the bribe money keeps coming. Do not fund RIAA lobbyists by buying from RIAA labels.
You're indies labels will be forced to start supporting the RIAA as well, because the equipment they use to press the CDs can be used to press pirate CD, the RIAA will demand a tax or surchange there. If they have them pressed overseas they will find a way of getting revenue from that too.
Indies don't need plastic. They have internet distribution. All the indies need is a paypal.
You reall want to stop the RIAA? You need laws like RICO, and Sherman Anti-trust. You need lots of independent lawsuits to bankrupt them. The RIAA and MPAA are predatory cartels, if you want to stop them boycotts aren't going to do squat, you have to sue them into oblivion.
That requires money be spent on lawyers and bribing congressmen. If you decide to take that route, please use proceeds saved by not buying RIAA albums to do so. You might want to pool your resources with others by donating it to someone like the EFF as well.
DO NOT BUY FROM THE RIAA. Check RIAA radar before purchasing.
Why is it BAD to have vertically aligned Windows/IE/Office and GOOD when its iPod/iTunes?
Export a song list or library in iTunes. You get a choice of tab delimited text files (Unicode or plain text) or an XML plist. Very easy to work with. Now export a MS Office document to HTML. Does that look remotely like standard html? Will it even render properly in Moz, Kon, or anything other than IE? I'm guessing no, but I can't say for sure since I don't support MS by buying/using any of their products. But going by what I've heard...
I can't put Yahoo music on an iPod and I can't put iTunes music on my RCA MP3 player.
Big deal. Don't buy those crippled formats. I have an iPod full of tunes I didn't buy from iTunes. You don't even have to spend money. There's thousands of free MP3s floating around the web. Listen to those. If not for your wallet, then do it for the children.
I can look at anybody's HTML in IE, and I can look at RTF generated from Office in other office apps.
Regarding HTML: see above. Regarding RTF: Sure, because MS writes that standard. Now look at how they conform to something 'not invented here' like MPEG4. They got so pissed about QuickTime being selected as the standard file format for MPEG4 that they went and developed their own incompatible 'standard' and named it the same thing.
Is this just a case of: MS, bad; Apple, good.
Nah, this is a case of Apple won fair and square where Microsoft always fights dirty.
They may have a record deal, but this album is RIAA free. So you shouldn't feel sullied if you paypal them some cash or buy their album. No funds will contribute to the litigation of minors. More to your complaint; No it isn't really novel, but it's nice that more bands are waking up to this intarweb thing. Maybe next time, they'll release source files like brad does. So they're OK with P2P... I wonder if they are cool with remixing too. That's probably too much to ask of a band doing this just to test the waters. Regardless, I hope this campaign is a success for them. It is evidence that the 'industry' is loosing mind share among its artists. If this succeeds, it will be more damaging to the RIAA than a simple court battle because more artists will follow.
Why not figure out how to make $100 water purifiers
That exists. In some cases, we're talking about a plastic box that is open on bottom, has a place to attach a pvc pipe on top, and has a cheap man powered pumping system to bring water out of the end of the pipe. (Pole with a plunger kind of thing) The idea is you bury the box in the river or lake bed, pump water out with good ol' elbow grease, and allow sand to do the filtration for you. If you're in a hilly area and have a long enough pipe, you can even do away with the pumping and just siphon. Of course, that's only one possible solution mentioned at that page, but it is one I saw in action on the The Learning Channel(TM) before it became a channel infected with shows like "Trading Spaces" and "What not to wear":-(
DMCA only involvement in this story is the fact that the band gave instructions on how to circumvent the copy protection. But the discussion about DMCA belongs in another thread.
Article title: Artist suggesting ways around copy protection.
The story IS circumvention of copy protection. Without that, there is no story. Who sold who what is the sidebar. The DMCA is of the utmost relevance here.
Multi-Billion dollar spelunking expeditions in outer space. What could we all POSSIBLY do with billions of dollars right here on Earth to benefit us all right now? Hmmm... alternative energy research? Nah. Cures for debilitating and deadly diseases? Nah. Improving the infrastructures of impovershed nations? Nah. Teaching people how to farm and improving their ability to do so to help keep them from satrving to death? Nah.
Given that we already have a nanny state, it seems to me that not voting is representing the nanny state - it says "go right ahead - I don't care enough to oppose you".
That depends: Do you believe that the person you elect will change things for the better? If the new boss is the same as the old boss, it doesn't matter which party he represents. It's all a shell game. Americans are being similarly oppressed, yet many of the provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act were things the Clinton administration fought very hard to get, yet never managed to win. So am I now to believe that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against black bag searches? Of course it isn't. They both suck, so there's no point in voting for either of them. If the voter turnout is too low the election becomes illegitimate. The leadership looses its authority without popular consent.
Same for attachments. They are not "executeable" by double click, but when you get a mail from a "friend" telling you to save the script and launch it... you likely do so!
Not necessary. Executables will launch with a single click from Mail.app. But only after you answer a sheet dialog to the tune of
"Foo" is an application Are you sure you want to open the application "Foo"? <Cancel><Open>
A script/virus send to a Mac user has all rights the user has,
But it has to get there first. That's the funny thing about email viruses. They only work when you have large marketshare. Otherwise, vulnerable machines are too diffuse for it to have a significant impact. Your doomsday scenario has already happened. Impact was nearly non-existent.
Nice examples, but I'm afraid they don't fit the challenge.
All my examples do quite clearly fit the challenge, and now I understand why you can claim you've never heard a decent response. You've plugged your ears and shouted "NA NA NANA NANANANANANANA" to every one presented to you. I will not take the time necessary to respond to every one of your rebuttals. I will simply pinpoint the source of our disagreement with one of them. I do not expect you to agree with me, to change your stance, or to even completely comprehend it. Hopefully though, it will illuminate for you why people like me do not feel the way people like you do.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
This declaration in the constitution is the root from which all copyright law in the US springs. For copyright law to be constitutional, it must meet the conditions set forth in these 27 words. The phrase is separated into two parts by a comma. It is "Why, how;"
Example number one, the remixing, occupies a similar IP space as fanfiction. You're not taking a theme you hear elsewhere and creating a unique and original theme inspired by it - you're taking somebody's theme and playing with it directly.
Ok, I didn't draw my own cute little mouse in high-water pants and gloves. I instead took an existing depiction of a cute little mouse and used him as a character in a new story.
You see a ripped off mouse, I see a new story. The new story is progress, the whole point of copyright. The ripped off mouse is defined based on 'limited times'. It is the "how" in the constitutional equation. My argument is that the "how" has become so distorted, it is impeding rather than promoting progress. We cannot encourage Walt to make new Mickey's. Walt is dead. Retroactively extending copyrights for the mouse in question goes against the very principal of copyright. The mouse has already been created, you cannot further promote the creation of something that already exists. It's time the people at Disney stop riding Walt's coattails and start coming up with some innovations of their own.
It's time a lot of people got off their ass and came up with new ideas. In the meantime, those who DO have new ideas are very visibly being prevented from sharing them by a system with the constitutional purpose to promote the sharing of ideas. I see a system that is obviously broken.
You seem to argue that Mickey Mouse would have somehow vanished from existence had the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act not retroactively given Disney 20 more years of monopoly over his depiction. I see Mickey Mouse being stolen from the public domain. You see a system guaranteeing you and your great great great grand children a royalty check. I see a system overpaying you, because you'd still write that book if the royalty checks only lasted 28 years. Even if 28 years was not enough incentive to prod you to share your creation with the world, I see diminishing returns. The loss of your creation will be offset by the numerous other creations that would have otherwise been stifled due to excessive copyright terms. If 28 years is not enough for you, I say with all due respect, keep your damned book. We don't need it that bad. There will be plenty of books available without your contribution. If you don't want to share your idea with the world, you should keep it to yourself.
That is the argument from where I stand.
Sorry, but that doesn't stifle innovation - that forces people to come up with their own music rather than ripping off somebody else's, and therefore enforces innovation.
To put your own argument back to you, you did not write a book. You remixed the Webster's dictionary. If you wanted to write a book full of words, you should have invented your own words.
I am so sick of this argument, it makes me see red.
What part of my argument specifically is it that makes you 'see red'?
Give me just ONE example of where COPYRIGHT (NOT trademarks, and NOT patents) prevents innovation. Just one. In fact, I'll settle for a conceptual model. You see, I've heard this argument again and again, and I've never seen anybody actually manage to justify that statement about copyright stifling innovation.
You must be new here. I'll be happy to provide more than one. Music? Remixing has been affected. Internet radio has certainly been stifled by copyright law too. Of course, you can't mention copyright infringement without mentioning P2P. Here, the law puts Bram Cohen's BitTorrent in possible legal jeopardy because of what he said, not how his software works. That's tantamount to thought crime. Why is there no iTunes-like software for my DVD collection? Probably because circumventing CSS, or distributing software that does the same, is a felony in the US. Being an author, you'll find this interesting: Encryption researchers are afraid to publish their findings thanks to copyright law.
But it's not just music, software, movies, and books being affected, it's everything. A frickin' universal garage door opener manufacture got hit with a DMCA lawsuit. If you don't have bags of money sitting around, one lawsuit, regardless of whether or not you are victorious, can put you out of business. I could go on, but I think I've more than adequately met your requirements. Copyright in the USA has gotten way out of hand and is damaging innovation and invention in practically every industry.
In fact, it's COPYRIGHT that protects the open source movement from being downright raped by corporations like Microsoft!
I assume you are referring to the GPL. You do realize that the GPL was designed to be the anti-copyright, right? Allow me to quote the pertinent part:
The GPL, on the other hand,
subtracts from copyright rather than adding to it. The license doesn't have to be complicated, because we try to control users as little as possible. Copyright grants publishers power to forbid users to exercise rights to copy, modify, and distribute that we believe all users should have; the GPL thus relaxes almost all the restrictions of the copyright system. The only thing we absolutely require is that anyone distributing GPL'd works or works made from GPL'd works distribute in turn under GPL. That condition is a very minor restriction, from the copyright point of view. Much more restrictive licenses are routinely held enforceable: every license involved in every single copyright lawsuit is more restrictive than the GPL.
In other words, if it weren't for copyright, there would be no need for the GPL. It exists because of copyright.
I'm an author, and that means I'm an intellectual rights advocate.
I'm an author too, I write software. I'm an intellectual rights advocate as well. I advocate considerably shorter copyright terms and an entire restructuring of the patent system. Copyright is completely broken by the existence of copyright terms lasting for life + 75/95 years. Copyright should last a maximum of 28 years. Given the extremely efficient means of distribution and production that we have today as opposed to 200 years ago, I would even support shorter terms. Special interests and politicians like Sonny Bono have stolen what rightfully belongs in the public domain. In doing so, they have created an environment where the people at large see no reason to respect the system. Because the system is so imbalanced, people feel no shame infringing on an author's copyright. Who here would refuse to sing "Happy Birthday" to their child in public on grounds of infringing Time Warner's intellectual property?
Additionally, they've created an environment where innovation is no longer possible. An author cannot build on the work of others because once written, the work is monopolized perpetually. Due to the system we have now, innovation is dragging to a halt. The systems that made this country mighty are now killing it. Look at how horribly broken the patent system has become. Numerous 'businesses' exist solely to patent everything thinkable and sue anyone who dares to create. Empty shell companies do nothing but collect 'Intellectual Property' and sue others who attempt to make an idea into reality.
The fundamental reason for copyright, patents and the whole morass of 'intellectual property' is to encourage innovation and progress, not to impede it. The only way to restore intellectual rights is to restore balance to the system. Even if they weren't suing grandmothers and children, I'd feel no pity for the RIAA. They and their lobbyists have only brought this upon themselves. Massive and flagrant infringement is the symptom, not the disease.
Don't forget to encrypt your VM if you're running 10.4. Even with all this going for you though, you're screwed if you use a weak password, or an app writes something important to/private/var/tmp/folders."UID"/TemporaryItems/ or some other location outside the home folder. At least, to my knowledge, no one has found a reference to some NSA_Key in OS X yet.
So yes, you can actually aim it with some degree of accuracy.
Some degree of accuracy eh?:-D Reading the article, I find the guy manages to inadvertently zap himself with a lightning gun that has a useful range of about four feet. If he's dead set on using electricity, a projectile that releases an electric charge on impact sounds like a better idea to me. But hey, it only cost the US taxpayer a million bucks or so to find out lightning sucks as a weapon. IMHO that ranks right up there with the cow fart studies.
And people can break the lock and put a body in the trunk, hide drugs under your seat, tape a handgun underneath the car, use the car to commit a crime.
Compare the number of those events to the number of Windows exploits in a year. Furthermore, if I'm having a problem locking my trunk, I'm probably going to notice the body and call the police myself.
What you are describing is a legal defense argument. It doesn't change the fact that illegal material was found on the computer.
It also doesn't change the fact that simply being an accused child pornographer is enough to thoroughly ruin your life in this country.
Instead of fixing the problem, he instead turns you in to the cops as a kiddie porn wanker.
What if he does fix the problem, but the person actually was a criminal, continues to download, is caught. After poking around the cops find that the tech had infact serviced the computer and seen the illegal material. They accuse him of covering up the crime, and his life is ruined, etc. etc. Would you risk going to jail over somebody who couldn't properly maintain their computer?
If the files were not related to the problem, then the technician had no excuse looking at them in the first place. The technician was hired to fix a problem, not snoop. If the files WERE related to the problem, then we're back to square one of my assertion.
If you don't agree, then don't make a peep when the next Window's virus of the week drowns the internet in a crapflood. You can't expect users to fix their problem if doing so results in them being framed up on child porn charges. Also expect a lot more child porn websites, child porn spam, and innocent people in prison as users are reluctant to fix zombied boxes serving up child porn for the real traffickers.
You can't have it both ways. In the long run, your way will result in a lot MORE child porn on the internet. Happy now?
Perhaps while legally you should turn the person in for this, morally that would be retarded. How do you know the person doens't own a copy at home and has his copy on his hard drive for a media center system, or even *gasp* a backup?
The fact is, child porn is completely illegal.
No, ripping LordOfTheRings.divx is a felony under anti-circumvention clauses of the DMCA. How the user came to have a copy might be called into question (Strangely, ripping a backup of a movie you own carries greater penalties than downloading a copy of a movie you don't own) but having the file itself is completely illegal.
The article left out a very important fact. From the brief:
And your post overlooks one very important fact:
This is computer repair. You know, viruses, root kits, the kind of thing that can place illegal files on your drive without your knowledge or consent. I'd hope that if my system were compromised by a remote root exploit, having it fixed would not result in child pornography charges against me.
As I was queueing the files for DVD burn, I saw a lot of... interesting file names go acrosss. I showed my boss, he showed the manager, we called the cops.
Do you also call the cops when you see LordOfTheRings.divx? If the file contained a rip of the movie, that is evidence of a felony offense. By making a copy, you may also be committing a felony. At the very least you may be an accomplice to the crime. Would you turn people in more frequently if the MPAA paid a bounty? <devil's advocate/>
Your analogy does not work for one simple reason. This is computer repair. You know, viruses, root kits. These things could have been used to place the illegal files on the drive in the first place.
An example: What happens when evil kiddie porn hacker roots your box and uses it as an FTP server for all his kiddie porn hacker friends? Your machine becomes kiddie porn central, slows to a crawl because of bandwidth saturation, and your directories are stuffed with illegal files. You, not being a 1337 HAX0R DUD3 unhook it, take it to the computer repair guy, and the computer repair guy finds illegal files you were unaware of. Instead of fixing the problem, he instead turns you in to the cops as a kiddie porn wanker. Your life is ruined. You loose your job, your wife leaves you, and you aren't allowed to see your own kids without a social worker present.
Slashdot Mirror
Then outsource it.
Or they (myself) won't bother owning a mobile phone.
Well giving them money certainly won't help. DO NOT BUY FROM THE RIAA. Check RIAA radar before purchasing.
When people stop buying from RIAA labels, the labels are going to go to the government screaming piracy because they can show what they think the numbers should be they will blaim the loss of revenue from piracy. There will be no consideration of a Boycott. Then congress will start taxing things like burnable CD, digital media players, to make up for the lost revenue due to piracy. They've already tried to have laws passed allowing them to break into people's computers so they can investigate music piracy.
Congress only listens as long as the bribe money keeps coming. Do not fund RIAA lobbyists by buying from RIAA labels.
You're indies labels will be forced to start supporting the RIAA as well, because the equipment they use to press the CDs can be used to press pirate CD, the RIAA will demand a tax or surchange there. If they have them pressed overseas they will find a way of getting revenue from that too.
Indies don't need plastic. They have internet distribution. All the indies need is a paypal.
You reall want to stop the RIAA? You need laws like RICO, and Sherman Anti-trust. You need lots of independent lawsuits to bankrupt them. The RIAA and MPAA are predatory cartels, if you want to stop them boycotts aren't going to do squat, you have to sue them into oblivion.
That requires money be spent on lawyers and bribing congressmen. If you decide to take that route, please use proceeds saved by not buying RIAA albums to do so. You might want to pool your resources with others by donating it to someone like the EFF as well.
DO NOT BUY FROM THE RIAA. Check RIAA radar before purchasing.
Export a song list or library in iTunes. You get a choice of tab delimited text files (Unicode or plain text) or an XML plist. Very easy to work with. Now export a MS Office document to HTML. Does that look remotely like standard html? Will it even render properly in Moz, Kon, or anything other than IE? I'm guessing no, but I can't say for sure since I don't support MS by buying/using any of their products. But going by what I've heard...
I can't put Yahoo music on an iPod and I can't put iTunes music on my RCA MP3 player.
Big deal. Don't buy those crippled formats. I have an iPod full of tunes I didn't buy from iTunes. You don't even have to spend money. There's thousands of free MP3s floating around the web. Listen to those. If not for your wallet, then do it for the children.
I can look at anybody's HTML in IE, and I can look at RTF generated from Office in other office apps.
Regarding HTML: see above. Regarding RTF: Sure, because MS writes that standard. Now look at how they conform to something 'not invented here' like MPEG4. They got so pissed about QuickTime being selected as the standard file format for MPEG4 that they went and developed their own incompatible 'standard' and named it the same thing.
Is this just a case of: MS, bad; Apple, good.
Nah, this is a case of Apple won fair and square where Microsoft always fights dirty.
They may have a record deal, but this album is RIAA free. So you shouldn't feel sullied if you paypal them some cash or buy their album. No funds will contribute to the litigation of minors. More to your complaint; No it isn't really novel, but it's nice that more bands are waking up to this intarweb thing. Maybe next time, they'll release source files like brad does. So they're OK with P2P... I wonder if they are cool with remixing too. That's probably too much to ask of a band doing this just to test the waters. Regardless, I hope this campaign is a success for them. It is evidence that the 'industry' is loosing mind share among its artists. If this succeeds, it will be more damaging to the RIAA than a simple court battle because more artists will follow.
That exists. In some cases, we're talking about a plastic box that is open on bottom, has a place to attach a pvc pipe on top, and has a cheap man powered pumping system to bring water out of the end of the pipe. (Pole with a plunger kind of thing) The idea is you bury the box in the river or lake bed, pump water out with good ol' elbow grease, and allow sand to do the filtration for you. If you're in a hilly area and have a long enough pipe, you can even do away with the pumping and just siphon. Of course, that's only one possible solution mentioned at that page, but it is one I saw in action on the The Learning Channel(TM) before it became a channel infected with shows like "Trading Spaces" and "What not to wear" :-(
Article title: Artist suggesting ways around copy protection.
The story IS circumvention of copy protection. Without that, there is no story. Who sold who what is the sidebar. The DMCA is of the utmost relevance here.
If you put money in Sony's pocket, either as an artist working for them, or as a buyer of music, well, you're part of the problem.
If you feel the need for a role model, as your age would indicate, look at the Grateful Dead for guidance.
The Grateful Dead are members of the RIAA. Do not support them.
Too bad nobody makes that response to the +5 funny prison rape comments.
Multi-Billion dollar spelunking expeditions in outer space. What could we all POSSIBLY do with billions of dollars right here on Earth to benefit us all right now? Hmmm... alternative energy research? Nah. Cures for debilitating and deadly diseases? Nah. Improving the infrastructures of impovershed nations? Nah. Teaching people how to farm and improving their ability to do so to help keep them from satrving to death? Nah.
Yeah. Stupid NASA.
That depends: Do you believe that the person you elect will change things for the better? If the new boss is the same as the old boss, it doesn't matter which party he represents. It's all a shell game. Americans are being similarly oppressed, yet many of the provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act were things the Clinton administration fought very hard to get, yet never managed to win. So am I now to believe that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against black bag searches? Of course it isn't. They both suck, so there's no point in voting for either of them. If the voter turnout is too low the election becomes illegitimate. The leadership looses its authority without popular consent.
What version of OS X are you running? It works just fine on 10.4.2.
Not necessary. Executables will launch with a single click from Mail.app. But only after you answer a sheet dialog to the tune of
A script/virus send to a Mac user has all rights the user has,
But it has to get there first. That's the funny thing about email viruses. They only work when you have large marketshare. Otherwise, vulnerable machines are too diffuse for it to have a significant impact. Your doomsday scenario has already happened. Impact was nearly non-existent.
It sounds like we need to submit a new bug: Icon needs to look more chicken-like. ;-)
All my examples do quite clearly fit the challenge, and now I understand why you can claim you've never heard a decent response. You've plugged your ears and shouted "NA NA NANA NANANANANANANA" to every one presented to you. I will not take the time necessary to respond to every one of your rebuttals. I will simply pinpoint the source of our disagreement with one of them. I do not expect you to agree with me, to change your stance, or to even completely comprehend it. Hopefully though, it will illuminate for you why people like me do not feel the way people like you do.
Allow me to begin by quoting the the foundation of copyright in the United States. US Constitution, Article 1 Section 8:
This declaration in the constitution is the root from which all copyright law in the US springs. For copyright law to be constitutional, it must meet the conditions set forth in these 27 words. The phrase is separated into two parts by a comma. It is "Why, how;"
Example number one, the remixing, occupies a similar IP space as fanfiction. You're not taking a theme you hear elsewhere and creating a unique and original theme inspired by it - you're taking somebody's theme and playing with it directly.
Ok, I didn't draw my own cute little mouse in high-water pants and gloves. I instead took an existing depiction of a cute little mouse and used him as a character in a new story.
You see a ripped off mouse, I see a new story. The new story is progress, the whole point of copyright. The ripped off mouse is defined based on 'limited times'. It is the "how" in the constitutional equation. My argument is that the "how" has become so distorted, it is impeding rather than promoting progress. We cannot encourage Walt to make new Mickey's. Walt is dead. Retroactively extending copyrights for the mouse in question goes against the very principal of copyright. The mouse has already been created, you cannot further promote the creation of something that already exists. It's time the people at Disney stop riding Walt's coattails and start coming up with some innovations of their own.
It's time a lot of people got off their ass and came up with new ideas. In the meantime, those who DO have new ideas are very visibly being prevented from sharing them by a system with the constitutional purpose to promote the sharing of ideas. I see a system that is obviously broken.
You seem to argue that Mickey Mouse would have somehow vanished from existence had the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act not retroactively given Disney 20 more years of monopoly over his depiction. I see Mickey Mouse being stolen from the public domain. You see a system guaranteeing you and your great great great grand children a royalty check. I see a system overpaying you, because you'd still write that book if the royalty checks only lasted 28 years. Even if 28 years was not enough incentive to prod you to share your creation with the world, I see diminishing returns. The loss of your creation will be offset by the numerous other creations that would have otherwise been stifled due to excessive copyright terms. If 28 years is not enough for you, I say with all due respect, keep your damned book. We don't need it that bad. There will be plenty of books available without your contribution. If you don't want to share your idea with the world, you should keep it to yourself.
That is the argument from where I stand.
Sorry, but that doesn't stifle innovation - that forces people to come up with their own music rather than ripping off somebody else's, and therefore enforces innovation.
To put your own argument back to you, you did not write a book. You remixed the Webster's dictionary. If you wanted to write a book full of words, you should have invented your own words.
Truly a rediculous argument, no?
What part of my argument specifically is it that makes you 'see red'?
Give me just ONE example of where COPYRIGHT (NOT trademarks, and NOT patents) prevents innovation. Just one. In fact, I'll settle for a conceptual model. You see, I've heard this argument again and again, and I've never seen anybody actually manage to justify that statement about copyright stifling innovation.
You must be new here. I'll be happy to provide more than one. Music? Remixing has been affected. Internet radio has certainly been stifled by copyright law too. Of course, you can't mention copyright infringement without mentioning P2P. Here, the law puts Bram Cohen's BitTorrent in possible legal jeopardy because of what he said, not how his software works. That's tantamount to thought crime. Why is there no iTunes-like software for my DVD collection? Probably because circumventing CSS, or distributing software that does the same, is a felony in the US. Being an author, you'll find this interesting: Encryption researchers are afraid to publish their findings thanks to copyright law.
But it's not just music, software, movies, and books being affected, it's everything. A frickin' universal garage door opener manufacture got hit with a DMCA lawsuit. If you don't have bags of money sitting around, one lawsuit, regardless of whether or not you are victorious, can put you out of business. I could go on, but I think I've more than adequately met your requirements. Copyright in the USA has gotten way out of hand and is damaging innovation and invention in practically every industry.
In fact, it's COPYRIGHT that protects the open source movement from being downright raped by corporations like Microsoft!
I assume you are referring to the GPL. You do realize that the GPL was designed to be the anti-copyright, right? Allow me to quote the pertinent part:
In other words, if it weren't for copyright, there would be no need for the GPL. It exists because of copyright.
I'm an author too, I write software. I'm an intellectual rights advocate as well. I advocate considerably shorter copyright terms and an entire restructuring of the patent system. Copyright is completely broken by the existence of copyright terms lasting for life + 75/95 years. Copyright should last a maximum of 28 years. Given the extremely efficient means of distribution and production that we have today as opposed to 200 years ago, I would even support shorter terms. Special interests and politicians like Sonny Bono have stolen what rightfully belongs in the public domain. In doing so, they have created an environment where the people at large see no reason to respect the system. Because the system is so imbalanced, people feel no shame infringing on an author's copyright. Who here would refuse to sing "Happy Birthday" to their child in public on grounds of infringing Time Warner's intellectual property?
Additionally, they've created an environment where innovation is no longer possible. An author cannot build on the work of others because once written, the work is monopolized perpetually. Due to the system we have now, innovation is dragging to a halt. The systems that made this country mighty are now killing it. Look at how horribly broken the patent system has become. Numerous 'businesses' exist solely to patent everything thinkable and sue anyone who dares to create. Empty shell companies do nothing but collect 'Intellectual Property' and sue others who attempt to make an idea into reality.
The fundamental reason for copyright, patents and the whole morass of 'intellectual property' is to encourage innovation and progress, not to impede it. The only way to restore intellectual rights is to restore balance to the system. Even if they weren't suing grandmothers and children, I'd feel no pity for the RIAA. They and their lobbyists have only brought this upon themselves. Massive and flagrant infringement is the symptom, not the disease.
;-)
Don't forget to encrypt your VM if you're running 10.4. Even with all this going for you though, you're screwed if you use a weak password, or an app writes something important to /private/var/tmp/folders."UID"/TemporaryItems/ or some other location outside the home folder. At least, to my knowledge, no one has found a reference to some NSA_Key in OS X yet.
Some degree of accuracy eh? :-D Reading the article, I find the guy manages to inadvertently zap himself with a lightning gun that has a useful range of about four feet. If he's dead set on using electricity, a projectile that releases an electric charge on impact sounds like a better idea to me. But hey, it only cost the US taxpayer a million bucks or so to find out lightning sucks as a weapon. IMHO that ranks right up there with the cow fart studies.
Compare the number of those events to the number of Windows exploits in a year. Furthermore, if I'm having a problem locking my trunk, I'm probably going to notice the body and call the police myself.
What you are describing is a legal defense argument. It doesn't change the fact that illegal material was found on the computer.
It also doesn't change the fact that simply being an accused child pornographer is enough to thoroughly ruin your life in this country.
What if he does fix the problem, but the person actually was a criminal, continues to download, is caught. After poking around the cops find that the tech had infact serviced the computer and seen the illegal material. They accuse him of covering up the crime, and his life is ruined, etc. etc. Would you risk going to jail over somebody who couldn't properly maintain their computer?
If the files were not related to the problem, then the technician had no excuse looking at them in the first place. The technician was hired to fix a problem, not snoop. If the files WERE related to the problem, then we're back to square one of my assertion.
If you don't agree, then don't make a peep when the next Window's virus of the week drowns the internet in a crapflood. You can't expect users to fix their problem if doing so results in them being framed up on child porn charges. Also expect a lot more child porn websites, child porn spam, and innocent people in prison as users are reluctant to fix zombied boxes serving up child porn for the real traffickers.
You can't have it both ways. In the long run, your way will result in a lot MORE child porn on the internet. Happy now?
The fact is, child porn is completely illegal.
No, ripping LordOfTheRings.divx is a felony under anti-circumvention clauses of the DMCA. How the user came to have a copy might be called into question (Strangely, ripping a backup of a movie you own carries greater penalties than downloading a copy of a movie you don't own) but having the file itself is completely illegal.
And your post overlooks one very important fact:
This is computer repair. You know, viruses, root kits, the kind of thing that can place illegal files on your drive without your knowledge or consent. I'd hope that if my system were compromised by a remote root exploit, having it fixed would not result in child pornography charges against me.
Do you also call the cops when you see LordOfTheRings.divx? If the file contained a rip of the movie, that is evidence of a felony offense. By making a copy, you may also be committing a felony. At the very least you may be an accomplice to the crime. Would you turn people in more frequently if the MPAA paid a bounty? <devil's advocate />
An example: What happens when evil kiddie porn hacker roots your box and uses it as an FTP server for all his kiddie porn hacker friends? Your machine becomes kiddie porn central, slows to a crawl because of bandwidth saturation, and your directories are stuffed with illegal files. You, not being a 1337 HAX0R DUD3 unhook it, take it to the computer repair guy, and the computer repair guy finds illegal files you were unaware of. Instead of fixing the problem, he instead turns you in to the cops as a kiddie porn wanker. Your life is ruined. You loose your job, your wife leaves you, and you aren't allowed to see your own kids without a social worker present.
Thanks Gateway!