"If someone sends me a threatening letter, I should be able to make the threat public in order to get help for myself."
You can. You just can't publish the entire text of the letter verbatim.
Any original composition is inherently covered by copyright the moment it is "fixed" (recorded in some form). That's true of letters, emails, postings on Slashdot (notice the disclaimer at the top of the page saying "The following comments are owned by whoever posted them"), song lyrics, poems, novels, grocery lists, random drawings on a piece of paper, whatever. This ruling should be no surprise to anyone who understands the basics of copyright law.
"In order to claim copyright in a work, the author must give the proper notice as required under Chapter 17, Section 401 of the US Code. This section requires that the work must contain either the word "copyright" or the (c) symbol, followed by the year of publication and the name of the entity claiming the copyright."
Your research appears to be somewhat dated. I believe it was in 1989 that the U.S. amended the 1976 Copyright Act to be in line with other Berne Convention signatory countries in no longer requiring the copyright notice. If I recall correctly, there are now only 1 or 2 countries in the world that still require the notice. In all other countries, including the U.S., common law copyright applies automatically the moment a work has been "fixed" (ie. recorded in some form, like writing it down, in the case of a letter).
"...they seem to have forgotten Chapter 17, Section 412 of the US Code. That section includes a rule that neither statutory damages nor attorneys fees are available remedies unless the entity claiming copyright has followed Section 407 which requires mandatory deposit of two copies of the work with the Copyright Office within three months after it was initially published."
I'm not aware of the details of that section, so it's possible that you're correct in that there's restrictions on the available damages when the copyright is unregistered. However, an unregistered copyright is still a copyright, so it would seem to me that there is still the option of other damages being awarded (punitive damages? compensatory damages? IANAL, so perhaps you have a better idea).
I can't believe I'm actually defending Bill Gates here, but that was 13 years ago, and if you read the article he does talk about how he started out being unaware of the realities of the world, and has been learning as the years have gone by, and is still learning. People do evolve, you know. I'd say, considering how low down on the "decent person" scale he started, he's actually come a really long way (but still has very far to go).
"Ford" is a trademark. I have just used it (with the best of intentions) without authorization. I did so legally. Therefore the sentence is bullshit.
As silly as this may sound, the issue here is that you're using the word "use" in a different way than they did. They used the word in the context of "using a trademark", which is not the same as "saying a trademarked word". "Using a trademark" means applying it to a product or service, not just saying or typing it.
This is part of the difference between trademarks and copyright. Copyright would prevent you from copying in some format (ex. saying aloud or typing would be considered "use"), while trademark prevents you from applying it to your business.
The sentence to which you were originally responding is legally correct.
By the way, neither my original response nor this one was meant to be snide. Maybe I could've done without the "um, no". My apologies.
"...of course it's legal to use another company's trademark without authorization. Otherwise it would be impossible to say "Budweiser beer sucks", because they'd sue me."
Um, no. This has nothing to do with copyright. The summary incorrectly mentions copyright, but the letter does not. This is entirely about trademarks.
Trademarks have nothing to do with simply saying the name of a product. The trademark on the name Budweiser in your example doesn't prevent you from saying the name "Budweiser", it prevents you from using it in a beer-related product. So, you can say "Budweiser sucks (and you should, because it does), but you cannot create a beer and call it "Budweiser sucks". Well, you could create it. You just can't sell it.
In the actual case, they're trying to sell images of Ford vehicles, but the Ford vehicle design is trademarked. Therefore, they claim this to be an infringement of their trademark.
You're confusing copyright and trademark (as does the summary, unfortunately). Ford owns a trademark on the design of the car. The photographer owns the copyright on the photograph. However, if he sells that photograph, he is infringing on Ford's trademark, since the focus of the photograph is Ford's trademarked design. He's attempting to profit off the sale of a Ford trademark.
Except this isn't a background image. They're trying to sell pictures of Ford vehicles. In other words, the product being sold is an image of a Ford. In the example you gave, the image of a Ford is merely incidental. So, no, this hasn't been solved years ago.
"Now, imagine what it's like if you have to get permission to put *any* product in *any* picture."
The issue is not putting any product in any picture, the issue is using a product with a trademarked design as a prominent feature of a picture that you're selling.
If you want to make money selling pictures of Ford vehicles, you need Ford's permission. If you just want to take pictures of Ford vehicles, go right ahead.
Note, also, that the summary's mention of copyright is meaningless. This is entirely a trademark issue.
I agree with the gist of what you're saying, and I, too, was puzzled and annoyed at first by the addition of the RIAA comment, however the article does actually mention that Antigua and Barbuda were essentially awarded the right to violate U.S. copyrights in retaliation, so it is actually relevant. It's still pretty obvious flamebait, though.
You don't need to "find about 4GB of stuff to burn" in order to check a DVD-burner.
Exactly. This story says a lot about Circuit City's staff. Basically, if you give them your computer to work on, they will snoop through your stuff for no good reason.
If I want to test a DVD-burner on someone else's computer, I don't need to go through their personal files and open them to see what they are. I know for a fact that there's a whole pile of perfectly burnable files in C:\WINDOWS that will do the trick quite nicely. Many of them are even small text files, in case I want to open a file to compare it to the original.
So, the moral of this story: the repair guys at places like Circuit City cannot be trusted. They will snoop through your stuff. Guaranteed.
"Pilots below 10,000 ft tend to refer to their altidude as distance from the ground..."
When I fly below 10,000 ft, which is always, I refer to my altitude as what the altimeter tells me, which is altitude above sea level. However, I'm only a private pilot, so I'll accept the possibility that commercial pilots do things differently.
"Also alot of helicopters have transparent cockpits so you look almost straigt down and see what your doing while trying to land so I suspect that shining a laser through the floor wouldn't be too hard of a task"
This is another really good point that I had thought of but didn't mention. I did some googling to try to find a picture of a typical police helicopter to see how much glass is used in the cockpit, but couldn't find a very good example (I'm at work, so I didn't look too hard).
"The helicopter was at 500 feet, so the distance from laser to cockpit was at least 500 ft, and probably more than 1000 considering the angle needed to enter the cockpit rather than bounce off the bottom of the helicopter."
Not necessarily. When the article says they were flying at 500 ft, it is most likely quoting the official report which came from the pilot. To a pilot, "flying at 500 ft" means flying at 500 ft above sea level (altimeters measure altitude using barometric pressure, which indicates altitude above sea level, and therefore can't possibly know where the actual ground is). So, if, for example, ground level was actually at 200 ft above sea level, the helicopter would only be 300 ft above the ground. This is probably not an unrealistic altitude for a patrolling police helicopter.
It's also not necessary to shine it at much of an angle if the helicopter was banking in a turn and the pilot was looking into the turn, as a pilot might logically do when turning, and also looking down, which a police pilot on patrol might logically do.
The article also doesn't state that it's a 5mW laser, just that it's a hand-held green laser. There are much more powerful hand-held green lasers than 5mW available.
The article does not give enough information to write this off as "more green-laser hysteria".
"If you could go through and memorize the hundreds and even thousands of notes on all of the songs, then you would be some sort of... memorizing guy with lots of stuff memorized."
Um, how do you think real guitarists play real guitars? There's no screen showing me what notes to play when I'm on stage with my band. And I know far more songs than you'll find in all the GH games combined. I guess I'm some sort of... memorizing guy with lots of stuff memorized.
Trying to follow the notes on screen at the higher levels is just silly. It's all about learning the songs.
"I have a feeling this discussion is going to end up with us agreeing to disagree, but you've got yourself confused there. When I said that I only know my wife is human/loves me to the extent that I can observe her doing things that support that theory, I meant it in a Descartian way--that I can't know anything with absolute certainty (except that cogito ergo sum). Therefore, you can't say first that I take it on faith that my wife is human and then say that I absolutely know that a hypothetical love-bot is a robot."
No, I haven't confused myself at all, although I may have done a poor job of explaining my point. As far as "knowing" anything goes, I see no point in discussing anything at all if we don't at least accept that, in the interest of discussion, we "know" the things we observe and experience, without getting metaphysical, as that is just a whole other debate entirely. So, given that assumption, and using the word "know" in that sense, I'll rephrase what I was saying before. Your wife acts in a way that indicates that she loves you, and you accept that she does this because she actually does love you, and not for any other reason (deception, programming, whatever). In the case of a robot that acts in a way that indicates that it loves you, there is no question as to why it does this: it is given an explicit set of instructions telling it to do so, and it is only capable of following those instructions to the letter.
I had some other stuff in here, but I'm tired and not explaining it very well, so I'll skip it, since you're probably right that we're just going to have to agree to disagree anyway.
"I fail to see the difference between a perfect simulation and reality. I'm no solipsist, but, in the end, my experiences are nothing more than the sum of my sensory inputs. I "know" that my wife loves me, but I only know it because she acts the way that someone in love acts. In fact, I "know" that she's human, but only because she looks, acts, smells, sounds, feels, and tastes human."
You believe that your wife is human, but can't know it for sure. You believe that your wife loves you, but can't know it for sure. That's the reality of human love. There's an element of risk and faith.
With a robot, you absolutely know that it's a robot, and you absolutely know that it doesn't actually love you, it merely simulates it. There's no risk. There's no faith. You know it's all fake. You can only pretend to believe it.
"I suppose I should state here that I'm areligious, don't believe in a "soul", and take a pretty materialistic (as opposed to spiritualistic) point of view. I don't think love is mystical in any way. It's pretty awesome, but it's just a bunch of chemistry in the molecules-and-atoms sense. If you disagree with me on that point, then I don't think we're ever going to agree on the larger point under discussion."
I don't disagree with you on that point. I just think that "falling in love" with a robot requires an incredible amount of self-delusion. One would have to be utterly convinced of something that one definitively knows to be false.
"The real point is that you have no idea that the other person in a relationship is actually reciprocating or giving the illusion of; in essence simulating."
With a person, you don't know. They could be "simulating". They could also not be "simulating". However, with a robot, you definitively know right from the start that it is only a simulation. That's the crucial difference.
"If you're questioning the ability of a person to be willing to sacrifice for an inanimate object, consider the people that line up for the latest game console."
They're not doing it for the console (as in, for the console's benefit), they're doing it for themselves (as in, they want the console). Similar words, different meaning.
"...the ability of a robot to adequately simulate willingness to sacrifice... a good robotic simulation of intimate discussion... convincingly simulate this reciprocally..."
Lots of talk of simulation. In other words, everything in this "relationship" is illusion, nothing is real. That's not "love", that's "simulated love". It looks and acts like it, but it's not it.
"There's no need for a robot to really feel in love--it merely has to act in love."
And therefore you know definitively that it is not actually in love.
A person who "falls in love" with a machine is completely missing what it really is to be in love. It might be a pretty decent simulation of love. And, if that's what you want, cool. But that's all it is.
Clearly, somebody out there liked the original movies. It wasn't nostalgia that caused everyone to go nuts over Star Wars back in 1977. The critics may have had some bad things to say about them, but the people loved them. The original movies were successful on their own.
The prequels, however, had the original movies to built onto. What limited success they have had has been because of the fascination with the originals. They would never have been anywhere near as successful on their own.
You nailed it in your subject line, or at least part of it. The problem with the prequels is the lack of Han Solo.
You see, Star Wars was supposed to be, in Lucas's mind, about the Jedi. However, the Jedi are really boring, pretentious, one-dimensional characters. By luck (at least, for us, the viewers), he started the story in a time when the Jedi were all but eliminated. Therefore, instead of actually being about the Jedi, the original trilogy was about a rebellion, with a bit of Jedi coolness (ie. light saber duels) thrown in for fun. The star of the show: Han Solo. A cool, bad-ass scoundrel of a good guy.
Fast forward to the prequels, and it's all Jedi. Where's Han Solo, or at least a cool character like him? There isn't one. There's just stiff pretentious Jedi spouting tripe masquerading as wisdom. Sure, there's lots of light sabers, which is cool. But that's not enough to make a good movie.
Think about it: the Empire came into existence because the Jedi screwed up and let it happen, and it came crumbling down because Lando Calrissian blew up the second Death Star after Han Solo destroyed the shield generator, while the only remaining Jedi was too busy dealing with personal issues to actually help.
"It just means the death of the "mega-lithic" rock star that 'hits it big' and owns 10 yachts and 3 multi-million dollar homes."
Exactly! And that's the way it should be. People whose contribution to the world is "playing guitar in some band" should not be paid better than someone whose contribution to the world is "healing the sick" or "teaching children to read".
And, just for the record, I'm someone who plays guitar in a band.
Do you not perform live? Do you not sell other merchandise (ex. t-shirts)? If not, then why not?
Even the complete elimination of copyright law will not prevent you from making money as a musician. In fact, it won't even prevent you from making money selling albums -- although it will make it unlikely to make as much money selling albums.
I'm a musician as well, and I realized long ago that the best way to become established and, consequently, make money, is to get your music heard by as many people as possible, by whatever means necessary. Sure, it's nice to make a few bucks off the album. But you'll make much more playing shows to the hordes of fans who come to see your show after hearing the album, regardless of how they heard it.
"...perhaps the journalists began with an English message."
That makes no sense. The final translated message was in English, as evidenced by the samples shown in the article. Either that, or after translating Hebrew to Dutch, the mistranslations were then somehow perfectly translated to English for the sake of this article, which seems just a little unlikely.
The version of this story in the Inquirer does state that they translated to English.
The Register's version of this story claims that they used www.babylon.com, not babelfish. Maybe that was another mistranslation.:S
"Should a 20 years old game of a company that closed 10 years ago public domain? Probably. Should a (software) product discontinued 10 years ago be public domain, with the company making new versions of it (eg. Visual Studio 5.0)? Hard to tell. Should a (software) product that started to sell 20 years ago but still has strong development be put into the public domain? Don't think so."
Each new version is a derivative of the previous version and gets its own copyright. So, let the older versions slip into the public domain while the newer versions remain protected.
Slashdot Mirror
"If someone sends me a threatening letter, I should be able to make the threat public in order to get help for myself."
You can. You just can't publish the entire text of the letter verbatim.
Any original composition is inherently covered by copyright the moment it is "fixed" (recorded in some form). That's true of letters, emails, postings on Slashdot (notice the disclaimer at the top of the page saying "The following comments are owned by whoever posted them"), song lyrics, poems, novels, grocery lists, random drawings on a piece of paper, whatever. This ruling should be no surprise to anyone who understands the basics of copyright law.
"In order to claim copyright in a work, the author must give the proper notice as required under Chapter 17, Section 401 of the US Code. This section requires that the work must contain either the word "copyright" or the (c) symbol, followed by the year of publication and the name of the entity claiming the copyright."
Your research appears to be somewhat dated. I believe it was in 1989 that the U.S. amended the 1976 Copyright Act to be in line with other Berne Convention signatory countries in no longer requiring the copyright notice. If I recall correctly, there are now only 1 or 2 countries in the world that still require the notice. In all other countries, including the U.S., common law copyright applies automatically the moment a work has been "fixed" (ie. recorded in some form, like writing it down, in the case of a letter).
"...they seem to have forgotten Chapter 17, Section 412 of the US Code. That section includes a rule that neither statutory damages nor attorneys fees are available remedies unless the entity claiming copyright has followed Section 407 which requires mandatory deposit of two copies of the work with the Copyright Office within three months after it was initially published."
I'm not aware of the details of that section, so it's possible that you're correct in that there's restrictions on the available damages when the copyright is unregistered. However, an unregistered copyright is still a copyright, so it would seem to me that there is still the option of other damages being awarded (punitive damages? compensatory damages? IANAL, so perhaps you have a better idea).
I can't believe I'm actually defending Bill Gates here, but that was 13 years ago, and if you read the article he does talk about how he started out being unaware of the realities of the world, and has been learning as the years have gone by, and is still learning. People do evolve, you know. I'd say, considering how low down on the "decent person" scale he started, he's actually come a really long way (but still has very far to go).
"Ford" is a trademark. I have just used it (with the best of intentions) without authorization. I did so legally. Therefore the sentence is bullshit.
As silly as this may sound, the issue here is that you're using the word "use" in a different way than they did. They used the word in the context of "using a trademark", which is not the same as "saying a trademarked word". "Using a trademark" means applying it to a product or service, not just saying or typing it.
This is part of the difference between trademarks and copyright. Copyright would prevent you from copying in some format (ex. saying aloud or typing would be considered "use"), while trademark prevents you from applying it to your business.
The sentence to which you were originally responding is legally correct.
By the way, neither my original response nor this one was meant to be snide. Maybe I could've done without the "um, no". My apologies.
"...of course it's legal to use another company's trademark without authorization. Otherwise it would be impossible to say "Budweiser beer sucks", because they'd sue me."
Um, no. This has nothing to do with copyright. The summary incorrectly mentions copyright, but the letter does not. This is entirely about trademarks.
Trademarks have nothing to do with simply saying the name of a product. The trademark on the name Budweiser in your example doesn't prevent you from saying the name "Budweiser", it prevents you from using it in a beer-related product. So, you can say "Budweiser sucks (and you should, because it does), but you cannot create a beer and call it "Budweiser sucks". Well, you could create it. You just can't sell it.
In the actual case, they're trying to sell images of Ford vehicles, but the Ford vehicle design is trademarked. Therefore, they claim this to be an infringement of their trademark.
You're confusing copyright and trademark (as does the summary, unfortunately). Ford owns a trademark on the design of the car. The photographer owns the copyright on the photograph. However, if he sells that photograph, he is infringing on Ford's trademark, since the focus of the photograph is Ford's trademarked design. He's attempting to profit off the sale of a Ford trademark.
Except this isn't a background image. They're trying to sell pictures of Ford vehicles. In other words, the product being sold is an image of a Ford. In the example you gave, the image of a Ford is merely incidental. So, no, this hasn't been solved years ago.
"Now, imagine what it's like if you have to get permission to put *any* product in *any* picture."
The issue is not putting any product in any picture, the issue is using a product with a trademarked design as a prominent feature of a picture that you're selling.
If you want to make money selling pictures of Ford vehicles, you need Ford's permission. If you just want to take pictures of Ford vehicles, go right ahead.
Note, also, that the summary's mention of copyright is meaningless. This is entirely a trademark issue.
I agree with the gist of what you're saying, and I, too, was puzzled and annoyed at first by the addition of the RIAA comment, however the article does actually mention that Antigua and Barbuda were essentially awarded the right to violate U.S. copyrights in retaliation, so it is actually relevant. It's still pretty obvious flamebait, though.
You don't need to "find about 4GB of stuff to burn" in order to check a DVD-burner.
Exactly. This story says a lot about Circuit City's staff. Basically, if you give them your computer to work on, they will snoop through your stuff for no good reason.
If I want to test a DVD-burner on someone else's computer, I don't need to go through their personal files and open them to see what they are. I know for a fact that there's a whole pile of perfectly burnable files in C:\WINDOWS that will do the trick quite nicely. Many of them are even small text files, in case I want to open a file to compare it to the original.
So, the moral of this story: the repair guys at places like Circuit City cannot be trusted. They will snoop through your stuff. Guaranteed.
"Pilots below 10,000 ft tend to refer to their altidude as distance from the ground..."
When I fly below 10,000 ft, which is always, I refer to my altitude as what the altimeter tells me, which is altitude above sea level. However, I'm only a private pilot, so I'll accept the possibility that commercial pilots do things differently.
"Also alot of helicopters have transparent cockpits so you look almost straigt down and see what your doing while trying to land so I suspect that shining a laser through the floor wouldn't be too hard of a task"
This is another really good point that I had thought of but didn't mention. I did some googling to try to find a picture of a typical police helicopter to see how much glass is used in the cockpit, but couldn't find a very good example (I'm at work, so I didn't look too hard).
"The helicopter was at 500 feet, so the distance from laser to cockpit was at least 500 ft, and probably more than 1000 considering the angle needed to enter the cockpit rather than bounce off the bottom of the helicopter."
Not necessarily. When the article says they were flying at 500 ft, it is most likely quoting the official report which came from the pilot. To a pilot, "flying at 500 ft" means flying at 500 ft above sea level (altimeters measure altitude using barometric pressure, which indicates altitude above sea level, and therefore can't possibly know where the actual ground is). So, if, for example, ground level was actually at 200 ft above sea level, the helicopter would only be 300 ft above the ground. This is probably not an unrealistic altitude for a patrolling police helicopter.
It's also not necessary to shine it at much of an angle if the helicopter was banking in a turn and the pilot was looking into the turn, as a pilot might logically do when turning, and also looking down, which a police pilot on patrol might logically do.
The article also doesn't state that it's a 5mW laser, just that it's a hand-held green laser. There are much more powerful hand-held green lasers than 5mW available.
The article does not give enough information to write this off as "more green-laser hysteria".
"If you could go through and memorize the hundreds and even thousands of notes on all of the songs, then you would be some sort of... memorizing guy with lots of stuff memorized."
Um, how do you think real guitarists play real guitars? There's no screen showing me what notes to play when I'm on stage with my band. And I know far more songs than you'll find in all the GH games combined. I guess I'm some sort of... memorizing guy with lots of stuff memorized.
Trying to follow the notes on screen at the higher levels is just silly. It's all about learning the songs.
"I have a feeling this discussion is going to end up with us agreeing to disagree, but you've got yourself confused there. When I said that I only know my wife is human/loves me to the extent that I can observe her doing things that support that theory, I meant it in a Descartian way--that I can't know anything with absolute certainty (except that cogito ergo sum). Therefore, you can't say first that I take it on faith that my wife is human and then say that I absolutely know that a hypothetical love-bot is a robot."
No, I haven't confused myself at all, although I may have done a poor job of explaining my point. As far as "knowing" anything goes, I see no point in discussing anything at all if we don't at least accept that, in the interest of discussion, we "know" the things we observe and experience, without getting metaphysical, as that is just a whole other debate entirely. So, given that assumption, and using the word "know" in that sense, I'll rephrase what I was saying before. Your wife acts in a way that indicates that she loves you, and you accept that she does this because she actually does love you, and not for any other reason (deception, programming, whatever). In the case of a robot that acts in a way that indicates that it loves you, there is no question as to why it does this: it is given an explicit set of instructions telling it to do so, and it is only capable of following those instructions to the letter.
I had some other stuff in here, but I'm tired and not explaining it very well, so I'll skip it, since you're probably right that we're just going to have to agree to disagree anyway.
"I fail to see the difference between a perfect simulation and reality. I'm no solipsist, but, in the end, my experiences are nothing more than the sum of my sensory inputs. I "know" that my wife loves me, but I only know it because she acts the way that someone in love acts. In fact, I "know" that she's human, but only because she looks, acts, smells, sounds, feels, and tastes human."
You believe that your wife is human, but can't know it for sure. You believe that your wife loves you, but can't know it for sure. That's the reality of human love. There's an element of risk and faith.
With a robot, you absolutely know that it's a robot, and you absolutely know that it doesn't actually love you, it merely simulates it. There's no risk. There's no faith. You know it's all fake. You can only pretend to believe it.
"I suppose I should state here that I'm areligious, don't believe in a "soul", and take a pretty materialistic (as opposed to spiritualistic) point of view. I don't think love is mystical in any way. It's pretty awesome, but it's just a bunch of chemistry in the molecules-and-atoms sense. If you disagree with me on that point, then I don't think we're ever going to agree on the larger point under discussion."
I don't disagree with you on that point. I just think that "falling in love" with a robot requires an incredible amount of self-delusion. One would have to be utterly convinced of something that one definitively knows to be false.
"The real point is that you have no idea that the other person in a relationship is actually reciprocating or giving the illusion of; in essence simulating."
With a person, you don't know. They could be "simulating". They could also not be "simulating". However, with a robot, you definitively know right from the start that it is only a simulation. That's the crucial difference.
"If you're questioning the ability of a person to be willing to sacrifice for an inanimate object, consider the people that line up for the latest game console."
They're not doing it for the console (as in, for the console's benefit), they're doing it for themselves (as in, they want the console). Similar words, different meaning.
"...the ability of a robot to adequately simulate willingness to sacrifice... a good robotic simulation of intimate discussion... convincingly simulate this reciprocally..."
Lots of talk of simulation. In other words, everything in this "relationship" is illusion, nothing is real. That's not "love", that's "simulated love". It looks and acts like it, but it's not it.
"There's no need for a robot to really feel in love--it merely has to act in love."
And therefore you know definitively that it is not actually in love.
A person who "falls in love" with a machine is completely missing what it really is to be in love. It might be a pretty decent simulation of love. And, if that's what you want, cool. But that's all it is.
And, sadly, all too many men mistake "thinking someone's hot" for "being in love".
Clearly, somebody out there liked the original movies. It wasn't nostalgia that caused everyone to go nuts over Star Wars back in 1977. The critics may have had some bad things to say about them, but the people loved them. The original movies were successful on their own.
The prequels, however, had the original movies to built onto. What limited success they have had has been because of the fascination with the originals. They would never have been anywhere near as successful on their own.
You nailed it in your subject line, or at least part of it. The problem with the prequels is the lack of Han Solo.
You see, Star Wars was supposed to be, in Lucas's mind, about the Jedi. However, the Jedi are really boring, pretentious, one-dimensional characters. By luck (at least, for us, the viewers), he started the story in a time when the Jedi were all but eliminated. Therefore, instead of actually being about the Jedi, the original trilogy was about a rebellion, with a bit of Jedi coolness (ie. light saber duels) thrown in for fun. The star of the show: Han Solo. A cool, bad-ass scoundrel of a good guy.
Fast forward to the prequels, and it's all Jedi. Where's Han Solo, or at least a cool character like him? There isn't one. There's just stiff pretentious Jedi spouting tripe masquerading as wisdom. Sure, there's lots of light sabers, which is cool. But that's not enough to make a good movie.
Think about it: the Empire came into existence because the Jedi screwed up and let it happen, and it came crumbling down because Lando Calrissian blew up the second Death Star after Han Solo destroyed the shield generator, while the only remaining Jedi was too busy dealing with personal issues to actually help.
"It just means the death of the "mega-lithic" rock star that 'hits it big' and owns 10 yachts and 3 multi-million dollar homes."
Exactly! And that's the way it should be. People whose contribution to the world is "playing guitar in some band" should not be paid better than someone whose contribution to the world is "healing the sick" or "teaching children to read".
And, just for the record, I'm someone who plays guitar in a band.
Do you not perform live? Do you not sell other merchandise (ex. t-shirts)? If not, then why not?
Even the complete elimination of copyright law will not prevent you from making money as a musician. In fact, it won't even prevent you from making money selling albums -- although it will make it unlikely to make as much money selling albums.
I'm a musician as well, and I realized long ago that the best way to become established and, consequently, make money, is to get your music heard by as many people as possible, by whatever means necessary. Sure, it's nice to make a few bucks off the album. But you'll make much more playing shows to the hordes of fans who come to see your show after hearing the album, regardless of how they heard it.
"Gene Simmons is a dinosaur."
By that, do you mean that he sucks?
"...perhaps the journalists began with an English message."
That makes no sense. The final translated message was in English, as evidenced by the samples shown in the article. Either that, or after translating Hebrew to Dutch, the mistranslations were then somehow perfectly translated to English for the sake of this article, which seems just a little unlikely.
The version of this story in the Inquirer does state that they translated to English.
The Register's version of this story claims that they used www.babylon.com, not babelfish. Maybe that was another mistranslation. :S
"Should a 20 years old game of a company that closed 10 years ago public domain? Probably.
Should a (software) product discontinued 10 years ago be public domain, with the company making new versions of it (eg. Visual Studio 5.0)? Hard to tell.
Should a (software) product that started to sell 20 years ago but still has strong development be put into the public domain? Don't think so."
Each new version is a derivative of the previous version and gets its own copyright. So, let the older versions slip into the public domain while the newer versions remain protected.