I would have several problems with any proposed replacement with the current system with one similar to the CAP.
First: While I do agree that a moral system largely based on the Bible is probably as good as any, I am very concerned with the homosexuality part of the 'sex/homosexuality' category, as well as essentially the entire 'offense to God' category. If such a system were to be used to restrict entry to movies, those objections would, I feel, have to be taken away.
Second: I suggest an alternate method for taking into account the length of the movie. Rather than the influence density thing they are doing, I would make the number of starting points (100) variable in direct proportion to the length. A 2 hr movie would get, say, 200 points, while a 1 hour movie would get 100. When giving the ratings, give fractions: 135/146 points, and maybe the percent (though people can calculate that on their own).
Third: I'm not sure I like how they don't take into account justification. While justification obviously shouldn't absolve a movie from losing points, somehow a shooting in self defense seems less wrong than a cold blooded murder, even if they are graphically the same. (Such grading would be allowed under their rules, but it sounds like that is not the intent of the 1-3 point thing.)
Fourth: This much -- "It's up to parents to decide what they consider to be "PG" or "R" by this system." -- of your post would have to be wrong if the CAP would be used to restrict entrance as an "R" rating is now. (Poor as it usually is enforced...) There would have to be some sort of cutoff.
I would put to you that in order to put the CAP into use as described in my fourth point there would need to be cutoffs by category rather than overall. That is, "no category gets below 60 points" rather than "the average is not below 60 points", because currently one category alone would very often drive a movie up a rating or two.
But this has other problems, for instance if a movie is just below the cutoff for one category and exemplary in all the others. There should be a separate rule for that. Sorta like the MPAA rule that using "fuck" twice will automatically drive up the rating to an R, unless the people feel that rating is very unduely deserved, in which case they can reduce it to PG-13. ("Quiz Show" has it twice -- the second time while playing a recording of the first use. The Right Stuff has several occurances of "fuckin' a", and it's even PG.)
Fifth: I think the flexibility of the rating system in use now is an advantage. It allows people to take into account things as justification (for instance, a movie where a couple shootings lead to a trial that result in the killers being found guilty should probably be given more leniency than just some gangster movie) and other circumstances.
Sixth: There arise all sorts of paradoxes. For instance: is one occurance of full frontal nudity (probably a 3 point violation) worse than three occurances of, say, two people kissing (maybe a 1 point violation)? I would say so... there are people who quite reasonably would not object to the latter but would to the former. Yet the rating system would treat each equally. The current system would almost certainly not.
Anyway, this post got a lot longer than I expected... I just have given movie ratings some thought in the past and got a bit carried away with myself. I DO think that separate categories like the CAP has would be extremely helpful for parents trying to decide if a movie is suitable or not, but I don't think a point based approach such as the CAP is the way to go. I think the categories would best be decided as the overall rating is now, subjectively.
(I also think there should be a new rating -- coincidentally I've always talked about it as an actual 'R-13' rating, though I think a better cutoff might be 14 or even 15 -- that is still a restricted rating, that is the number isn't just a cautionary age but is actually a mandatory (haha) cutoff. I've seen plenty of movies where I looked and said to myself 'this really dosn't deserve to be rated R; people younger than 17 should certainly be fine to see this' but also thought that because the next rating down is unrestricted, it was really the only option.)
We're raised on music, movies, and games only to learn that we have to pay a tithe to revisit our childhood. There's no reason we should stand for that. 5-10 years is more than sufficient time to ensure that an investor/artist is compensated. Until congress stops selling out the average american to corporations, there's no reason the average american should respect the acts of congress.
While I agree that the extensions from the Berne convention on are utterly stupid, I do think it's quite reasonable to grant a copyright for the life of the author. For corporate works, maybe 50 years.
Thus I have even no ethical, moral problem with companies trying to enforce copyrights within such terms. As that almost certainly constitutes almost everything that's pirated, I can't blame them.
Which emphasizes the point that the law is a sham.
No, the law can't pick favorites, or it would be even less fair. No authority can have a say on what is absolutely right and what isn't, especially since those very definitions change depending on who you talk to. The next best thing is to treat everyone equally.
You don't get a break if you murder a notorious criminal. Jack Ruby was still sentenced to death* for murder, despite his target being Lee Harvey Oswald.
Copyright infringement committed against an unethical conglomerate is no less of an offense than commiting it against a garage band. And rightly so.
*It was overturned and the case was remanded for a new trial, but Ruby died of disease before it could take place. Nevertheless, my point stands.
Which further illustrates that only people who already have huge hoardes of available funding can afford to enforce or benefit from a contract in today's America.
Uh... no. I'd say it illustrates the exact OPPOSITE. If you were required to have someone follow the person around to ensure compliance, THEN only the companies with "huge hoardes of funding" would be able to enforce contracts.
How about the industry takes responsibility for its own profits?
I agree. And as people who commit copyright infringement are arguably hurting their profits (and at least that's how they see it), that is exactly what they are doing.
Prime example: genetically engineered crops. The major producers didn't introduce the engineered crops until they could engineer seed which produced sterile plants. Why? Because they recognized that no one will continue to buy engineered seed if they can pull the seed from their own crops. Their product also is EASILY COPIED. Surely the agri industry could have lobbied for political maneuvers and federal oversight. The DNA testing is quite simple to determine the strain of grain. Why didn't the agri industry go for the same policies as the media industry? I'll answer that: Because the agri industry rightly saw that there was no benefit in making criminals out of farmers doing what farmers do.
And because it was a hell of a lot easier to make a plant that was sterile than it is to make a copy protection algorithm that isn't cracked.
Also, look at when companies try to introduce measures to hurt copying. People complain by the bushels here! Sure, many are complaining at the DMCA's making the circumvention of those measures illegal, but many also are complaining about the introduction of the measures themselves.
It seems like the prevailing/. attitude is lose lose for the labels... if they try to protect their interests through legal means, the consensus here seems to be that they are doing something they shouldn't, copyright is bad, etc. If they introduce a technical means to try to prevent copying, the consensus seems to be that they are doing something that they shouldn't, they are stopping fair use, etc. I've got news... IT CAN'T BE BOTH WAYS. Either the media can be easily copied, in which case they need to protect their interests through legal measures, or it can't, in which case they are protecting it through both.
That's a silly pot shot. A normal citizen may get busted for trying to bribe an agent or police officer but large corporations have figured out the legal loopholes in bribes ages ago. Once again we illustrate that the system is a sham set up to favor those who already have a financial advantage.
I'll agree... it's a problem. However, what's the alternative? Make it completely legal? That's even worse. And it's not as if a private individual CAN'T do anything.
They're not exercising rights. They're deliberately ignoring the nature of their product. See the example of the agri industry.
Yeah, after all, intellectual property rights aren't written into the Constitution... </sarcasm>
Don't even start. I've rebuilt dozens of computers a
I would have sympathy if these were private independent artists we're talking about. But it's not. The legal owner is now a big media conglomerate once the artist sells the rights. That big media conglomerate is more than capable of the market research to figure out what a fair and profitable price for a CD is. If they don't know the fair worth of their own product, given considerations of how that product can and will be sued, then maybe they just suck as businessmen? That's hardly the consumers' fault....none of which actually has any bearing on the matter. Fortunately, the law doesn't cater much to what people's sympathies are.
I can't realistically demand that agreement because I'm intelligent and realize that I can't stand over his shoulder 24/7 to see what he does with the papers that I sold to him.
What? That's a asinine argument. People request terms in contracts that they can't personally verify are being followed ALL THE TIME. When someone signs an NDA, the other doesn't assign them a monitor to make sure that they don't disclose the information they aren't allowed to. Does this make NDAs any less valid? No! Does it make it unreasonable for someone to request another person to sign an NDA? No!
That's what RESPONSIBILITY is for. You trust that the person that you're signing the contract won't violate it. That person then has a legal obligation to not violate it. If he does, you can sue them for breach of contract.
Why are music conglomerates allowed to play dumb just to stage a legal debacle?
How is the media playing dumb by exercising their rights?
There is no sense in raiding the homes of private citizens. These people are not terrorists. For the greatest part their not even violent.
Oh, goody. Next you'll be saying that people who commit bribery shouldn't be arrested, because the people who commit are neither terrorists nor violent. Or people who give false information to the police. They aren't violent or terrorists. Nor are minors who carry fake IDs. Or convienience store clerks who sell tobacco to minors. There's a TON of non-violent crimes, but that doesn't mean that they aren't wrong. People are still wronged by most of them, and have the right to try to mitigate that as much as possible.
When asked the question people have been trained to rattle off the rote answer of,"Of course it's stealing" and then everyone goes home and does the same thing.
Oh, so since they disagree with you, it's just because they've been "trained"? What if I were to say that people have been trained to rattle off the rote answer of, 'of course theft is wrong', or 'of course murder is wrong'? What would you say to that? You'd probably think I was nuts, wouldn't you, thinking that those aren't, in and of themselves, evil?
Well, I think that people have the right, as enumerated in our Constitution (implicitly by the granting of power to create such a right), of being able to prevent people from profiting off of the hard work of themselves if they so choose. This isn't 'by rote' or anything, at least any more than 'murder is wrong' is instilled in me by rote.
I would like to see/. post a poll about copyright. Maybe:
What should be the proper length for a copyright: -Information should be free... no copyrights -1-10 years -10-20 years -20-30 years -30-50 years -50-100 years -100+ years -Life -Life + (1-50 years) -Life + (over 50 years)
I just made up those numbers. But a search for polls with the word 'copyright' turned up nothing.
Anyway, my guess is that only a pretty small number of people (I would guess under 10%) would say there should be no copyright.
I don't think they're criminals and I don't think they're infringing.
Um, they are distributing copyrighted works without the owner's permission... how is that not infringing?
And done enough, it becomes a criminal offense.
If I sell the secret of nuclear fusion to you for $5 then it's my loss if I was stupid enough to sell it to you for $5. If I demand $500 then you and five friends chip in and I still think it's my loss for being stupid enough to give it away for $500. There's no doubt the amount of money that's poured into marketing by the big media corporations. Why should they be allowed to plead ignorance?
Um, because this is totally different. The record companies wouldn't have a problem (okay, they would, but they would have no recourse at all) if friends pass CDs around amongst themselves. BUT, if all five can listen to it at any time they wish, and all at once even, then it becomes a problem if they only bought one CD.
Back to your "analogy". It would be a different matter if when you had sold the secrets to the person you did for $500 you had done it with the mutual agreement that if he were to pass on the secrets to others, he must cease using it. If he then passed on the secret to his other friends and continued to use it himself, you would (I presume) be pretty annoyed. And you'd have a fine case for breach of contract.
The only difference between that example and that of copyright infringement is that in the latter, the conditions of the "agreement" are stipulated by law instead of a contract.
There is no need to criminalize otherwise boring citizens.
Okay, this I have a problem with. The RIAA IS NOT criminalizing anyone. The RIAA isn't entrapping anyone into copyright infringement, the RIAA isn't putting anyone under duress. It is a perfectly free choice.
That's silly. The concept of theft is as ingrained in humans as a child looking guilty for stealing a cookie. The very fact that people's consciences are fuzzy on the concept of "intellectual property" should be our first sign that there's really no wrongdoing here.
I have a suspicion that in the general population you won't find much of a fuzziness, and that/. is tilted much more to a "free information" point of view. And I don't even think that there is more than a pretty small minority of people on/. that would support the complete abolishment of intellectual property.
When a person buys a CD they accept, knowingly or unknowingly, certain terms of the license agreement which dictate their use of the product. If, however, you receive an mp3 file from someone you are bound by no such licensing agreements.
My first objection... there's no license agreement. All restrictions are from copyright law, which everyone is bound by regardless of if they agree. (Provided they are in the US and don't have permission of the copyright holder.)
The people operating the fileservers are never actively aware of any legal strings on the files which traverse their networks. If they were then ISPs might be liable as well for allowing the files to traverse their connections.
Ah, but the people were almost certainly actually sharing files. You had to have at least 100 GB shared in order to join the network. They were, from what it sounds like in the article, actually participating in the sharing.
The 9th circuit court just essentially gave common carrier status to P2P networks, so unless the people involved here are in a different district and think that the ruling won't stick, they must have been participating.
If they feel that the consumer, for once, is getting the best of them then they have the perfect ability to raise the price without making criminals of otherwise boring citizens.
On the other hand, why should a bunch of criminals who are infringing their copyright be able to dictate their policy?
I also feel that holding people legally liable to a document which is never read is fundamentally flawed. It is not a secret. It is public knowledge that no one reads the licensing agreements.
Again, CDs, DVDs, etc. don't have license agreements. Only computer software. (So far anyway.) The only document that we hold them to in this case without reading is Title 17 in the US Code. There's nothing more hidden about this than, say, someone robbing someone and saying "I haven't read the statute prohibiting robbery".
To be clear, I hate the RIAA and labels as much as the next guy. However, I certainly cannot blame any copyright holder from trying to exercise their rights. If they feel that piracy is the problem and the best way to combat it is as they are, that is their choice and I can't really take fault with it. (I do take fault with them demanding ISPs to turn over names of offenders without a warrant.)
Two wrongs (wonderful behavior by RIAA, and copyright infringement) don't make a right.
Well, it's not exactly an analogous case since Sony would still be paying for materials. You'd have to provide all the materials necessary to produce the TV and just have your buddy run them through the machines.
But one piece of advice... check to be sure you're right before you criticize.;-) Do a find on warrant or something. It can save a lot of embarrassment later.
(Sorta like how you should quadruple check spelling and grammar flames to be sure that you didn't make one yourself...)
When someone walks into a record store and steals a few albums they have actually caused a loss to the record store.
What if no one would have bought those records anyway?
Same argument that is used to "support" file sharing. It still applies, though is admittedly a lot harder to stomach because it's much less likely to be the case.
I'm sorry, but that is a point I cannot ignore, seeing as it was my entire point.
I wasn't sure if that was your point or not. I took the position that it might not be, because otherwise you would, IMHO, be arguing a technicality. (In an actual courtroom, of course, it wouldn't be, but in terms of this discussion as to the responsibility of the police, I think it is. The point of the post you were replying to was, I think, that police shouldn't shun the "smaller" crimes entirely to concentrate on the bigger ones. It would be simple to replace "burgled your house" with an equivalent federal offense and restore the point.)
Actually, they don't. You'll find the Justice Department itself backing this up if you look up their response to the charge that they were selectively enforcing the law and "picking" on Martha Stewart. All prosecution is discretionary. The system is intentionally structured this way to promote justice over law.
Okay, however, I think that it should usually be presumed that they are the same unless you can demonstrate extenuating circumstances. I can't think of many good excuses for distributing copyrighted music in the volume that these people were, so the presumption stands.
(The exception to the above is if the law itself is unjust, in which case it should be prosecuted for nobody.)
In most cases if your house is burgled the police will take a report and that will be the end of the matter. They will not even make a cursory attempt to "solve the crime."
And this is an utter shame and travesty.
The law provides no protection from thieves and intruders. It provides prosecution after the fact. There is considerable question as to whether it even provides a deterence.
I have an EXTREMELY hard time believeing that it wouldn't provide a deterrance. And at any rate, it definitely does lock up many people who are dangerous. Think of all the offenders who are in and out of jail because they never stop offending. Now think of how many more offenses they would be able to commit if they weren't locked up.
There isn't enough wealth in the known universe to provide sufficient manpower to proactively detect, investigate and prosecute every crime, nor is there sufficient manpower.
That doesn't mean that one shouldn't strive to do the very best that you can, or ignore crimes, or make an arrest when it's handed to you.
No where (that I saw) was there mention of 1) a warrant
Um... "Among the files offered on the network were the movies 'Kill Bill,' 'Lord of the Rings -- The Two Towers,' and 'The Last Samurai,' according to an affidavit filed in connection with one of the search warrants."
2) a crime being committed (just vague inuendo on this one)
How is "U.S. agents have raided the homes of five people who allegedly traded hundreds of thousands of songs, movies and other copyrighted material over the Internet" vague innuendo?
3) an investigation.
So that affidavit just materialized, and the police just happened to randomly pick this network? Wow, must be the DOJ's lucky day.
Mere distribution is not sufficient.
It's also not necessary to show to get a warrant. They can come up with evidence of that from the seized evidence, depositions, court proceedings, etc.
Actually, many jurisdictions, under the leadership of the model penal code, have eliminated the separate offenses of lacreny, embezzlement, theft by fraud, unlawful posession, etc. and incorporated them all into an offense called... wait for it... theft.
In fact, the MPC even has a section explicitly stating that all the crimes are now called theft. It probably reads word for word (this is from the PA statutes, much of which is word for word identical to the MPC):
"Conduct denominated theft in this chapter constitutes a single offense. An accusation of theft may be supported by evidence that it was committed in any manner that would be theft under this chapter, notwithstanding the specification of a different manner in the complaint or indictment, subject only to the power of the court to ensure fair trial by granting a continuance or other appropriate relief where the conduct of the defense would be prejudiced by lack of fair notice or by surprise."
Excuse me, but how was this "pissing all over" the Constitution?
I seem to remember that Art. I, Sec. 8 gives congress the power to create laws to protect the IP rights of authors.
As for taking seizing the property, get a clue. This is *evidence*. Police have been able, with the proper warrants, to seize evidence since the nation's founding. If they don't give it back or bring charges (or negotiate a deal) within a reasonable time, then you have a legitimate complaint. However, nothing in this act is, in and of itself, unconstitutional or even, I would go so far as to say, wrong.
And it would be right and proper for them to do so.
Ignoring for the moment the fact that the crime wouldn't be a federal offense, this is crap. They have an OBLIGATION to enforce the laws that protect you and your property from thieves and intruders.
The police aren't there to say "oh, someone broke the law... eh, so what." They are there to say "oh, someone broke the law... let's go get that motherfucker." Doesn't matter what the crime is.
For the police to not enforce a law is to defy the legislature's (and by proxy somewhat the people's) wishes with regards to what is acceptable conduct.
If the police don't have the manpower to do this, it's time to increase their budget so they can. (Or cut down on the number of crimes, but that's a qualitatively different problem.)
Copyright infringement that is either for financial gain or in excess of $1000 in a 180 day period moves from a civil realm to a federal crime. 17 U.S.C. 506
Here's what I thought was a good description of what you're talking about, stolen from a post at User Friendly's site:
Trademark law has protections against many unauthorized uses of company logos. However, authors are free to use them when reviewing the company, in satire about the company, etc. So if a political cartoonist were to draw a cartoon criticizing a company, they could use that company's logo in the strip. Say it's a fairly complicated strip with the logos having legs and running around and doing other things that wouldn't be easy to draw.
The author thinks "hey, I don't feel like drawing this out" so goes and finds the work someone else did where they gave the AOL logo arms and legs and stuff and just copies and pastes that into his strip.
It is probable that, should the original author of the copied logos go to court, he would win a copyright suit against the author of the political cartoon. In the same vein, someone who wanted to criticize the current administration would *likely* not be successful (insert standard IANAL disclaimer here) in court if they just took some random song and changed the words.
In order to be protected from copyright infringement, the song needs to be part of what the satire is about. In Jib-Jab's case, I think one of their defenses was that this was the case, and they were doing something with the song's message of national unity.
Parody and satire do enjoy much larger protections than most speech, but it is not a blank check to do whatever you want to violate copyright.
While I can't argue that this is desirable... It IS intentional. (And not a "uh, let's call this bug a feature" thing.)
The goal of Word's HTML export is twofold: 1) Make something that can be displayed in a web browser (read: IE) 2) Make something that can be imported back to Word to get the exact same document you started with.
If Word went through and sanitized the HTML to make it "real" HTML, it'd lose features Word has and HTML doesn't. So that the HTML document looks exactly like your Word document is the point.
I've had sentences (can't reconstruct any under Word 2000) where it offered a suggestion. Then, if you took the suggestion, still said it was wrong and offered you the original as a suggestion. Then, if you took that suggestion, said it was wrong and offered the second sentence as a suggestion. Then...
'cause you can get a 200 gig external drive for $125 on Pricewatch?
Not saying that the iPod is a bad option, but really, if you're just looking for a storage device and not an MP3 player, it is probably not the way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, how did I type that? I guess my lack of sleep has caught up to me more than I thought...
Because it has to be counting in a repeatable, secure, verifyable, anonymouse, and as accurate as possible manner?
I would have several problems with any proposed replacement with the current system with one similar to the CAP.
First: While I do agree that a moral system largely based on the Bible is probably as good as any, I am very concerned with the homosexuality part of the 'sex/homosexuality' category, as well as essentially the entire 'offense to God' category. If such a system were to be used to restrict entry to movies, those objections would, I feel, have to be taken away.
Second: I suggest an alternate method for taking into account the length of the movie. Rather than the influence density thing they are doing, I would make the number of starting points (100) variable in direct proportion to the length. A 2 hr movie would get, say, 200 points, while a 1 hour movie would get 100. When giving the ratings, give fractions: 135/146 points, and maybe the percent (though people can calculate that on their own).
Third: I'm not sure I like how they don't take into account justification. While justification obviously shouldn't absolve a movie from losing points, somehow a shooting in self defense seems less wrong than a cold blooded murder, even if they are graphically the same. (Such grading would be allowed under their rules, but it sounds like that is not the intent of the 1-3 point thing.)
Fourth: This much -- "It's up to parents to decide what they consider to be "PG" or "R" by this system." -- of your post would have to be wrong if the CAP would be used to restrict entrance as an "R" rating is now. (Poor as it usually is enforced...) There would have to be some sort of cutoff.
I would put to you that in order to put the CAP into use as described in my fourth point there would need to be cutoffs by category rather than overall. That is, "no category gets below 60 points" rather than "the average is not below 60 points", because currently one category alone would very often drive a movie up a rating or two.
But this has other problems, for instance if a movie is just below the cutoff for one category and exemplary in all the others. There should be a separate rule for that. Sorta like the MPAA rule that using "fuck" twice will automatically drive up the rating to an R, unless the people feel that rating is very unduely deserved, in which case they can reduce it to PG-13. ("Quiz Show" has it twice -- the second time while playing a recording of the first use. The Right Stuff has several occurances of "fuckin' a", and it's even PG.)
Fifth: I think the flexibility of the rating system in use now is an advantage. It allows people to take into account things as justification (for instance, a movie where a couple shootings lead to a trial that result in the killers being found guilty should probably be given more leniency than just some gangster movie) and other circumstances.
Sixth: There arise all sorts of paradoxes. For instance: is one occurance of full frontal nudity (probably a 3 point violation) worse than three occurances of, say, two people kissing (maybe a 1 point violation)? I would say so... there are people who quite reasonably would not object to the latter but would to the former. Yet the rating system would treat each equally. The current system would almost certainly not.
Anyway, this post got a lot longer than I expected... I just have given movie ratings some thought in the past and got a bit carried away with myself. I DO think that separate categories like the CAP has would be extremely helpful for parents trying to decide if a movie is suitable or not, but I don't think a point based approach such as the CAP is the way to go. I think the categories would best be decided as the overall rating is now, subjectively.
(I also think there should be a new rating -- coincidentally I've always talked about it as an actual 'R-13' rating, though I think a better cutoff might be 14 or even 15 -- that is still a restricted rating, that is the number isn't just a cautionary age but is actually a mandatory (haha) cutoff. I've seen plenty of movies where I looked and said to myself 'this really dosn't deserve to be rated R; people younger than 17 should certainly be fine to see this' but also thought that because the next rating down is unrestricted, it was really the only option.)
We're raised on music, movies, and games only to learn that we have to pay a tithe to revisit our childhood. There's no reason we should stand for that. 5-10 years is more than sufficient time to ensure that an investor/artist is compensated. Until congress stops selling out the average american to corporations, there's no reason the average american should respect the acts of congress.
While I agree that the extensions from the Berne convention on are utterly stupid, I do think it's quite reasonable to grant a copyright for the life of the author. For corporate works, maybe 50 years.
Thus I have even no ethical, moral problem with companies trying to enforce copyrights within such terms. As that almost certainly constitutes almost everything that's pirated, I can't blame them.
Which emphasizes the point that the law is a sham.
/. attitude is lose lose for the labels... if they try to protect their interests through legal means, the consensus here seems to be that they are doing something they shouldn't, copyright is bad, etc. If they introduce a technical means to try to prevent copying, the consensus seems to be that they are doing something that they shouldn't, they are stopping fair use, etc. I've got news... IT CAN'T BE BOTH WAYS. Either the media can be easily copied, in which case they need to protect their interests through legal measures, or it can't, in which case they are protecting it through both.
No, the law can't pick favorites, or it would be even less fair. No authority can have a say on what is absolutely right and what isn't, especially since those very definitions change depending on who you talk to. The next best thing is to treat everyone equally.
You don't get a break if you murder a notorious criminal. Jack Ruby was still sentenced to death* for murder, despite his target being Lee Harvey Oswald.
Copyright infringement committed against an unethical conglomerate is no less of an offense than commiting it against a garage band. And rightly so.
*It was overturned and the case was remanded for a new trial, but Ruby died of disease before it could take place. Nevertheless, my point stands.
Which further illustrates that only people who already have huge hoardes of available funding can afford to enforce or benefit from a contract in today's America.
Uh... no. I'd say it illustrates the exact OPPOSITE. If you were required to have someone follow the person around to ensure compliance, THEN only the companies with "huge hoardes of funding" would be able to enforce contracts.
How about the industry takes responsibility for its own profits?
I agree. And as people who commit copyright infringement are arguably hurting their profits (and at least that's how they see it), that is exactly what they are doing.
Prime example: genetically engineered crops. The major producers didn't introduce the engineered crops until they could engineer seed which produced sterile plants. Why? Because they recognized that no one will continue to buy engineered seed if they can pull the seed from their own crops. Their product also is EASILY COPIED. Surely the agri industry could have lobbied for political maneuvers and federal oversight. The DNA testing is quite simple to determine the strain of grain. Why didn't the agri industry go for the same policies as the media industry? I'll answer that: Because the agri industry rightly saw that there was no benefit in making criminals out of farmers doing what farmers do.
And because it was a hell of a lot easier to make a plant that was sterile than it is to make a copy protection algorithm that isn't cracked.
Also, look at when companies try to introduce measures to hurt copying. People complain by the bushels here! Sure, many are complaining at the DMCA's making the circumvention of those measures illegal, but many also are complaining about the introduction of the measures themselves.
It seems like the prevailing
That's a silly pot shot. A normal citizen may get busted for trying to bribe an agent or police officer but large corporations have figured out the legal loopholes in bribes ages ago. Once again we illustrate that the system is a sham set up to favor those who already have a financial advantage.
I'll agree... it's a problem. However, what's the alternative? Make it completely legal? That's even worse. And it's not as if a private individual CAN'T do anything.
They're not exercising rights. They're deliberately ignoring the nature of their product. See the example of the agri industry.
Yeah, after all, intellectual property rights aren't written into the Constitution... </sarcasm>
Don't even start. I've rebuilt dozens of computers a
I would have sympathy if these were private independent artists we're talking about. But it's not. The legal owner is now a big media conglomerate once the artist sells the rights. That big media conglomerate is more than capable of the market research to figure out what a fair and profitable price for a CD is. If they don't know the fair worth of their own product, given considerations of how that product can and will be sued, then maybe they just suck as businessmen? That's hardly the consumers' fault. ...none of which actually has any bearing on the matter. Fortunately, the law doesn't cater much to what people's sympathies are.
/. post a poll about copyright. Maybe:
I can't realistically demand that agreement because I'm intelligent and realize that I can't stand over his shoulder 24/7 to see what he does with the papers that I sold to him.
What? That's a asinine argument. People request terms in contracts that they can't personally verify are being followed ALL THE TIME. When someone signs an NDA, the other doesn't assign them a monitor to make sure that they don't disclose the information they aren't allowed to. Does this make NDAs any less valid? No! Does it make it unreasonable for someone to request another person to sign an NDA? No!
That's what RESPONSIBILITY is for. You trust that the person that you're signing the contract won't violate it. That person then has a legal obligation to not violate it. If he does, you can sue them for breach of contract.
Why are music conglomerates allowed to play dumb just to stage a legal debacle?
How is the media playing dumb by exercising their rights?
There is no sense in raiding the homes of private citizens. These people are not terrorists. For the greatest part their not even violent.
Oh, goody. Next you'll be saying that people who commit bribery shouldn't be arrested, because the people who commit are neither terrorists nor violent. Or people who give false information to the police. They aren't violent or terrorists. Nor are minors who carry fake IDs. Or convienience store clerks who sell tobacco to minors. There's a TON of non-violent crimes, but that doesn't mean that they aren't wrong. People are still wronged by most of them, and have the right to try to mitigate that as much as possible.
When asked the question people have been trained to rattle off the rote answer of,"Of course it's stealing" and then everyone goes home and does the same thing.
Oh, so since they disagree with you, it's just because they've been "trained"? What if I were to say that people have been trained to rattle off the rote answer of, 'of course theft is wrong', or 'of course murder is wrong'? What would you say to that? You'd probably think I was nuts, wouldn't you, thinking that those aren't, in and of themselves, evil?
Well, I think that people have the right, as enumerated in our Constitution (implicitly by the granting of power to create such a right), of being able to prevent people from profiting off of the hard work of themselves if they so choose. This isn't 'by rote' or anything, at least any more than 'murder is wrong' is instilled in me by rote.
I would like to see
What should be the proper length for a copyright:
-Information should be free... no copyrights
-1-10 years
-10-20 years
-20-30 years
-30-50 years
-50-100 years
-100+ years
-Life
-Life + (1-50 years)
-Life + (over 50 years)
I just made up those numbers. But a search for polls with the word 'copyright' turned up nothing.
Anyway, my guess is that only a pretty small number of people (I would guess under 10%) would say there should be no copyright.
I don't think they're criminals and I don't think they're infringing.
/. is tilted much more to a "free information" point of view. And I don't even think that there is more than a pretty small minority of people on /. that would support the complete abolishment of intellectual property.
Um, they are distributing copyrighted works without the owner's permission... how is that not infringing?
And done enough, it becomes a criminal offense.
If I sell the secret of nuclear fusion to you for $5 then it's my loss if I was stupid enough to sell it to you for $5. If I demand $500 then you and five friends chip in and I still think it's my loss for being stupid enough to give it away for $500. There's no doubt the amount of money that's poured into marketing by the big media corporations. Why should they be allowed to plead ignorance?
Um, because this is totally different. The record companies wouldn't have a problem (okay, they would, but they would have no recourse at all) if friends pass CDs around amongst themselves. BUT, if all five can listen to it at any time they wish, and all at once even, then it becomes a problem if they only bought one CD.
Back to your "analogy". It would be a different matter if when you had sold the secrets to the person you did for $500 you had done it with the mutual agreement that if he were to pass on the secrets to others, he must cease using it. If he then passed on the secret to his other friends and continued to use it himself, you would (I presume) be pretty annoyed. And you'd have a fine case for breach of contract.
The only difference between that example and that of copyright infringement is that in the latter, the conditions of the "agreement" are stipulated by law instead of a contract.
There is no need to criminalize otherwise boring citizens.
Okay, this I have a problem with. The RIAA IS NOT criminalizing anyone. The RIAA isn't entrapping anyone into copyright infringement, the RIAA isn't putting anyone under duress. It is a perfectly free choice.
That's silly. The concept of theft is as ingrained in humans as a child looking guilty for stealing a cookie. The very fact that people's consciences are fuzzy on the concept of "intellectual property" should be our first sign that there's really no wrongdoing here.
I have a suspicion that in the general population you won't find much of a fuzziness, and that
Where the hell did you get that idea?
I'm not the poster you're responding to, but there's such a thing as PRIORITIES.
Yes, when there's a murder, you put more effort into solving it than you do investigating an allegation of speeding.
BUT, at the same time, you don't ignore speeders and let people drive as fast as they want, unchecked...
Stop making excuses for what is obviously wrong.
It sounds like that's excatly what YOU are doing... arguing that two wrongs make a right.
When a person buys a CD they accept, knowingly or unknowingly, certain terms of the license agreement which dictate their use of the product. If, however, you receive an mp3 file from someone you are bound by no such licensing agreements.
My first objection... there's no license agreement. All restrictions are from copyright law, which everyone is bound by regardless of if they agree. (Provided they are in the US and don't have permission of the copyright holder.)
The people operating the fileservers are never actively aware of any legal strings on the files which traverse their networks. If they were then ISPs might be liable as well for allowing the files to traverse their connections.
Ah, but the people were almost certainly actually sharing files. You had to have at least 100 GB shared in order to join the network. They were, from what it sounds like in the article, actually participating in the sharing.
The 9th circuit court just essentially gave common carrier status to P2P networks, so unless the people involved here are in a different district and think that the ruling won't stick, they must have been participating.
If they feel that the consumer, for once, is getting the best of them then they have the perfect ability to raise the price without making criminals of otherwise boring citizens.
On the other hand, why should a bunch of criminals who are infringing their copyright be able to dictate their policy?
I also feel that holding people legally liable to a document which is never read is fundamentally flawed. It is not a secret. It is public knowledge that no one reads the licensing agreements.
Again, CDs, DVDs, etc. don't have license agreements. Only computer software. (So far anyway.) The only document that we hold them to in this case without reading is Title 17 in the US Code. There's nothing more hidden about this than, say, someone robbing someone and saying "I haven't read the statute prohibiting robbery".
To be clear, I hate the RIAA and labels as much as the next guy. However, I certainly cannot blame any copyright holder from trying to exercise their rights. If they feel that piracy is the problem and the best way to combat it is as they are, that is their choice and I can't really take fault with it. (I do take fault with them demanding ISPs to turn over names of offenders without a warrant.)
Two wrongs (wonderful behavior by RIAA, and copyright infringement) don't make a right.
Well, it's not exactly an analogous case since Sony would still be paying for materials. You'd have to provide all the materials necessary to produce the TV and just have your buddy run them through the machines.
Heh, I understand... I do the same thing.
;-) Do a find on warrant or something. It can save a lot of embarrassment later.
But one piece of advice... check to be sure you're right before you criticize.
(Sorta like how you should quadruple check spelling and grammar flames to be sure that you didn't make one yourself...)
So you're saying that the establishment of the DOJ is unconstitutional?
(BTW, you're looking for amendments 9 and 10, not articles 9 and 10, which don't exist.)
When someone walks into a record store and steals a few albums they have actually caused a loss to the record store.
What if no one would have bought those records anyway?
Same argument that is used to "support" file sharing. It still applies, though is admittedly a lot harder to stomach because it's much less likely to be the case.
I'm sorry, but that is a point I cannot ignore, seeing as it was my entire point.
I wasn't sure if that was your point or not. I took the position that it might not be, because otherwise you would, IMHO, be arguing a technicality. (In an actual courtroom, of course, it wouldn't be, but in terms of this discussion as to the responsibility of the police, I think it is. The point of the post you were replying to was, I think, that police shouldn't shun the "smaller" crimes entirely to concentrate on the bigger ones. It would be simple to replace "burgled your house" with an equivalent federal offense and restore the point.)
Actually, they don't. You'll find the Justice Department itself backing this up if you look up their response to the charge that they were selectively enforcing the law and "picking" on Martha Stewart. All prosecution is discretionary. The system is intentionally structured this way to promote justice over law.
Okay, however, I think that it should usually be presumed that they are the same unless you can demonstrate extenuating circumstances. I can't think of many good excuses for distributing copyrighted music in the volume that these people were, so the presumption stands.
(The exception to the above is if the law itself is unjust, in which case it should be prosecuted for nobody.)
In most cases if your house is burgled the police will take a report and that will be the end of the matter. They will not even make a cursory attempt to "solve the crime."
And this is an utter shame and travesty.
The law provides no protection from thieves and intruders. It provides prosecution after the fact. There is considerable question as to whether it even provides a deterence.
I have an EXTREMELY hard time believeing that it wouldn't provide a deterrance. And at any rate, it definitely does lock up many people who are dangerous. Think of all the offenders who are in and out of jail because they never stop offending. Now think of how many more offenses they would be able to commit if they weren't locked up.
There isn't enough wealth in the known universe to provide sufficient manpower to proactively detect, investigate and prosecute every crime, nor is there sufficient manpower.
That doesn't mean that one shouldn't strive to do the very best that you can, or ignore crimes, or make an arrest when it's handed to you.
No where (that I saw) was there mention of 1) a warrant
Um... "Among the files offered on the network were the movies 'Kill Bill,' 'Lord of the Rings -- The Two Towers,' and 'The Last Samurai,' according to an affidavit filed in connection with one of the search warrants."
2) a crime being committed (just vague inuendo on this one)
How is "U.S. agents have raided the homes of five people who allegedly traded hundreds of thousands of songs, movies and other copyrighted material over the Internet" vague innuendo?
3) an investigation.
So that affidavit just materialized, and the police just happened to randomly pick this network? Wow, must be the DOJ's lucky day.
Mere distribution is not sufficient.
It's also not necessary to show to get a warrant. They can come up with evidence of that from the seized evidence, depositions, court proceedings, etc.
Actually, many jurisdictions, under the leadership of the model penal code, have eliminated the separate offenses of lacreny, embezzlement, theft by fraud, unlawful posession, etc. and incorporated them all into an offense called... wait for it... theft.
In fact, the MPC even has a section explicitly stating that all the crimes are now called theft. It probably reads word for word (this is from the PA statutes, much of which is word for word identical to the MPC):
"Conduct denominated theft in this chapter constitutes a single offense. An accusation of theft may be supported by evidence that it was committed in any manner that would be theft under this chapter, notwithstanding the specification of a different manner in the complaint or indictment, subject only to the power of the court to ensure fair trial by granting a continuance or other appropriate relief where the conduct of the defense would be prejudiced by lack of fair notice or by surprise."
Excuse me, but how was this "pissing all over" the Constitution?
I seem to remember that Art. I, Sec. 8 gives congress the power to create laws to protect the IP rights of authors.
As for taking seizing the property, get a clue. This is *evidence*. Police have been able, with the proper warrants, to seize evidence since the nation's founding. If they don't give it back or bring charges (or negotiate a deal) within a reasonable time, then you have a legitimate complaint. However, nothing in this act is, in and of itself, unconstitutional or even, I would go so far as to say, wrong.
And it would be right and proper for them to do so.
Ignoring for the moment the fact that the crime wouldn't be a federal offense, this is crap. They have an OBLIGATION to enforce the laws that protect you and your property from thieves and intruders.
The police aren't there to say "oh, someone broke the law... eh, so what." They are there to say "oh, someone broke the law... let's go get that motherfucker." Doesn't matter what the crime is.
For the police to not enforce a law is to defy the legislature's (and by proxy somewhat the people's) wishes with regards to what is acceptable conduct.
If the police don't have the manpower to do this, it's time to increase their budget so they can. (Or cut down on the number of crimes, but that's a qualitatively different problem.)
What's the DOJ supposed to do? Sit around and not enforce federal law?
Not enforcing laws causes all sorts of problems.
Copyright infringement that is either for financial gain or in excess of $1000 in a 180 day period moves from a civil realm to a federal crime. 17 U.S.C. 506
Here's what I thought was a good description of what you're talking about, stolen from a post at User Friendly's site:
Trademark law has protections against many unauthorized uses of company logos. However, authors are free to use them when reviewing the company, in satire about the company, etc. So if a political cartoonist were to draw a cartoon criticizing a company, they could use that company's logo in the strip. Say it's a fairly complicated strip with the logos having legs and running around and doing other things that wouldn't be easy to draw.
The author thinks "hey, I don't feel like drawing this out" so goes and finds the work someone else did where they gave the AOL logo arms and legs and stuff and just copies and pastes that into his strip.
It is probable that, should the original author of the copied logos go to court, he would win a copyright suit against the author of the political cartoon. In the same vein, someone who wanted to criticize the current administration would *likely* not be successful (insert standard IANAL disclaimer here) in court if they just took some random song and changed the words.
In order to be protected from copyright infringement, the song needs to be part of what the satire is about. In Jib-Jab's case, I think one of their defenses was that this was the case, and they were doing something with the song's message of national unity.
Parody and satire do enjoy much larger protections than most speech, but it is not a blank check to do whatever you want to violate copyright.
While I can't argue that this is desirable... It IS intentional. (And not a "uh, let's call this bug a feature" thing.)
The goal of Word's HTML export is twofold:
1) Make something that can be displayed in a web browser (read: IE)
2) Make something that can be imported back to Word to get the exact same document you started with.
If Word went through and sanitized the HTML to make it "real" HTML, it'd lose features Word has and HTML doesn't. So that the HTML document looks exactly like your Word document is the point.
I've had sentences (can't reconstruct any under Word 2000) where it offered a suggestion. Then, if you took the suggestion, still said it was wrong and offered you the original as a suggestion. Then, if you took that suggestion, said it was wrong and offered the second sentence as a suggestion. Then...
'cause you can get a 200 gig external drive for $125 on Pricewatch?
Not saying that the iPod is a bad option, but really, if you're just looking for a storage device and not an MP3 player, it is probably not the way to go.