Well, if Comcast customers are upset enough with their service, they have two options: 1) cancel all service or 2) move to a TWC area.
And after the merger, replace option 2 with "move to a Charter area". If you're moving just to get a certain brand of cable TV, then it's just as reasonable to move to a Charter area as a TW area.
Now, if there were truly only one cable company covering the entire US, that would be a good market force for the creation of more cable companies to compete directly. Or you could also get Dish/Direct/etc if you didn't want to limit "competition" for television services to wired providers.
That still requires someone with the ability to pay for whatever you plan to offer to create that job.
The employee is paid by the employer. I.e., the "company".
No customer, no job creation.
So there were people buying Flip Jacks before they existed? There were no customers for Flip Jacks before the company that designed them paid people to design and produce some that they could then market (another job, marketing them) and then eventually sell.
And had there been people waiting to buy Flip Jacks but Orgreenic decided not to design and market and sell them, there would be no jobs designing, marketing, making, or selling them.
Jobs without demand. Demand without jobs. Neither could be true if you were right. If you were right, then all it would take to have jobs is a demand for jobs. That is so obviously not the way the world works that it is hard to imagine why you keep saying it.
The fact is, most companies start up with zero customers. It really is hard to buy something from a company that doesn't exist. The next time you manage to do it, let us know. I suppose that once in a blue moon someone finds a guy on the street and says "I am giving you $10,000 to create a company to build me a widget", but it is uncommon enough to be statistically and economically irrelevant. I know I'd never buy widgets that way -- I'd buy them from an established company that has already created the jobs necessary to make and sell widgets. My demand comes long after the jobs exist, which makes it very very hard to claim that my demand created those jobs.
The job is still there, they are just using robots to perform that job.
Yes, the issue really is the useless definition of "job" that is being used here.
No, the job does not exist, but the task does. A "job" means that someone is being employed, paid for his labor. A "task" is something that an employee or someone else has to do as part of his "job".
The economy is not measured by "tasks", it is measured by the number of people who have and do not have employment and are or are not getting paychecks. Putting someone in your kind of "job" but not paying them anything does not help the economy, yet the "job" exists. Well, yes, it does help the economy -- it helps the plantation owners who get the benefit of having the slaves, but the slaves don't make out too well.
A company that eliminates half its labor force truly has halved the number of jobs it provides even if all the same tasks are now being done by half the number of people. Try offering someone who has no job one of your "jobs" that pays nothing and see if he thinks you're really offering him a job. (Your robot that you say has a job isn't getting paid, so "pay" is irrelevant to "job".)
Of course, this also demonstrates that it is no demand that creates those "jobs", because those "jobs" do not exist (there are no tasks to be performed) for a company that doesn't exist. If the auto manufacturer closes its doors, the tasks of building the cars they used to build no longer exist. The robots don't have anything to do anymore. Even using the useless "jobs" definition it is still companies that create the jobs.
Yes, I think I said that the demand is often why companies are created -- to take advantage of the profit from demand. But I also pointed out that simply having demand does not create jobs, it takes a company to create those jobs before they can actually exist.
I'm an investor/entrepreneur. Today, I see a demand for a certain product. Tomorrow I create a company to fill that demand. Today, there are no jobs created by that demand. Tomorrow I have a company that hires people. Those jobs did not exist today. They do tomorrow. Same demand, different job count.
Then the day after tomorrow my money runs out and I file for bankruptcy. The company goes away. The jobs go away. The demand hasn't changed. Same demand, different job count.
A different investor has a bucket of money. He predicts a demand for some neat new thing. He creates a company, and the jobs that go with it, to develop that neat thing. There is no actual demand, only an idea. Who do you imagine was lining up for a Flip Jack before Orgreenic developed and marketed it? Nobody. But the jobs that were created in devel and marketing still existed. No demand and yet there were jobs. All it took was someone with money thinking he'd be able to create demand after the jobs were created to make the product.
I'm still waiting to hear just who pays the people to do a job if the company that hires them doesn't exist. If you look at everything already said, you might notice that "demand" was not the common element in differentiating between "jobs" and "no jobs", it was the company that hired the folks and created the jobs.
No need to supply, no job creation.
And no desire to meet the demand, no job creation. It is the desire to meet the demand that the corporations provide, and in doing so the corporations create the jobs. Unless your definition of "jobs" is actually "a reason or desire to work" and not "a place to work and a paycheck for doing so". If that's the problem, then you need a better dictionary. "A reason or desire to work" is a pretty poor definition of "job", and a pretty poor indicator of the health of an economy. That kind of definition actually means an economy with a 50% unemployment rate isn't really in bad shape at all just as long as those 50% want to work.
The idea that demand creates jobs would mean that there should be zero unemployment. Every job seeker is a demand; the jobs are created by the demand, so every seeker should thus have a job. No, "putting in resumes" isn't a job.
As soon as a company actually creates a job, we can talk.
Apparently not, since all you want to do is insult.
The cynic in me would just say that if corporations are treated like people, why not tax them like people.
The people who make up those corporations, which is the basis for allowing the people who make up corporations to continue to have rights, already pay taxes.
Yes, I pay taxes too. I pay my share of the sewage pipes, the electrical lines, the roads. Why shouldn't a company pay their share, too?
The people who make up the corporation already pay the same taxes you do for sewage pipes, etc. Why should there be a second charge for the same thing? If you work, then both you and your employer are paying for the sewage pipes, etc.
It seems odd that in the same venue where Comcast is routinely thrashed for trying to charge both the Comcast customer and the streaming data provider for data packets, that you'd try to argue that it's ok for the government to charge both the users of sewage pipes and corporations who employ the users for the same sewage pipes.
If I'm a taxpayer and I've paid for my part of the infrastructure through those taxes, why should it matter if I put a load into the pipes at my house or where I work? Why should my employer be charged for something I've already paid for? Or in the other view, why should the government charge me for something the government is also charging my employer for?
Companies do not create jobs, demand for goods creates jobs,
Demand creates opportunities for companies to profit, who then create the jobs while making the product in demand. It is trivial to have demand without jobs. Ten million people could line up for a product tomorrow, and if the company that makes that product decides that the increased prices and profits from high demand were better than increased sales of lower priced products then there will be no new jobs. E.g., the demand for Apple Dev tickets is outrageous, yet this doesn't create more jobs. Or more Jobs.
And you really should recognize that companies often create both the demand and the jobs. Who really needs a Flip Jack or Shamwow or Ronco Pocket Fisherman? Those companies created the demand through advertising, and the jobs for the people that made those products.
If that company was not there the job would still be there.
So you're saying that if all the companies magically went away tomorrow that all the jobs would still be there? Funny, we've seen lots of companies go bankrupt and the jobs went away with them. Who pays the salaries for the people who hold the jobs when there is no company? A job with no pay and noplace to perform it is hardly a job worth having, is it?
That is a myth created by the right.
That the left wants to call the truth a "myth" speaks volumes about the quality of the argument from the left. Perhaps more economic "truth" from the left, such as counting the people who have simply given up looking for work as no longer unemployed, would help the economy even more, huh? Oh, wait, that's right. The demand for jobs has, all by itself, created those jobs, since it is demand by itself that creates jobs. That's the left's version of the job market. Works great, huh? Try telling an unemployed guy that he's got a job because he demands one...
(for a case where mobile phone companies were not counting their own video streaming apps against transfer caps, but were counting apps like Netflix).
And the winner when the government forces the telecom company to start counting both Netflix and their own video streaming in the user's data cap is... the telecom company.
Oh, you thought the telecom company would simply lift all caps to solve this problem?
And if Comcast is allowed to expand it's empire, that will only ensure that US consumers have even less options in the future (for cable providers anyway).
That's not true. That's the point of the statement that Comcast and Time Warner don't compete against each other in any markets. If you live in a Comcast service area, you get to choose Comcast for wired television service. If you live in a TW area, you get to choose TW. One choice each. When TW and C merge, you still get one choice in either area -- ComTime. One equals one.
What this allegedly damning bit of evidence does NOT say, however, is that Comcast and TimeWarner have no competition at all. They just don't compete against each other. If you don't like Comcast now, you can choose Dish, DirecTV, etc. If you don't like CTW then, you still get to choose Dish, DirecTV, etc. Same choices among non-wireline services, not less.
You can't lose a customer if you're the only viable game in town.
That's already the status quo. A merger doesn't change that. They cannot today lose customers to each other, and after a merger they still will not be able to lose customers to "each other" (which would actually be "themselves" if I wanted to abandon the parallel construction of that sentence.)
Now, what a merger would do is create a huge monolithic customer for content services. If CTW decides to tell a content provider that they have to lower rates if they want to be seen, the provider has much more interest in obeying. Today, if Comcast says "jump" and the provider doesn't, the provider loses 40% of its eyes. In a CTW world, they'd lose 80% of them (assuming Dish, DirecTV, etc have 20% of the market.)
So "loss of competition" is a losing argument against the merger. One choice before, one choice after. It doesn't matter that it's the same company after and two before since you cannot use the fact it was two to actually make a different choice. Unless, of course, you think moving is a reasonable way to increase your cable television choices. Even then, you can still move to a Charter service area.
Ponder for a moment how much you'd pay to be protected from looting, to have your workforce protected from being mugged, to create and maintain an infrastructure so you have gas, water, power and transportation,...
Except that those employees ALSO pay taxes to create and maintain the same infrastructure so they get gas, water, power, and transportation. In fact, because those employees are employed and earning income they pay MORE than people who are unemployed.
So the government is double dipping here. Tax the company who creates the jobs that allow the people to pay more in taxes, and tax the people who exchange their time and labor for money.
The real issue is not whether there should be corporate taxes, but whether a corporate tax rate of 25% is reasonable when a company earns that money someplace else. Great Britain has no business taxing multinationals for money earned abroad, and even less business threatening them with an exorbitant penalty when they don't free pay up on those external profits.
As for the entire people, not quite. Colonial militias weren't that inclusive.
The right to vote belongs to every citizen (barring some limited exclusions). The fact that every citizen doesn't vote (or didn't belong to a militia) doesn't mean they don't have the right to vote.
You truly are arguing that the Bill of Rights should be called the Bill of Privileges. If all a government has to do to (Constitutionally) confiscate the weapons of the citizens is declare that any existing militias aren't "well regulated" and thus the "right" to keep and bear arms doesn't apply to anyone, then the "right" to keep and bear arms truly is a privilege.
Exactly! The right was granted because they believed in militias.
1. Rights cannot be granted by governments, they exist and are recognized as such. Even our government has admitted that rights are granted by the creator and not by government itself. Rights which required a government to grant are not rights, they are privileges. "The Bill of Privileges" just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
2. ONE REASON is not "the only reason". Militias may have been one reason, which is why it merited a subordinate clause but not a defining clause. If you believe that militia membership as the only reason the privilege of owning a gun was important, then you're ignoring the entire concept of armed rebellion from corrupt government -- something the founders were VERY familiar with. You're also ignoring the situations that a large part of the populace were faced with during those times, and for many years following them. "Yeah, ok settlers, you can live out there in the boonies and we'll even give you land if you build and live on it, but no, you may not have a gun to protect yourself from wild animals or to hunt for food. That's not necessary. Only those who are members of militias can have guns..."
Whether or not some of the founders "believed" in militias or not is irrelevant at this point. Their action was to recognize the right to keep and bear arms without any requirement that they be kept and born for use in a militia. The founders were not illiterate cavemen grunting and scratching all day. Had the intent been that the only reason anyone had a right to keep and bear arms been so they could be active members of militias, the founders could have written that clearly. "Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the members of well regulated militias to keep and hear arms." They chose not to. That's the intent.
If you disagree with item 1, then please don't ever talk about "human" or "civil" rights that other governments haven't granted to their citizens. It is clear that you think that rights are granted, and if a citizenry has a government that hasn't granted them a right, well then, that's an issue between those citizens and their government, not a matter for outsiders to pronounce "those people are denied their rights!".
They did say it explicitly. Multiple times both at the convention, before and after.
They were also probably just as explicit in ordering lunch, but none of the explicit lunch orders got written into the Constitution, nor should any of the lunch orders be considered to be limits on what the Constitution means. Oh, well, maybe the 2nd amendment truly does apply only to people who eat ham sandwiches for lunch and nobody else.
You are actually arguing against the entire theory of interpretation.
That may be. If "interpretation" means "every word ever spoken by anyone involved with creating a law must be included when interpreting every law", then gosh, I guess I am. If "interpretation" means "why did that particular author vote for or against a law", that's something else.
Dubya's been out of office for 6 years so stop bringing him up when people call out Obama.
If Hitler had won and a successor continued his work, would Hitler no longer to be to blame 6 years after the fact?
If Hitler had "won" (I assume you mean WWII) and a successor who promised "change you can believe in" and ran a campaign based on "no more Hitler" had replaced him, then no, Hitler would no longer be to blame for things the successor did or did not do during the following 6 years.
What do you think, "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" means?
It means that the founders included a subordinate clause giving just one of the reasons why this specific inalienable right was important to protect. It is not, as many people try to argue, a sole justification for a privilege.
Were the only reason to allow people to keep and bear arms so that "well regulated militias" could exist, then 1) it's not a right, it is a privilege, and 2) they'd have said that explicitly. Just what do you think "Bill of Rights" means? It isn't "List of Reasons Why The Government Will Grant Certain Privileges To The Citizens Thereof."
... and their intent is pretty clear as the documents show. Wording like, "If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army" note form not deploy.
I'm pretty sure that this "pretty clear" statement does not appear in the Constitution, and I know that it does not appear in the 2nd amendment. What one or two of the founders wrote elsewhere about why they supported the 2nd amendment, or why they think the 2nd amendment is good for the government and not just the citizenry, isn't binding on the rest of them, and it doesn't put limits on the clear language that was actually ratified.
Actually it would be a good idea if laws were only valid for a set period of time and then they need to undergo review.
Are you truly on the side of complete government inaction? Not that this is a bad thing, you should just be aware that you're promoting that with this opinion. The congress would be so swamped reviewing laws that they'd never be able to do anything else. That's certainly true if you "mean a serious review with a definite "why do we still need this law to exist" statement to it.""
it would also allow us to actually force our legislators to REMOVE laws from time to time
No, what it would probably result in is the same kind of legislating that we've seen recently: an omnibus review bill written by a staffer, that nobody has time to read but everyone will vote for anyway. You know, someone asks "but what's IN the bill", and the leadership says "you'll know after you vote on it."
And the point was more to the fact that, without records, I don't know what he owns or shares copyright over. So anything he wrote is abandoned.
Only if the copyright holder says so. If that's you and/or your sister, then fine, you can abandon both the material and the copyright there is no limit on who can republish the material. Your fear that it will be lost forever because it will forever be subject to copyright is not a problem.
And if it is you, if you never go after anyone who republishes the works, who cares if the copyright is still technically active?
I could spend time and money tracking them down,
Antecedent of "them" is? The actual copyright holder? Look at the notice. People who republish the material? If you don't care that they do, then why are you obsessing over who holds the copyright? If it's you and you don't care, are you going to sue? If it's not you you can't sue.
As has happened with games, someone sees someone else making money, and goes after them.
If you don't hold the copyright to something, you have no grounds to sue. And the copyright holder needs to know he is before he knows he has grounds to sue. Yeah, anyone can file suit for anything, I guess, but a valid suit requires standing.
People who didn't get clear title over something, and those sorts of things.
People who "didn't get clear title" aren't people who don't know they have a copyright, they are people who think they do. Your question about people who don't know they hold a copyright doesn't apply, so I guess the answer I gave wouldn't apply, either. "I think I hold the copyright" is a much different issue than "I don't know I hold a copyright."
If I saw something that sounded like his specialty making money, I'd look into it enough to figure out of my father was aware of it, just for general curiosity. And if he was, then I could start up trouble.
Someone in the same specialty making money would trigger your interest in protecting a copyright that you don't know you hold and are actively arguing should not exist because of the "old and abandoned" status of the work you're now protecting? That really does stretch meaning of "abandoned".
Of course you can start up trouble by filing specious and unfounded lawsuits. Does copyright really have anything to do with it? That's more an issue of tort reform and not copyright.
Not that I think that would ever happen, but that it could, so it discourages people from building on the works of others.
Republishing your father's books is not "building on the works of others", it is reproducing the works of others for profit. But even so, let's say someone does republish a book. How can they prevent legal issues? By contacting the copyright holder as listed in the copyright notice in the book they intend to duplicate, first step. If you say "sure, go ahead, I think it should be public domain anyway", why would they be discouraged? Yes, they may want it in writing, so?
Copyright does the opposite of its stated purpose, and since the stated purpose is clear in the Constitution, I believe that makes all copyright law in the USA unconstitutional.
Well, I can see how you think that when you have said that anything after Mickey Mouse has copyright forever. The law doesn't actually say that, so, I guess I'll agree that the law as YOU know it is unconstitutional but the law as it exists is not.
Now, a final question might be, if someone sees a book your father wrote and reads the copyright notice, but doesn't feel like going to the trouble of asking/finding the copyright holder to get permission to reprint it, then are they really that interested in reprinting it in the first place? I'd say "no". That, I fear, would be the real reason that those works disappear forever, not a copyright law that says the copyright on it expires no later than 2081, and can be dealt with by a simple approval otherwise.
You were so interested in proving every one of my statements wrong, you didn't address the point. Try again. Who holds the copyright of my father's writings?
I'm sorry, but when I started commenting on this I didn't know your father held any copyrights, so that could hardly be my point, now could it? I responded specifically to your statements about honoring copyright as it should be and then about how "old and abandoned" should be free. (I even AGREED with you, so yes, I deserve a long drawn-out argument about "old and abandoned" works being copyrighted for too long.) People who "honor copyright as it should be" by distributing the latest movies or TV shows aren't dealing with "old and abandoned", and nobody who argues that they're only breaking copyright laws because "the vendor won't sell it to me in the format I want" is coming even close to dealing with this "old and abandoned" issue.
If your argument is that "old and abandoned" works still have copyright thus all copyrights are invalid constitutionally, well, sorry, but that's just silly. The vast majority of copyrights are unregistered and expire (now) at "life+70", and if the material was produced prior to 1978 and hasn't been extended the material is already public domain. That's hardly "forever", and while it is perhaps longer than it should be, it is certainly not a reason to claim the system is unconstitutional.
Who holds the copyright of my father's writings?
I do believe if you read what I wrote you'll see I did answer that question, even though I certainly am not the right person to ask because I don't have any specifics. Here's the answers:
1. If your father's works were initially copyrighted prior to 1978, then NOBODY owns the copyright -- it's all public domain now. Remember -- 1978+28 = 2006. It's been public domain for at least 8 years. Was there an extension? I don't know -- ask the copyright office. Any extensions are not default, they must be requested.
2. If they were copyrighted after 1 Jan 1978, then someone holds the copyright until 70 years after he died. You didn't tell me when that was so I cannot answer with a specific date. Now, who holds that copyright? If you recall, I said that you, as the heir, probably do, or whoever the heir is. I said that all it would take is for you as the heir to put the material in public domain and the copyright would be ended and the books freely copyable.
So, you need to step up and accept the inheritance and solve the problem you complain of. In either case, those books are not "lost forever". The copyright will run out no later than, umm, 2014+70=2084, but it may have run out already, OR you (or the actual heirs) could decide to end it earlier.
Now, it is possible that your father assigned the copyright to someone else. You need to look in the books you fear are lost forever to see what the actual copyright statement says. Year and who -- two items that must be there. What do those copyright notices say?
Who can re-print them?
Sigh. For anything copyrighted prior to 1978, anyone can reprint them now. For anything after that, anyone who the copyright holder authorizes can reprint them, unless the copyright holder (the heirs) rescinds copyright and turns the material over to the public domain and then the answer is "anyone". If you want a specific answer by name, I'm sorry, I can't tell you who the heirs were, nor have you said a word about what the actual copyright notice in the material says. I have a list of who "anyone" is, but the margins are too limited to allow inclusion here.
If the "rightful" copyright owner doesn't know he is, how is that not abandonware?
If the copyright holder doesn't know he is, then who is going to file a lawsuit for violation of copyright law? Do you really imagine that any of the material involved in the KDC legal hassles is based on copyright holders who don't know they are? I do
Why would they make a profit when anyone who does a quick google for what they're selling would find it for half price or even less from someone else?
Because they get the money up front, that's how this sort of thing works, you are not very smart.
I don't know what kind of comic book fantasy world you live in, but nobody who sells stuff gets money "up front" when nobody is buying anything from them. If someone else can knock off the movie I produced with my own money and sell it for 1/10 the price, then I don't get anything "up front" but the fun of spending a lot of money for a movie I can't get any money back on.
Wow, you're staggeringly stupid. People aren't going to pay for movies up front when they have the option to pay for movies which have already been made,
I'm sorry, does this have anything to do with what I said? Your "copyright cartel" cannot stop me from making a movie or selling it. They can only be a "copyright cartel" for other people who have made movies, and it doesn't matter if the other movies are under copyright or not, they're still competition. In fact, if they are under copyright, and the copyright owner is restricting distribution, those other movies are LESS competition because they will cost more and be harder to buy.
because they are too stupid to realize that in the current system, they're paying for movies that they're not even watching.
Your statement makes zero sense and has no relevance to the argument. Your ad hominem is boring.
Someone has to be on the rolls. It could be someone who is dead, or is known to be out of town. They moved, perhaps. All you have to do is pretend to be them and bingo, you get to vote.
It isn't like without voter ID laws anyone can just walk up and say "I want to vote here".
Well, actually, yes they can. It's called a "provisional ballot" and it is federal law. It's meant to deal with the common situation where someone forgets their ID. It also covers mistakes in the voter list. The voter gets a ballot, but it isn't put in the box with all the rest. It's held until approved.
There is still voter registration that happens.
Yes, at some point in time, someone had to register. That happens once for each person. I registered here so long ago thatI don't remember when it was -- 15 years ago at least. If you think that my having to register would keep someone from using fake ID to keep voting my ballot after I die, you're looney. It's even easier here - all they have to do is forge my signature on the envelope the ballot is in. I have no doubt that there are dead people voting in Oregon, it is so easy.
And under "motor voter", it's getting easier to register, so even that small protection is being eroded.
Unless you know a specific voter and their polling place for each of those people you just picked up, you aren't going to get anywhere at the polling station.
Here's another bit of information you lack. Voter registration lists and whether or not you've voted are public record. That's how the political parties feed their robocall machines, for one thing.
The fact is that most of the voter fraud happens not at the polls but with absentee ballots. Of course the republicans don't want to touch those because they are used by old people and soldiers, which are their bread and butter.
No, they don't want to touch those because those are valid ballots cast by people who have the right to vote. But Democrats will happily attack both, especially after they are counted and it is known that by throwing them all out (even the Democrat votes) the Democrat will win instead of a Republican. That's the heart of many of the cases in Florida for Bush V. Gore. In one county, the Republican election official write the voter number (or some other similar thing) on the outgoing absentee requests so the voter didn't have to look it up; the Democrat did not. Gore lost, so the Democrat filed a lawsuit claiming that it was tampering with ballots to write the voter number on the application. In other words, the Democrat wanted to disenfranchise every absentee voter in that county because he wanted his guy to win.
So what if it happens with absentees, too? That's no excuse to take simple security measures to prevent it from happening with in-person voting.
I didn't say there wasn't. What I actually said was that I never hear anyone using "abandoned" as the excuse for skirting, or outright breaking, copyright law. Don't argue with me over things I didn't say.
And lots of books printed with a short run.
Books printed with a short run aren't the definition of "abandoned". Lots of things are produced "with a short run" and are hardly abandoned. The phrase is "limited edition".
But anything made after Mickey Mouse will be protected to the end of time.
I doubt that. Can you cite any law that says that?
There are books that will be lost because the runs were short, and you can't copy them. The author is dead, and often the people who inherited "other" from the estate don't even know they are a copyright holder of a book, let alone what to do with it.
You're getting closer to abandoned, but haven't quite reached it yet. Let's see, how do we handle this situation legally? Maybe you ASK the copyright holder if the book can be archived? You know who it is even if they themselves don't. Educate them.
Any copyrighted work of his is lost forever.
Here's what I see in the copyright law regarding length of copyrights. I'm going to paraphrase because it's full of legal twists, but the basics seem to be:
1. Copyright after 1978: life of author plus 70 years.
2. Before 1978 in initial copyright: 28 years from the initial copyright.
I'll not bother with "before 1978 already extended" or any of the optional extension mechanisms. I doubt your father had done that if it wasn't part of the estate papers. In either 1 or 2, the work is hardly "lost forever". All you have to do is not extend the copyright (and you seem unlikely to do that) and the copyright will expire. If there was a copyright, all you have to do as heir is release the material to the public domain. If it was initially copyright before 1978, it will have already become public domain! (1978+28=2006)
It will only be lost forever if someone throws up their hands and burns all his books as a protest to an incorrect belief that copyright lasts forever.
Now, your comment about "Mickey Mouse". I don't think anyone can use Mickey Mouse or any Disney property as an example of "abandoned".
You want old, but enforced like a Nazi?
I know I didn't say anything even close to that.
Try Happy Birthday...
If "Happy Birthday" is still in copyright, it is only because it has not been abandoned. Arguing that abandoned works should not be under copyright anymore (an idea with which I've already told you I agree) and then using an example that is so clearly not abandoned is simply ridiculous.
We switched to permanent absentee voting the moment they introduced electronic ballots in our county.
We're still using all-paper balloting and we've been "permanent absentee voting" for several years now. Welcome to Oregon, where elections run for two weeks or more, political robocalls happen at least twice a day for the entire time, and if you want to vote just go to the post office and look in the trashcan for a discarded ballot.
And meanwhile, states are pushing voter-ID laws to combat a problem of which there are only a handful of incidents in the past 12 years.
Yeah, the "empty the cemetery" voting drives that the Daley machine in Chicago used to run on election day just can't possibly happen anymore. Especially when undocumented aliens can be found for $5 a pop at the local Home Depot and it costs almost nothing to drive a busload of them around to the polling places.
Anyone who doesn't think it happens is naive, and anyone who thinks it shouldn't be necessary to prove you have the right to vote someplace is asking for unauthorized votes.
there will be little room for 2000-style "dimpled chad" and "interpreting the voter's intentions".
There should already be little room for this. "Voter demonstrates intentions by poking hole in piece of paper. No hole, no intention to vote." Very simple. The failed assumption is that every person who cast a ballot intended on voting for every position and if there wasn't a hole there was a mistake. People who had no intention of voting for any candidate got their vote counted anyway.
This voting system was approved by both parties prior to the election. It wasn't a surprise dropped out of Heaven on an unsuspecting public. The time to say "gee, it's too hard to poke a hole" was before the election, not after.
We shouldn't have to find an excuse for preventing that kind of nonsense. It should be SOP that people can refuse to vote for a particular office and have it honored. It should be SOP that those who followed the instructions get their votes counted and those who don't don't.
Who is being disingenuous here? Why would they make a profit when anyone who does a quick google for what they're selling would find it for half price or even less from someone else? Other people can sell for those prices because they didn't have the production costs -- it costs almost nothing to dupe a DVD, but it costs a lot of money to produce a good quality movie. Nobody who is smart enough to have a couple of million dollars to spend on producing a movie would be dumb enough to accept the nonsense that he'll make anything back on it if anyone who wants to can copy and distribute it for him for free. That's why it isn't a standard model for movie production, not any "copyright cartel" stopping him.
It's not about prevention. It's about not being able to compete with someone who is successfully gaming the system.
What competition? If you can make a quality movie under CC licensing, then what competition is there? Oh, yes, the competition from people who will copy your movie and sell it for you, keeping the profit instead of giving it back to you. But there's no competition from the "copyright cartel". They can't stop you from making your movie or distributing it. So what if they make other movies that compete for eyeballs with yours? You've made the movie, you're distributing it. It doesn't matter if they are CC or analy-restrictive licensed -- under either licensing scheme their movies will compete for sales with yours, so how it is licensed doesn't matter.
It's odd that you think that you as a producer of a CC movie would have competition enough to stop you from other movie producers, but that you wouldn't have significant direct and immediate competition from other people selling your movie for you. That's just, well, weird. We live in a world of Chinese knock-offs causing significant damage to US technology firms and yet you think allowing everyone to knock-off a major motion picture would not harm the original investors at all.
We are trying to honor copyright as conceived and written. Old and abandoned works are "free".
I have no argument with you when it comes to truly "old and abandoned" works where there is no possible way the original copyright holder could benefit from copyright protections. But
I don't believe that the latest episode of Dr. Who, or the finale to Breaking Bad, or most of what is pirated today, are "old and abandoned" in any sense of the word. I've yet to hear the excuse "the copyright holder isn't selling that movie made 40 years ago anymore, so I feel it's ok to pirate it". What I do hear is "the copyright holder doesn't want to sell that current content in my region, or in the format I want it in, so I feel it's ok to pirate it. I'd happily pay for it, but the seller doesn't want my money!"
I think it's a bit disingenuous to imply that the piracy issue is all about "old and abandoned works", and I don't think any of the case against KDC has anything to do with content that has been abandoned or is older than 20 years, much less old enough to be public domain under previous versions of the copyright law. I don't think the **AA has gone after anyone for pirating "It's A Wonderful Life" or "Zero Hour", but they seem to find a lot of targets for violations of modern, currently published work's copyright.
Judge Egan correctly wrote that all the IP addresses did was "identify specific computers used to access Dropbox" (actually, of course, computer IP addresses can change, and if the computer is behind a proxy server then it will be the proxy server's IP address that shows up in the log; but that's close enough, let's give it to him).
No, moron, let's not "give it to him", unless "it" refers to "a firm tongue lashing for getting it wrong wrong wrong." He's just created exactly the precedent that you don't want created: "the IP address identifies specific computers". It's not "close enough" when **AA claims it in court, it's not "close enough" when a judge says it regarding a FOIA case.
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Well, if Comcast customers are upset enough with their service, they have two options: 1) cancel all service or 2) move to a TWC area.
And after the merger, replace option 2 with "move to a Charter area". If you're moving just to get a certain brand of cable TV, then it's just as reasonable to move to a Charter area as a TW area.
Now, if there were truly only one cable company covering the entire US, that would be a good market force for the creation of more cable companies to compete directly. Or you could also get Dish/Direct/etc if you didn't want to limit "competition" for television services to wired providers.
That still requires someone with the ability to pay for whatever you plan to offer to create that job.
The employee is paid by the employer. I.e., the "company".
No customer, no job creation.
So there were people buying Flip Jacks before they existed? There were no customers for Flip Jacks before the company that designed them paid people to design and produce some that they could then market (another job, marketing them) and then eventually sell.
And had there been people waiting to buy Flip Jacks but Orgreenic decided not to design and market and sell them, there would be no jobs designing, marketing, making, or selling them.
Jobs without demand. Demand without jobs. Neither could be true if you were right. If you were right, then all it would take to have jobs is a demand for jobs. That is so obviously not the way the world works that it is hard to imagine why you keep saying it.
The fact is, most companies start up with zero customers. It really is hard to buy something from a company that doesn't exist. The next time you manage to do it, let us know. I suppose that once in a blue moon someone finds a guy on the street and says "I am giving you $10,000 to create a company to build me a widget", but it is uncommon enough to be statistically and economically irrelevant. I know I'd never buy widgets that way -- I'd buy them from an established company that has already created the jobs necessary to make and sell widgets. My demand comes long after the jobs exist, which makes it very very hard to claim that my demand created those jobs.
The job is still there, they are just using robots to perform that job.
Yes, the issue really is the useless definition of "job" that is being used here.
No, the job does not exist, but the task does. A "job" means that someone is being employed, paid for his labor. A "task" is something that an employee or someone else has to do as part of his "job".
The economy is not measured by "tasks", it is measured by the number of people who have and do not have employment and are or are not getting paychecks. Putting someone in your kind of "job" but not paying them anything does not help the economy, yet the "job" exists. Well, yes, it does help the economy -- it helps the plantation owners who get the benefit of having the slaves, but the slaves don't make out too well.
A company that eliminates half its labor force truly has halved the number of jobs it provides even if all the same tasks are now being done by half the number of people. Try offering someone who has no job one of your "jobs" that pays nothing and see if he thinks you're really offering him a job. (Your robot that you say has a job isn't getting paid, so "pay" is irrelevant to "job".)
Of course, this also demonstrates that it is no demand that creates those "jobs", because those "jobs" do not exist (there are no tasks to be performed) for a company that doesn't exist. If the auto manufacturer closes its doors, the tasks of building the cars they used to build no longer exist. The robots don't have anything to do anymore. Even using the useless "jobs" definition it is still companies that create the jobs.
But first of all you need demand.
Yes, I think I said that the demand is often why companies are created -- to take advantage of the profit from demand. But I also pointed out that simply having demand does not create jobs, it takes a company to create those jobs before they can actually exist.
I'm an investor/entrepreneur. Today, I see a demand for a certain product. Tomorrow I create a company to fill that demand. Today, there are no jobs created by that demand. Tomorrow I have a company that hires people. Those jobs did not exist today. They do tomorrow. Same demand, different job count.
Then the day after tomorrow my money runs out and I file for bankruptcy. The company goes away. The jobs go away. The demand hasn't changed. Same demand, different job count.
A different investor has a bucket of money. He predicts a demand for some neat new thing. He creates a company, and the jobs that go with it, to develop that neat thing. There is no actual demand, only an idea. Who do you imagine was lining up for a Flip Jack before Orgreenic developed and marketed it? Nobody. But the jobs that were created in devel and marketing still existed. No demand and yet there were jobs. All it took was someone with money thinking he'd be able to create demand after the jobs were created to make the product.
I'm still waiting to hear just who pays the people to do a job if the company that hires them doesn't exist. If you look at everything already said, you might notice that "demand" was not the common element in differentiating between "jobs" and "no jobs", it was the company that hired the folks and created the jobs.
No need to supply, no job creation.
And no desire to meet the demand, no job creation. It is the desire to meet the demand that the corporations provide, and in doing so the corporations create the jobs. Unless your definition of "jobs" is actually "a reason or desire to work" and not "a place to work and a paycheck for doing so". If that's the problem, then you need a better dictionary. "A reason or desire to work" is a pretty poor definition of "job", and a pretty poor indicator of the health of an economy. That kind of definition actually means an economy with a 50% unemployment rate isn't really in bad shape at all just as long as those 50% want to work.
The idea that demand creates jobs would mean that there should be zero unemployment. Every job seeker is a demand; the jobs are created by the demand, so every seeker should thus have a job. No, "putting in resumes" isn't a job.
As soon as a company actually creates a job, we can talk.
Apparently not, since all you want to do is insult.
The cynic in me would just say that if corporations are treated like people, why not tax them like people.
The people who make up those corporations, which is the basis for allowing the people who make up corporations to continue to have rights, already pay taxes.
Yes, I pay taxes too. I pay my share of the sewage pipes, the electrical lines, the roads. Why shouldn't a company pay their share, too?
The people who make up the corporation already pay the same taxes you do for sewage pipes, etc. Why should there be a second charge for the same thing? If you work, then both you and your employer are paying for the sewage pipes, etc.
It seems odd that in the same venue where Comcast is routinely thrashed for trying to charge both the Comcast customer and the streaming data provider for data packets, that you'd try to argue that it's ok for the government to charge both the users of sewage pipes and corporations who employ the users for the same sewage pipes.
If I'm a taxpayer and I've paid for my part of the infrastructure through those taxes, why should it matter if I put a load into the pipes at my house or where I work? Why should my employer be charged for something I've already paid for? Or in the other view, why should the government charge me for something the government is also charging my employer for?
Companies do not create jobs, demand for goods creates jobs,
Demand creates opportunities for companies to profit, who then create the jobs while making the product in demand. It is trivial to have demand without jobs. Ten million people could line up for a product tomorrow, and if the company that makes that product decides that the increased prices and profits from high demand were better than increased sales of lower priced products then there will be no new jobs. E.g., the demand for Apple Dev tickets is outrageous, yet this doesn't create more jobs. Or more Jobs.
And you really should recognize that companies often create both the demand and the jobs. Who really needs a Flip Jack or Shamwow or Ronco Pocket Fisherman? Those companies created the demand through advertising, and the jobs for the people that made those products.
If that company was not there the job would still be there.
So you're saying that if all the companies magically went away tomorrow that all the jobs would still be there? Funny, we've seen lots of companies go bankrupt and the jobs went away with them. Who pays the salaries for the people who hold the jobs when there is no company? A job with no pay and noplace to perform it is hardly a job worth having, is it?
That is a myth created by the right.
That the left wants to call the truth a "myth" speaks volumes about the quality of the argument from the left. Perhaps more economic "truth" from the left, such as counting the people who have simply given up looking for work as no longer unemployed, would help the economy even more, huh? Oh, wait, that's right. The demand for jobs has, all by itself, created those jobs, since it is demand by itself that creates jobs. That's the left's version of the job market. Works great, huh? Try telling an unemployed guy that he's got a job because he demands one ...
(for a case where mobile phone companies were not counting their own video streaming apps against transfer caps, but were counting apps like Netflix).
And the winner when the government forces the telecom company to start counting both Netflix and their own video streaming in the user's data cap is ... the telecom company.
Oh, you thought the telecom company would simply lift all caps to solve this problem?
And if Comcast is allowed to expand it's empire, that will only ensure that US consumers have even less options in the future (for cable providers anyway).
That's not true. That's the point of the statement that Comcast and Time Warner don't compete against each other in any markets. If you live in a Comcast service area, you get to choose Comcast for wired television service. If you live in a TW area, you get to choose TW. One choice each. When TW and C merge, you still get one choice in either area -- ComTime. One equals one.
What this allegedly damning bit of evidence does NOT say, however, is that Comcast and TimeWarner have no competition at all. They just don't compete against each other. If you don't like Comcast now, you can choose Dish, DirecTV, etc. If you don't like CTW then, you still get to choose Dish, DirecTV, etc. Same choices among non-wireline services, not less.
You can't lose a customer if you're the only viable game in town.
That's already the status quo. A merger doesn't change that. They cannot today lose customers to each other, and after a merger they still will not be able to lose customers to "each other" (which would actually be "themselves" if I wanted to abandon the parallel construction of that sentence.)
Now, what a merger would do is create a huge monolithic customer for content services. If CTW decides to tell a content provider that they have to lower rates if they want to be seen, the provider has much more interest in obeying. Today, if Comcast says "jump" and the provider doesn't, the provider loses 40% of its eyes. In a CTW world, they'd lose 80% of them (assuming Dish, DirecTV, etc have 20% of the market.)
So "loss of competition" is a losing argument against the merger. One choice before, one choice after. It doesn't matter that it's the same company after and two before since you cannot use the fact it was two to actually make a different choice. Unless, of course, you think moving is a reasonable way to increase your cable television choices. Even then, you can still move to a Charter service area.
Ponder for a moment how much you'd pay to be protected from looting, to have your workforce protected from being mugged, to create and maintain an infrastructure so you have gas, water, power and transportation, ...
Except that those employees ALSO pay taxes to create and maintain the same infrastructure so they get gas, water, power, and transportation. In fact, because those employees are employed and earning income they pay MORE than people who are unemployed.
So the government is double dipping here. Tax the company who creates the jobs that allow the people to pay more in taxes, and tax the people who exchange their time and labor for money.
The real issue is not whether there should be corporate taxes, but whether a corporate tax rate of 25% is reasonable when a company earns that money someplace else. Great Britain has no business taxing multinationals for money earned abroad, and even less business threatening them with an exorbitant penalty when they don't free pay up on those external profits.
As for the entire people, not quite. Colonial militias weren't that inclusive.
The right to vote belongs to every citizen (barring some limited exclusions). The fact that every citizen doesn't vote (or didn't belong to a militia) doesn't mean they don't have the right to vote.
You truly are arguing that the Bill of Rights should be called the Bill of Privileges. If all a government has to do to (Constitutionally) confiscate the weapons of the citizens is declare that any existing militias aren't "well regulated" and thus the "right" to keep and bear arms doesn't apply to anyone, then the "right" to keep and bear arms truly is a privilege.
Exactly! The right was granted because they believed in militias.
1. Rights cannot be granted by governments, they exist and are recognized as such. Even our government has admitted that rights are granted by the creator and not by government itself. Rights which required a government to grant are not rights, they are privileges. "The Bill of Privileges" just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
2. ONE REASON is not "the only reason". Militias may have been one reason, which is why it merited a subordinate clause but not a defining clause. If you believe that militia membership as the only reason the privilege of owning a gun was important, then you're ignoring the entire concept of armed rebellion from corrupt government -- something the founders were VERY familiar with. You're also ignoring the situations that a large part of the populace were faced with during those times, and for many years following them. "Yeah, ok settlers, you can live out there in the boonies and we'll even give you land if you build and live on it, but no, you may not have a gun to protect yourself from wild animals or to hunt for food. That's not necessary. Only those who are members of militias can have guns..."
Whether or not some of the founders "believed" in militias or not is irrelevant at this point. Their action was to recognize the right to keep and bear arms without any requirement that they be kept and born for use in a militia. The founders were not illiterate cavemen grunting and scratching all day. Had the intent been that the only reason anyone had a right to keep and bear arms been so they could be active members of militias, the founders could have written that clearly. "Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the members of well regulated militias to keep and hear arms." They chose not to. That's the intent.
If you disagree with item 1, then please don't ever talk about "human" or "civil" rights that other governments haven't granted to their citizens. It is clear that you think that rights are granted, and if a citizenry has a government that hasn't granted them a right, well then, that's an issue between those citizens and their government, not a matter for outsiders to pronounce "those people are denied their rights!".
They did say it explicitly. Multiple times both at the convention, before and after.
They were also probably just as explicit in ordering lunch, but none of the explicit lunch orders got written into the Constitution, nor should any of the lunch orders be considered to be limits on what the Constitution means. Oh, well, maybe the 2nd amendment truly does apply only to people who eat ham sandwiches for lunch and nobody else.
You are actually arguing against the entire theory of interpretation.
That may be. If "interpretation" means "every word ever spoken by anyone involved with creating a law must be included when interpreting every law", then gosh, I guess I am. If "interpretation" means "why did that particular author vote for or against a law", that's something else.
Dubya's been out of office for 6 years so stop bringing him up when people call out Obama.
If Hitler had won and a successor continued his work, would Hitler no longer to be to blame 6 years after the fact?
If Hitler had "won" (I assume you mean WWII) and a successor who promised "change you can believe in" and ran a campaign based on "no more Hitler" had replaced him, then no, Hitler would no longer be to blame for things the successor did or did not do during the following 6 years.
What do you think, "a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State" means?
It means that the founders included a subordinate clause giving just one of the reasons why this specific inalienable right was important to protect. It is not, as many people try to argue, a sole justification for a privilege. Were the only reason to allow people to keep and bear arms so that "well regulated militias" could exist, then 1) it's not a right, it is a privilege, and 2) they'd have said that explicitly. Just what do you think "Bill of Rights" means? It isn't "List of Reasons Why The Government Will Grant Certain Privileges To The Citizens Thereof."
... and their intent is pretty clear as the documents show. Wording like, "If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army" note form not deploy.
I'm pretty sure that this "pretty clear" statement does not appear in the Constitution, and I know that it does not appear in the 2nd amendment. What one or two of the founders wrote elsewhere about why they supported the 2nd amendment, or why they think the 2nd amendment is good for the government and not just the citizenry, isn't binding on the rest of them, and it doesn't put limits on the clear language that was actually ratified.
Actually it would be a good idea if laws were only valid for a set period of time and then they need to undergo review.
Are you truly on the side of complete government inaction? Not that this is a bad thing, you should just be aware that you're promoting that with this opinion. The congress would be so swamped reviewing laws that they'd never be able to do anything else. That's certainly true if you "mean a serious review with a definite "why do we still need this law to exist" statement to it.""
it would also allow us to actually force our legislators to REMOVE laws from time to time
No, what it would probably result in is the same kind of legislating that we've seen recently: an omnibus review bill written by a staffer, that nobody has time to read but everyone will vote for anyway. You know, someone asks "but what's IN the bill", and the leadership says "you'll know after you vote on it."
And the point was more to the fact that, without records, I don't know what he owns or shares copyright over. So anything he wrote is abandoned.
Only if the copyright holder says so. If that's you and/or your sister, then fine, you can abandon both the material and the copyright there is no limit on who can republish the material. Your fear that it will be lost forever because it will forever be subject to copyright is not a problem.
And if it is you, if you never go after anyone who republishes the works, who cares if the copyright is still technically active?
I could spend time and money tracking them down,
Antecedent of "them" is? The actual copyright holder? Look at the notice. People who republish the material? If you don't care that they do, then why are you obsessing over who holds the copyright? If it's you and you don't care, are you going to sue? If it's not you you can't sue.
As has happened with games, someone sees someone else making money, and goes after them.
If you don't hold the copyright to something, you have no grounds to sue. And the copyright holder needs to know he is before he knows he has grounds to sue. Yeah, anyone can file suit for anything, I guess, but a valid suit requires standing.
People who didn't get clear title over something, and those sorts of things.
People who "didn't get clear title" aren't people who don't know they have a copyright, they are people who think they do. Your question about people who don't know they hold a copyright doesn't apply, so I guess the answer I gave wouldn't apply, either. "I think I hold the copyright" is a much different issue than "I don't know I hold a copyright."
If I saw something that sounded like his specialty making money, I'd look into it enough to figure out of my father was aware of it, just for general curiosity. And if he was, then I could start up trouble.
Someone in the same specialty making money would trigger your interest in protecting a copyright that you don't know you hold and are actively arguing should not exist because of the "old and abandoned" status of the work you're now protecting? That really does stretch meaning of "abandoned".
Of course you can start up trouble by filing specious and unfounded lawsuits. Does copyright really have anything to do with it? That's more an issue of tort reform and not copyright.
Not that I think that would ever happen, but that it could, so it discourages people from building on the works of others.
Republishing your father's books is not "building on the works of others", it is reproducing the works of others for profit. But even so, let's say someone does republish a book. How can they prevent legal issues? By contacting the copyright holder as listed in the copyright notice in the book they intend to duplicate, first step. If you say "sure, go ahead, I think it should be public domain anyway", why would they be discouraged? Yes, they may want it in writing, so?
Copyright does the opposite of its stated purpose, and since the stated purpose is clear in the Constitution, I believe that makes all copyright law in the USA unconstitutional.
Well, I can see how you think that when you have said that anything after Mickey Mouse has copyright forever. The law doesn't actually say that, so, I guess I'll agree that the law as YOU know it is unconstitutional but the law as it exists is not.
Now, a final question might be, if someone sees a book your father wrote and reads the copyright notice, but doesn't feel like going to the trouble of asking/finding the copyright holder to get permission to reprint it, then are they really that interested in reprinting it in the first place? I'd say "no". That, I fear, would be the real reason that those works disappear forever, not a copyright law that says the copyright on it expires no later than 2081, and can be dealt with by a simple approval otherwise.
You were so interested in proving every one of my statements wrong, you didn't address the point. Try again. Who holds the copyright of my father's writings?
I'm sorry, but when I started commenting on this I didn't know your father held any copyrights, so that could hardly be my point, now could it? I responded specifically to your statements about honoring copyright as it should be and then about how "old and abandoned" should be free. (I even AGREED with you, so yes, I deserve a long drawn-out argument about "old and abandoned" works being copyrighted for too long.) People who "honor copyright as it should be" by distributing the latest movies or TV shows aren't dealing with "old and abandoned", and nobody who argues that they're only breaking copyright laws because "the vendor won't sell it to me in the format I want" is coming even close to dealing with this "old and abandoned" issue.
If your argument is that "old and abandoned" works still have copyright thus all copyrights are invalid constitutionally, well, sorry, but that's just silly. The vast majority of copyrights are unregistered and expire (now) at "life+70", and if the material was produced prior to 1978 and hasn't been extended the material is already public domain. That's hardly "forever", and while it is perhaps longer than it should be, it is certainly not a reason to claim the system is unconstitutional.
Who holds the copyright of my father's writings?
I do believe if you read what I wrote you'll see I did answer that question, even though I certainly am not the right person to ask because I don't have any specifics. Here's the answers:
1. If your father's works were initially copyrighted prior to 1978, then NOBODY owns the copyright -- it's all public domain now. Remember -- 1978+28 = 2006. It's been public domain for at least 8 years. Was there an extension? I don't know -- ask the copyright office. Any extensions are not default, they must be requested.
2. If they were copyrighted after 1 Jan 1978, then someone holds the copyright until 70 years after he died. You didn't tell me when that was so I cannot answer with a specific date. Now, who holds that copyright? If you recall, I said that you, as the heir, probably do, or whoever the heir is. I said that all it would take is for you as the heir to put the material in public domain and the copyright would be ended and the books freely copyable.
So, you need to step up and accept the inheritance and solve the problem you complain of. In either case, those books are not "lost forever". The copyright will run out no later than, umm, 2014+70=2084, but it may have run out already, OR you (or the actual heirs) could decide to end it earlier.
Now, it is possible that your father assigned the copyright to someone else. You need to look in the books you fear are lost forever to see what the actual copyright statement says. Year and who -- two items that must be there. What do those copyright notices say?
Who can re-print them?
Sigh. For anything copyrighted prior to 1978, anyone can reprint them now. For anything after that, anyone who the copyright holder authorizes can reprint them, unless the copyright holder (the heirs) rescinds copyright and turns the material over to the public domain and then the answer is "anyone". If you want a specific answer by name, I'm sorry, I can't tell you who the heirs were, nor have you said a word about what the actual copyright notice in the material says. I have a list of who "anyone" is, but the margins are too limited to allow inclusion here.
If the "rightful" copyright owner doesn't know he is, how is that not abandonware?
If the copyright holder doesn't know he is, then who is going to file a lawsuit for violation of copyright law? Do you really imagine that any of the material involved in the KDC legal hassles is based on copyright holders who don't know they are? I do
Why would they make a profit when anyone who does a quick google for what they're selling would find it for half price or even less from someone else?
Because they get the money up front, that's how this sort of thing works, you are not very smart.
I don't know what kind of comic book fantasy world you live in, but nobody who sells stuff gets money "up front" when nobody is buying anything from them. If someone else can knock off the movie I produced with my own money and sell it for 1/10 the price, then I don't get anything "up front" but the fun of spending a lot of money for a movie I can't get any money back on.
Wow, you're staggeringly stupid. People aren't going to pay for movies up front when they have the option to pay for movies which have already been made,
I'm sorry, does this have anything to do with what I said? Your "copyright cartel" cannot stop me from making a movie or selling it. They can only be a "copyright cartel" for other people who have made movies, and it doesn't matter if the other movies are under copyright or not, they're still competition. In fact, if they are under copyright, and the copyright owner is restricting distribution, those other movies are LESS competition because they will cost more and be harder to buy.
because they are too stupid to realize that in the current system, they're paying for movies that they're not even watching.
Your statement makes zero sense and has no relevance to the argument. Your ad hominem is boring.
Except they still have to be on the voter rolls.
Someone has to be on the rolls. It could be someone who is dead, or is known to be out of town. They moved, perhaps. All you have to do is pretend to be them and bingo, you get to vote.
It isn't like without voter ID laws anyone can just walk up and say "I want to vote here".
Well, actually, yes they can. It's called a "provisional ballot" and it is federal law. It's meant to deal with the common situation where someone forgets their ID. It also covers mistakes in the voter list. The voter gets a ballot, but it isn't put in the box with all the rest. It's held until approved.
There is still voter registration that happens.
Yes, at some point in time, someone had to register. That happens once for each person. I registered here so long ago thatI don't remember when it was -- 15 years ago at least. If you think that my having to register would keep someone from using fake ID to keep voting my ballot after I die, you're looney. It's even easier here - all they have to do is forge my signature on the envelope the ballot is in. I have no doubt that there are dead people voting in Oregon, it is so easy.
And under "motor voter", it's getting easier to register, so even that small protection is being eroded.
Unless you know a specific voter and their polling place for each of those people you just picked up, you aren't going to get anywhere at the polling station.
Here's another bit of information you lack. Voter registration lists and whether or not you've voted are public record. That's how the political parties feed their robocall machines, for one thing.
The fact is that most of the voter fraud happens not at the polls but with absentee ballots. Of course the republicans don't want to touch those because they are used by old people and soldiers, which are their bread and butter.
No, they don't want to touch those because those are valid ballots cast by people who have the right to vote. But Democrats will happily attack both, especially after they are counted and it is known that by throwing them all out (even the Democrat votes) the Democrat will win instead of a Republican. That's the heart of many of the cases in Florida for Bush V. Gore. In one county, the Republican election official write the voter number (or some other similar thing) on the outgoing absentee requests so the voter didn't have to look it up; the Democrat did not. Gore lost, so the Democrat filed a lawsuit claiming that it was tampering with ballots to write the voter number on the application. In other words, the Democrat wanted to disenfranchise every absentee voter in that county because he wanted his guy to win.
So what if it happens with absentees, too? That's no excuse to take simple security measures to prevent it from happening with in-person voting.
There are piles of abandonware.
I didn't say there wasn't. What I actually said was that I never hear anyone using "abandoned" as the excuse for skirting, or outright breaking, copyright law. Don't argue with me over things I didn't say.
And lots of books printed with a short run.
Books printed with a short run aren't the definition of "abandoned". Lots of things are produced "with a short run" and are hardly abandoned. The phrase is "limited edition".
But anything made after Mickey Mouse will be protected to the end of time.
I doubt that. Can you cite any law that says that?
There are books that will be lost because the runs were short, and you can't copy them. The author is dead, and often the people who inherited "other" from the estate don't even know they are a copyright holder of a book, let alone what to do with it.
You're getting closer to abandoned, but haven't quite reached it yet. Let's see, how do we handle this situation legally? Maybe you ASK the copyright holder if the book can be archived? You know who it is even if they themselves don't. Educate them.
Any copyrighted work of his is lost forever.
Here's what I see in the copyright law regarding length of copyrights. I'm going to paraphrase because it's full of legal twists, but the basics seem to be:
1. Copyright after 1978: life of author plus 70 years.
2. Before 1978 in initial copyright: 28 years from the initial copyright.
I'll not bother with "before 1978 already extended" or any of the optional extension mechanisms. I doubt your father had done that if it wasn't part of the estate papers. In either 1 or 2, the work is hardly "lost forever". All you have to do is not extend the copyright (and you seem unlikely to do that) and the copyright will expire. If there was a copyright, all you have to do as heir is release the material to the public domain. If it was initially copyright before 1978, it will have already become public domain! (1978+28=2006)
It will only be lost forever if someone throws up their hands and burns all his books as a protest to an incorrect belief that copyright lasts forever.
Now, your comment about "Mickey Mouse". I don't think anyone can use Mickey Mouse or any Disney property as an example of "abandoned".
You want old, but enforced like a Nazi?
I know I didn't say anything even close to that.
Try Happy Birthday...
If "Happy Birthday" is still in copyright, it is only because it has not been abandoned. Arguing that abandoned works should not be under copyright anymore (an idea with which I've already told you I agree) and then using an example that is so clearly not abandoned is simply ridiculous.
We switched to permanent absentee voting the moment they introduced electronic ballots in our county.
We're still using all-paper balloting and we've been "permanent absentee voting" for several years now. Welcome to Oregon, where elections run for two weeks or more, political robocalls happen at least twice a day for the entire time, and if you want to vote just go to the post office and look in the trashcan for a discarded ballot.
And meanwhile, states are pushing voter-ID laws to combat a problem of which there are only a handful of incidents in the past 12 years.
Yeah, the "empty the cemetery" voting drives that the Daley machine in Chicago used to run on election day just can't possibly happen anymore. Especially when undocumented aliens can be found for $5 a pop at the local Home Depot and it costs almost nothing to drive a busload of them around to the polling places.
Anyone who doesn't think it happens is naive, and anyone who thinks it shouldn't be necessary to prove you have the right to vote someplace is asking for unauthorized votes.
there will be little room for 2000-style "dimpled chad" and "interpreting the voter's intentions".
There should already be little room for this. "Voter demonstrates intentions by poking hole in piece of paper. No hole, no intention to vote." Very simple. The failed assumption is that every person who cast a ballot intended on voting for every position and if there wasn't a hole there was a mistake. People who had no intention of voting for any candidate got their vote counted anyway.
This voting system was approved by both parties prior to the election. It wasn't a surprise dropped out of Heaven on an unsuspecting public. The time to say "gee, it's too hard to poke a hole" was before the election, not after.
We shouldn't have to find an excuse for preventing that kind of nonsense. It should be SOP that people can refuse to vote for a particular office and have it honored. It should be SOP that those who followed the instructions get their votes counted and those who don't don't.
Of course they would. They'd make a profit, too.
Who is being disingenuous here? Why would they make a profit when anyone who does a quick google for what they're selling would find it for half price or even less from someone else? Other people can sell for those prices because they didn't have the production costs -- it costs almost nothing to dupe a DVD, but it costs a lot of money to produce a good quality movie. Nobody who is smart enough to have a couple of million dollars to spend on producing a movie would be dumb enough to accept the nonsense that he'll make anything back on it if anyone who wants to can copy and distribute it for him for free. That's why it isn't a standard model for movie production, not any "copyright cartel" stopping him.
It's not about prevention. It's about not being able to compete with someone who is successfully gaming the system.
What competition? If you can make a quality movie under CC licensing, then what competition is there? Oh, yes, the competition from people who will copy your movie and sell it for you, keeping the profit instead of giving it back to you. But there's no competition from the "copyright cartel". They can't stop you from making your movie or distributing it. So what if they make other movies that compete for eyeballs with yours? You've made the movie, you're distributing it. It doesn't matter if they are CC or analy-restrictive licensed -- under either licensing scheme their movies will compete for sales with yours, so how it is licensed doesn't matter.
It's odd that you think that you as a producer of a CC movie would have competition enough to stop you from other movie producers, but that you wouldn't have significant direct and immediate competition from other people selling your movie for you. That's just, well, weird. We live in a world of Chinese knock-offs causing significant damage to US technology firms and yet you think allowing everyone to knock-off a major motion picture would not harm the original investors at all.
We are trying to honor copyright as conceived and written. Old and abandoned works are "free".
I have no argument with you when it comes to truly "old and abandoned" works where there is no possible way the original copyright holder could benefit from copyright protections. But I don't believe that the latest episode of Dr. Who, or the finale to Breaking Bad, or most of what is pirated today, are "old and abandoned" in any sense of the word. I've yet to hear the excuse "the copyright holder isn't selling that movie made 40 years ago anymore, so I feel it's ok to pirate it". What I do hear is "the copyright holder doesn't want to sell that current content in my region, or in the format I want it in, so I feel it's ok to pirate it. I'd happily pay for it, but the seller doesn't want my money!"
I think it's a bit disingenuous to imply that the piracy issue is all about "old and abandoned works", and I don't think any of the case against KDC has anything to do with content that has been abandoned or is older than 20 years, much less old enough to be public domain under previous versions of the copyright law. I don't think the **AA has gone after anyone for pirating "It's A Wonderful Life" or "Zero Hour", but they seem to find a lot of targets for violations of modern, currently published work's copyright.
Judge Egan correctly wrote that all the IP addresses did was "identify specific computers used to access Dropbox" (actually, of course, computer IP addresses can change, and if the computer is behind a proxy server then it will be the proxy server's IP address that shows up in the log; but that's close enough, let's give it to him).
No, moron, let's not "give it to him", unless "it" refers to "a firm tongue lashing for getting it wrong wrong wrong." He's just created exactly the precedent that you don't want created: "the IP address identifies specific computers". It's not "close enough" when **AA claims it in court, it's not "close enough" when a judge says it regarding a FOIA case.