Plus the cost of special effects continues to drop all the time. The LoTR movies, for a given level of quality, could certainly be made less expensively now than they were at the time. And would've cost far more a few years before they were made.
This doesn't happen just by magic. There is no real life special effect that makes special effects cheaper. It's a result of capitalism pushing people to improve technology.
If people didn't stand a chance of profiting in some way from linux, it would still be a hobbyist OS, and wouldn't have grown and developed as quickly as it has.
No, his argument is not correct, as he's not (imho) using the correct argument to support his point. He said:
- No DRM of any form is ever okay: I should be able to do anything with items I obtain, including sharing them with others;
which is an argument against copyrights, licensing, and contracts. If DRM itself is unacceptable, there are other arguments to be made.
If you accept his argument, you're basically saying that the GPL (our holiest of holies) should be struck down, that everything should be in the public domain, and that creators should have absolutely no rights concerning their creations.
I believe we can eventually find the proper balance between the rights of creators and the rights of the consumer, and that DRM is not part of that balance. On a personal level, I am willing to put up with a mild DRM scheme, so long as tools are available to insure my fair use rights. What is unacceptable are laws that prohibit the creation or use of such tools.
I pretty much agree with you. There is such a thing as "lite DRM", which is generally unobtrusive. And if it becomes obtrusive there are tools one can use to remove the controls and continue to enjoy one's fair use rights.
Apple and others try to fight this, but ultimately it's a waste of their time, because there will always be people that just like to make such tools and are willing to make the effort. I realize that it might not be possible to just give up, because they are under pressure by the labels to make a good faith effort to protect the copyrighted properties. They must bear this additional cost of doing business because they have obligations to the labels.
What does bother me is when our politicians make laws prohibiting the creation or use of such tools. That is not acceptable.
You don't understand the idea of a "cut out". Instead of doing something, you hire someone to do something. Then they hire someone to do something. You don't explicitly tell them how to do it. Then, if it comes back to bite you in the ass, you have plausible deniability: your contractor or subcontractor exceeded their authority.
Unless someone can prove that you gave explicit authority to the subcontractor, you're insulated. (Cf., Iran-Contra.)
You do make a good point, however. If you (not the copyright holder this time) were caught distributing these works, and sued or prosecuted, you could certainly point to the release by Rouge and say that you had reasonable belief that you had implicit permission and were acting in good faith. Then the court could foreseeably uphold the copyright owners right to stop distribution while at the same time letting you off the hook.
That doesn't mean that people in subsequent cases would be off the hook, though. It doesn't set the precedent you might think it does. A good deal would hinge on timelines after that. When did the alleged unlawful act take place, how much the alleged infringer knew and when, etc. It's not cut-and-dried.
No dude. Sati has nothing to do with cooking one's spouse. You should read the links you post, because it makes you look extremely ignorant. I don't seek any possible connection to sati and satay either.
Also don't appreciate the inference that satay. (In case you were wondering what it is you're really ordering at that Thai restaurant.) has anything to do with cannibalism.
I'd also like to point out that sati is extremely rare these days and has been illegal in India for many decades.
I guess in/. open bigotry towards Indians is accepted.
Relax, it's a joke. It's an ironic poke at the ignorance of slashdot. Sorry if it was too subtle for you.
And apparently you don't know everything about your own country (I'm assuming you're Indian). Sati has been illegal, not for decades, since 1829. That's coming up on two centuries.
Look, I understand why you're defensive. There is a lot of bigotry on slashdot, especially towards Indians. Many people's livelihoods are threatened. Ironically, many who are ardent capitalists are the most threatened, and the most bigoted. I guess when your political principles are based on "enlightened self interest" it's easy to conveniently change them when the outcome doesn't serve that self-interest.
Outsourcing is a bitter pill to swallow, but I believe we should take our medicine if we want to stay competitive. We've had it so good for so long that we now believe it's our right. Guess what? It's not. Our opulent (and sometimes even decadent) lifestyles have made us soft and lazy, and competition is hard and takes a lot of work. I'm confident we'll meet the challenge, but not until after a lot of pain and adjustment. A lot of Americans will suffer, and are suffering. However, a lot of suffering goes on throughout the world, and we have no right to think we are somehow immune because we are Americans.
It's not surprising that we put a gang of criminals into power, because Americans are in love with the ideology of capitalism and the criminals talk a good game of capitalist ideology. They want to destroy what safety nets we have while at the same time engage in a huge give-away to their closest friends and allies. And we go along with it because we don't understand the principles of capitalism, but are mesmerized by the ideology in the same way that compulsive gamblers are mesmerized by the lottery. We've become brittle, when we need to become more flexible.
Personally, I want to move to Mexico, because that's where the jobs are going to be in ten years, and the cost of living is much cheaper. I don't want to wait too long, because eventually Mexico will try to close the border to prevent too many gringos from sneaking in.
That's actually a pretty funny script in a mild sort of way. Thanks for the link.
You know what else is funny? How some people are so totally opposed to business in any form. They're always talking about the big evil corporations ruining everything for everyone, yet they don't ever seem to offer a realistic alternative, other than to substitute a big evil government for the big evil corporations through some sort of (usually violent) revolution.
And you know what else is funny? There are other people who hate government programs that help those in need, because each individual should be responsible for himself, and helping people only encourages irresponsibility. And at the same time as they laud this responsibility, they just cream their undies over this huge corporations that act irresponsibly, because the leaders of these companies have "responsibilities to the share holders." And apparently the buck stops there, because shareholders don't seem to be accountable to anyone, so long as they pay their capital gains taxes, although it looks like their gonna get out of that one, too.
I think there's another principle operating in the realm of legalese that's the same in many trades. Jargon. Jargon (or if you like 2-bit words (2-bits in the sense of money) nomenclature) serves several purposes, not the least of which is to keep outsiders out and to accentuate one's power over outsiders, especially in fields requiring a high degree of technical expertise (such as technology or Law). It is also a quick way of finding out if the person you're talking to knows very much about your field, or is just a know-it-all. Using the field of tech as an example, when someone technically knowledgeable hears someone else talking about how their school had a T-2 line, they know their full of shit, because there is no T-2. It goes from T-1 to T-3.
Anyone out there that has worked on movie production will also know what I'm talking about (ending a sentence with a preposition is totally in). All the gear used to make movies have slang names, often different from the technical names. A 2,000 watt fresnel light is called a junior, unless it uses a smaller housing that makes it more convenient for location work, in which case it's called a Baby Junior, or BJ for short. A 1,000 watt fresnel light is called a baby and and a 1,000 watt light designed for location work is called a baby baby. There are two types of 200 watt fresnel lights: Mini and Inky. And in between those and the baby is a 600 watt light called the tweenie. This is barely scratching the surface.
Partly this movie jargon is a type of shorthand. It's a lot faster to say, "Put a BJ in that corner on a pancake with some schmutz on it, and pin it." than it is to say, "Put a location 2,000 watt fresnel light in that corner on a piece of plywood approximately 14" by 24", with some diffusion gel on it, then turn the knob from floodlight to spotlight." This is also the case in the tech world and law, and many, many other fields.
But it's also to discourage outsiders from moving in to one's territory and to keep one's position of expertise. When a person who's never worked in movie lighting doesn't pick up the vocabulary very quickly, they get washed out even more quickly.
There's even regional differences. Some items have slightly different names depending on whether you're in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York. (The funny thing is that many people know the regional variations, but you'll get looked at slightly funny, like you're the country cousin, if you use the wrong regional term).
Terms are also made up on the spot, partly to amuse, but also partly to keep outsiders guessing. An adapter for attaching a smaller light to a stand designed for a larger unit is called a spud (possibly after the slang term for a rivet in steel construction). However, it is also often referred to as a buttplug. A wooden box is called an applebox (fairly obvious), but the joke name for it is a "grip-to-ground adapter, since it can, and often is, utilized as a seat.
I noticed you getting bleary eyed about two sentences in to the second paragraph, so I'll stop now. I'll leave figuring out the correct name for a clothes pin as an exercise for the reader.
But according to his CV on his site, he also has a couple of patents pending, not to mention a producer of a TV show. So he might not think it's good when it's used to make unauthorized copies of copyrighted work, especially if he's interested in selling any DVDs of the show.
OK, right now, like you, I'm soooooo confused! How can a guy that cool be so evil as to expect to earn money from original creations? Heresy! I blame the Natural Philosphers. If Newton or Liebniz had published under the GPL, then Bill Nye couldn't profit by ripping off science. I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to the 17th century, and warn them not to use the BSD license.
I think they refer to the cooking of one's wife (or widow, actually) as sati.
In many South East Asian cultures that were influenced by India, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, it referred to as satay. (In case you were wondering what it is you're really ordering at that Thai restaurant.)
I think maybe it's because I'm such a language nerd, and I love the nuanced power of English, where so many synonymous words have different shades of meaning. I also love conciseness (not one of my strong points, as I also love digressions, like this one) and intelligibility, so I think I'd prefer the word "previously" to "hereinbefore". I'm sure the ABA would ostracize me. =)
There's a legal principle called "fruit of the poisoned tree" that I think covers this. If any evidence is illegally obtained, even if that evidence is not used, any evidence derived from it is tainted and not permissible in court.
There is some leeway with this. I did some PI work way back when (yeah, I was an operative), and did some work on a case involving a ski lift accident. I went to the ski lift with my video camera, and began videotaping "the scenery" without identifying myself as an investigator. The guy working the lift gave me permission and we chatted while the video camera ran. I began asking him questions about the safety of the lift equipment, accidents, etc.
Anyway, to make an already long story short, the attorney didn't want to use the video tape (with it's very interesting audio track) as evidence because, although I had permission to tape (and had that on tape) I didn't have explicit permission from the guy to tape the conversation. OTOH, the guy knew my camera was running, or should have known it was capturing our conversation.
The attorney was still pretty thrilled with what I got because it helped him press some good questions during deposition time. I'm not sure if they took the lift operator's deposition, but I'd say they probably did.
(Total aside: I got out of that line of work after about a year, because most of what I did for this detective was process serving, which isn't the most pleasant work. A coworker broke both a leg and an arm getting thrown down some stairs. Good money, though.)
You're slightly confused. It's Trademarks that must be vigorously defended. Copyright may be defended at leisure (within the statute of limitations, however).
Further, this is far from cut-and-dried. Did the informer have authority to upload the material? What powers of agency (if any) did he have? (This is why it's good to use a "cut out". Plausible deniability.)
This should be enough to get the case thrown out, one would hope, but it certainly doesn't automatically mean that the works in question automatically go into the Public Domain. Not by a long shot.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, where's my code?
I want to create a work of art, will you be my patron and underwrite me?
Plus the cost of special effects continues to drop all the time. The LoTR movies, for a given level of quality, could certainly be made less expensively now than they were at the time. And would've cost far more a few years before they were made.
This doesn't happen just by magic. There is no real life special effect that makes special effects cheaper. It's a result of capitalism pushing people to improve technology.
If people didn't stand a chance of profiting in some way from linux, it would still be a hobbyist OS, and wouldn't have grown and developed as quickly as it has.
No, his argument is not correct, as he's not (imho) using the correct argument to support his point. He said:
- No DRM of any form is ever okay: I should be able to do anything with items I obtain, including sharing them with others;
which is an argument against copyrights, licensing, and contracts. If DRM itself is unacceptable, there are other arguments to be made.
If you accept his argument, you're basically saying that the GPL (our holiest of holies) should be struck down, that everything should be in the public domain, and that creators should have absolutely no rights concerning their creations.
I believe we can eventually find the proper balance between the rights of creators and the rights of the consumer, and that DRM is not part of that balance. On a personal level, I am willing to put up with a mild DRM scheme, so long as tools are available to insure my fair use rights. What is unacceptable are laws that prohibit the creation or use of such tools.
I pretty much agree with you. There is such a thing as "lite DRM", which is generally unobtrusive. And if it becomes obtrusive there are tools one can use to remove the controls and continue to enjoy one's fair use rights.
Apple and others try to fight this, but ultimately it's a waste of their time, because there will always be people that just like to make such tools and are willing to make the effort. I realize that it might not be possible to just give up, because they are under pressure by the labels to make a good faith effort to protect the copyrighted properties. They must bear this additional cost of doing business because they have obligations to the labels.
What does bother me is when our politicians make laws prohibiting the creation or use of such tools. That is not acceptable.
You don't understand the idea of a "cut out". Instead of doing something, you hire someone to do something. Then they hire someone to do something. You don't explicitly tell them how to do it. Then, if it comes back to bite you in the ass, you have plausible deniability: your contractor or subcontractor exceeded their authority.
Unless someone can prove that you gave explicit authority to the subcontractor, you're insulated. (Cf., Iran-Contra.)
You do make a good point, however. If you (not the copyright holder this time) were caught distributing these works, and sued or prosecuted, you could certainly point to the release by Rouge and say that you had reasonable belief that you had implicit permission and were acting in good faith. Then the court could foreseeably uphold the copyright owners right to stop distribution while at the same time letting you off the hook.
That doesn't mean that people in subsequent cases would be off the hook, though. It doesn't set the precedent you might think it does. A good deal would hinge on timelines after that. When did the alleged unlawful act take place, how much the alleged infringer knew and when, etc. It's not cut-and-dried.
Relax, it's a joke. It's an ironic poke at the ignorance of slashdot. Sorry if it was too subtle for you.
And apparently you don't know everything about your own country (I'm assuming you're Indian). Sati has been illegal, not for decades, since 1829. That's coming up on two centuries.
Look, I understand why you're defensive. There is a lot of bigotry on slashdot, especially towards Indians. Many people's livelihoods are threatened. Ironically, many who are ardent capitalists are the most threatened, and the most bigoted. I guess when your political principles are based on "enlightened self interest" it's easy to conveniently change them when the outcome doesn't serve that self-interest.
Outsourcing is a bitter pill to swallow, but I believe we should take our medicine if we want to stay competitive. We've had it so good for so long that we now believe it's our right. Guess what? It's not. Our opulent (and sometimes even decadent) lifestyles have made us soft and lazy, and competition is hard and takes a lot of work. I'm confident we'll meet the challenge, but not until after a lot of pain and adjustment. A lot of Americans will suffer, and are suffering. However, a lot of suffering goes on throughout the world, and we have no right to think we are somehow immune because we are Americans.
It's not surprising that we put a gang of criminals into power, because Americans are in love with the ideology of capitalism and the criminals talk a good game of capitalist ideology. They want to destroy what safety nets we have while at the same time engage in a huge give-away to their closest friends and allies. And we go along with it because we don't understand the principles of capitalism, but are mesmerized by the ideology in the same way that compulsive gamblers are mesmerized by the lottery. We've become brittle, when we need to become more flexible.
Personally, I want to move to Mexico, because that's where the jobs are going to be in ten years, and the cost of living is much cheaper. I don't want to wait too long, because eventually Mexico will try to close the border to prevent too many gringos from sneaking in.
and remember when an oversea-er held a whip and bossed us around?
That's actually a pretty funny script in a mild sort of way. Thanks for the link.
You know what else is funny? How some people are so totally opposed to business in any form. They're always talking about the big evil corporations ruining everything for everyone, yet they don't ever seem to offer a realistic alternative, other than to substitute a big evil government for the big evil corporations through some sort of (usually violent) revolution.
And you know what else is funny? There are other people who hate government programs that help those in need, because each individual should be responsible for himself, and helping people only encourages irresponsibility. And at the same time as they laud this responsibility, they just cream their undies over this huge corporations that act irresponsibly, because the leaders of these companies have "responsibilities to the share holders." And apparently the buck stops there, because shareholders don't seem to be accountable to anyone, so long as they pay their capital gains taxes, although it looks like their gonna get out of that one, too.
It's a funny world we live in.
That was most excellent.
I think there's another principle operating in the realm of legalese that's the same in many trades. Jargon. Jargon (or if you like 2-bit words (2-bits in the sense of money) nomenclature) serves several purposes, not the least of which is to keep outsiders out and to accentuate one's power over outsiders, especially in fields requiring a high degree of technical expertise (such as technology or Law). It is also a quick way of finding out if the person you're talking to knows very much about your field, or is just a know-it-all. Using the field of tech as an example, when someone technically knowledgeable hears someone else talking about how their school had a T-2 line, they know their full of shit, because there is no T-2. It goes from T-1 to T-3.
Anyone out there that has worked on movie production will also know what I'm talking about (ending a sentence with a preposition is totally in). All the gear used to make movies have slang names, often different from the technical names. A 2,000 watt fresnel light is called a junior, unless it uses a smaller housing that makes it more convenient for location work, in which case it's called a Baby Junior, or BJ for short. A 1,000 watt fresnel light is called a baby and and a 1,000 watt light designed for location work is called a baby baby. There are two types of 200 watt fresnel lights: Mini and Inky. And in between those and the baby is a 600 watt light called the tweenie. This is barely scratching the surface.
Partly this movie jargon is a type of shorthand. It's a lot faster to say, "Put a BJ in that corner on a pancake with some schmutz on it, and pin it." than it is to say, "Put a location 2,000 watt fresnel light in that corner on a piece of plywood approximately 14" by 24", with some diffusion gel on it, then turn the knob from floodlight to spotlight." This is also the case in the tech world and law, and many, many other fields.
But it's also to discourage outsiders from moving in to one's territory and to keep one's position of expertise. When a person who's never worked in movie lighting doesn't pick up the vocabulary very quickly, they get washed out even more quickly.
There's even regional differences. Some items have slightly different names depending on whether you're in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York. (The funny thing is that many people know the regional variations, but you'll get looked at slightly funny, like you're the country cousin, if you use the wrong regional term).
Terms are also made up on the spot, partly to amuse, but also partly to keep outsiders guessing. An adapter for attaching a smaller light to a stand designed for a larger unit is called a spud (possibly after the slang term for a rivet in steel construction). However, it is also often referred to as a buttplug. A wooden box is called an applebox (fairly obvious), but the joke name for it is a "grip-to-ground adapter, since it can, and often is, utilized as a seat.
I noticed you getting bleary eyed about two sentences in to the second paragraph, so I'll stop now. I'll leave figuring out the correct name for a clothes pin as an exercise for the reader.
But according to his CV on his site, he also has a couple of patents pending, not to mention a producer of a TV show. So he might not think it's good when it's used to make unauthorized copies of copyrighted work, especially if he's interested in selling any DVDs of the show.
OK, right now, like you, I'm soooooo confused! How can a guy that cool be so evil as to expect to earn money from original creations? Heresy! I blame the Natural Philosphers. If Newton or Liebniz had published under the GPL, then Bill Nye couldn't profit by ripping off science. I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to the 17th century, and warn them not to use the BSD license.
What about a kiss before you go stampeding the clitoris?
This reminds me of that movie, you know? The one about that guy that did stuff?
I think they refer to the cooking of one's wife (or widow, actually) as sati.
In many South East Asian cultures that were influenced by India, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, it referred to as satay. (In case you were wondering what it is you're really ordering at that Thai restaurant.)
No, I think it was meant to be sarcastic, a comment on our ethnocentrism or something.
However, it is also proof that outsourcing is nothing new.
I think maybe it's because I'm such a language nerd, and I love the nuanced power of English, where so many synonymous words have different shades of meaning. I also love conciseness (not one of my strong points, as I also love digressions, like this one) and intelligibility, so I think I'd prefer the word "previously" to "hereinbefore". I'm sure the ABA would ostracize me. =)
JD, 1925 - 2005, RIP
I didn't know they even had pirates in Sweden. I thought they had vikings.
There's a legal principle called "fruit of the poisoned tree" that I think covers this. If any evidence is illegally obtained, even if that evidence is not used, any evidence derived from it is tainted and not permissible in court.
There is some leeway with this. I did some PI work way back when (yeah, I was an operative), and did some work on a case involving a ski lift accident. I went to the ski lift with my video camera, and began videotaping "the scenery" without identifying myself as an investigator. The guy working the lift gave me permission and we chatted while the video camera ran. I began asking him questions about the safety of the lift equipment, accidents, etc.
Anyway, to make an already long story short, the attorney didn't want to use the video tape (with it's very interesting audio track) as evidence because, although I had permission to tape (and had that on tape) I didn't have explicit permission from the guy to tape the conversation. OTOH, the guy knew my camera was running, or should have known it was capturing our conversation.
The attorney was still pretty thrilled with what I got because it helped him press some good questions during deposition time. I'm not sure if they took the lift operator's deposition, but I'd say they probably did.
(Total aside: I got out of that line of work after about a year, because most of what I did for this detective was process serving, which isn't the most pleasant work. A coworker broke both a leg and an arm getting thrown down some stairs. Good money, though.)
The best I could come up with using the Sherlock translation channel was for "sex face", as the word "fuck" wouldn't translate.
I wonder if slashdot will even display it. I doubt it but here it is:
????
OK, just previewed it, and it doesn't work. My browser can handle me pasting it, but slashcode fails it.
I'd scoff at you, but I don't want one of the 593550 people with a lower number than mine scoffing at me.
You're slightly confused. It's Trademarks that must be vigorously defended. Copyright may be defended at leisure (within the statute of limitations, however).
Further, this is far from cut-and-dried. Did the informer have authority to upload the material? What powers of agency (if any) did he have? (This is why it's good to use a "cut out". Plausible deniability.)
This should be enough to get the case thrown out, one would hope, but it certainly doesn't automatically mean that the works in question automatically go into the Public Domain. Not by a long shot.
All of you suck (hot grits off of a petrified Natalie Portman), but you made me laugh.
Back in my day, you had to dress up like an Arab and hire a yacht if you wanted to entrap somebody, and we liked it that way!