Well, the only truly open "license" is the public domain. Otherwise, the only real point of having a license is to delimit the use of the copyrighted work. And that's okay, one simply has to accept that the term "open" is not an absolute.
Yeah... the Space Shuttle software group pretty much exemplifies what it takes to write software that is about as fault-free as it's possible to get. And they work as you say, by sound development practices, and constant, never-ending testing and refinement. It's a grueling process but it works.
During the Middle Ages (indeed, throughout most of human history) when somebody powerful wanted what you have so that he could have even more, he would just bop you on the head and take your stuff. Nowadays we call this a "transfer of wealth". All this random head-bopping became a problem for a lot of people, so some of them got together and invented the "rule of law". Now, the "rule of law" is expensive, so the newfound "rulers" (nowadays we call them "lawyers") had to create "taxation" in order pay for it. "Taxation", as we all know, is just a formalized, State-sponsored method of bopping somebody on the head and taking their stuff. Fortunately, we are now civilized so this rarely requires any actual head-bopping. Unfortunately, "taxation" only works for governments, so the corporations of the world came up with "intellectual property" for the express purpose of taxing our ideas, thereby once again bopping us on our heads and taking our stuff.
Yes, I know... but the parent poster was concerned that we weren't defending the rights of creators, and I was pointing out that such protection (even though it wasn't termed "intellectual property", that's a fiction of more recent vintage) has been in place for a long time.
Intellectual property has been defended all down the line... it's in the goddamn Constitution, for chrissakes (admittedly, Thomas Jefferson had doubts about the whole thing.) The problem is that the defense, in recent decades, has become far too vigorous and needs to be put back where it belongs. This idea that we need the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and all the other myriad bits of legal bullshit that have come down the line in order to eliminate the public domain and use the power of the Federal Government to maintain outdated monopolies is simply wrong. Realistically, the copyright and patent protections we already had were, given the pace of change in modern times, already excessive and in need of reduction not increase.
Maybe... but this appears to just be a warez group, not a pirate outfit (there is a difference: these guys were distributing material, not selling it.) At least, so far as I can tell from what little information there is on it. So how exactly does one fund terrorism (or anything else) when you aren't actually making any money from your illegal activities? The cops did this at the behest of the media companies in order to try and scare other people from doing anything similar, pure and simple. If there were any substantive evidence that the 19 individuals being persecuted here had a. made any money and b. were giving that money to terrorists, I'd feel very differently. But as it is, I'm sick to death of a few large corporations acting like spoiled brats and threatening anyone and everyone that doesn't toe their line. And I'm even more disturbed when they manage to get big government to do their dirty work.
Your priority system is pretty thoroughly screwed if you believe that, and I have news for you... the average Slashdotter (who is, in my humble opinion, generally well above average even if I don't happen to agree with him or her at any particular moment) "gets it" a lot better than you appear to.
The average car thief spends a hell of a lot less time behind bars that these so-called pirates will, but that's a bad example since we're comparing apples to oranges. If you want a better example of white-collar crime, how about law enforcement prosecuting (and I mean, really prosecuting) the people responsible for massive exposures of private financial data. Choicepoint, for a choice example... the people in charge of that operation should be up on criminal charges and be facing at least as much jail time as those kids making movies available for download.
Have you ever been the victim of identity theft? I haven't... but I know some people that have. It's a life-changing event, and you never really recover from it. Furthermore, just knowing that the corporate crooks responsible will get, at best, a slap on the wrist and still get to buy that new Ferrari is intolerable. There really are a hell of a lot of truly serious computer crimes that affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of our citizens that the Feds could and should be spending tax dollars investigating and prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law. But there are no big special interests contributing to campaign warchests lobbying for that (quite the opposite, actually.)
So yes, while I certainly agree that what these people did was against the law, I would much rather the government concern itself with my welfare, rather than spend my money enacting and enforcing private law for a criminal oligopoly known collectively as the "motion picture industry".
Yes. And when you put a neo-Luddite with synthetic morality in the highest office in the land, you put such things at risk. I think you're right, but I also think the train wreck has already happened in the U.S. research establishment.
Bush is playing to the uneducated who have irrational fears of an "Island of Dr. Moreau" scenario, with hairy human-animal hybrids running around beating up and eating people. The real tragedy here is all the people that will die because of such fears, because medical treatments that would have saved their lives were never developed. Frankly, I hope George W. Bush and others like him eventually suffer from such an untreatable condition... it would serve them right.
Perhaps... but let's face facts, this wouldn't be happening if certain powerful interests hadn't spent some money on certain obliging lawmakers. And I'm sure that, if one looks around, one can find conspiricies far more deserving of law enforcement attention. That is really my problem with this: that mass quantities of government resources can be spent to serve corporate interests. Cops have better things to do.
One could easily argue that the unfettered multi-lettered organizations of various nationalities that are going after these (ahem) "pirates" are guilty of a degree of terrorism themselves. Of course, they would use words such as "justice" or "deterrence", but that's really a matter of perspective. Oh sure, we aren't talking explosives or mass-murder here... but we are talking about private organizations conscripting law-enforcement agencies into putting the fear of God (or Allah, or whatever deity you choose) into groups of people whose crime really doesn't warrant the attention it is receiving. My own take is that it is not the responsibility of the taxpayer to support their businesses, or to protect their oh-so-valuable "intellectual property". If the media companies want to spend their money taking people to court for their alleged improprieties that's one thing... but misusing police resources this way is just unacceptable. Personally, I'd rather see my tax dollars going to deal with somewhat more serious issues. Certainly there are more than enough of those to go around.
And at that point M.A.D. ceases to mean "Mutually Assured Destruction" and instead will stand for "Mostly All Dead". Seriously, it just takes one whack job with a nuke taking aim at another whack job with a nuke to cause substantial devastation. At least Soviet leadership during the Cold War was sufficiently rational not to want to die en masse for their ideology. The same cannot easily be said for North Korea or Iran.
They don't want to opt out, they want it all to just go away.
Good point. The old guard in any industry simply wants the newfangled stuff to simply "go away", so they can get back to doing things the way their Daddy and their Granddaddy did. The problem is, if the new is substantially better than the old it becomes really hard for the incumbents to just make it go away. Sometimes (not often) they wise up and get with the program... other times, they lack the requisite vision and try to maintain the status quo ante at all costs. That's why the RIAA/MPAA, the Baby Bells, (and now probably some newly-formed cartel ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H "industry trade association" of publishers) has to go to Washington to get anticompetitive laws made.
Even so, in the long run it is usually the incumbents that end up just going away, with the only real issue being the amount of damage they're allowed to do before they are finally put to rest. George Gilder once termed the process of new technologies displacing existing ones as "creative destruction", and that's a pretty apt description, I'd say.
Pretty much. The other thing that the suits didn't get was that Roddenberry's aliens weren't gratuitous... they were ways that Roddenberry explored aspects of the human psyche, by accentuating different human personality traits in various alien races. Vulcans stood for logic and reason, Klingons for aggression and warlike behavior, Andorians for passion, and so forth. Most of the aliens that existed in later franchises served little purpose other than as two-dimensional plot devices. I mean, what were the Cardassians but warmed-over Klingons with more makeup?
Yeah, Quark was a hoot. Armin Shimerman has appeared in a number of things since, he's one of my favorite supporting actors.
The fact that some people find something repugnant is not sufficient reason to make it illegal. If something is found to be actually harmful, well, then there may be cause. May, I say. Arguably, more children are harmed by alcoholic parents and secondhand smoke inhalation than by pornography, but people don't get put in jail simply for smoking or drinking in the privacy of their own home. Nor would I be jailed for selling a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of wine to a friend. By your logic, the fact that a majority of people find, say, homosexuality repugnant should be grounds for making it illegal. Others think that a woman wearing a revealing outfit is repulsive and immoral. Matter fact, virtually every aspect of human behavior will have its detractors, which is why public opinion is not relevant when deciding to pass a law against it. As the great Lazarus Long once said, "The popular will is often an idiot." Child pornography is against the law because it can be easily demonstrated that children are harmed by it, not because it disgusts most of us.
Suppose (as will eventually happen) we can synthesize perfectly realistic imagery of children performing illicit sex acts. All done by computer, no actual children involved anywhere in the production of said porno. Would you still be in favor of putting someone away for twenty years because he was caught with some of said pictures on his hard disk? Because he burned copies to sell or give away? The mere fact that you and I find such images appalling doesn't mean that others should be punished for disagreeing with us.
Re:Glad this wasn't settled out of court
on
RIM - The Whole Story
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Yes. There have been a number of adjustments to the patent system that work out very well in favor of the big guy. Charging maintenance fees, for example... a small inventor strapped for cash may not be able to afford the fees and then finds his patent becoming public domain before he has a chance to do anything with it. Not having to show a working prototype was another brilliant idea.
I have a couple of patents that I received as a consultant to a large corporation: they wanted me to assign all rights to them but I refused. I told their lawyer that if they didn't want to share ownership of the patent they should have made it clear up front that such was the case, particularly seeing that it was my work that was being patented. Supposedly I should have signed away all rights before the project started, but no-one ever mentioned that to me. So they dropped the issue at that point: at least I don't have to worry about paying the maintenance fees. Hey, maybe I should go talk to NTP and see if they can get some money out of anybody that might be infringing. Probably not: it was a very well-written and concise patent and the technology is pretty old. You never know, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the only truly open "license" is the public domain. Otherwise, the only real point of having a license is to delimit the use of the copyrighted work. And that's okay, one simply has to accept that the term "open" is not an absolute.
Really, you should write for a popular medicine column. Your talents are wasted on Slashdot.
So, if I were a secure cow, would that be a roast beef or a corned beef hash?
... no wonder I'm thinking about food.
Cripes, it's way past lunchtime
Yeah ... the Space Shuttle software group pretty much exemplifies what it takes to write software that is about as fault-free as it's possible to get. And they work as you say, by sound development practices, and constant, never-ending testing and refinement. It's a grueling process but it works.
I think you just came up with the definitive name for it. Tomorrow I'll be publishing "Bambi's Guide to Copyright".
During the Middle Ages (indeed, throughout most of human history) when somebody powerful wanted what you have so that he could have even more, he would just bop you on the head and take your stuff. Nowadays we call this a "transfer of wealth". All this random head-bopping became a problem for a lot of people, so some of them got together and invented the "rule of law". Now, the "rule of law" is expensive, so the newfound "rulers" (nowadays we call them "lawyers") had to create "taxation" in order pay for it. "Taxation", as we all know, is just a formalized, State-sponsored method of bopping somebody on the head and taking their stuff. Fortunately, we are now civilized so this rarely requires any actual head-bopping. Unfortunately, "taxation" only works for governments, so the corporations of the world came up with "intellectual property" for the express purpose of taxing our ideas, thereby once again bopping us on our heads and taking our stuff.
Yes, I know ... but the parent poster was concerned that we weren't defending the rights of creators, and I was pointing out that such protection (even though it wasn't termed "intellectual property", that's a fiction of more recent vintage) has been in place for a long time.
Nope. That's not what I'm saying, nor is it what I said. Thank you for playing.
Intellectual property has been defended all down the line ... it's in the goddamn Constitution, for chrissakes (admittedly, Thomas Jefferson had doubts about the whole thing.) The problem is that the defense, in recent decades, has become far too vigorous and needs to be put back where it belongs. This idea that we need the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and all the other myriad bits of legal bullshit that have come down the line in order to eliminate the public domain and use the power of the Federal Government to maintain outdated monopolies is simply wrong. Realistically, the copyright and patent protections we already had were, given the pace of change in modern times, already excessive and in need of reduction not increase.
No, it's about as good an analysis of Microsoft's motivations as any.
It's been used on metal-hulled oceangoing vessels for a long time.
Maybe ... but this appears to just be a warez group, not a pirate outfit (there is a difference: these guys were distributing material, not selling it.) At least, so far as I can tell from what little information there is on it. So how exactly does one fund terrorism (or anything else) when you aren't actually making any money from your illegal activities? The cops did this at the behest of the media companies in order to try and scare other people from doing anything similar, pure and simple. If there were any substantive evidence that the 19 individuals being persecuted here had a. made any money and b. were giving that money to terrorists, I'd feel very differently. But as it is, I'm sick to death of a few large corporations acting like spoiled brats and threatening anyone and everyone that doesn't toe their line. And I'm even more disturbed when they manage to get big government to do their dirty work.
who will control the new Global Goonet's root servers? Ahem.
Your priority system is pretty thoroughly screwed if you believe that, and I have news for you ... the average Slashdotter (who is, in my humble opinion, generally well above average even if I don't happen to agree with him or her at any particular moment) "gets it" a lot better than you appear to.
... the people in charge of that operation should be up on criminal charges and be facing at least as much jail time as those kids making movies available for download.
... but I know some people that have. It's a life-changing event, and you never really recover from it. Furthermore, just knowing that the corporate crooks responsible will get, at best, a slap on the wrist and still get to buy that new Ferrari is intolerable. There really are a hell of a lot of truly serious computer crimes that affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of our citizens that the Feds could and should be spending tax dollars investigating and prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law. But there are no big special interests contributing to campaign warchests lobbying for that (quite the opposite, actually.)
The average car thief spends a hell of a lot less time behind bars that these so-called pirates will, but that's a bad example since we're comparing apples to oranges. If you want a better example of white-collar crime, how about law enforcement prosecuting (and I mean, really prosecuting) the people responsible for massive exposures of private financial data. Choicepoint, for a choice example
Have you ever been the victim of identity theft? I haven't
So yes, while I certainly agree that what these people did was against the law, I would much rather the government concern itself with my welfare, rather than spend my money enacting and enforcing private law for a criminal oligopoly known collectively as the "motion picture industry".
Yes. And when you put a neo-Luddite with synthetic morality in the highest office in the land, you put such things at risk. I think you're right, but I also think the train wreck has already happened in the U.S. research establishment.
... it would serve them right.
Bush is playing to the uneducated who have irrational fears of an "Island of Dr. Moreau" scenario, with hairy human-animal hybrids running around beating up and eating people. The real tragedy here is all the people that will die because of such fears, because medical treatments that would have saved their lives were never developed. Frankly, I hope George W. Bush and others like him eventually suffer from such an untreatable condition
Perhaps ... but let's face facts, this wouldn't be happening if certain powerful interests hadn't spent some money on certain obliging lawmakers. And I'm sure that, if one looks around, one can find conspiricies far more deserving of law enforcement attention. That is really my problem with this: that mass quantities of government resources can be spent to serve corporate interests. Cops have better things to do.
One could easily argue that the unfettered multi-lettered organizations of various nationalities that are going after these (ahem) "pirates" are guilty of a degree of terrorism themselves. Of course, they would use words such as "justice" or "deterrence", but that's really a matter of perspective. Oh sure, we aren't talking explosives or mass-murder here ... but we are talking about private organizations conscripting law-enforcement agencies into putting the fear of God (or Allah, or whatever deity you choose) into groups of people whose crime really doesn't warrant the attention it is receiving. My own take is that it is not the responsibility of the taxpayer to support their businesses, or to protect their oh-so-valuable "intellectual property". If the media companies want to spend their money taking people to court for their alleged improprieties that's one thing ... but misusing police resources this way is just unacceptable. Personally, I'd rather see my tax dollars going to deal with somewhat more serious issues. Certainly there are more than enough of those to go around.
And at that point M.A.D. ceases to mean "Mutually Assured Destruction" and instead will stand for "Mostly All Dead". Seriously, it just takes one whack job with a nuke taking aim at another whack job with a nuke to cause substantial devastation. At least Soviet leadership during the Cold War was sufficiently rational not to want to die en masse for their ideology. The same cannot easily be said for North Korea or Iran.
They don't want to opt out, they want it all to just go away.
... other times, they lack the requisite vision and try to maintain the status quo ante at all costs. That's why the RIAA/MPAA, the Baby Bells, (and now probably some newly-formed cartel ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H "industry trade association" of publishers) has to go to Washington to get anticompetitive laws made.
Good point. The old guard in any industry simply wants the newfangled stuff to simply "go away", so they can get back to doing things the way their Daddy and their Granddaddy did. The problem is, if the new is substantially better than the old it becomes really hard for the incumbents to just make it go away. Sometimes (not often) they wise up and get with the program
Even so, in the long run it is usually the incumbents that end up just going away, with the only real issue being the amount of damage they're allowed to do before they are finally put to rest. George Gilder once termed the process of new technologies displacing existing ones as "creative destruction", and that's a pretty apt description, I'd say.
I think everyone here understands what you're saying ... they just can't relate to it.
Actually, I believe it is guaranteed to do one thing: take up lots of space on your hard disk.
Pretty much. The other thing that the suits didn't get was that Roddenberry's aliens weren't gratuitous ... they were ways that Roddenberry explored aspects of the human psyche, by accentuating different human personality traits in various alien races. Vulcans stood for logic and reason, Klingons for aggression and warlike behavior, Andorians for passion, and so forth. Most of the aliens that existed in later franchises served little purpose other than as two-dimensional plot devices. I mean, what were the Cardassians but warmed-over Klingons with more makeup?
Yeah, Quark was a hoot. Armin Shimerman has appeared in a number of things since, he's one of my favorite supporting actors.
I don't. Got burned one too many times and decided to shop elsewhere.
The fact that some people find something repugnant is not sufficient reason to make it illegal. If something is found to be actually harmful, well, then there may be cause. May, I say. Arguably, more children are harmed by alcoholic parents and secondhand smoke inhalation than by pornography, but people don't get put in jail simply for smoking or drinking in the privacy of their own home. Nor would I be jailed for selling a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of wine to a friend. By your logic, the fact that a majority of people find, say, homosexuality repugnant should be grounds for making it illegal. Others think that a woman wearing a revealing outfit is repulsive and immoral. Matter fact, virtually every aspect of human behavior will have its detractors, which is why public opinion is not relevant when deciding to pass a law against it. As the great Lazarus Long once said, "The popular will is often an idiot." Child pornography is against the law because it can be easily demonstrated that children are harmed by it, not because it disgusts most of us.
Suppose (as will eventually happen) we can synthesize perfectly realistic imagery of children performing illicit sex acts. All done by computer, no actual children involved anywhere in the production of said porno. Would you still be in favor of putting someone away for twenty years because he was caught with some of said pictures on his hard disk? Because he burned copies to sell or give away? The mere fact that you and I find such images appalling doesn't mean that others should be punished for disagreeing with us.
Yes. There have been a number of adjustments to the patent system that work out very well in favor of the big guy. Charging maintenance fees, for example ... a small inventor strapped for cash may not be able to afford the fees and then finds his patent becoming public domain before he has a chance to do anything with it. Not having to show a working prototype was another brilliant idea.
I have a couple of patents that I received as a consultant to a large corporation: they wanted me to assign all rights to them but I refused. I told their lawyer that if they didn't want to share ownership of the patent they should have made it clear up front that such was the case, particularly seeing that it was my work that was being patented. Supposedly I should have signed away all rights before the project started, but no-one ever mentioned that to me. So they dropped the issue at that point: at least I don't have to worry about paying the maintenance fees. Hey, maybe I should go talk to NTP and see if they can get some money out of anybody that might be infringing. Probably not: it was a very well-written and concise patent and the technology is pretty old. You never know, though.