These are top lecturers at their countries top Uni. I did say "text books" which is perhaps misleading you to think they covered a range of topics. They cover the material for the course.
If you've taught the same material for 10years doesn't it make sense to bind it as a book?
Stephen Read and Crispin Wright (I remember their names cause of the joke, "Read and Wright") wrote a logic book, theirs was published and is translated in 4 languages I think. Most weren't published outside the Uni.
Last points.. in this Fantasy University (I've clearly created in my mind) if their course content is so generic why would anyone want to copy it? If it's generic they can write their own content entirely unrelated to the course presentation and sell that? And how did the lecturers at Fantasy Uni' get such high gradings for their teaching standard (Uni's in the UK are, or at least were, inspected by a government sponsored agency) compared to other Uni's - surely they just all teach the same thing in the same way?
-- PS: I've never seen this sort of thing in the UK, but then I attended Uni rather than paying someone else to do it for me.
Er, did you read my post. Sure those profs derived the work from the facts they presented but the presentation, compilation, description and what-have-you is theirs - they wrote the books that the lecture is based on.
If you want to argue that all text-book level science is derivative and can't be copyrighted then that's a different question.
Also, often at Uni the pace of lectures was such that all I could do was near verbatim copy, particularly things like QFT as it took a couple of days to understand the content of that one hour enough that you'd know what is and is not so important - most of it being formulas, you can't exactly study a proof if you only have one lemma and the final equation or you only noted one axiom, etc..
Sure there are other text books, but they present a different course of study. There was probably only one course where I couldn't actually have studied the subject had it not been for the use of the prof's book, however.
But the fact that there are other presentations doesn't mean that I can use any particular one how I see fit.
The link is to an imagined future where a man won't let someone read his copy of something for fear of reprise by a monitoring authority.
So it seems you're saying that the students attending should let the others read *their copy*.
The article is about someone taking that copy and making further copies and selling it. This is not addressed in the article you link.
Indeed you are quite right the students should lend their copy (whose creation is authorised by implicit contract as that student has attended the lecture) just as in the citation you give.
[slightly sarcastically]Incidentally I noticed you didn't rewrite the article including all the salient points, put it on a website with ads, then link to it as your own work... why was that?? [/]
Or if you make a movie of some people doing a demonstration. Is it you or the people that get the copyright on that work?...snip...
And don't forget that a lecture is fact filtered through the lecturer's view. And a recording will only catch that view from the view that the recording position will provide. This means that any different angle or position in the lecturing hall will provide a different view and therefore be a different work. (1) Try making a movie of some people performing a hollywood movie rather than a factually derived lecture... good luck!
(2) Have you read Bertrand Russell? If you look at a table from two angles you see different views of _the_same_table! Priceless!!
Most of my lecturers at Uni wrote at least one of the text books we were using. That's true in Maths, Physics, Logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology courses I took.
You're not allowed to copy out the text book and reprint it as a new work. Why then should you be able to do so, just because they spoke about that same material?
Copyright terms are a separate issue entirely and I know this is no defence against those that disagree completely with compensating producers of creative works.
If a student took my notes, polished them up to the point that they could be sold, sold them for a profit, and proved to me that she did it, I'd bump her final grade up a letter if she didn't already have an A. How about if that student was then given your job because they know the course better than you... their notes are better after all.
Wouldn't you want it to be acknowledged that it was your work originally and all she did was shine it up.
In copyright terms, that means asserting your "moral rights". You choose like Dire Bonobo says whether you feel you should be financially recompensed or not.
>>> "asking for compensation for the work you did and they couldn't be bothered to do"
Part of passing a course is being bothered to do the work... so you're not helping really.
Also you're taking the notes anyway. I have no problem with passing your notes on to be read by someone else. Mass-reproduction of your notes again is fine, *provided* they are not a copy of the lecturers notes.
For example if you use the lecturers material to write _your_own_notes_, ie they use other sources include other material excerpts and have additional original material. That there is fine.
That however is not what the subject of the post is.
The world I live in is "fucked up" as you describe but I consider myself to be one of the least fucked-up bits. Students that think they should repay their professors by taking their hard work and exploiting it to make a fast buck (whether it's legal or not) I consider to be in one of the more fucked-up bits.
FWIW
If you want to help your fellow students that much arrange a study group and you can go over the professors notes and include example problems from other sources and add your own illustrations and analogies, etc., to aid the learning process.
If you do that you'll realise why the professor deserves to be paid for his hard work.
The first sentence of the abstract is plain wrong.
Taking notes from the lecturer on a course you've paid for (or the tax payer, depending on your location, has) is fine. You create a derivative of the lecturers copyright but it's either allowed contractually or fair use for educational purposes (again depending on jurisdiction).
Making a "slavish" copy of the lecturers notes and then selling them is not allowed and impinges on the ability of the lecturer to sell his own work for publication. In this case I don't think it's just infringement it's also immoral.
It's pretty straight forward.
Now if the company were giving away copies of the notes then it might be interesting...
as long as you keep the original CD as "proof of purchase" So I wouldn't get sued for copyright infringement because I format shift, but because I have a bad memory and lost a CD. Hmm, might have to think about that a little more. Why should the onus be on me, the innocent party to prove my innocence, surely the plaintif should have some evidence to support their "injury" claim.
So John User is using his computer for personal stuff... hope you cleared that benefit properly in your accounts and that he declared it on his annual return?
Who do you want to pay more money to, the tax offices or the music industry.
I'm no historian but I think it's fair to say that slaves come via a variety of routes. For example being captured in a war. Abducted by pirates (the non copyright infringing kind). Simply abducted by people pulling a boat up at your village, killing a few people and carrying you off (do they count as pirates?).
Now granted literacy through the ages hasn't perhaps been as high as it could but some of those galley slaves are going to be literates that couldn't be trusted with book work or who's masters wished to drive into the deck.
Your point on access to the library is probably valid. But as they say "information wants to be free"...
I would say as a tyrannical slave-master I'd want to get the best from each slave, or know where to put those most in need of subduing.
>>> It was just that KDE 4.0 was somewhat rushed (it probably should have been still beta, but at least this way it got lots of development attention).
Look I use KDE, it's been the default desktop environment for me since I started with Slackware about 9 years ago, I've tried Gnome (again recently), FVWM, TWM(!) and minimalist environs you get with the likes of blackbox. That's where I'm coming from...
If I wanted to be tricked into using sub-standard software I'll buy a new computer with windows preloaded. Releasing KDE4 as a release and not a beta (or extended alpha) just makes it look like KDE sucks-teh-big-one. And to be honest I think, compared to KDE3 it seems like it does - but I'll wait for the 4.1 (which looks like it may actually work properly) and try again.
The kicker is two steps back in usability. Dolphin lacked all the options for displaying different file listings that I use in Konq...
>>> "Joking aside, most people already are symmetrical, so it would definitely stand out for people who aren't."
Take a photo of yourself, photoshop (but use Gimp, cause you're a geek right!) it to mirror half the face. You look freaky, that's not what you normally look like is it.
Some research was done on this at St.Andrews University, Fife, UK (I studied Phys / Maths there) at the time they published pics in all the daily papers of a theoretical beauty (composite).
But those ISS dudes are going to be pissed that, whilst they were once astronauts, the closest they can get to being CERN scientists is being Nuclear Safety Officers... damn!
It's the only time with this computer I've had a complete lock up that wouldn't even respond to Alt-SysRq-B. Had to hard power-off.
I've got a Winfast Leadtek 7600GT running in an Acer Aspire with Athlon 64 X2 4000+ and 3G RAM - crashes after about 10 mins of gameplay on my Vista, also appears to crash when running 3D apps on Linux.
I may be mistaken but I think in settings you choose to read the HTML or text versions as default and presumably the reply is then using that part - it's worse than I thought otherwise.
When I moved from Slackware to Ubuntu, I tried all sorts of new 'wares. Evolution was great but like Kontact (which wraps KMail, the KDE newsreader, calendar, notes, weather reports, etc.) appears to lack simple HTML inline images in template emails.
Just this one feature means I'm stuck with Thunderbird, which is great but not the integrated package I wished for. If I had the money I'd pay someone to add HTML email composition... but I suspect the KMail devs would still reject it as (I've been told in the past) "email is not for images"!
So, if I ask you to "get me a coffee" and you interpret that to mean murder the first person you see and take their coffee - you believe I'm no better than someone who asked you to "murder that person"? (You said that it didn't matter about the intent of a command only the action of those carrying it out).
>>> Do you want to make them abandon their beliefs because their religion is incompatible with yours?
Yes, I want those who believe I should be dead (eg Sura 9:5), or at best a slave, for my beliefs to stop believing that. Is that really hard to understand?
>>> Muslim countries were actively murdering Christians by the thousands and amassing armies at our borders. But they aren't and if anything we are doing that to them.
There is no such thing as a Christian country. Muslim countries don't murder Christian by the thousand, because it's illegal to become a Christian - everyone is declared Muslim, apostasy is punishable by death under Sharia, Christians have long since been "punished", fled or gone underground. In countries such as Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Iran,... minority Christian populations are murdered for their faith. It's not just Christians, some Sunni and Shia think the others are apostate and that's why so many are dying in Iraq at the moment for example.
Having a good search facility is not a benefit to a store provided they have a reasonable assumption that you will keep looking. I think this works well for high-street branded stores.
Just like the way the supermarkets move the stock, the on-line retailer wants you to: a) stick around and b) see more of what they have on offer in the hope something else will peak your interest so they can c)... and d) profit.
So a search facility that doesn't show you what you need straight away is actually probably one designed that way.
>>> "The early Islamic world was well known for tolerating other faiths. In fact, there was a financial incentive for this as well..."
How early. Are you talking about those slaughtered by Mohammed and his men or those ransomed to pay a heavy tax to support Islamic invasion or die for their beliefs?
You know if you murder a city full of people you get to keep the money too, and you've purged the world of "infidels" and "apostates" too.
>>> "Martin Luther King was a Christian, but so was Jerry Falwell, and so were the Crusaders and Oliver Cromwell. Similarly, Osama bin Laden is a Muslim, but Avicenna, Abd Ar Rahman, and Suleyman the Magnificent were Muslims too."
There is some debate as to what percentage of the crusaders were Christians.
[wikipedia:] "Suleiman personally led Ottoman armies to conquer the Christian strongholds of Belgrade, Rhodes, and most of Hungary before his conquests were checked at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He annexed most of the Middle East in his conflict with the Persians and large swathes of North Africa as far west as Algeria. Under his rule, the Ottoman fleet dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean."
So this is your example of a non-violent Muslim believer? Perhaps you're referring to his enlightened reform of land slaves (serf) to become dhimmi (bound to remain subservient to the ruling Muslims on pain of death)?
>>> "Both are in fact inert doctrines until they are taken up and interpreted by individuals."
The difference is that Muslims are commanded to subdue the world by force, impose their political system and by threat of death create converts. Christians are commanded to spread the message of God's sacrificial death and perform works of service to demonstrate God's love and convince people to convert. No interpretation needed, it's plain as day.
Remember that in Christian "law" the New Testament supersedes as in Islamic scripture the later stanzas overrule any earlier contradiction.
Ever heard of global climate change, or just the idea of reduced taxes?
Maybe you could buy a pocket torch (I actually enjoy walking at night away from streetlights, especially when the moon is out and you can see nearly as much as in daylight). Wind up torches work pretty well too.
Slashdot Mirror
Who do you think writes the text books?
.. in this Fantasy University (I've clearly created in my mind) if their course content is so generic why would anyone want to copy it? If it's generic they can write their own content entirely unrelated to the course presentation and sell that? And how did the lecturers at Fantasy Uni' get such high gradings for their teaching standard (Uni's in the UK are, or at least were, inspected by a government sponsored agency) compared to other Uni's - surely they just all teach the same thing in the same way?
These are top lecturers at their countries top Uni. I did say "text books" which is perhaps misleading you to think they covered a range of topics. They cover the material for the course.
If you've taught the same material for 10years doesn't it make sense to bind it as a book?
Stephen Read and Crispin Wright (I remember their names cause of the joke, "Read and Wright") wrote a logic book, theirs was published and is translated in 4 languages I think. Most weren't published outside the Uni.
Last points
--
PS: I've never seen this sort of thing in the UK, but then I attended Uni rather than paying someone else to do it for me.
Er, did you read my post. Sure those profs derived the work from the facts they presented but the presentation, compilation, description and what-have-you is theirs - they wrote the books that the lecture is based on.
If you want to argue that all text-book level science is derivative and can't be copyrighted then that's a different question.
Also, often at Uni the pace of lectures was such that all I could do was near verbatim copy, particularly things like QFT as it took a couple of days to understand the content of that one hour enough that you'd know what is and is not so important - most of it being formulas, you can't exactly study a proof if you only have one lemma and the final equation or you only noted one axiom, etc..
Sure there are other text books, but they present a different course of study. There was probably only one course where I couldn't actually have studied the subject had it not been for the use of the prof's book, however.
But the fact that there are other presentations doesn't mean that I can use any particular one how I see fit.
The link is to an imagined future where a man won't let someone read his copy of something for fear of reprise by a monitoring authority.
... why was that??
So it seems you're saying that the students attending should let the others read *their copy*.
The article is about someone taking that copy and making further copies and selling it. This is not addressed in the article you link.
Indeed you are quite right the students should lend their copy (whose creation is authorised by implicit contract as that student has attended the lecture) just as in the citation you give.
[slightly sarcastically]Incidentally I noticed you didn't rewrite the article including all the salient points, put it on a website with ads, then link to it as your own work
[/]
And don't forget that a lecture is fact filtered through the lecturer's view. And a recording will only catch that view from the view that the recording position will provide. This means that any different angle or position in the lecturing hall will provide a different view and therefore be a different work. (1) Try making a movie of some people performing a hollywood movie rather than a factually derived lecture
(2) Have you read Bertrand Russell? If you look at a table from two angles you see different views of _the_same_table! Priceless!!
Most of my lecturers at Uni wrote at least one of the text books we were using. That's true in Maths, Physics, Logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology courses I took.
You're not allowed to copy out the text book and reprint it as a new work. Why then should you be able to do so, just because they spoke about that same material?
Copyright terms are a separate issue entirely and I know this is no defence against those that disagree completely with compensating producers of creative works.
Wouldn't you want it to be acknowledged that it was your work originally and all she did was shine it up.
In copyright terms, that means asserting your "moral rights". You choose like Dire Bonobo says whether you feel you should be financially recompensed or not.
>>> "asking for compensation for the work you did and they couldn't be bothered to do"
... so you're not helping really.
Part of passing a course is being bothered to do the work
Also you're taking the notes anyway. I have no problem with passing your notes on to be read by someone else. Mass-reproduction of your notes again is fine, *provided* they are not a copy of the lecturers notes.
For example if you use the lecturers material to write _your_own_notes_, ie they use other sources include other material excerpts and have additional original material. That there is fine.
That however is not what the subject of the post is.
The world I live in is "fucked up" as you describe but I consider myself to be one of the least fucked-up bits. Students that think they should repay their professors by taking their hard work and exploiting it to make a fast buck (whether it's legal or not) I consider to be in one of the more fucked-up bits.
FWIW
If you want to help your fellow students that much arrange a study group and you can go over the professors notes and include example problems from other sources and add your own illustrations and analogies, etc., to aid the learning process.
If you do that you'll realise why the professor deserves to be paid for his hard work.
RTFA, please.
...
The first sentence of the abstract is plain wrong.
Taking notes from the lecturer on a course you've paid for (or the tax payer, depending on your location, has) is fine. You create a derivative of the lecturers copyright but it's either allowed contractually or fair use for educational purposes (again depending on jurisdiction).
Making a "slavish" copy of the lecturers notes and then selling them is not allowed and impinges on the ability of the lecturer to sell his own work for publication. In this case I don't think it's just infringement it's also immoral.
It's pretty straight forward.
Now if the company were giving away copies of the notes then it might be interesting
>>> I think John User must have done it.
... hope you cleared that benefit properly in your accounts and that he declared it on his annual return?
So John User is using his computer for personal stuff
Who do you want to pay more money to, the tax offices or the music industry.
I think it's fair to say I was going to castigate you for weasel words ...
L-O-L
I'm no historian but I think it's fair to say that slaves come via a variety of routes. For example being captured in a war. Abducted by pirates (the non copyright infringing kind). Simply abducted by people pulling a boat up at your village, killing a few people and carrying you off (do they count as pirates?).
...
Now granted literacy through the ages hasn't perhaps been as high as it could but some of those galley slaves are going to be literates that couldn't be trusted with book work or who's masters wished to drive into the deck.
Your point on access to the library is probably valid. But as they say "information wants to be free"
I would say as a tyrannical slave-master I'd want to get the best from each slave, or know where to put those most in need of subduing.
>>> It was just that KDE 4.0 was somewhat rushed (it probably should have been still beta, but at least this way it got lots of development attention).
...
...
Look I use KDE, it's been the default desktop environment for me since I started with Slackware about 9 years ago, I've tried Gnome (again recently), FVWM, TWM(!) and minimalist environs you get with the likes of blackbox. That's where I'm coming from
If I wanted to be tricked into using sub-standard software I'll buy a new computer with windows preloaded. Releasing KDE4 as a release and not a beta (or extended alpha) just makes it look like KDE sucks-teh-big-one. And to be honest I think, compared to KDE3 it seems like it does - but I'll wait for the 4.1 (which looks like it may actually work properly) and try again.
The kicker is two steps back in usability. Dolphin lacked all the options for displaying different file listings that I use in Konq
>>> "Joking aside, most people already are symmetrical, so it would definitely stand out for people who aren't."
Take a photo of yourself, photoshop (but use Gimp, cause you're a geek right!) it to mirror half the face. You look freaky, that's not what you normally look like is it.
Some research was done on this at St.Andrews University, Fife, UK (I studied Phys / Maths there) at the time they published pics in all the daily papers of a theoretical beauty (composite).
FWIW.
"Hi, let's fuck"?
But those ISS dudes are going to be pissed that, whilst they were once astronauts, the closest they can get to being CERN scientists is being Nuclear Safety Officers ... damn!
It's the only time with this computer I've had a complete lock up that wouldn't even respond to Alt-SysRq-B. Had to hard power-off.
I've got a Winfast Leadtek 7600GT running in an Acer Aspire with Athlon 64 X2 4000+ and 3G RAM - crashes after about 10 mins of gameplay on my Vista, also appears to crash when running 3D apps on Linux.
I may be mistaken but I think in settings you choose to read the HTML or text versions as default and presumably the reply is then using that part - it's worse than I thought otherwise.
... but I suspect the KMail devs would still reject it as (I've been told in the past) "email is not for images"!
When I moved from Slackware to Ubuntu, I tried all sorts of new 'wares. Evolution was great but like Kontact (which wraps KMail, the KDE newsreader, calendar, notes, weather reports, etc.) appears to lack simple HTML inline images in template emails.
Just this one feature means I'm stuck with Thunderbird, which is great but not the integrated package I wished for. If I had the money I'd pay someone to add HTML email composition
You obviously haven't seen the super-duper-ultimate-your-collection-quiz-poke application then
</sarcasm>
So, if I ask you to "get me a coffee" and you interpret that to mean murder the first person you see and take their coffee - you believe I'm no better than someone who asked you to "murder that person"? (You said that it didn't matter about the intent of a command only the action of those carrying it out).
... minority Christian populations are murdered for their faith. It's not just Christians, some Sunni and Shia think the others are apostate and that's why so many are dying in Iraq at the moment for example.
>>> Do you want to make them abandon their beliefs because their religion is incompatible with yours?
Yes, I want those who believe I should be dead (eg Sura 9:5), or at best a slave, for my beliefs to stop believing that. Is that really hard to understand?
>>> Muslim countries were actively murdering Christians by the thousands and amassing armies at our borders. But they aren't and if anything we are doing that to them.
There is no such thing as a Christian country. Muslim countries don't murder Christian by the thousand, because it's illegal to become a Christian - everyone is declared Muslim, apostasy is punishable by death under Sharia, Christians have long since been "punished", fled or gone underground. In countries such as Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Iran,
"provided they have a reasonable assumption that you will keep looking"
I meant bring your interest to a maximal cusp. ... no, not really.
Having a good search facility is not a benefit to a store provided they have a reasonable assumption that you will keep looking. I think this works well for high-street branded stores.
... and d) profit.
Just like the way the supermarkets move the stock, the on-line retailer wants you to: a) stick around and b) see more of what they have on offer in the hope something else will peak your interest so they can c)
So a search facility that doesn't show you what you need straight away is actually probably one designed that way.
[Yeah, I know I got the quote ass-about-tail.]
>>> "The early Islamic world was well known for tolerating other faiths. In fact, there was a financial incentive for this as well ..."
How early. Are you talking about those slaughtered by Mohammed and his men or those ransomed to pay a heavy tax to support Islamic invasion or die for their beliefs?
You know if you murder a city full of people you get to keep the money too, and you've purged the world of "infidels" and "apostates" too.
>>> "Martin Luther King was a Christian, but so was Jerry Falwell, and so were the Crusaders and Oliver Cromwell. Similarly, Osama bin Laden is a Muslim, but Avicenna, Abd Ar Rahman, and Suleyman the Magnificent were Muslims too."
There is some debate as to what percentage of the crusaders were Christians.
[wikipedia:] "Suleiman personally led Ottoman armies to conquer the Christian strongholds of Belgrade, Rhodes, and most of Hungary before his conquests were checked at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He annexed most of the Middle East in his conflict with the Persians and large swathes of North Africa as far west as Algeria. Under his rule, the Ottoman fleet dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean."
So this is your example of a non-violent Muslim believer? Perhaps you're referring to his enlightened reform of land slaves (serf) to become dhimmi (bound to remain subservient to the ruling Muslims on pain of death)?
>>> "Both are in fact inert doctrines until they are taken up and interpreted by individuals."
The difference is that Muslims are commanded to subdue the world by force, impose their political system and by threat of death create converts. Christians are commanded to spread the message of God's sacrificial death and perform works of service to demonstrate God's love and convince people to convert. No interpretation needed, it's plain as day.
Remember that in Christian "law" the New Testament supersedes as in Islamic scripture the later stanzas overrule any earlier contradiction.
Ever heard of global climate change, or just the idea of reduced taxes?
Maybe you could buy a pocket torch (I actually enjoy walking at night away from streetlights, especially when the moon is out and you can see nearly as much as in daylight). Wind up torches work pretty well too.