They are as effective as using a howitzer to remove an ant pile.
Bad analogy. A howitzer would be a supremely effective way to remove an ant pile.
In this case, though, the problem is that the software blocks legitimate sites while letting pornography sites through. This is more like attempting to use a howitzer to remove an ant pile, missing the ant pile completely, and hitting your own house, after which the ants move in set up an even bigger ant pile in the smoking crater where your house used to be.
Ah, yes, the latest karma whoring strategy. Post a vague and completely unrelated quote from a well-respected authority, without commentary, and wait for the mod points to roll in.
Test succeeded. You can start doing this as a logged-in user now.
Or... intriguing. Maybe this is just chaff. You know, a distraction so the people with mod points will spend their points on this post, leaving them with no points for down-modding the trolls. Great strategy! Brilliant!
Re:Religious paranoid idiots will ban anything
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Interpretation is not a slippery thing that you can just arbitrarily apply. There is a science to it that involves processes and mechanics to extract and confirm the true meaning.
So... you're saying there's a right interpretation and a wrong interpretation? That's... well, that's just stupid. No offense.
Remember: de gustibus non disputandum est.
Anyways, the Bible is quite clear upon the idea of a death penalty and is consistent from cover to cover on this subject.
Yes... except for that great bit about, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." I always enjoyed that part.
So is it's ok if we put murderers in prison and they murder other prison inmates, or guards? There will always be people in the periphery of criminals no matter where they are incarcerated.
If my argument is flawed, yours is equally flawed. I said-- let me reiterate that it was merely an example of an ethical argument, and not intended to be a complete or strong one-- that it's best not to execute someone, on the chance that he might do something good with the remainder of his natural life. You're saying it's best to execute someone, on the chance that he might do something bad with the remainder of his natural life. Either we're both on solid ground, or we're both just plain wrong. You pick; I can live with either.
A dog that attacks and kills is immediately put to sleep. No reprieve can save them. How much more accountable should a person be for their actions than a dog?
Sounds like you've answered your own question. I prefer not to treat other human beings like dogs, but that's just me. Also, your analogy begs the question, accountable to whom? If you're as much of a Bible scholar as you seem to be, you should know that only God can judge a man's actions, for only God can know what was in that man's heart. Where were you, Dread_ed, when He laid the foundations of the Earth?
The human being, as described in the Bible, is not a human being until God adds the soul to it. [...] This "soul" is not detectable under a microscope or evident though amniocentesis, and cannot be weighed as a differnce in weight between the unborn fetus and the newborn child. Therefore, ovbiously, it has nothing to do with our understanding of human fetal development.
Therefore, obviously, it is not a useful concept in deciding at what point a fetus becomes a biologically viable human being.
Here's a little exercise for you. Find a woman who has just suffered a miscarriage. Try, just try, to console her by telling her that her baby wasn't really human because it didn't have a soul. After your bones knit, come back and tell us how it went over.
The Bible states that there is no human life in the womb.
If that's true-- I'm not at all certain that it is-- then the Bible is mistaken. That's no big deal; the Bible includes a great many factual errors, none of which diminish its value as a book or as a religious symbol. Read on.
First, the Bible is accurate with regard to the "scientific" thigs that it makes reference to.
In the book of Leviticus (11:6) it is said the rabbits chew their cud. This is not correct. Earlier in the same chapter (11:4), it says that camels do not have cloven hooves; they do. The book of Matthew (13:31-32) says that mustard seeds grow into trees. They don't. Are any of these things important in any way? No, of course not. But it does serve to illustrate the point that the Bible is not a particularly good authority on matters of strict fact.
All I am saying is that if someone is a Christian they should keep in mind what God has stated about human life and keep their mouth shut about the issue. Period.
Different Christians have different opinions on this subject than yours. In the fourth century, for example, St. Gregory of Nyssa (one of the Cappadocians) held the opinion that life quickens an organism from the first moment of its individual-- not necessarily independent-- existence until the moment of its death.
Centuries later, St. Thomas Aquinas established his own doctrine of ensoulment: 40 days post-conception for male fetuses, 80 days post-conception for female fetuses.
Modern Catholic doctrine is less specific, but just as resolute. In fact, the Church states that embryonic children must be baptized before expiration due to the termination-- intentional or otherwise-- of a pregnancy, and even goes so far as to say that the baptism, because of the obvious exigency of the circumstances, may be performed by a non-Christian.
Clearly the book is not closed on the collective Christian opinion on abortion.
It started in the Garden of Eden when God breathed life into the body of man, and the same mechanics happen at each birth.
Ah... the old "continuum of life" theory. Or, in this case, your rejection of it. The theory of the continuum of life says that God granted Adam with the "breath of life"-- although I've never heard that phrase used in this context before-- at the moment of his creation, and that all subsequent human beings share that same "breath of life." This explains why it's not possible to create human life but through the process of insemination-- be it in vivo or in vitro. In other words, this theory proposes that there is no instant of time in which a human being is biologically but not spiritually alive; instead, there is an unbroken continuum of life going back umpty-bump thousands of years all the way to Adam.
(Scholars who discuss the continuum of life theory seem to be divided on the question of Eve. The general consensus is that, because God created her out of Adam's body and not out of "the dust of the ground," Eve's "breath of life" (again, your term) sprang from Adam's. This is not universally agreed-upon, however.)
I'm certainly not arguing that you're wrong. I'm simply trying to point out that the issue is not quite as simple as you might think it is. Naturally, you personally are free to believe whatever you wish.
Which reminds me of a funny story. The old joke goes that a scientist is giving a lecture on cosmology. After his talk, and old lady comes up to him and tells him that he's got it all wrong. "The world," she says, "rests on the back of a giant tortise." Thinking he'll put her in her place, the scientist asks, "Well, then, madam, what is the tortise standing on?" The old lady laughs and says, "You're very clever, young man, but it's no use. It's turtles all the way down!"
Re:Religious paranoid idiots will ban anything
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You keep talking about rights as if there were such a thing. As I have already explained at length, what you think of as "rights" are nothing more or less than the imposition of will upon another person through the threat of force. Let me make my point as clearly as I know how: there are no such things as rights. They are a consensual hallucination.
Therefore any system that bases itself on, as you say, "demanding that our rights be respected," cannot stand. It requires that all members of society adopt the same set of values and beliefs, and that all people live by the arrangement of rules that you so quaintly call your "rights." This has not yet, and never will, happen.
I'll give you an example. I do not believe that any person is entitled to what you euphemistically call "the right to one's body." I believe that prostitution should-- indeed, must-- be illegal. I believe that some drugs are so dangerous that they must also be illegal. More generally, I believe that communities of people have the collective privilege of deciding what behavior is and is not appropriate among their members. If a community rules that massage parlors or pornography theaters or strip clubs must be outlawed, that is a valid and appropriate judgment.
There are many other items in the Libertarian Party platform-- to which you linked many posts back-- that are simply unacceptable to the vast majority of people. The abolition of prescription requirements for the purchase of medicines: absurd. My girlfriend is a physician, so I've witnessed second-hand the dangers that can come from patients who self-medicate. Medicines must be regulated to protect unwise or ignorant people from hurting, or even killing, themselves. Likewise, the Libertarian Party stands for the abolition of regulation on the sale of alcohol and tobacco. This is unacceptable. Persons under the legal age are not capable of making good decisions about their use of these substances, and therefore they must not have access to them.
The Libertarian Party opposes the involuntary commitment of individuals on the grounds of mental illness. This baffles me; are they expecting mentally ill individuals to somehow overcome their disease long enough to sign themselves into a hospital?
The Libertarian Party opposes the use of passports, and other forms of border control. The number of instances of criminals being caught at border crossings alone is enough to put the lie to this proposal.
The Libertarian Party opposes the protection of national secrets by the Department of Defense and other agencies of government. I'm sure those who worked on codes and code-breaking during World War II would have something to say about that.
The Libertarian Party opposes bans on the sale of automatic weapons to civilians. In fact, they oppose the ban of any weapon or class of weapon. In a Libertarian world, you'd be able to buy machine guns at Wal-Mart.
The Libertarian Party calls for the repeal of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is astounding to any individual who has served in the armed forces.
The Libertarian Party opposes taxation, but also opposes deficit spending, which leads to the natural conclusion that they hope to establish a government funded entirely by charity.
The list goes on and on and on.
But here's the important thing: there are more people like me than there are people like you. We literally outnumber you, and by a very wide margin. What you call "my rights," I call a foolish and unfounded assertion not backed up by the facts. You have no right to your body, in the sense that you mean it. You have no right to sexual freedom, in the sense that you mean it. These are myths propagated by individuals such as yourself. They're a fiction, a rumor.
I'm not going to try to convince you to change you opinions. As I said before, I believe it's important for people such as yourself to hold and advocate these sorts of opinions, for no other reason than to serve as a "but-for" argument. Reading the Libertarian Party platform, and your own messages, fills me with a great feeling of gratitude and appreciation that I'm lucky enough to live in a country where the vast majority of citizens do not agree with you.
It may not be recent globally, but it is recent in the states and Europe.
That statement doesn't make a whole lot of sense. US law, and the laws of the various European states, are based on traditions of law that came before them. A significant portion of US law, for example, was inspired by Iroquois law. And a significant portion of the various European bodies of law was inspired by US law. So there's a direct connection between the Iroquois tradition of intellectual property going back a thousand years and the copyright law that governs this very comment today.
Again - making 'property' out of it is bad - because it doesn't advacne the real goal of copyrights - which is Promoting Science and Useful Arts.
Absolutely it does. It promotes science and the useful arts in two ways. First, it attaches a profit motive to the creation of new inventions, which, as history has demonstrated, promotes the heck out of science and the useful arts. Second, it promotes original work. If person X wants to develop an invention based on IP owned by person Y, and person X doesn't want to pay person Y's asking price for a license, then person X will go out there and find a new and different way to accomplish the same goal. That's a good thing for science and the useful arts.
(While we're on the subject, please explain to me how the entry of "Steamboat Willie" into the public domain will do anything to promote science or the useful arts. I've never really understood that assertion.)
'Property' implies it never enters the public domain, and is under the permanent and complete control of someone - which is a concept which should be abolished.
Did you use the "Preview" button? Are you seriously saying that you believe the concept of property ought to be abolished? I'll just assume that you misspoke, and I look forward to reading your clarification.
In any case, remember that we're not talking about pure intellectual property here. These are not simply ideas. These are works, created through the effort of individuals. Just as I wouldn't expect my exclusive right to sit in this chair-- which I bought, but I could just as well have built myself-- to end after 14 years, neither would I expect that my rights to "Steamboat Willie," the film, would end after 14 years. (Assuming I was the person who owned them, that is.)
When you remember that copyright protects not just ideas but actual works as well, it sort of throws the whole idea of an expiration date on rights into question.
If copyright limits were enforced as everyone backing the Eldred case hopes they will be, it would also mean that older movies could be viewed for just the cost of a CD-R or DVD-R, instead of the much larger price of the MPAA's $20-$40 "30th/40th Anniversary Special Edition Boxed Set", if the MPAA has even bothered to rerelease it on VHS or DVD in the last twenty years or so.
I was right with you up to this point. I think this is where your argument took a wrong turn.
There are a few places on the Internet where you can download public-domain books, although they're rarely in useful format. (Finding properly formatted PDFs that aren't too hard on the eyes is a real challenge. In most cases, I'd rather pay $5 for a book than sift through OCR'd plain-text copies of classic works.) But given that the sole purpose of these sorts of archives is to give stuff away for free, how can they afford to stay on line? Most often through donation. Books are pretty easy, because they're small, but movies? Unless you're looking for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (made exactly 75 years ago) in 6 frame-per-second, 160x120 pixel MPEG-1, the chances that there's going to be a free archive out there with the movie available for download are pretty damn slim.
Here's an exercise for you. The Birth of a Nation was made by D. W. Griffith in 1915; it is out of copyright, and (theoretically) in the public domain. Find someplace where you can get it for free, or for cheap. I'll give you a place to start: Kino International sells a VHS version for $39.95. If you're willing to wait about a month, you'll be able to get it on DVD for the low, low price of $34.95. Do substantially better than that, and I'll buy your argument.
(By the way, the MPAA doesn't release movies. Movie distributors do. The MPAA is an association of movie studios, not distributors. Your point is still valid, but it's really critical that we not just personify organizations like the MPAA into being the source of all evil. When the general public, who know better, hear things like that, their opinion of the speaker goes right through the floor.)
Weeping Jesus on the cross, dude. Go to any shopping mall and find one of those stores that sells posters and paintings. Find a nice landscape that you like. Buy it for a few bucks and hang it on your wall.
It is not necessary for you to eat, sleep, breathe, and stare at computer shit all day long. In your place of work, surround yourself with things unrelated to work. In my office, I used to have a framed 24" x 36" print of a vintage poster from the Egyptian board of tourism, in French. It was great; exotic and soothing at the same time. Whenever I wanted, I could glance up from my monitor and see something completely unrelated to computers in any way. It was like a thirty second micro-vacation. Only thing that kept me sane during the dark days as the company-- a software startup-- was spiraling down the drain.
So... I'm guessing you got screwed out of an inheritance or something. You're really hostile to the idea of inheriting wealth. There's probably an interesting story behind that.
Myself, I've never inherited anything of significant worth-- my parents did fine, but they weren't wealthy-- but I fully intend for my kids to inherit a stinking fortune. They're my kids, and it's my right to pass the accumulated worth of my accomplishments on to them. They didn't work for it, in the sense that you mean it, but I'm free to give it to them, and I will choose to do so. And that includes any licensable IP that I own, like a copyright or a trademark.
Telling me that I can't bequeath my possessions-- and a copyright is a possession, because it's transferrable under law-- to my children is unreasonable and unacceptable.
Now that that's out of the way, we can return to the issue at hand: can somebody please give me an argument for why we should limit copyrights to a particular duration? Make it 14 years, or 28, or 75, or whatever, but please provide some kind of justification for your choice. Everything I've heard so far amounts to, "That sounds long enough to me," and I'm not willing to accept that, because for every person that agrees, there will be one who doesn't. Surely there's got to be a rational way to arrive at a duration, hasn't there?
Are you really naive enough to think Disney won't sue?
They can't. They don't own the copyright registration on the version that's in the public domain. (Assuming there is one; I'm taking your word on that one because I'm too lazy to google for it.)
The law says that only a copyright holder can bring an infringement suit. Since Disney doesn't hold the copyright on the public domain Beauty and the Beast, they can't claim infringement if a work is derived from it.
Now, if your work actually does infringe on Disney's, that's a different story. For example, if you used some of Disney's dialogue-- not stuff from the public domain version, but stuff that Disney created independently-- you're going to get a nasty letter.
There is a rich and deep legal tradition of intellectual property, not only in European, English, and American law, but also in the tribal law of most Native American tribes (the Iroquois and the Tlingit in particular, but not exclusively), and even going back as far as the Stele of Hammurabi. Among the Tlingit, for example, singing a song belonging to another clan was strictly forbidden; it was considered theft in the same way that the taking of an object was considered theft.
Whether you like it or not, intellectual property is not a new idea at all. You're certainly free to argue against it, but don't argue that it's a recent thing.
Re:Religious paranoid idiots will ban anything
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What's your point?
My point is that your ideas about how your ideal society would work are foolishly optimistic at best. Any group that worked the way you're proposing would devolve into tyranny in extremely short order.
I was hoping you'd come to this conclusion yourself, after thinking about what I've said. It sounds like that's not going to happen.
Re:One of the first things I considered on 11-Sep-
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The flaw with your idea-- which is a terrifying one on its face-- is that our enemies are not all ethically related. Killing off an entire branch of the tree would be drastic, but it wouldn't wipe out the black hats. It would also have the nasty side-effect of killing a goodly fraction of the white hats as well.
If only we could tell the good guys from the bad guys so easily.
By extension, does this mean that if I fork over some cash to the government I should also be able to get away with murder?
You're being silly. I'm having a serious discussion here, and you're being silly. Cut it out.
Also, for copyright to hold, it must be registered.
That's actually the case already. The law says that you get a copyright automatically upon the creation of a work-- I believe that was in the '78 act-- but in order to bring suit against someone in defense of that copyright, you have to have a registration on file first.
Personally I'd like it much shorter, but this is a figure I think everyone can agree on as an absolute maximum.
I don't agree. It's trivial to argue that one hundred years is too short. Many currently extant companies, families, and institutions have been around for longer than 100 years. The figure of 100 years is arbitrary.
Why is 100 years a good figure? Give me some sort of justification for it, however feeble it might be. Just plucking it out of the air isn't good enough to convince me that it's the right number. You'd be better off going with the Biblical "threescore and ten" than with 100 years.
No, no. The purpose of copyrights (and patents) is to promote the arts. (Well, "science and the useful arts," but it's since been extended to all arts.) Simply allowing an author to recoup his expenses doesn't promote the arts. Allowing an author to take a tidy profit promotes the arts. If you limited copyrights to a period necessary for the author to recoup costs, you would be limiting the government's ability to enact a constitutionally granted power, which in and of itself would be unconstitutional.
I would have to research to find out why 14 years with a possible 14 more was chosen
In looking up something else, I ran across an annotation in the US Code (US Constitution, Article I, clause 8, annotations page 39). "So far as patents are concerned, modern legislation harks back to the Statute of Monopolies of 1624, whereby Parliament endowed inventors with the sole right to their inventions for fourteen years." That's where the 14 year figure comes from.
In 1624, 14 years was a pretty significant fraction of the adult lifespan. Once you hit adulthood at age 16 or so, you could reasonably expect to have another 15-30 years in you. Today, of course, with average adult lifespans hovering around the 55 year mark, things are somewhat different.
Most of disney's works are based on older stories which are in the public domain already.
If that's the case, then no harm is done by letting Disney hold on to their copyrights. Anybody who wants to can create their own work based on the original, public domain source material.
the fact that someone is trading or even seling copyrighted material does not anoy anyone
No. It annoys the copyright holders greatly. If you want to use loaded language and talk about a "cartel of content providers," go right ahead. But that's just meaningless rhetoric. The point stands: spam, though legal, is bad because it annoys you, while trading copyrighted material, while illegal, is okay because it only annoys other people.
Would you still feel fine about sending those "would you like to buy a lawnmower" e-mails to your friend, if you *knew* he didn't like to receive this type of communication?
Well, that's a tough question. If I know that you don't want to get an email from me asking if you want to buy my lawnmower, I probably wouldn't send you one... but that's simply a matter of pragmatism and courtesy. I don't know you, but I feel compelled to be at least basically courteous to you, just because that's the kind of guy I am. But more importantly, if you don't want to hear the question, I can be reasonably sure you won't give me the answer I want, either.
But I don't feel like I have any particular obligation to respect your wishes on this matter. If I send you an email you didn't want, I've succeeded in annoying you, but I haven't hurt you at all. I'm not infringing on you in any meaningful way. I'm not stepping on your toes. So if I sent you an email that you turned out not to have wanted, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
So I guess the answer to your question is more complex than a simple yes or no. Put as plainly as I can, I might or might not send you the email, but if I did, I would feel just fine about it.
Re:Religious paranoid idiots will ban anything
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Oddly enough, the Bible advocates a different stance to this.
Depends on how you interpret it. The Bible is a big book, and there's a lot of stuff in there that appears to be contradictory at first glance. There's the eye-for-an-eye stuff in the Old Testament, and the turn-the-other-cheek stuff in the New Testament, for example. Reconciling these disparate doctrines is a job for a person with more patience than I have.
The blasphemy argument is just one example of a moral case based in Biblical principles. You can flip through the Bible to find material to support any argument, any position at all, on this matter.
Oh, by the way, your ethical argument against capital punnishment is faulty because the person could also do unspeakable things if they live.
The chance that a person, duly incarcerated, can commit a crime is slim enough to be acceptable to many people.
At best the argumenbt as stated is a wash and therefore inconsequential.
Not at all, because the argument is based on the idea that it's better to err on the side of caution. A person imprisoned for life can still do good things. A person executed for his crime is lost forever.
There is no reason that any person that believes in the Bible should have anything to do with the abortion issue.
But the Bible should not be taken literally on matters about which biblical authors knew nothing. The concept of the "breath of life" is not meaningful in the context of what we now know about human development. Few could argue that a baby is not just as alive ten minutes before it is born as it is ten minutes after.
It's one thing to use the Bible as a source for moral guidance, for religious teaching and doctrine, for history, and for a whole host of other purposes. It's quite another thing to use it as a science textbook.
Re:Religious paranoid idiots will ban anything
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It is not, however, me forcing my will on anyone else -- it's me preventing them from forcing their will on me. In other words, modern rights are defensive, not offensive. They're used as a shield, not a sword.
Semantics. Why do I not come into your house and steal your stuff? Because I know that, if I try, you will hurt me. (Or the state will hurt me. Or the state will deprive me of liberty. Whatver.) What you call a "right" can best be described as an enforced prohibition on another person's behavior. Enforced how? With a literal or figurative sword. It is the threat of force, and that alone, that alters other people's behavior. This is obvious to anyone who has ever raised a child... or, for that matter, a puppy. You can't reason with a puppy. If you want to train him, you have to spank him, and make him believe that you'll spank him again if he acts out. Sometimes you have to "spank" other people as well, and you always have to be able to demonstrate that you're willing to do so if necessary. That's how you get to enjoy those precious "rights" you keep talking about.
Maybe...for those of us who don't believe in human rights, and don't want to respect anyone else' rights, fine. They can do so. But then their rights need not be respected either.
So you're expecting me to respect your "rights"-- again, we disagree in some serious ways on the definition of that term-- out of some desire for a quid pro quo? You respect my rights and I'll respect yours? Sorry, the world doesn't work that way. Human beings are fundamentally selfish creatures. If I were deprived of food, my instinct would be to take food from you, even if it would result in depriving you of food in turn.
The only reason any person will respect your "rights" is if you force them to.
This has been demonstrated time and again here on Slashdot. Many people here would happily steal your property-- a song you recorded, or a book you wrote, software you wrote, or a movie you made-- if it suited them, despite the fact that the law grants you a right to determine how your work is distributed. They don't respect that right, so they'll ignore it until and unless you force them not to.
People who believe that a society held together by nothing more than a loose social contract-- and an optional one at that-- are simply mistaken about the nature of humans in groups, and would probably be well served to read some history books.
Mickey Mouse should, and I would argue does, in fact belong to everyone now!
Don't confuse copyright with trademark. Mickey Mouse, the character, is a trademark, and as such will not pass into the public domain as long as the owner maintains the trademark registration.
Copyright applies to specific works, like "Steamboat Willie," not to characters that are trademarks like Mickey Mouse.
a copyright law that was drafted a few hundred years ago cannot be relevant today without any change.
Why not? Other laws, drafted hundreds of years ago, are just as relevant today as they were then with no changes at all. What makes copyright law so different?
Don't make the mistake of assuming that the time in which you live is somehow fundamentally different from the time that came before. It hasn't been true yet in all of human history; what makes you think it's true now?
The reason we have a Republican Nation is that Americans "do give a shit" and voted for the Republicans.
Well, let's be fair. Most Americans who could vote, didn't. About a third of the voters in this country cast a ballot in the midterm elections. So I think it's more accurate to say that of the Americans who do give a shit, a slim but notable majority voted for Republicans.
And I think it's fair to say that most Americans don't give a shit whether Disney holds on to the copyright for "Steamboat Willie." I know I couldn't care less about that. It makes absolutely no difference to my life one way or another, except in principle.
Can somebody convince me otherwise? I feel kind of bad about being so indifferent about the Bono act. Can somebody give me an example of a situation in which a work's not being copyrighted-- that is, being in the public domain-- led to some kind of wonderful thing happening?
Slashdot Mirror
They are as effective as using a howitzer to remove an ant pile.
Bad analogy. A howitzer would be a supremely effective way to remove an ant pile.
In this case, though, the problem is that the software blocks legitimate sites while letting pornography sites through. This is more like attempting to use a howitzer to remove an ant pile, missing the ant pile completely, and hitting your own house, after which the ants move in set up an even bigger ant pile in the smoking crater where your house used to be.
Ah, yes, the latest karma whoring strategy. Post a vague and completely unrelated quote from a well-respected authority, without commentary, and wait for the mod points to roll in.
Test succeeded. You can start doing this as a logged-in user now.
Or... intriguing. Maybe this is just chaff. You know, a distraction so the people with mod points will spend their points on this post, leaving them with no points for down-modding the trolls. Great strategy! Brilliant!
Interpretation is not a slippery thing that you can just arbitrarily apply. There is a science to it that involves processes and mechanics to extract and confirm the true meaning.
So... you're saying there's a right interpretation and a wrong interpretation? That's... well, that's just stupid. No offense.
Remember: de gustibus non disputandum est.
Anyways, the Bible is quite clear upon the idea of a death penalty and is consistent from cover to cover on this subject.
Yes... except for that great bit about, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." I always enjoyed that part.
So is it's ok if we put murderers in prison and they murder other prison inmates, or guards? There will always be people in the periphery of criminals no matter where they are incarcerated.
If my argument is flawed, yours is equally flawed. I said-- let me reiterate that it was merely an example of an ethical argument, and not intended to be a complete or strong one-- that it's best not to execute someone, on the chance that he might do something good with the remainder of his natural life. You're saying it's best to execute someone, on the chance that he might do something bad with the remainder of his natural life. Either we're both on solid ground, or we're both just plain wrong. You pick; I can live with either.
A dog that attacks and kills is immediately put to sleep. No reprieve can save them. How much more accountable should a person be for their actions than a dog?
Sounds like you've answered your own question. I prefer not to treat other human beings like dogs, but that's just me. Also, your analogy begs the question, accountable to whom? If you're as much of a Bible scholar as you seem to be, you should know that only God can judge a man's actions, for only God can know what was in that man's heart. Where were you, Dread_ed, when He laid the foundations of the Earth?
The human being, as described in the Bible, is not a human being until God adds the soul to it. [...] This "soul" is not detectable under a microscope or evident though amniocentesis, and cannot be weighed as a differnce in weight between the unborn fetus and the newborn child. Therefore, ovbiously, it has nothing to do with our understanding of human fetal development.
Therefore, obviously, it is not a useful concept in deciding at what point a fetus becomes a biologically viable human being.
Here's a little exercise for you. Find a woman who has just suffered a miscarriage. Try, just try, to console her by telling her that her baby wasn't really human because it didn't have a soul. After your bones knit, come back and tell us how it went over.
The Bible states that there is no human life in the womb.
If that's true-- I'm not at all certain that it is-- then the Bible is mistaken. That's no big deal; the Bible includes a great many factual errors, none of which diminish its value as a book or as a religious symbol. Read on.
First, the Bible is accurate with regard to the "scientific" thigs that it makes reference to.
In the book of Leviticus (11:6) it is said the rabbits chew their cud. This is not correct. Earlier in the same chapter (11:4), it says that camels do not have cloven hooves; they do. The book of Matthew (13:31-32) says that mustard seeds grow into trees. They don't. Are any of these things important in any way? No, of course not. But it does serve to illustrate the point that the Bible is not a particularly good authority on matters of strict fact.
All I am saying is that if someone is a Christian they should keep in mind what God has stated about human life and keep their mouth shut about the issue. Period.
Different Christians have different opinions on this subject than yours. In the fourth century, for example, St. Gregory of Nyssa (one of the Cappadocians) held the opinion that life quickens an organism from the first moment of its individual-- not necessarily independent-- existence until the moment of its death.
Centuries later, St. Thomas Aquinas established his own doctrine of ensoulment: 40 days post-conception for male fetuses, 80 days post-conception for female fetuses.
Modern Catholic doctrine is less specific, but just as resolute. In fact, the Church states that embryonic children must be baptized before expiration due to the termination-- intentional or otherwise-- of a pregnancy, and even goes so far as to say that the baptism, because of the obvious exigency of the circumstances, may be performed by a non-Christian.
Clearly the book is not closed on the collective Christian opinion on abortion.
It started in the Garden of Eden when God breathed life into the body of man, and the same mechanics happen at each birth.
Ah... the old "continuum of life" theory. Or, in this case, your rejection of it. The theory of the continuum of life says that God granted Adam with the "breath of life"-- although I've never heard that phrase used in this context before-- at the moment of his creation, and that all subsequent human beings share that same "breath of life." This explains why it's not possible to create human life but through the process of insemination-- be it in vivo or in vitro. In other words, this theory proposes that there is no instant of time in which a human being is biologically but not spiritually alive; instead, there is an unbroken continuum of life going back umpty-bump thousands of years all the way to Adam.
(Scholars who discuss the continuum of life theory seem to be divided on the question of Eve. The general consensus is that, because God created her out of Adam's body and not out of "the dust of the ground," Eve's "breath of life" (again, your term) sprang from Adam's. This is not universally agreed-upon, however.)
I'm certainly not arguing that you're wrong. I'm simply trying to point out that the issue is not quite as simple as you might think it is. Naturally, you personally are free to believe whatever you wish.
Which reminds me of a funny story. The old joke goes that a scientist is giving a lecture on cosmology. After his talk, and old lady comes up to him and tells him that he's got it all wrong. "The world," she says, "rests on the back of a giant tortise." Thinking he'll put her in her place, the scientist asks, "Well, then, madam, what is the tortise standing on?" The old lady laughs and says, "You're very clever, young man, but it's no use. It's turtles all the way down!"
You keep talking about rights as if there were such a thing. As I have already explained at length, what you think of as "rights" are nothing more or less than the imposition of will upon another person through the threat of force. Let me make my point as clearly as I know how: there are no such things as rights. They are a consensual hallucination.
Therefore any system that bases itself on, as you say, "demanding that our rights be respected," cannot stand. It requires that all members of society adopt the same set of values and beliefs, and that all people live by the arrangement of rules that you so quaintly call your "rights." This has not yet, and never will, happen.
I'll give you an example. I do not believe that any person is entitled to what you euphemistically call "the right to one's body." I believe that prostitution should-- indeed, must-- be illegal. I believe that some drugs are so dangerous that they must also be illegal. More generally, I believe that communities of people have the collective privilege of deciding what behavior is and is not appropriate among their members. If a community rules that massage parlors or pornography theaters or strip clubs must be outlawed, that is a valid and appropriate judgment.
There are many other items in the Libertarian Party platform-- to which you linked many posts back-- that are simply unacceptable to the vast majority of people. The abolition of prescription requirements for the purchase of medicines: absurd. My girlfriend is a physician, so I've witnessed second-hand the dangers that can come from patients who self-medicate. Medicines must be regulated to protect unwise or ignorant people from hurting, or even killing, themselves. Likewise, the Libertarian Party stands for the abolition of regulation on the sale of alcohol and tobacco. This is unacceptable. Persons under the legal age are not capable of making good decisions about their use of these substances, and therefore they must not have access to them.
The Libertarian Party opposes the involuntary commitment of individuals on the grounds of mental illness. This baffles me; are they expecting mentally ill individuals to somehow overcome their disease long enough to sign themselves into a hospital?
The Libertarian Party opposes the use of passports, and other forms of border control. The number of instances of criminals being caught at border crossings alone is enough to put the lie to this proposal.
The Libertarian Party opposes the protection of national secrets by the Department of Defense and other agencies of government. I'm sure those who worked on codes and code-breaking during World War II would have something to say about that.
The Libertarian Party opposes bans on the sale of automatic weapons to civilians. In fact, they oppose the ban of any weapon or class of weapon. In a Libertarian world, you'd be able to buy machine guns at Wal-Mart.
The Libertarian Party calls for the repeal of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is astounding to any individual who has served in the armed forces.
The Libertarian Party opposes taxation, but also opposes deficit spending, which leads to the natural conclusion that they hope to establish a government funded entirely by charity.
The list goes on and on and on.
But here's the important thing: there are more people like me than there are people like you. We literally outnumber you, and by a very wide margin. What you call "my rights," I call a foolish and unfounded assertion not backed up by the facts. You have no right to your body, in the sense that you mean it. You have no right to sexual freedom, in the sense that you mean it. These are myths propagated by individuals such as yourself. They're a fiction, a rumor.
I'm not going to try to convince you to change you opinions. As I said before, I believe it's important for people such as yourself to hold and advocate these sorts of opinions, for no other reason than to serve as a "but-for" argument. Reading the Libertarian Party platform, and your own messages, fills me with a great feeling of gratitude and appreciation that I'm lucky enough to live in a country where the vast majority of citizens do not agree with you.
It may not be recent globally, but it is recent in the states and Europe.
That statement doesn't make a whole lot of sense. US law, and the laws of the various European states, are based on traditions of law that came before them. A significant portion of US law, for example, was inspired by Iroquois law. And a significant portion of the various European bodies of law was inspired by US law. So there's a direct connection between the Iroquois tradition of intellectual property going back a thousand years and the copyright law that governs this very comment today.
Again - making 'property' out of it is bad - because it doesn't advacne the real goal of copyrights - which is Promoting Science and Useful Arts.
Absolutely it does. It promotes science and the useful arts in two ways. First, it attaches a profit motive to the creation of new inventions, which, as history has demonstrated, promotes the heck out of science and the useful arts. Second, it promotes original work. If person X wants to develop an invention based on IP owned by person Y, and person X doesn't want to pay person Y's asking price for a license, then person X will go out there and find a new and different way to accomplish the same goal. That's a good thing for science and the useful arts.
(While we're on the subject, please explain to me how the entry of "Steamboat Willie" into the public domain will do anything to promote science or the useful arts. I've never really understood that assertion.)
'Property' implies it never enters the public domain, and is under the permanent and complete control of someone - which is a concept which should be abolished.
Did you use the "Preview" button? Are you seriously saying that you believe the concept of property ought to be abolished? I'll just assume that you misspoke, and I look forward to reading your clarification.
In any case, remember that we're not talking about pure intellectual property here. These are not simply ideas. These are works, created through the effort of individuals. Just as I wouldn't expect my exclusive right to sit in this chair-- which I bought, but I could just as well have built myself-- to end after 14 years, neither would I expect that my rights to "Steamboat Willie," the film, would end after 14 years. (Assuming I was the person who owned them, that is.)
When you remember that copyright protects not just ideas but actual works as well, it sort of throws the whole idea of an expiration date on rights into question.
If copyright limits were enforced as everyone backing the Eldred case hopes they will be, it would also mean that older movies could be viewed for just the cost of a CD-R or DVD-R, instead of the much larger price of the MPAA's $20-$40 "30th/40th Anniversary Special Edition Boxed Set", if the MPAA has even bothered to rerelease it on VHS or DVD in the last twenty years or so.
I was right with you up to this point. I think this is where your argument took a wrong turn.
There are a few places on the Internet where you can download public-domain books, although they're rarely in useful format. (Finding properly formatted PDFs that aren't too hard on the eyes is a real challenge. In most cases, I'd rather pay $5 for a book than sift through OCR'd plain-text copies of classic works.) But given that the sole purpose of these sorts of archives is to give stuff away for free, how can they afford to stay on line? Most often through donation. Books are pretty easy, because they're small, but movies? Unless you're looking for Fritz Lang's Metropolis (made exactly 75 years ago) in 6 frame-per-second, 160x120 pixel MPEG-1, the chances that there's going to be a free archive out there with the movie available for download are pretty damn slim.
Here's an exercise for you. The Birth of a Nation was made by D. W. Griffith in 1915; it is out of copyright, and (theoretically) in the public domain. Find someplace where you can get it for free, or for cheap. I'll give you a place to start: Kino International sells a VHS version for $39.95. If you're willing to wait about a month, you'll be able to get it on DVD for the low, low price of $34.95. Do substantially better than that, and I'll buy your argument.
(By the way, the MPAA doesn't release movies. Movie distributors do. The MPAA is an association of movie studios, not distributors. Your point is still valid, but it's really critical that we not just personify organizations like the MPAA into being the source of all evil. When the general public, who know better, hear things like that, their opinion of the speaker goes right through the floor.)
Weeping Jesus on the cross, dude. Go to any shopping mall and find one of those stores that sells posters and paintings. Find a nice landscape that you like. Buy it for a few bucks and hang it on your wall.
It is not necessary for you to eat, sleep, breathe, and stare at computer shit all day long. In your place of work, surround yourself with things unrelated to work. In my office, I used to have a framed 24" x 36" print of a vintage poster from the Egyptian board of tourism, in French. It was great; exotic and soothing at the same time. Whenever I wanted, I could glance up from my monitor and see something completely unrelated to computers in any way. It was like a thirty second micro-vacation. Only thing that kept me sane during the dark days as the company-- a software startup-- was spiraling down the drain.
So... I'm guessing you got screwed out of an inheritance or something. You're really hostile to the idea of inheriting wealth. There's probably an interesting story behind that.
Myself, I've never inherited anything of significant worth-- my parents did fine, but they weren't wealthy-- but I fully intend for my kids to inherit a stinking fortune. They're my kids, and it's my right to pass the accumulated worth of my accomplishments on to them. They didn't work for it, in the sense that you mean it, but I'm free to give it to them, and I will choose to do so. And that includes any licensable IP that I own, like a copyright or a trademark.
Telling me that I can't bequeath my possessions-- and a copyright is a possession, because it's transferrable under law-- to my children is unreasonable and unacceptable.
Now that that's out of the way, we can return to the issue at hand: can somebody please give me an argument for why we should limit copyrights to a particular duration? Make it 14 years, or 28, or 75, or whatever, but please provide some kind of justification for your choice. Everything I've heard so far amounts to, "That sounds long enough to me," and I'm not willing to accept that, because for every person that agrees, there will be one who doesn't. Surely there's got to be a rational way to arrive at a duration, hasn't there?
Are you really naive enough to think Disney won't sue?
They can't. They don't own the copyright registration on the version that's in the public domain. (Assuming there is one; I'm taking your word on that one because I'm too lazy to google for it.)
The law says that only a copyright holder can bring an infringement suit. Since Disney doesn't hold the copyright on the public domain Beauty and the Beast, they can't claim infringement if a work is derived from it.
Now, if your work actually does infringe on Disney's, that's a different story. For example, if you used some of Disney's dialogue-- not stuff from the public domain version, but stuff that Disney created independently-- you're going to get a nasty letter.
There is a rich and deep legal tradition of intellectual property, not only in European, English, and American law, but also in the tribal law of most Native American tribes (the Iroquois and the Tlingit in particular, but not exclusively), and even going back as far as the Stele of Hammurabi. Among the Tlingit, for example, singing a song belonging to another clan was strictly forbidden; it was considered theft in the same way that the taking of an object was considered theft.
Whether you like it or not, intellectual property is not a new idea at all. You're certainly free to argue against it, but don't argue that it's a recent thing.
What's your point?
My point is that your ideas about how your ideal society would work are foolishly optimistic at best. Any group that worked the way you're proposing would devolve into tyranny in extremely short order.
I was hoping you'd come to this conclusion yourself, after thinking about what I've said. It sounds like that's not going to happen.
The flaw with your idea-- which is a terrifying one on its face-- is that our enemies are not all ethically related. Killing off an entire branch of the tree would be drastic, but it wouldn't wipe out the black hats. It would also have the nasty side-effect of killing a goodly fraction of the white hats as well.
If only we could tell the good guys from the bad guys so easily.
By extension, does this mean that if I fork over some cash to the government I should also be able to get away with murder?
You're being silly. I'm having a serious discussion here, and you're being silly. Cut it out.
Also, for copyright to hold, it must be registered.
That's actually the case already. The law says that you get a copyright automatically upon the creation of a work-- I believe that was in the '78 act-- but in order to bring suit against someone in defense of that copyright, you have to have a registration on file first.
Personally I'd like it much shorter, but this is a figure I think everyone can agree on as an absolute maximum.
I don't agree. It's trivial to argue that one hundred years is too short. Many currently extant companies, families, and institutions have been around for longer than 100 years. The figure of 100 years is arbitrary.
Why is 100 years a good figure? Give me some sort of justification for it, however feeble it might be. Just plucking it out of the air isn't good enough to convince me that it's the right number. You'd be better off going with the Biblical "threescore and ten" than with 100 years.
No, no. The purpose of copyrights (and patents) is to promote the arts. (Well, "science and the useful arts," but it's since been extended to all arts.) Simply allowing an author to recoup his expenses doesn't promote the arts. Allowing an author to take a tidy profit promotes the arts. If you limited copyrights to a period necessary for the author to recoup costs, you would be limiting the government's ability to enact a constitutionally granted power, which in and of itself would be unconstitutional.
I would have to research to find out why 14 years with a possible 14 more was chosen
In looking up something else, I ran across an annotation in the US Code (US Constitution, Article I, clause 8, annotations page 39). "So far as patents are concerned, modern legislation harks back to the Statute of Monopolies of 1624, whereby Parliament endowed inventors with the sole right to their inventions for fourteen years." That's where the 14 year figure comes from.
In 1624, 14 years was a pretty significant fraction of the adult lifespan. Once you hit adulthood at age 16 or so, you could reasonably expect to have another 15-30 years in you. Today, of course, with average adult lifespans hovering around the 55 year mark, things are somewhat different.
You can read the annotations on FindLaw, here.
Great argument. Thanks for giving me something new to think about. The Shakespeare thing is spot-on.
Would you object to a copyright term of 200 years? Is that too long? Why?
Most of disney's works are based on older stories which are in the public domain already.
If that's the case, then no harm is done by letting Disney hold on to their copyrights. Anybody who wants to can create their own work based on the original, public domain source material.
the fact that someone is trading or even seling copyrighted material does not anoy anyone
No. It annoys the copyright holders greatly. If you want to use loaded language and talk about a "cartel of content providers," go right ahead. But that's just meaningless rhetoric. The point stands: spam, though legal, is bad because it annoys you, while trading copyrighted material, while illegal, is okay because it only annoys other people.
Would you still feel fine about sending those "would you like to buy a lawnmower" e-mails to your friend, if you *knew* he didn't like to receive this type of communication?
Well, that's a tough question. If I know that you don't want to get an email from me asking if you want to buy my lawnmower, I probably wouldn't send you one... but that's simply a matter of pragmatism and courtesy. I don't know you, but I feel compelled to be at least basically courteous to you, just because that's the kind of guy I am. But more importantly, if you don't want to hear the question, I can be reasonably sure you won't give me the answer I want, either.
But I don't feel like I have any particular obligation to respect your wishes on this matter. If I send you an email you didn't want, I've succeeded in annoying you, but I haven't hurt you at all. I'm not infringing on you in any meaningful way. I'm not stepping on your toes. So if I sent you an email that you turned out not to have wanted, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
So I guess the answer to your question is more complex than a simple yes or no. Put as plainly as I can, I might or might not send you the email, but if I did, I would feel just fine about it.
Oddly enough, the Bible advocates a different stance to this.
Depends on how you interpret it. The Bible is a big book, and there's a lot of stuff in there that appears to be contradictory at first glance. There's the eye-for-an-eye stuff in the Old Testament, and the turn-the-other-cheek stuff in the New Testament, for example. Reconciling these disparate doctrines is a job for a person with more patience than I have.
The blasphemy argument is just one example of a moral case based in Biblical principles. You can flip through the Bible to find material to support any argument, any position at all, on this matter.
Oh, by the way, your ethical argument against capital punnishment is faulty because the person could also do unspeakable things if they live.
The chance that a person, duly incarcerated, can commit a crime is slim enough to be acceptable to many people.
At best the argumenbt as stated is a wash and therefore inconsequential.
Not at all, because the argument is based on the idea that it's better to err on the side of caution. A person imprisoned for life can still do good things. A person executed for his crime is lost forever.
There is no reason that any person that believes in the Bible should have anything to do with the abortion issue.
But the Bible should not be taken literally on matters about which biblical authors knew nothing. The concept of the "breath of life" is not meaningful in the context of what we now know about human development. Few could argue that a baby is not just as alive ten minutes before it is born as it is ten minutes after.
It's one thing to use the Bible as a source for moral guidance, for religious teaching and doctrine, for history, and for a whole host of other purposes. It's quite another thing to use it as a science textbook.
It is not, however, me forcing my will on anyone else -- it's me preventing them from forcing their will on me. In other words, modern rights are defensive, not offensive. They're used as a shield, not a sword.
Semantics. Why do I not come into your house and steal your stuff? Because I know that, if I try, you will hurt me. (Or the state will hurt me. Or the state will deprive me of liberty. Whatver.) What you call a "right" can best be described as an enforced prohibition on another person's behavior. Enforced how? With a literal or figurative sword. It is the threat of force, and that alone, that alters other people's behavior. This is obvious to anyone who has ever raised a child... or, for that matter, a puppy. You can't reason with a puppy. If you want to train him, you have to spank him, and make him believe that you'll spank him again if he acts out. Sometimes you have to "spank" other people as well, and you always have to be able to demonstrate that you're willing to do so if necessary. That's how you get to enjoy those precious "rights" you keep talking about.
Maybe...for those of us who don't believe in human rights, and don't want to respect anyone else' rights, fine. They can do so. But then their rights need not be respected either.
So you're expecting me to respect your "rights"-- again, we disagree in some serious ways on the definition of that term-- out of some desire for a quid pro quo? You respect my rights and I'll respect yours? Sorry, the world doesn't work that way. Human beings are fundamentally selfish creatures. If I were deprived of food, my instinct would be to take food from you, even if it would result in depriving you of food in turn.
The only reason any person will respect your "rights" is if you force them to.
This has been demonstrated time and again here on Slashdot. Many people here would happily steal your property-- a song you recorded, or a book you wrote, software you wrote, or a movie you made-- if it suited them, despite the fact that the law grants you a right to determine how your work is distributed. They don't respect that right, so they'll ignore it until and unless you force them not to.
People who believe that a society held together by nothing more than a loose social contract-- and an optional one at that-- are simply mistaken about the nature of humans in groups, and would probably be well served to read some history books.
Mickey Mouse should, and I would argue does, in fact belong to everyone now!
Don't confuse copyright with trademark. Mickey Mouse, the character, is a trademark, and as such will not pass into the public domain as long as the owner maintains the trademark registration.
Copyright applies to specific works, like "Steamboat Willie," not to characters that are trademarks like Mickey Mouse.
a copyright law that was drafted a few hundred years ago cannot be relevant today without any change.
Why not? Other laws, drafted hundreds of years ago, are just as relevant today as they were then with no changes at all. What makes copyright law so different?
Don't make the mistake of assuming that the time in which you live is somehow fundamentally different from the time that came before. It hasn't been true yet in all of human history; what makes you think it's true now?
The reason we have a Republican Nation is that Americans "do give a shit" and voted for the Republicans.
Well, let's be fair. Most Americans who could vote, didn't. About a third of the voters in this country cast a ballot in the midterm elections. So I think it's more accurate to say that of the Americans who do give a shit, a slim but notable majority voted for Republicans.
And I think it's fair to say that most Americans don't give a shit whether Disney holds on to the copyright for "Steamboat Willie." I know I couldn't care less about that. It makes absolutely no difference to my life one way or another, except in principle.
Can somebody convince me otherwise? I feel kind of bad about being so indifferent about the Bono act. Can somebody give me an example of a situation in which a work's not being copyrighted-- that is, being in the public domain-- led to some kind of wonderful thing happening?