Right -- I thought the whole history of AWS was that Amazon built a good infrastructure with lots of built-in redundancy. The rest of us are just living off their fumes. It would be as if the ground beef bin at the butcher went into their own business -- hamburgers come from the extra bits of the choice cuts.
My Master's paper for my academic specialty is a proposal for a computer system that would allow a common activity in this field to happen on a sort of centralized website. I think my idea is fairly detailed and good, but a lot of the people and institutions in my field aren't very computer-savvy. I don't think I am a good enough programmer to build the entire thing myself -- it doesn't have to ultimately be Wikipedia-size, but if successful, it would have several tens of thousands of users, and things like security would be important.
How would you recommend I proceed? Get some (bad) working code and early adopters and iterate? Try to organize a team of planners and programmers? Try to get funding first? Any tips?
But if you are vulnerable to automated attacks, then you most certainly are also vulnerable to directed attacks, no? The attacker can just use a known (or new) attack against WordPress once they see that that is what you are running:
"Aha! From the Meta Tags I can tell they're running WordPress. Looks like it's version X. I'll do a POST to site/wp-admin/tiny-mce/lang/en-us/takefile.php of a PHP script. If they didn't apply the patch that was released yesterday I should be able to upload my PHP script which will allow me write access or at least read access..." If you were not up-to-date in your install (or if you haven't audited any plugins you used), then the entire hack might takes just a few minutes, and could be done by someone with only rudimentary skills.
A non-custom CMS like WordPress is very often the target of massive automated attacks: a new bug is discovered in WP and a tool is written to seek out vulnerable installations and exploit that bug. If you have the skill or $$ to pour over the code, you can probably find your own bugs before they become publicly known.
On the other hand, if your site is specifically targeted, then your custom CMS is as vulnerable or more than the WordPresses out there. You might have a bit of security through obscurity (in a standard WP install, the attacker might know file names and locations, variable names, classes, etc.) but this will probably do you little good if you weren't able to harden the code.
Lesson: you are screwed if a rich, powerful, or smart attacker singles you out. A standard CMS can land you in hot water if you don't have a knowledgeable person administering it (and who has that?).
Your analysis seems messed-up to me. I assume you are referring to this chart http://www.conceivablytech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/browser2.jpg Chrome's rate of growth might have slowed a bit, but it still grew by what looks like 10%. IE has had negative growth pretty consistently. Safari's growth rate seems to be much lower than Chrome's. Since your understanding of the data seems so far off the mark, I doubt your conclusions are accurate.
The conceptions of what we "do" with music and film have been limited by the sales and "IP" models. Remixing, adding/replacing tracks, mashups, even sampling, all come about as a consequence of ignoring the "consumption" model as you describe it. So does all "traditional" or "folk" music. There are places that film and music can go that we can't easily think of today. Try to come up with your own examples of what can be done. If you can't think of anything or if your ideas don't seem all that revolutionary or important, maybe you're not an artist.
My 3 year old son urges me to download games on the iPhone. I get all the free ones listed for each category and listed under "most popular." He and I agree that 99% of the games we see are some of the worst crap you can imagine. There are a few types:
* Stuff that requires a lot of downloading, rendering, entering passwords, connecting to various multiplayer networks, answering their questions, etc. It takes 5 minutes before the game starts, but by then, we've both lost patience.
* The games are obnoxiously crippled -- they offer only teases, or they constantly try to trick you into clicking to their ordering system, or their ads, or they suddenly stop in the middle of play. You feel interrupted, short-changed, and ripped off.
* The games themselves strike us as weirdly unimaginative. The graphics are retreds of crap I've been seeing since the 80s, or else they look like the standard manga stuff. They often have cliched, muzak-style "soundtracks" and have the game equivalents of a laugh-track: clapping, "awww"-ing, etc.
In sum: these games suck. How they can represent some sort of billion-dollar-industry is so baffling that I suspect a hyped bubble; I can't imagine masses of people paying for this junk. It's more fun to kill time by flipping a coin. It feels like there are no original artists in the game-making work, just "industry" hacks. Maybe one day game-making will somehow be more democratic like website creation and some will try to innovate.
When the lamb has struggled so long and hard to get food fight illness and brave the elements, don't you think it deserves to not be killed by the lion? WinZip, that succulent little lamb, will be eaten by us, the vicious software pirates, however we moralize. It is our nature.
>>I am so glad we won't be hearing from her at least until 2012 or so...
Ted Stevens gets re-elected; then he resigns (or is kicked out of the Senate by 2/3rds); then there will be a special election in Alaska for Senate and Palin will most likely win. She plans this already. When she found out about Stevens she said (paraphrase) "He should leave the Senate. Even if he is re-elected, he should then resign." So we will most likely see her in the Senate for the next 4 years or so. The question is: will she be like Liddy Dole who people thought was an up-and-comer but who turned out to be a drag, or like Hillary who was a massively divisive figure but who used the Senate to grow to become liked by a broad spectrum of people.
"get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible" is "technology" when you are given a black box and told how much you have to pay to stay on the upgrade path? Told you are breaking the law when you develop a competing product? Told...
I thought OLPC was about using technology to help kids to learn technology so that they can do any number of things that technology can potentially offer them. I though that that was why Free software seemed to make so much sense.
It does pass. The original Acid 2 test page http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html accidentally got changed a bit (so that a missing link returns error code 200 instead of 404 not found). That's why FF (and other browsers like Safari and Opera) "fail" on that page. But see the mirrored page here http://www.hixie.ch/tests/evil/acid/002/ to verify that FF 3b2 (and Safari and Opera and IE 8... OOoops! can't test that one!) do pass...
Microsoft and Samsung Electronics have agreed to a broad, cross-licensing patent agreement that apparently includes a controversial clause that protects against any legal claims Microsoft may have on technology used in Linux....
Within the joint press release announcing the deal, however, the companies said, "Samsung and its distributors and customers may utilize Microsoft's patents in Samsung's products with proprietary software, and Samsung will also obtain coverage from Microsoft for its customers' use of certain Linux-based products."[PJ:Emphasis added. So it isn't Linux itself, I gather, rather stuff that runs on it, perchance things like Mono, OpenOffice.org, etc.]
>> I want the epic movies that took years of hard work to produce.
I want the same, except a version that is much harder to make, takes even more years, requires higher paid actors, more expensive/elaborate visual effects, has music composed and played by the most expensive possible musicians, plays only in theaters that allow you watch in a personalized jacuzzi with a team of fluffers keeping me interested, and who's bottom line production costs (not including marketing) is over $1bn USD.
As for music, I want music that costs WAY more to make than then standard billboard chart-toppers of today -- I want the artists to use custom-designed microphones that require years of R&D by the top engineers, I want pre-amps that costs millions to be used, I want a format that requires a special, proprietary player, I want the artists to be paid hundreds of millions of dollars just for signing the contract.
As for porn, what I want will require the slave-economy to be re-established in the US, and for a massive colonial war to be waged in order to set up the perfect international geo-political situation that would provide the legal, historical, and yes, moral space in which the films I desire to see would be possible.
But then, we can't always get what we want can we? The Lord of the Rings was possible because the legal, historical, economic, technological, and cultural facts on the ground were conducive to it's production. If things change, then it may become impossible for such an epic movie to be made again. But then again, the geniuses and moneyed people no longer conspire to write classical music, design and build massive tombs, create bejeweled swords, or memorize and chant epic histories of their peoples. Those things are now left to the museums.
You said "Accusing someone of supporting slavery and Nazism because they happen to think that artists should have rights?" My point was that people defend the accepted ways that things work not because of the reasons, but because that's the way things work. Do you see my point? I still think that that is what you are doing.
You said "The idea of copyright has always included the moral rights of the creator." But your quote from the constitution makes no claim to such a moral right -- monopoly power is given in order to encourage the creation; I assume that we want to encourage the creation because it is good for society; I also assume that the encouragement comes from the potential to make money from the monopoly power. I think that this is the generally understood meaning of the Article, no? You might feel there is an additional moral right, but I submit to you that you are conflating a scenario whereby someone unjustly misattributes an artist's work with a general feeling that an artist should "own" or "control" their work.
You say "The artist has an exclusive right to reproduce his or her creation. That's what makes it theirs." This might be how the laws makes us see things, but I do not think it represents the ontological state of things, as you seem to imply. Artists had no such monopoly power for thousands of years, and yet they did create art, and much of it is attributable. I hesitate to say "no, what makes art theirs is the fact that they created it" because that may well do injustice to the people who contributed by influence, assistance, inspiration, source, etc. I prefer to think of art as belonging to us all, rather than to try to insist that the film belongs to the director, say, and not to the writer, producer, star, etc...
You say "The exclusive right to copy and the exclusive right to sell are two separate provisions of the same law." So? The law could well be different. The only power Congress was granted was to make such laws in order "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" -- one can imagine many many laws that could claim that as their justification. What is troubling is that the lawmakers' motives as they pass the DMCA, as they consider the broadcast flag, as they extend copyright, is that they clearly are not concerned with promoting science and art, but rather with giving monopolists a potentially stronger business plan. If they did take as the starting point an investigation into how best to promote... in order to benefit society then they would have to take the potentially world-changing fact of broadband, p2p, etc into account, no? The only way to enforce the existing notions of copyright (whose benefits towards the goal are dubious at best) are to pass increasing intrusive laws that ban the simplest and most desirable actions...
You say "conflating copying with the creation of derivative works" -- but isn't blocking derivative works done in order to further the potential gain of the monopolist? In terms of interpretation, the big distributors are insisting that we consume their content under circumstances that they dictate -- with their devices, used under their conditions, etc. Why should, for example, I not be allowed to use the Mickey Mouse character in my film? Because by doing so I would dilute their property's potential sale value.
You say "My opinion on the subject hasn't even entered into it." But I thought your opinion was that artists have the moral right to control their work, and that this right is enshrined in the US Constitution, and that downloading movies is wrong because it violates the laws that are derived from this Article, but that it has nothing to do with money or art... No?
I didn't make that accusation. I said that I think that you (or at least that other guy until you too came along) are defending the status quo because... well because it is the status quo. That's why a lot of people defend the status quo. In fact I specifically distanced myself from claiming that this issue is anything like slavery, Nazism, etc.
Copyright law works the way it does because of a lot of factors, a large one of which is lobbying by people who came up with ways they could make money off of it and the minutia of the laws. A VERY small part was some sort of planned-out way to encourage artists or some sort of philosophical ideological agreement about inherent ownership of ideas or expression. The way you talk, you'd think think that it was a "natural law" -- "artists should have rights" you say. Artists rights means that people can't share a digital copy of art? Since when? Why?
I think a much more important "artists right" is the right to make your art incorporate others' art -- this is the way art has always worked, but it is this "copyright" which is now being used to deprive artists of this fundamental "right."
Copyright has everything to do with selling -- the idea justifying it (it is an exception to the fundamental concept of free-speech) was that, in order to encourage artists (and inventors) to make their art (and inventions), they would be provided with a monopoly to copy -- that is sell -- it, to give them a special leg-up on the competition.
And it very much does dictate meaning -- the forbidding of "copying" inherently makes the claim that I Micky Mouse, say, is not the kind of person who would ever [insert your interesting Mickey Mouse film idea here]. In the case of the Apple TV (and iTunes), they are presenting a model by which I consume their product. It is presented according to their classification schemes, with their descriptions, and their threat to me that if I "misuse" their materials, I will have the full force of the law come down on me.
Why do you (and that other guy) insist on calling me names and dismissing me with such violence? As you see it, the law is was and will be the law no matter what it says, and there is no room for the rest of us.
I disagree with you. You belong to the tradition of philosophical laborer; you take what is given to you and find the logic, history, attitudes, and glory that support that thing. If we were in 10th century Ireland, you'd be arguing that no one should be able to read the gospels except the monks. "How are the monks supposed to make money then?" you'd demand. Or if we were in old China, you'd aggressively argue for foot-binding.
Am I claiming that the current "content distribution system" as you see it is as bad as foot-binding, slavery, or Nazi-ism? Not at all. But no matter: you'd defend them anyway, like you defend this.
You say I have a "hive mind" because I think that art shouldn't be put into a box and denied any meaning except that imposed on it by the person who wants to sell it to you. But my idea isn't some hippy vision of a perfect world, it's just a simple description of the way things actually work -- people like art; they like to share art; they like to transform the substance and meaning of the art into something different. Your vision is one where the seller dictates the meaning of the object to a passive recipient, who must then be forced to accept those terms by law and (as you try to make clear) by members of the crowd using coercive and ridiculing language to prop up those laws and the interests of the "sellers."
Apple wants to replace the monks with reading machines. I prefer that we all learn to read. Is that idealistic? Was that an encouragement to break the laws? Perhaps, but it is what happened -- people did learn to read -- and I claim that it was good thing.
Fair use? Fair use is about reviewing, satirizing, or otherwise quoting or mildly incorporating someone's legally protected monopoly on some expression. It's an interesting edge case in the history of "US copyright court decisions" if you're into studying that academically.
No, what I'm talking about is the act of watching filmed scenarios, or whatever else the good artists of the world create in their infinite inventiveness in order to have people see.
What I'm talking about is participating in culture, and about benefiting from expression, and about enjoying art.
If that's illegal, then the laws are seriously broken. You can't break something that is broken. All you can do is try to fix it, and in the meantime, help spread the wonderful bounty of entertaining, enlightening, and thought-provoking artistic expression.
All the good people in the world share in this way. Many others would sacrifice their own and everyone else's children to try to grab some cheap, revolting, reactive power for a fleeting moment.
How is this better than the following workflow (which is what many do now, and more will do soon):
* Find content on the Internet or other places (via whatever means)
* Download/aquire (again, however you need to)
* Watch on your TV (via any network-attached device or stand-alone DVD player that supports lots of codecs and can be controlled with a remote)
The only things outlined in TFA that differs from this is
* What is available is controlled by some bullshit companies who will have your worst interest at heart
* You have to watch ads
* You have to pay for downloads
* Apple and Google spy on you
Er, um... no thanks!
say a word for PJ!
on
SCO Vs. Groklaw
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Not only is PJ a real person, but she is one of the few public intellectuals who really inspire with her integrity, honesty, and quirkiness. I swear I almost shed a tear when she resigned from a paying job to quickly dispel the FUD-of-the-week about her. It is amazingly rare to read such a person in todays world on issues of technology, business, and the law.
Quirk: She ardently enforces a policy of no cursing (she gives warning to users who write "BS"). She claims this is to keep discussion respectful.
She stands tall for what she believes is right, whether it relates to the SCO case or not. She has focused on many other issues, including great coverage of the current MS anti-trust case, and the MS/Novel deal, a well as long and recurring essays on ethics.
She graciously defers to people who know more than her on technical issues, and is willing to change her mind.
The underlying themes of her blog (often discussed explicitly) are:
* The US legal system is an attempt to be fair under difficult and complex situations -- it's hard to see this sometimes, but cynicism is an incorrect analysis.
* Business can be good, but business does NOT mean a sacrifice of all values except a quick buck. She is very pro-business.
* A person who stands firm in their knowledge of truth, even as others attack them, has a very difficult road ahead of them; but those who lie, attack, or surrender face harsh spiritual repercussions. In this, as in almost all of her attitude, a Christian sensibility shines through. But rather than being off-putting, dogmatic, or familiar, she comes across as convincing, passionate, and wise.
I always watch ads. How else will the people who want me to see their ads get me to see their ads? Also, they want me to buy their products, so I do. How else are they supposed to sell me their products unless they make me watch ads that tell me to? Also, they want to cover my town with ads: let them. How else are we going to see ads unless they cover the whole country? Also, they now want to put ads into movies and books -- good for them! How else can they really get mind-share penetration unless they completely bombard us, and trick us into thinking that our favorite actors and characters like their products? Also, they want to lie in their ads. That's OK too! If they don't lie, then how will we really be motivated to buy their products? Also, they want to pass laws that make it illegal to NOT watch their ads. Good for them! Why would anyone not want to watch the ads? It's for our own good!
Principled and practical concerns are as one when it comes to free speech. The technology is at the point that any DRM requires all kinds of supporting laws that stop people from using art (music, video, books, etc) in creative and natural ways. Sampling and mashups might be considered "illegal" as is sharing an e-book in the same way you'd share a paper book (except on a larger, easier, and simultaneous scale). Who knows what I might want to do with a recording? Add it to the film I'm making? Overdub my own backup vocals? Give it to my friends so they can play it at the club they own? Use it to generate a random number? Use it as the theme song for my political campaign? And I'm sure that 6 billion people could come up with at least 10 other (even more interesting) ways to use the song in question.
When copyright was written into the US Constitution, in effect an exception was carved out to Free Speech. The benefits of Free Speech to society were generally understood (see John Stewart Mill) but it was thought that the arts, sciences, and culture could benefit more by this limited form of censorship. Whether those early thinkers were right or not is open to debate (I myself think the arts and sciences would have been more fruitful with no copyright), it is clear that times have changed and that now the restrictiveness required far outweighs any benefits. In fact, if the system is meant to put money in the hands of artists and scientists, it is doing a very bad job (with a few extreme exceptions).
Slashdot Mirror
Right -- I thought the whole history of AWS was that Amazon built a good infrastructure with lots of built-in redundancy. The rest of us are just living off their fumes. It would be as if the ground beef bin at the butcher went into their own business -- hamburgers come from the extra bits of the choice cuts.
My Master's paper for my academic specialty is a proposal for a computer system that would allow a common activity in this field to happen on a sort of centralized website. I think my idea is fairly detailed and good, but a lot of the people and institutions in my field aren't very computer-savvy. I don't think I am a good enough programmer to build the entire thing myself -- it doesn't have to ultimately be Wikipedia-size, but if successful, it would have several tens of thousands of users, and things like security would be important.
How would you recommend I proceed? Get some (bad) working code and early adopters and iterate? Try to organize a team of planners and programmers? Try to get funding first? Any tips?
http://blog.jprosevear.org/2011/05/13/webgl-security/
But if you are vulnerable to automated attacks, then you most certainly are also vulnerable to directed attacks, no? The attacker can just use a known (or new) attack against WordPress once they see that that is what you are running:
"Aha! From the Meta Tags I can tell they're running WordPress. Looks like it's version X. I'll do a POST to site/wp-admin/tiny-mce/lang/en-us/takefile.php of a PHP script. If they didn't apply the patch that was released yesterday I should be able to upload my PHP script which will allow me write access or at least read access..." If you were not up-to-date in your install (or if you haven't audited any plugins you used), then the entire hack might takes just a few minutes, and could be done by someone with only rudimentary skills.
No?
A non-custom CMS like WordPress is very often the target of massive automated attacks: a new bug is discovered in WP and a tool is written to seek out vulnerable installations and exploit that bug. If you have the skill or $$ to pour over the code, you can probably find your own bugs before they become publicly known.
On the other hand, if your site is specifically targeted, then your custom CMS is as vulnerable or more than the WordPresses out there. You might have a bit of security through obscurity (in a standard WP install, the attacker might know file names and locations, variable names, classes, etc.) but this will probably do you little good if you weren't able to harden the code.
Lesson: you are screwed if a rich, powerful, or smart attacker singles you out. A standard CMS can land you in hot water if you don't have a knowledgeable person administering it (and who has that?).
Your analysis seems messed-up to me. I assume you are referring to this chart http://www.conceivablytech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/browser2.jpg Chrome's rate of growth might have slowed a bit, but it still grew by what looks like 10%. IE has had negative growth pretty consistently. Safari's growth rate seems to be much lower than Chrome's. Since your understanding of the data seems so far off the mark, I doubt your conclusions are accurate.
The conceptions of what we "do" with music and film have been limited by the sales and "IP" models. Remixing, adding/replacing tracks, mashups, even sampling, all come about as a consequence of ignoring the "consumption" model as you describe it. So does all "traditional" or "folk" music. There are places that film and music can go that we can't easily think of today. Try to come up with your own examples of what can be done. If you can't think of anything or if your ideas don't seem all that revolutionary or important, maybe you're not an artist.
Since when does MS have the right to say "To get software truly correct..."? They KNOW how to make software secure?
My 3 year old son urges me to download games on the iPhone. I get all the free ones listed for each category and listed under "most popular." He and I agree that 99% of the games we see are some of the worst crap you can imagine. There are a few types:
* Stuff that requires a lot of downloading, rendering, entering passwords, connecting to various multiplayer networks, answering their questions, etc. It takes 5 minutes before the game starts, but by then, we've both lost patience.
* The games are obnoxiously crippled -- they offer only teases, or they constantly try to trick you into clicking to their ordering system, or their ads, or they suddenly stop in the middle of play. You feel interrupted, short-changed, and ripped off.
* The games themselves strike us as weirdly unimaginative. The graphics are retreds of crap I've been seeing since the 80s, or else they look like the standard manga stuff. They often have cliched, muzak-style "soundtracks" and have the game equivalents of a laugh-track: clapping, "awww"-ing, etc.
In sum: these games suck. How they can represent some sort of billion-dollar-industry is so baffling that I suspect a hyped bubble; I can't imagine masses of people paying for this junk. It's more fun to kill time by flipping a coin. It feels like there are no original artists in the game-making work, just "industry" hacks. Maybe one day game-making will somehow be more democratic like website creation and some will try to innovate.
When the lamb has struggled so long and hard to get food fight illness and brave the elements, don't you think it deserves to not be killed by the lion? WinZip, that succulent little lamb, will be eaten by us, the vicious software pirates, however we moralize. It is our nature.
>>I am so glad we won't be hearing from her at least until 2012 or so...
Ted Stevens gets re-elected; then he resigns (or is kicked out of the Senate by 2/3rds); then there will be a special election in Alaska for Senate and Palin will most likely win. She plans this already. When she found out about Stevens she said (paraphrase) "He should leave the Senate. Even if he is re-elected, he should then resign." So we will most likely see her in the Senate for the next 4 years or so. The question is: will she be like Liddy Dole who people thought was an up-and-comer but who turned out to be a drag, or like Hillary who was a massively divisive figure but who used the Senate to grow to become liked by a broad spectrum of people.
Flashblock DOES block the attack for me...
"get the technology in the hands of as many children as possible" is "technology" when you are given a black box and told how much you have to pay to stay on the upgrade path? Told you are breaking the law when you develop a competing product? Told...
I thought OLPC was about using technology to help kids to learn technology so that they can do any number of things that technology can potentially offer them. I though that that was why Free software seemed to make so much sense.
It does pass. The original Acid 2 test page http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html accidentally got changed a bit (so that a missing link returns error code 200 instead of 404 not found). That's why FF (and other browsers like Safari and Opera) "fail" on that page. But see the mirrored page here http://www.hixie.ch/tests/evil/acid/002/ to verify that FF 3b2 (and Safari and Opera and IE 8... OOoops! can't test that one!) do pass...
MS's Patent Deal Covers "Certain Linux-Based Products"
."[PJ:Emphasis added. So it isn't Linux itself, I gather, rather stuff that runs on it, perchance things like Mono, OpenOffice.org, etc.]
Microsoft and Samsung Electronics have agreed to a broad, cross-licensing patent agreement that apparently includes a controversial clause that protects against any legal claims Microsoft may have on technology used in Linux....
Within the joint press release announcing the deal, however, the companies said, "Samsung and its distributors and customers may utilize Microsoft's patents in Samsung's products with proprietary software, and Samsung will also obtain coverage from Microsoft for its customers' use of certain Linux-based products
>> I want the epic movies that took years of hard work to produce.
I want the same, except a version that is much harder to make, takes even more years, requires higher paid actors, more expensive/elaborate visual effects, has music composed and played by the most expensive possible musicians, plays only in theaters that allow you watch in a personalized jacuzzi with a team of fluffers keeping me interested, and who's bottom line production costs (not including marketing) is over $1bn USD.
As for music, I want music that costs WAY more to make than then standard billboard chart-toppers of today -- I want the artists to use custom-designed microphones that require years of R&D by the top engineers, I want pre-amps that costs millions to be used, I want a format that requires a special, proprietary player, I want the artists to be paid hundreds of millions of dollars just for signing the contract.
As for porn, what I want will require the slave-economy to be re-established in the US, and for a massive colonial war to be waged in order to set up the perfect international geo-political situation that would provide the legal, historical, and yes, moral space in which the films I desire to see would be possible.
But then, we can't always get what we want can we? The Lord of the Rings was possible because the legal, historical, economic, technological, and cultural facts on the ground were conducive to it's production. If things change, then it may become impossible for such an epic movie to be made again. But then again, the geniuses and moneyed people no longer conspire to write classical music, design and build massive tombs, create bejeweled swords, or memorize and chant epic histories of their peoples. Those things are now left to the museums.
AppleTV can now play Xvid -- http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s= &threadid=2391956
You said "Accusing someone of supporting slavery and Nazism because they happen to think that artists should have rights?" My point was that people defend the accepted ways that things work not because of the reasons, but because that's the way things work. Do you see my point? I still think that that is what you are doing.
You said "The idea of copyright has always included the moral rights of the creator." But your quote from the constitution makes no claim to such a moral right -- monopoly power is given in order to encourage the creation; I assume that we want to encourage the creation because it is good for society; I also assume that the encouragement comes from the potential to make money from the monopoly power. I think that this is the generally understood meaning of the Article, no? You might feel there is an additional moral right, but I submit to you that you are conflating a scenario whereby someone unjustly misattributes an artist's work with a general feeling that an artist should "own" or "control" their work.
You say "The artist has an exclusive right to reproduce his or her creation. That's what makes it theirs." This might be how the laws makes us see things, but I do not think it represents the ontological state of things, as you seem to imply. Artists had no such monopoly power for thousands of years, and yet they did create art, and much of it is attributable. I hesitate to say "no, what makes art theirs is the fact that they created it" because that may well do injustice to the people who contributed by influence, assistance, inspiration, source, etc. I prefer to think of art as belonging to us all, rather than to try to insist that the film belongs to the director, say, and not to the writer, producer, star, etc...
You say "The exclusive right to copy and the exclusive right to sell are two separate provisions of the same law." So? The law could well be different. The only power Congress was granted was to make such laws in order "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" -- one can imagine many many laws that could claim that as their justification. What is troubling is that the lawmakers' motives as they pass the DMCA, as they consider the broadcast flag, as they extend copyright, is that they clearly are not concerned with promoting science and art, but rather with giving monopolists a potentially stronger business plan. If they did take as the starting point an investigation into how best to promote... in order to benefit society then they would have to take the potentially world-changing fact of broadband, p2p, etc into account, no? The only way to enforce the existing notions of copyright (whose benefits towards the goal are dubious at best) are to pass increasing intrusive laws that ban the simplest and most desirable actions...
You say "conflating copying with the creation of derivative works" -- but isn't blocking derivative works done in order to further the potential gain of the monopolist? In terms of interpretation, the big distributors are insisting that we consume their content under circumstances that they dictate -- with their devices, used under their conditions, etc. Why should, for example, I not be allowed to use the Mickey Mouse character in my film? Because by doing so I would dilute their property's potential sale value.
You say "My opinion on the subject hasn't even entered into it." But I thought your opinion was that artists have the moral right to control their work, and that this right is enshrined in the US Constitution, and that downloading movies is wrong because it violates the laws that are derived from this Article, but that it has nothing to do with money or art... No?
I didn't make that accusation. I said that I think that you (or at least that other guy until you too came along) are defending the status quo because ... well because it is the status quo. That's why a lot of people defend the status quo. In fact I specifically distanced myself from claiming that this issue is anything like slavery, Nazism, etc.
Copyright law works the way it does because of a lot of factors, a large one of which is lobbying by people who came up with ways they could make money off of it and the minutia of the laws. A VERY small part was some sort of planned-out way to encourage artists or some sort of philosophical ideological agreement about inherent ownership of ideas or expression. The way you talk, you'd think think that it was a "natural law" -- "artists should have rights" you say. Artists rights means that people can't share a digital copy of art? Since when? Why?
I think a much more important "artists right" is the right to make your art incorporate others' art -- this is the way art has always worked, but it is this "copyright" which is now being used to deprive artists of this fundamental "right."
Copyright has everything to do with selling -- the idea justifying it (it is an exception to the fundamental concept of free-speech) was that, in order to encourage artists (and inventors) to make their art (and inventions), they would be provided with a monopoly to copy -- that is sell -- it, to give them a special leg-up on the competition.
And it very much does dictate meaning -- the forbidding of "copying" inherently makes the claim that I Micky Mouse, say, is not the kind of person who would ever [insert your interesting Mickey Mouse film idea here]. In the case of the Apple TV (and iTunes), they are presenting a model by which I consume their product. It is presented according to their classification schemes, with their descriptions, and their threat to me that if I "misuse" their materials, I will have the full force of the law come down on me.
Why do you (and that other guy) insist on calling me names and dismissing me with such violence? As you see it, the law is was and will be the law no matter what it says, and there is no room for the rest of us.
I disagree with you. You belong to the tradition of philosophical laborer; you take what is given to you and find the logic, history, attitudes, and glory that support that thing. If we were in 10th century Ireland, you'd be arguing that no one should be able to read the gospels except the monks. "How are the monks supposed to make money then?" you'd demand. Or if we were in old China, you'd aggressively argue for foot-binding.
Am I claiming that the current "content distribution system" as you see it is as bad as foot-binding, slavery, or Nazi-ism? Not at all. But no matter: you'd defend them anyway, like you defend this.
You say I have a "hive mind" because I think that art shouldn't be put into a box and denied any meaning except that imposed on it by the person who wants to sell it to you. But my idea isn't some hippy vision of a perfect world, it's just a simple description of the way things actually work -- people like art; they like to share art; they like to transform the substance and meaning of the art into something different. Your vision is one where the seller dictates the meaning of the object to a passive recipient, who must then be forced to accept those terms by law and (as you try to make clear) by members of the crowd using coercive and ridiculing language to prop up those laws and the interests of the "sellers."
Apple wants to replace the monks with reading machines. I prefer that we all learn to read. Is that idealistic? Was that an encouragement to break the laws? Perhaps, but it is what happened -- people did learn to read -- and I claim that it was good thing.
Fair use? Fair use is about reviewing, satirizing, or otherwise quoting or mildly incorporating someone's legally protected monopoly on some expression. It's an interesting edge case in the history of "US copyright court decisions" if you're into studying that academically.
No, what I'm talking about is the act of watching filmed scenarios, or whatever else the good artists of the world create in their infinite inventiveness in order to have people see.
What I'm talking about is participating in culture, and about benefiting from expression, and about enjoying art.
If that's illegal, then the laws are seriously broken. You can't break something that is broken. All you can do is try to fix it, and in the meantime, help spread the wonderful bounty of entertaining, enlightening, and thought-provoking artistic expression.
All the good people in the world share in this way. Many others would sacrifice their own and everyone else's children to try to grab some cheap, revolting, reactive power for a fleeting moment.
How is this better than the following workflow (which is what many do now, and more will do soon):
... no thanks!
* Find content on the Internet or other places (via whatever means)
* Download/aquire (again, however you need to)
* Watch on your TV (via any network-attached device or stand-alone DVD player that supports lots of codecs and can be controlled with a remote)
The only things outlined in TFA that differs from this is
* What is available is controlled by some bullshit companies who will have your worst interest at heart
* You have to watch ads
* You have to pay for downloads
* Apple and Google spy on you
Er, um
Not only is PJ a real person, but she is one of the few public intellectuals who really inspire with her integrity, honesty, and quirkiness. I swear I almost shed a tear when she resigned from a paying job to quickly dispel the FUD-of-the-week about her. It is amazingly rare to read such a person in todays world on issues of technology, business, and the law.
Quirk: She ardently enforces a policy of no cursing (she gives warning to users who write "BS"). She claims this is to keep discussion respectful.
She stands tall for what she believes is right, whether it relates to the SCO case or not. She has focused on many other issues, including great coverage of the current MS anti-trust case, and the MS/Novel deal, a well as long and recurring essays on ethics.
She graciously defers to people who know more than her on technical issues, and is willing to change her mind.
The underlying themes of her blog (often discussed explicitly) are:
* The US legal system is an attempt to be fair under difficult and complex situations -- it's hard to see this sometimes, but cynicism is an incorrect analysis.
* Business can be good, but business does NOT mean a sacrifice of all values except a quick buck. She is very pro-business.
* A person who stands firm in their knowledge of truth, even as others attack them, has a very difficult road ahead of them; but those who lie, attack, or surrender face harsh spiritual repercussions. In this, as in almost all of her attitude, a Christian sensibility shines through. But rather than being off-putting, dogmatic, or familiar, she comes across as convincing, passionate, and wise.
Thank you PJ! You are a role model for us all!
I always watch ads. How else will the people who want me to see their ads get me to see their ads? Also, they want me to buy their products, so I do. How else are they supposed to sell me their products unless they make me watch ads that tell me to? Also, they want to cover my town with ads: let them. How else are we going to see ads unless they cover the whole country? Also, they now want to put ads into movies and books -- good for them! How else can they really get mind-share penetration unless they completely bombard us, and trick us into thinking that our favorite actors and characters like their products? Also, they want to lie in their ads. That's OK too! If they don't lie, then how will we really be motivated to buy their products? Also, they want to pass laws that make it illegal to NOT watch their ads. Good for them! Why would anyone not want to watch the ads? It's for our own good!
Principled and practical concerns are as one when it comes to free speech. The technology is at the point that any DRM requires all kinds of supporting laws that stop people from using art (music, video, books, etc) in creative and natural ways. Sampling and mashups might be considered "illegal" as is sharing an e-book in the same way you'd share a paper book (except on a larger, easier, and simultaneous scale). Who knows what I might want to do with a recording? Add it to the film I'm making? Overdub my own backup vocals? Give it to my friends so they can play it at the club they own? Use it to generate a random number? Use it as the theme song for my political campaign? And I'm sure that 6 billion people could come up with at least 10 other (even more interesting) ways to use the song in question.
When copyright was written into the US Constitution, in effect an exception was carved out to Free Speech. The benefits of Free Speech to society were generally understood (see John Stewart Mill) but it was thought that the arts, sciences, and culture could benefit more by this limited form of censorship. Whether those early thinkers were right or not is open to debate (I myself think the arts and sciences would have been more fruitful with no copyright), it is clear that times have changed and that now the restrictiveness required far outweighs any benefits. In fact, if the system is meant to put money in the hands of artists and scientists, it is doing a very bad job (with a few extreme exceptions).