I'm surprised no one seems to have mentioned the Greens who tend to be more into civil liberties, transparency, participatory democracy, cutting back copyright law (inc. supporting free software), &c than the other parties which would appeal to a lot of the/. crowd.
I'm British (and biased as I was a Green candidate over here this month) so I don't know much about the US Green Party's policies, but looking at RMS's website, he seems to be promoting them.
According to Wikipedia, the announced prospective Green candidates are Alan Augustson, Elaine Brown, Kent Mesplay and Kat Swift and there is speculation that Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Rebecca Rotzler, Cindy Sheehan and Al Gore might stand for the Greens.
From the referenced OUP page, it doesn't appear that the referenced book deals with the what is and isn't property though, and I would have surely thought your statement is moot as they didn't even speak English or anything like it.
How would you define property to somehow include the intangible, then? And, what makes you think that people shouldn't use property to only refer to tangible things in a society that is both "modern" and "commercial"?
RAM counts in some jurisdictions and not in others. (I was under the impression it didn't count in the USA, but I haven't checked and I don't even live there.)
However, I disagree that the problem is merely the absurdity of such restrictions bringing the rationality of the entire copyright system into question. The danger of them being enforced most definitely is a problem (even if they haven't, so far, been enforced).
A fact well understood (and used), particularly by Bush and previous US regimes, is that, if there are so many laws that it is impossible to survive without violating any, the executive has total and absolute control over the populace and their liberty via selective enforcement*.
To elaborate, if accidently humming a tune to yourself (or, in transient-medium-copyright-violation jurisdictions, possibly, just storing a song in your own memory) is a criminal offence then the goverment will use it if they cannot get a person who they don't like (e.g.: a whistleblower) banged up for something else. Now, of course, it is unlikely they would ever use such a clearly stupid law. They will first try to convict under a more borderline stupid, but nonetheless, obscure law. Due to the astronomical number of laws in the world, a significant proportion of convictions in all jurisdictions are under laws that have never been used before to convict someone (and probably never will be again). The victims of such laws are nearly always convicted for reasons other than their breach of the given law.
[* If you don't think the entire legal and law enforcement system is based around selective enforcement, you're living in a dream world. Do you think the U.S. president is as likely to be convicted of an offence as a typical US citizen? Actually he probably cannot even be convicted because of presidential immunity and the (very ironic) signing statements (which he claims allow him to secretly ignore any laws he signs, even though Congress has now passed a law saying that he has to tell them if he is going to ignore any laws, which he apparnetly decided to ignore).]
I realised this just after posting (but couldn't be bothered clarifying). The point still stands that the OP was slightly misleading as most works probably aren't under joint ownership (as is implied), and where a work is under joint copyright you would, I assume, need the permission of all joint holders. I have no idea about the particulars of US law you mention as IANALOEAUSC (or even a US citizen).
The GPL explicitly allows commercial usage of (including selling of and the production of commercial derivative works from) GPLed works. As explained in the GNU manifesto, by doing so, it allows a free market in selling GPLed works and related services (as opposed to the monopolies of the proprietary software world) as is evidenced by the booming industry around GNU (or Linux).
What intangible things would you commonly characterise as "property" or "owned"*?
Also, I don't understand what rivalry has to do with whether something's property?
[*bearing in mind, as you claim to be a lawyer, that this is a discussion about the common (formal) not the legal usage of the words--which varies considerably between jurisdictions anyway]
I'd imagine lawful users who require P2P, as opposed to traditional publishing methods, should be the most scared by this.
If you're using P2P this is usually because you don't want someone to know what you are copying; not because it is a copyright violation, but because of what it is expressing (e.g.: material critical of governments, or large criminal syndicates or protection rackets like, say, the RIAA/Sony/et al). (The danger being, obviously, that if such people knew you were expressing such opinions you would "dissappear".)
Works are automatically copyrighted (see my neice post). The reason the answer to the question is "yes" is because there is no law (at least in most jurisdictions) about copying CDs. What happens to be on those CDs is irrelevant as copying to any other medium would be covered by the same laws. Also, the vast majority of works are ineligible for copyright or in the public domain. Much of the rest are licensed for copying to CD or such copying would be covered by fair use or dealing.
Also, I fail to understand how any of this relates to any clause of the GNU GPL.
Actually, under the Berne Convention, copyright laws in all signitory jurisdictions must give the author copyright on their work without the author having to explicitly state anything.
If they are selling a license, what are its terms, when did you agree to it and when was it explicitly stated that they were not selling you the CD when you handed over the cash?
The RIAA and its agents claim that they are selling you the CD (not a license to the music). The shop gives you the CD in exchange for money; they are, therefore, by definition selling you the CD. Even if they aren't, you have physical control over the CD so the assumption is that you own it.
If the claim you need a license to use your own property (which is bullshit), then every single person who uses a CD they have bought is in violation (as you agree to no license when buying a CD).
The copies which copyright concerns itself with are the ones that are fixed in a persistent medium
As pointed out by the first-cousin-once-removed post, in some jurisdictions, such as the UK, copying to a transient medium like RAM is still a violation. [Although, under UK law, some specific exceptions for transient media (to allow Internet caches and alike) are covered by section 31A of the 1998 act as amended.]
No. It doesn't have such exemptions (for software anyway) which is why EULAs carry more weight over here. We do have incidental copying exemptions obviously (for Internet caches and such like) so that might apply to music CDs.
The other interesting issue here is, given case law interprets our vague copyright law to include copying into RAM, logically, the courts should also accept the copies you keep in your own memory as a violation.
copyright != ownership. Own is defined as "to possess as property". Property must be tangible. The comments on this story seem to mostly be discussing what "owning" an abstract concept means. It means nothing.
I'd have thought ruggedness is not an issue in a vacuum. In the unlikely event that something does hit it, it's probably screwed however rugged it may be.
The trouble is that, in general, they don't have the power to propose legislation themselves (because they're officially the legislature...umm...ye).
Whereas, the EC civil servants do have the power to propose legislation, which is passed unless the majority of the legislature—including those not present—repeatedly vote against it. If the parliament does manage to vote against it, the EC then says this is abuse or gaming of the (de facto, beuracratic) system.
If you think there is more variation of morals between individuals in the same member state than between different member states, I fail to see why you think we shouldn't harmonise laws on things like trade when it is clearly in the economic and practical interests of EU citizens (except maybe lawyers). What makes the member state (another arbitrary geographic area) a better place for legislation on these matters?
I agree the EU has accountability problems (as do many member states), but that doesn't mean we should get rid of it.
In case you didn't realise algorithms or formulae are exactly what the EPO has been trying to make patentable (while passing illegal patents for them). Software patents are on algorithms, not individual implementations of those algorithms.
Actually, technically, they'd get run over if there weren't many zebra crossing, because they crossed were they thought they saw zebra crossings. Nevermind. (Douglas Adams does seem to make the same mistake though.)
To clarify, many individual parties within other party groups took an anti-software-patent stance, but the fractuous party groups, as on many issues, found it difficult to agree. Obviously, I don't know where you live (if you are even in the EU), so I have no idea whether there is a pro-free-software or anti-software patent party in your state.
They have 42 of the 732 members in the parliament, which counts as major in my book. At irsk of stating the obvious, if people vote for the anti-software-patent MEPs (many of whom are in other party groups, but I don't think any other party group officially supported the FFII position--I may be wrong), then there will be more.
I'm not entirely sure what your point is.
Whether the party groups whipped their members to vote against software patents is irrelevant, as the vast majority of parliament voted against the directive (inlcuding the JURI).
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Never mind the Macs. He has lots of books and no visible desk space.
I'm British (and biased as I was a Green candidate over here this month) so I don't know much about the US Green Party's policies, but looking at RMS's website, he seems to be promoting them.
According to Wikipedia, the announced prospective Green candidates are Alan Augustson, Elaine Brown, Kent Mesplay and Kat Swift and there is speculation that Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Rebecca Rotzler, Cindy Sheehan and Al Gore might stand for the Greens.
From the referenced OUP page, it doesn't appear that the referenced book deals with the what is and isn't property though, and I would have surely thought your statement is moot as they didn't even speak English or anything like it.
How would you define property to somehow include the intangible, then? And, what makes you think that people shouldn't use property to only refer to tangible things in a society that is both "modern" and "commercial"?
RAM counts in some jurisdictions and not in others. (I was under the impression it didn't count in the USA, but I haven't checked and I don't even live there.)
However, I disagree that the problem is merely the absurdity of such restrictions bringing the rationality of the entire copyright system into question. The danger of them being enforced most definitely is a problem (even if they haven't, so far, been enforced).
A fact well understood (and used), particularly by Bush and previous US regimes, is that, if there are so many laws that it is impossible to survive without violating any, the executive has total and absolute control over the populace and their liberty via selective enforcement*.
To elaborate, if accidently humming a tune to yourself (or, in transient-medium-copyright-violation jurisdictions, possibly, just storing a song in your own memory) is a criminal offence then the goverment will use it if they cannot get a person who they don't like (e.g.: a whistleblower) banged up for something else. Now, of course, it is unlikely they would ever use such a clearly stupid law. They will first try to convict under a more borderline stupid, but nonetheless, obscure law. Due to the astronomical number of laws in the world, a significant proportion of convictions in all jurisdictions are under laws that have never been used before to convict someone (and probably never will be again). The victims of such laws are nearly always convicted for reasons other than their breach of the given law.
[* If you don't think the entire legal and law enforcement system is based around selective enforcement, you're living in a dream world. Do you think the U.S. president is as likely to be convicted of an offence as a typical US citizen? Actually he probably cannot even be convicted because of presidential immunity and the (very ironic) signing statements (which he claims allow him to secretly ignore any laws he signs, even though Congress has now passed a law saying that he has to tell them if he is going to ignore any laws, which he apparnetly decided to ignore).]
I realised this just after posting (but couldn't be bothered clarifying). The point still stands that the OP was slightly misleading as most works probably aren't under joint ownership (as is implied), and where a work is under joint copyright you would, I assume, need the permission of all joint holders. I have no idea about the particulars of US law you mention as IANALOEAUSC (or even a US citizen).
The GPL explicitly allows commercial usage of (including selling of and the production of commercial derivative works from) GPLed works. As explained in the GNU manifesto, by doing so, it allows a free market in selling GPLed works and related services (as opposed to the monopolies of the proprietary software world) as is evidenced by the booming industry around GNU (or Linux).
What intangible things would you commonly characterise as "property" or "owned"*?
Also, I don't understand what rivalry has to do with whether something's property?
[*bearing in mind, as you claim to be a lawyer, that this is a discussion about the common (formal) not the legal usage of the words--which varies considerably between jurisdictions anyway]
I'd imagine lawful users who require P2P, as opposed to traditional publishing methods, should be the most scared by this.
If you're using P2P this is usually because you don't want someone to know what you are copying; not because it is a copyright violation, but because of what it is expressing (e.g.: material critical of governments, or large criminal syndicates or protection rackets like, say, the RIAA/Sony/et al). (The danger being, obviously, that if such people knew you were expressing such opinions you would "dissappear".)
Also, I fail to understand how any of this relates to any clause of the GNU GPL.
Actually, under the Berne Convention, copyright laws in all signitory jurisdictions must give the author copyright on their work without the author having to explicitly state anything.
If they are selling a license, what are its terms, when did you agree to it and when was it explicitly stated that they were not selling you the CD when you handed over the cash?
The RIAA and its agents claim that they are selling you the CD (not a license to the music). The shop gives you the CD in exchange for money; they are, therefore, by definition selling you the CD. Even if they aren't, you have physical control over the CD so the assumption is that you own it.
If the claim you need a license to use your own property (which is bullshit), then every single person who uses a CD they have bought is in violation (as you agree to no license when buying a CD).
Multiple people cannot have the copyright on the whole of the song (although obviously different bits could be owned by different people).
The other interesting issue here is, given case law interprets our vague copyright law to include copying into RAM, logically, the courts should also accept the copies you keep in your own memory as a violation.
copyright != ownership. Own is defined as "to possess as property". Property must be tangible. The comments on this story seem to mostly be discussing what "owning" an abstract concept means. It means nothing.
I'd have thought ruggedness is not an issue in a vacuum. In the unlikely event that something does hit it, it's probably screwed however rugged it may be.
Oh, you mean the parliament.
The trouble is that, in general, they don't have the power to propose legislation themselves (because they're officially the legislature...umm...ye). Whereas, the EC civil servants do have the power to propose legislation, which is passed unless the majority of the legislature—including those not present—repeatedly vote against it. If the parliament does manage to vote against it, the EC then says this is abuse or gaming of the (de facto, beuracratic) system.
Democracy at work EU-style.
I agree the EU has accountability problems (as do many member states), but that doesn't mean we should get rid of it.
Actually, technically, they'd get run over if there weren't many zebra crossing, because they crossed were they thought they saw zebra crossings. Nevermind. (Douglas Adams does seem to make the same mistake though.)
I'm in a member state that is in favour of software patents, you insensitive clod.
To clarify, many individual parties within other party groups took an anti-software-patent stance, but the fractuous party groups, as on many issues, found it difficult to agree. Obviously, I don't know where you live (if you are even in the EU), so I have no idea whether there is a pro-free-software or anti-software patent party in your state.
I'm not entirely sure what your point is. Whether the party groups whipped their members to vote against software patents is irrelevant, as the vast majority of parliament voted against the directive (inlcuding the JURI).
THe EU government, if by that you mean the EC, isn't elected (even indirectly), but then most governments of EU member states aren't elected directly.