This is slashdot. MS can NEVER be seen as anything but evil here.
You're lying. Slashdot frequently has pro-M$ posts. M$ marketers and M$ marketing victims appear to have their very own reality distortion field and can't cope with a website that has any alternative points of view at all.
When websites like microsoft.com or Paul Thurott are fair and balanced then you might have a point. Until then any so-called bias by slashdot website contributers is just balancing out a tiny fraction of the incredible volume of propaganda coming out of Redmond and their client websites.
Oh, and to anticipate one snide comment: "M$" is a reminder that they are currently costing the world USD$50,000,000,000+ per year for a dozen programs mostly written decades ago with the most difficult bits, the device drivers, being written by third parties. It's also a response to them putting multiple marketing keys on general purpose PC keyboards.
Gosh, mod'ed up to +5. I wonder how that happened?
Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB would seem to disagree with your friends.
Doesn't mean much - both those sites get push-polled every time a major release comes out.
As would I: I think this is the best Star Trek movie I've seen (and I've seen them all).
Yeah, the latest is always the "best" to a marketer.
Wolverine was a vaguely entertaining but ultimately shallow and formulaic popcorn flick. Star Trek has breathed life into what seemed to many a dead franchise.
The trek movie is a very shallow, formulaic action movie. Stop pretending it's deep or meaningful.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
They don't. Most people don't give a shit. It's just shills astroturfing on all the major social networking sites and slashdot is in the target demographic. They'll be spending millions on marketing and astroturfing is cheap and easy for those with no ethics.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
I'm really surprised that the "hardcore" Klingon-speaking fans aren't completely outraged...
That's because half the posts and replies you get will be lying shills astroturfing for the movie. They'll be on all the social networking sites. Many "fans" are actually marketers trying to make people think "everybody's going to it". Astroturfers are lowlifes who should be in jail for fraud.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
Sure it sounds like an easy swap, but imagine trying to do something like changing dipswitches and installing a PCIe card with ping pong balls on your finger tips - even with big clunky milspec connectors, everything you twist tries to twist you, everything you pull tries to pull you.
You're right, what they're doing is not easy but that's in part due to poor design by the people on the ground. They're sometimes just way too conservative and bureaucratic, and not in a good way, with many design elements.
As just one example off the top of my head they could've used an unpowered "Canada arm", a light truss where the joints can be tightened and loosened, attached to the telescope to hold them in a fixed position while they're working. Another example is designing replaceable modules and connectors that don't require fine hand coordination. They already do this to a degree but I see no reason why the astronauts should need to use their fingers at all.
It's easy to understand why the designers are conservative, they only get one chance, however maybe they need to think in terms of good/optimal solutions and fallbacks if they don't work, instead of "this is the one true, will always work not matter what" way.
I've watched the astronauts working on the ISS and there's a huge amount of bureaucracy and complexity for what should be very simple lego-style plugin-and-leave jobs while on space walks. To put it another way the complexity perhaps should be more in the design work on the ground, not in the procedures to implement the designs in space.
Reminds me of house design, the last bastion of bespoke, non-factory, non-prefabricated design.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
Personally, I suspect that the reductionist worldview is at least partially responsible for that.
Holistic, reductionist, it's all abstraction.
We're human, with human limitations. To understand we have to abstract and that by definition is an approximation. Some people aren't happy with current abstractions/approximations but unfortunately they haven't really suggested anything better. To me, saying "reductionist is no good" is just a fuzzy way of saying current abstractions/approximations aren't as successful as they'd like.
Sure, many people would like better abstractions however saying "holistic" may be better is meaningless; "holistic" appears to be code for "we must consider the overall system" and as I've just said we have human limitations that mean we can't consider the overall system, we have to abstract. The only question is, which bits are important and thus should be abstracted?
---
Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.
Nonsense. Elsevier and the drug companies used the format of the publication to claim that the work was peer reviewed by expert, objective third parties. It wasn't. That's fraud.
People should go to jail for this. They have endangered peoples' lives. I'm sick of lowlifes claiming that a language lie is okay but somehow a non-language lie isn't.
They used the format of the publication specifically to fool doctors. If it made no difference then they wouldn't have done it. Repeatedly.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
Any Slashdot article that quotes from the abstract, background, or other parts of the disclosure of a patent application instead of the claims,
So what you're saying is that the abstract is not a truthful abstraction of the contents of the patent? Ok, then why did the PTO accept a patent with an invalid abstract?
---
Every new patent is a new law; another opportunity for a lawyer to make money at the expense of the wider community.
An unobtrusive ad is a non-functioning ad. It is a non-sustainable business model.
Particularly in today's media overloaded world you're dreaming if you think "unobtrusive advertising" is possible long term.
All forms of unclassified advertising push up the advertising load till the media has a net value just marginally above zero. Network TV is already dead (valueless) because of this and movies and the web are heading the same way.
To make a long post short, what exactly is wrong with advertising subsidizing suscription costs?
You're paying twice over; once in time and attention to avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
Most unsolicited media advertising is just a shell game to hide the true cost of the media from the consumer while paying advertising middlemen who add little to no value.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
Look up the words "digital", "rights" and "management".
Anyways, Demigod requires online servers to unlock functionality. Are those online servers DRM?
Depends. Are those servers controlled by the owner of the software or the vendor?
Because if they aren't, then anyone who sets up their own server (they're out there), has unlocked that functionality.
If those servers are not hacks, are legal and the average purchaser can create and access those servers then the game is not DRM'ed.
At the end of the day, you just seem like you don't want to participate in a capitalist society, and I have to wonder, what are you doing in the US?
Irrelevant to the question of whether a piece of software has DRM or not. I'm more than happy to participate in a capitalist society however you seem to have a very narrow view of what a capitalist society is.
---
For the copyright bargain to be valid all DRM'ed works should lose copyright.
copyright gives too much power to the owners of the work.
Tautology. Ownership, by definition, is the right to control. The more interesting question is "Who owns it?" In other words who owns the original and who owns the copies.
What you probably meant to say is "copyright gives too much power to the original creators of a work."
---
Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.
So unless you have full control over THEIR servers, it's DRM?
I didn't say that. Stop dishonestly pretending I did.
Anti cheating measures? DRM! unique usernames? DRM! not allowing incompatible out of date versions on the server? DRM!
That's it, dishonestly try to muddy the waters.
DRM is about your software and your PC. Not about services provided on someone else's systems.
When your software is deliberately locked to a system you don't control for the purpose of controlling your use and significant functionality in the game can only be accessed with that system's approval then it's DRM.
If the user can run their own server (as many early games did), thus allowing them to access that significant program functionality without being controlled, then you might have a point.
If the game requires any form of authentication to unlock any significant functionality then it's DRM'ed. End of story.
It has nothing to with RMS. Nothing to do with zealotry. It's DRM. That's "Digital Rights Management".
You can try rationalizing the DRM all you like whilst pretending that somebody can still "buy" the game but you know full well that when somebody doesn't have control of their own keys it's just another form of rental.
Some people are happy to rent. Many aren't, no matter how hard the marketers and assorted astroturfers try to dissemble.
There is a new type of flu, a fair number of people *have* died from it.
A hundred people in a Mexican population of millions. That's far lower than practically any other cause of death. Those reporters really need to get a sense of proportion.
Sure the appropriate authorities need to monitor it for the very small possibility it turns out to be something serious but the general hysteria is just ridiculous.
For all the reporters know those people who died were vulnerable due to poor nutrition and other factors. It's not a first world country after all. I wonder why we haven't see any news stories detailing those deaths.
This is a gross media beat up by the drug companies (e.g. The bird flu "epidemic" and Tamiflu probably made Roche hundreds of millions of dollars - probably well worth spending a few million on astroturf), not to mention other vested interests. Just look at the media reports - it's all about suspected cases, not actual cases, and ridiculousness like making a fuss about a few suspected cases leaving one country's population of millions and entering another country's millions. Well, duh.
I repeat, they really need to get a sense of proportion. If they're so mathematically illiterate that they're not capable of getting a sense of proportion then they should shut up and go back to school - they're not qualified to say a damn thing.
60-70% of what? Money? That is not a good measure in this case. Neither is numbers of drugs approved or numbers of papers in a "publish or perish" research world. It's actually pretty hard to judge what and where worthwhile research is being done.
---
Support underdogs and variety. Monopolies (=industrial feudalism) are unhealthy.
So? If the judge was a member of Swedish Citizens Against Drunk Driving, and he was presiding over the trial of a guy that killed somebody while driving drunk, would that make his personal interest in reducing the crime of drunk driving somehow wrong, or prejudicial?
That's it, try to compare pirating, of which the vast majority of citizens do in one form or another, with drunk driving, the vast majority of which are against. They are not comparable. Marketing 101: Try to make an emotional association when you can't make a real argument. Ditto heroin.
It all depends on the organization. If it is a self-help organization, education, professional improvement, social get-togethers etc., then no problem.
However, if it is an organization that lobbies in any way for stronger copyright and more copyright law, and this is likely given that a large percentage of it's members are lawyers and lawyers are known for lobbying for more law to give themselves more work, then big problem.
It appears that the judge is a copyright maximalist and biased. Since that was not revealed before the trial and the judge appears to have made an extreme interpretation not in keeping with Swedish law (cf. assisting piracy and not actually doing it) then big problem.
It's likewise rational to support copyrights,
No it isn't. See? I can make meaningless, content-free statements also.
and to discourage the wholesale ripping off of artists.
An opinion that has little to do with the previous statement despite your "and". Trying to create an association perhaps? The artists aren't being ripped off, they've already been ripped off by the middlemen.
Why would you want a judge who doesn't get that to be involved in such a trial?
Because the judge isn't capable of distinguishing copyright fanaticism from balance and reasonable interpretation of the law perhaps?
---
Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.
Generally, the public you refer to doesn't care one bit about copyright cases or law.
It's even stronger than that. They are not just indifferent. The vast majority of the population are actively flouting copyright law, everything from photocopying in the library as students to copying a friend's music to buying dodgy DVD's on the street.
Copyright maximalists, let alone copyright-as-it-is-currently-implemented preservationists are only a tiny fraction of the total population. And that's not even considering the third world and file sharers.
Mod parent up. I also work for a non-evil email marketing company,
Most marketing companies are evil. It's just a question of degree.
All unsolicited marketing is based on the premise that it's okay to steal the time of a large number of people to make a sale to one person. That's evil.
---
An unobtrusive ad is a non-functional ad. It is a non-sustainable business model.
would absolutely hate hate hate to alienate individuals by annoying them with unwanted messages.
Nice fiction. Pity it has nothing to do with the reality.
I have a prominent "No Junk Mail" sign on my mailbox. I get junk mail several times a week. I deal with many businesses where I told them I want legitimate correspondence and no advertising. They say it's "impossible".
Marketers are lying scum. When push comes to shove they do whatever they think they can get away with. The only thing that stops them is the law. A pity truth-in-advertising isn't actually enforced - if it was the majority of "legitimate" marketers would be in jail for fraud.
---
Marketing in a saturated market is a zero-sum game. When one player wins another must lose. In a saturated market; marketing = un-marketing = arms race = parasites.
marketing from an otherwise legitimate company, opting out will work,
No it won't. For most it'll just mark it as an address to try again in 6 months, just to be "sure". Most marketing parasites think this is somehow okay. Arseholes.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
If someone spends a year writing a book, you think everyone just has an implicit right to possess it? Why?
You think distributors have an implicit right to restrict freedom of speech? Why?
All "rights" trade one person against another. The question is what is the correct balance. That's a value judgment and it's not at all clear that one person should be able to completely restrict what 6,700,000,000+ people do.
---
Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.
I can't say the same for most of the independent films I have watched.
You're not looking very hard. I see wonderful old, foreign and independent movies every day. Hollywood alone is currently producing more than two feature movies a day. Worldwide there must be hundreds per day. That's thousands per year. With a world population of 6,700,000,000+ that's actually a small number. How many movies do you watch in a year?
We simply don't need draconian copyright to increase the number of good movies made. We are suffering from an information and entertainment glut, not scarcity, and it's only going to get worse, causing resources to be redirected from more important needs (e.g. care of the elderly) because of almost completely unnecessary artificial scarcity.
---
Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.
Slashdot Mirror
This is slashdot. MS can NEVER be seen as anything but evil here.
You're lying. Slashdot frequently has pro-M$ posts. M$ marketers and M$ marketing victims appear to have their very own reality distortion field and can't cope with a website that has any alternative points of view at all.
When websites like microsoft.com or Paul Thurott are fair and balanced then you might have a point. Until then any so-called bias by slashdot website contributers is just balancing out a tiny fraction of the incredible volume of propaganda coming out of Redmond and their client websites.
Oh, and to anticipate one snide comment: "M$" is a reminder that they are currently costing the world USD$50,000,000,000+ per year for a dozen programs mostly written decades ago with the most difficult bits, the device drivers, being written by third parties. It's also a response to them putting multiple marketing keys on general purpose PC keyboards.
---
Adopt an astroturfer. Make their life hell.
Gosh, mod'ed up to +5. I wonder how that happened?
Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB would seem to disagree with your friends.
Doesn't mean much - both those sites get push-polled every time a major release comes out.
As would I: I think this is the best Star Trek movie I've seen (and I've seen them all).
Yeah, the latest is always the "best" to a marketer.
Wolverine was a vaguely entertaining but ultimately shallow and formulaic popcorn flick. Star Trek has breathed life into what seemed to many a dead franchise.
The trek movie is a very shallow, formulaic action movie. Stop pretending it's deep or meaningful.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
It depresses me to hear the masses rave about it.
They don't. Most people don't give a shit. It's just shills astroturfing on all the major social networking sites and slashdot is in the target demographic. They'll be spending millions on marketing and astroturfing is cheap and easy for those with no ethics.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
Thanks for the worthwhile review.
I'm really surprised that the "hardcore" Klingon-speaking fans aren't completely outraged ...
That's because half the posts and replies you get will be lying shills astroturfing for the movie. They'll be on all the social networking sites. Many "fans" are actually marketers trying to make people think "everybody's going to it". Astroturfers are lowlifes who should be in jail for fraud.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
Sure it sounds like an easy swap, but imagine trying to do something like changing dipswitches and installing a PCIe card with ping pong balls on your finger tips - even with big clunky milspec connectors, everything you twist tries to twist you, everything you pull tries to pull you.
You're right, what they're doing is not easy but that's in part due to poor design by the people on the ground. They're sometimes just way too conservative and bureaucratic, and not in a good way, with many design elements.
As just one example off the top of my head they could've used an unpowered "Canada arm", a light truss where the joints can be tightened and loosened, attached to the telescope to hold them in a fixed position while they're working. Another example is designing replaceable modules and connectors that don't require fine hand coordination. They already do this to a degree but I see no reason why the astronauts should need to use their fingers at all.
It's easy to understand why the designers are conservative, they only get one chance, however maybe they need to think in terms of good/optimal solutions and fallbacks if they don't work, instead of "this is the one true, will always work not matter what" way.
I've watched the astronauts working on the ISS and there's a huge amount of bureaucracy and complexity for what should be very simple lego-style plugin-and-leave jobs while on space walks. To put it another way the complexity perhaps should be more in the design work on the ground, not in the procedures to implement the designs in space.
Reminds me of house design, the last bastion of bespoke, non-factory, non-prefabricated design.
---
Don't be a programmer-bureaucrat; someone who substitutes marketing buzzwords and software bloat for verifiable improvements.
You remind me of the three stages of technology:
Not a bad description. :-)
Personally, I suspect that the reductionist worldview is at least partially responsible for that.
Holistic, reductionist, it's all abstraction.
We're human, with human limitations. To understand we have to abstract and that by definition is an approximation. Some people aren't happy with current abstractions/approximations but unfortunately they haven't really suggested anything better. To me, saying "reductionist is no good" is just a fuzzy way of saying current abstractions/approximations aren't as successful as they'd like.
Sure, many people would like better abstractions however saying "holistic" may be better is meaningless; "holistic" appears to be code for "we must consider the overall system" and as I've just said we have human limitations that mean we can't consider the overall system, we have to abstract. The only question is, which bits are important and thus should be abstracted?
---
Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.
Correction: ... is not okay ...
So there is no fraud.
Nonsense. Elsevier and the drug companies used the format of the publication to claim that the work was peer reviewed by expert, objective third parties. It wasn't. That's fraud.
People should go to jail for this. They have endangered peoples' lives. I'm sick of lowlifes claiming that a language lie is okay but somehow a non-language lie isn't.
They used the format of the publication specifically to fool doctors. If it made no difference then they wouldn't have done it. Repeatedly.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
Any Slashdot article that quotes from the abstract, background, or other parts of the disclosure of a patent application instead of the claims,
So what you're saying is that the abstract is not a truthful abstraction of the contents of the patent? Ok, then why did the PTO accept a patent with an invalid abstract?
---
Every new patent is a new law; another opportunity for a lawyer to make money at the expense of the wider community.
as long as it is unobtrusive,
An unobtrusive ad is a non-functioning ad. It is a non-sustainable business model.
Particularly in today's media overloaded world you're dreaming if you think "unobtrusive advertising" is possible long term.
All forms of unclassified advertising push up the advertising load till the media has a net value just marginally above zero. Network TV is already dead (valueless) because of this and movies and the web are heading the same way.
To make a long post short, what exactly is wrong with advertising subsidizing suscription costs?
You're paying twice over; once in time and attention to avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
Most unsolicited media advertising is just a shell game to hide the true cost of the media from the consumer while paying advertising middlemen who add little to no value.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
HE'S FULL OF IT?
Look up the words "digital", "rights" and "management".
Anyways, Demigod requires online servers to unlock functionality. Are those online servers DRM?
Depends. Are those servers controlled by the owner of the software or the vendor?
Because if they aren't, then anyone who sets up their own server (they're out there), has unlocked that functionality.
If those servers are not hacks, are legal and the average purchaser can create and access those servers then the game is not DRM'ed.
At the end of the day, you just seem like you don't want to participate in a capitalist society, and I have to wonder, what are you doing in the US?
Irrelevant to the question of whether a piece of software has DRM or not. I'm more than happy to participate in a capitalist society however you seem to have a very narrow view of what a capitalist society is.
---
For the copyright bargain to be valid all DRM'ed works should lose copyright.
copyright gives too much power to the owners of the work.
Tautology. Ownership, by definition, is the right to control. The more interesting question is "Who owns it?" In other words who owns the original and who owns the copies.
What you probably meant to say is "copyright gives too much power to the original creators of a work."
---
Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.
So unless you have full control over THEIR servers, it's DRM?
I didn't say that. Stop dishonestly pretending I did.
Anti cheating measures? DRM! unique usernames? DRM! not allowing incompatible out of date versions on the server? DRM!
That's it, dishonestly try to muddy the waters.
DRM is about your software and your PC. Not about services provided on someone else's systems.
When your software is deliberately locked to a system you don't control for the purpose of controlling your use and significant functionality in the game can only be accessed with that system's approval then it's DRM.
If the user can run their own server (as many early games did), thus allowing them to access that significant program functionality without being controlled, then you might have a point.
---
Adopt an astroturfer. Make their life hell.
No, Demigod isn't DRM'd.
And in the very next paragraph:
Online play requires authentication
You're full of it.
If the game requires any form of authentication to unlock any significant functionality then it's DRM'ed. End of story.
It has nothing to with RMS. Nothing to do with zealotry. It's DRM. That's "Digital Rights Management".
You can try rationalizing the DRM all you like whilst pretending that somebody can still "buy" the game but you know full well that when somebody doesn't have control of their own keys it's just another form of rental.
Some people are happy to rent. Many aren't, no matter how hard the marketers and assorted astroturfers try to dissemble.
---
Adopt an astroturfer. Make their life hell.
There is a new type of flu, a fair number of people *have* died from it.
A hundred people in a Mexican population of millions. That's far lower than practically any other cause of death. Those reporters really need to get a sense of proportion.
Sure the appropriate authorities need to monitor it for the very small possibility it turns out to be something serious but the general hysteria is just ridiculous.
For all the reporters know those people who died were vulnerable due to poor nutrition and other factors. It's not a first world country after all. I wonder why we haven't see any news stories detailing those deaths.
This is a gross media beat up by the drug companies (e.g. The bird flu "epidemic" and Tamiflu probably made Roche hundreds of millions of dollars - probably well worth spending a few million on astroturf), not to mention other vested interests. Just look at the media reports - it's all about suspected cases, not actual cases, and ridiculousness like making a fuss about a few suspected cases leaving one country's population of millions and entering another country's millions. Well, duh.
I repeat, they really need to get a sense of proportion. If they're so mathematically illiterate that they're not capable of getting a sense of proportion then they should shut up and go back to school - they're not qualified to say a damn thing.
---
Insisting on absolute safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world.
-- Mary Shafer, risks researcher, NASA
60-70%, is done in the US
60-70% of what? Money? That is not a good measure in this case. Neither is numbers of drugs approved or numbers of papers in a "publish or perish" research world. It's actually pretty hard to judge what and where worthwhile research is being done.
---
Support underdogs and variety. Monopolies (=industrial feudalism) are unhealthy.
This was all technically feasible
Cloth is soft. Robots have trouble with soft objects.
Little research has been done in this area so by hand is currently the only viable option and that's comparatively expensive.
Robot/machine manipulation of soft objects would be a fertile research area to get into.
---
Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.
So? If the judge was a member of Swedish Citizens Against Drunk Driving, and he was presiding over the trial of a guy that killed somebody while driving drunk, would that make his personal interest in reducing the crime of drunk driving somehow wrong, or prejudicial?
That's it, try to compare pirating, of which the vast majority of citizens do in one form or another, with drunk driving, the vast majority of which are against. They are not comparable. Marketing 101: Try to make an emotional association when you can't make a real argument. Ditto heroin.
It all depends on the organization. If it is a self-help organization, education, professional improvement, social get-togethers etc., then no problem.
However, if it is an organization that lobbies in any way for stronger copyright and more copyright law, and this is likely given that a large percentage of it's members are lawyers and lawyers are known for lobbying for more law to give themselves more work, then big problem.
It appears that the judge is a copyright maximalist and biased. Since that was not revealed before the trial and the judge appears to have made an extreme interpretation not in keeping with Swedish law (cf. assisting piracy and not actually doing it) then big problem.
It's likewise rational to support copyrights,
No it isn't. See? I can make meaningless, content-free statements also.
and to discourage the wholesale ripping off of artists.
An opinion that has little to do with the previous statement despite your "and". Trying to create an association perhaps? The artists aren't being ripped off, they've already been ripped off by the middlemen.
Why would you want a judge who doesn't get that to be involved in such a trial?
Because the judge isn't capable of distinguishing copyright fanaticism from balance and reasonable interpretation of the law perhaps?
---
Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.
Generally, the public you refer to doesn't care one bit about copyright cases or law.
It's even stronger than that. They are not just indifferent. The vast majority of the population are actively flouting copyright law, everything from photocopying in the library as students to copying a friend's music to buying dodgy DVD's on the street.
Copyright maximalists, let alone copyright-as-it-is-currently-implemented preservationists are only a tiny fraction of the total population. And that's not even considering the third world and file sharers.
---
Adopt an astroturfer. Make their life hell.
Mod parent up. I also work for a non-evil email marketing company,
Most marketing companies are evil. It's just a question of degree.
All unsolicited marketing is based on the premise that it's okay to steal the time of a large number of people to make a sale to one person. That's evil.
---
An unobtrusive ad is a non-functional ad. It is a non-sustainable business model.
would absolutely hate hate hate to alienate individuals by annoying them with unwanted messages.
Nice fiction. Pity it has nothing to do with the reality.
I have a prominent "No Junk Mail" sign on my mailbox. I get junk mail several times a week. I deal with many businesses where I told them I want legitimate correspondence and no advertising. They say it's "impossible".
Marketers are lying scum. When push comes to shove they do whatever they think they can get away with. The only thing that stops them is the law. A pity truth-in-advertising isn't actually enforced - if it was the majority of "legitimate" marketers would be in jail for fraud.
---
Marketing in a saturated market is a zero-sum game. When one player wins another must lose. In a saturated market; marketing = un-marketing = arms race = parasites.
marketing from an otherwise legitimate company, opting out will work,
No it won't. For most it'll just mark it as an address to try again in 6 months, just to be "sure". Most marketing parasites think this is somehow okay. Arseholes.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
If someone spends a year writing a book, you think everyone just has an implicit right to possess it? Why?
You think distributors have an implicit right to restrict freedom of speech? Why?
All "rights" trade one person against another. The question is what is the correct balance. That's a value judgment and it's not at all clear that one person should be able to completely restrict what 6,700,000,000+ people do.
---
Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.
That's a pretty ridiculous argument, actually.
No it isn't actually. Only fanatics think that copyright-as-it-is-currently-implemented is the one true way.
---
Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
I can't say the same for most of the independent films I have watched.
You're not looking very hard. I see wonderful old, foreign and independent movies every day. Hollywood alone is currently producing more than two feature movies a day. Worldwide there must be hundreds per day. That's thousands per year. With a world population of 6,700,000,000+ that's actually a small number. How many movies do you watch in a year?
We simply don't need draconian copyright to increase the number of good movies made. We are suffering from an information and entertainment glut, not scarcity, and it's only going to get worse, causing resources to be redirected from more important needs (e.g. care of the elderly) because of almost completely unnecessary artificial scarcity.
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Copyrights and patents are privileges, not rights.