It will also send entirely the wrong signal to such people, who will get bored of cracking DRM technologies and find new ways to entertain themselves -- writing the next big virus, for example.
Erm. Cracking DRM is generally done by respectable engineers, not the lowlifes who are willing to write virii. (Mind you, 4 times out of 5, those respectable engineers don't release their work, so relatively few folks hear about it). Additionally, their motives are typically not enabling copyright infringement, but more along the lines of allowing actions such as format-shifting with media they've already gained legitimate access to.
...the content from many sources will dry up...
I also doubt that the content will dry up, even substantially. Even in the present state of affairs, we have mostly-effective copyright protection. Sale of physical content on media and licensed electronic sale are both doing well, and commercial piracy is all but unheard of in the US. The general public is aware of copyright issues, even if they don't obey the law, and many of those who knowingly break the law still make an effort to legitimately purchase media they like and can afford. To jump to an analogy I'll be using below -- yes, there are vast numbers of speeders on the highways, but commercial traffic still gets safely from point A to B. Given that that's true, let's not do anything too rash.
My key point here is that individuals must exercise those rights responsibly, and it must be possible to hold them to account through due process when they do not. This is a (the?) necessary concession to maintain a civil society, just as we require the use of identifying information before handing out benefits or access to bank accounts (because many people would commit fraud otherwise), before letting you drive a car on the road (because many people would drive dangerously and inconsiderately otherwise), and so on.
The analogy with driving isn't a bad one, but I'd like to extend it a bit.
Roadways have police driving them and pulling over the offenders they catch. For offenses not repugnant or damaging enough for a 3rd party to report, only a fairly small subset of total offenders are actually pulled over -- but the penalties of being caught, while not completely unreasonable, are high enough for one to improve one's behaviour, at least somewhat. Generally speaking, one is either "caught in the act" for traffic offenses -- actually observed by an officer or third party -- or observed by cameras [web server logs], which results in a license plate number [IP address] that then needs to be traced back. These cameras, again, aren't ubiquitous, but their presence (either on public roads or private roads with the willing consent of the owner) is in practice Good Enough nonetheless. The trace doesn't always go all the way back to the right person immediately -- someone could be borrowing a friend's car [using a shared net connection], for instance -- but it, too, is in practice good enough. Individuals aren't (yet) obliged to have black boxes in their cars that record all of their activities for the police; and while roadways often have cameras, it's not mandatory that they do so or maintain a specific records-retention policy -- particularly in the case of privately owned roadways.
I find what you propose very much akin to mandating that every private stretch of road have a camera installed, with records to be maintained for $N years, and that every driver wear a wireless transmitter that identifies them individually (and not just the car they're driving [net connection they're using]). Such a proposal would be rejected posthaste were in proposed for the physical world, and would be unnecessary; in practice, merely pulling over those offenses that are observed or reported by the public results in a public roadway system which, despite the presence of massive numbers of individuals breaking the speed limit on a daily basis, manages to be safe and effective enough for almost everyone to get where they're going -- and without draconian steps being taken.
(For the avoidance of doubts, I'm talking about things like courts and their agents, and not things like the RIAA and their lawyers.)
And yet, if such powers are granted to the courts, they will make it down to the RIAA and their lawyers -- you've seen the bills permitting the RIAA to make other queries which legitimately should require court orders, no?
One of the points that the Libertarian party makes well is that the tendency of governmental powers to end up being used in a manner favorable to large corporations and unfavorable to individuals is contingent on goverenment having those powers in the first place.
Further, I'm convinced that some of the actions which would be necessary for this to come about would be of necessity be overly intrusive on the set of actions people are allowed to take with their own property. (Oh, you're writing blogging/polling/guestbook software for your personal website, but you didn't log the GUID/IP/whatever of the individual who made that post? Arrest him!) (Oh, you're building a new networking protocol, and didn't include provisions for identifying users?) (Oh, you're hiding your actions via an encrypted VPN?) (Oh, you're working on the Freenet project?)
Frankly, I think the status quo is acceptable, if we're just willing to be patient for a while. Better technology will eventually win out against viruses and spam; and society is already learning not to blindly accept assertions made anonymously (and others can already be delt with via legal process). To implement what you propose would mean a massive reduction in the range of actions that individuals would be able to take with their own [network-enabled] personal property; and from my perspective, that's an absolute travesty wrt human rights.
If we accept the underlying principle of copyright, perhaps it has become necessary to review the rights accorded to content providers and how they can be enforced effectively in practice. Unfortunately, many industries are too busy trying to flog a dead horse and/or sue their own customers to consider the idea of advocating a genuine change in the law that is in keeping with the common good but still addresses their (IMHO genuine) grievances.
Do you see potential for such an improved compromise that stays fair to that section of the public which behaves morally? I'd be curious to hear any suggestions.
Damn, I miss working there...
on
RT Linux Patches
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
...though I don't miss the Bay Area at all.
[Abridged version: I took a two-week vacation to Austin TX, and never got around to going back. The "oh, hey, I'm a remote employee now" bit was, entirely understandably, not well-received]
MontaVista's engineering department is absolutely the best place I've ever had the privilege of working. Really, really good people; clueful management (though I hear they've lost their VP of Engineering since I left -- that's a shame; I still haven't had a better manager); lots of opportunities to learn and do new things and come up with (and follow through on) R&D projects.
Not that my new job sucks, by any means -- I'm now the (pretty much only) systems-level generalist at a Java shop making a next-generation EMR system -- but it's not quite the same as spending ones' days hacking and debugging C (and Python, for some internal tools) surrounded by folks doing the same.
And indeed this case is a perfect example of the need for copyright. If the people supplying the content Google is using didn't get certain guarantees about how it would be used, they wouldn't publish it at all.
If your position is that the content owners would not publish to Google without copy+paste being disabled, you're not arguing the need for copyright. Rather, your argument is that this case is an example of the need for protections above and beyond copyright.
If your position is that no books at all would be published without copyright protection, then I can safely take the position that this is provably untrue. Private sale of books predates the establishment of copyright law. (That said, I firmly believe that copyright is a Good Thing; see here)
I really shouldn't be having to explain this. (Also, don't say "IP". Because you did, I'm going to have to talk about copyright, patent, trademark and trade secret, since they're completely different things and I don't know which subset you actually meant to refer to).
Patent law was created such that inventions would be made available for public use, by encouraging inventors to register detailed designs of their inventions with the patent office in return for a brief period of protection. After this protection, the design becomes available for the general public to use free of cost; hence, public good.
Copyright, IIRC, was originally created in Great Britain to enable censorship -- but the rationale behind its enablement in the USA was public good. Part of this, like patents, is wrt the expiration term (which was originally quite short).
Trademark is to prevent the public being defrauded by individuals selling (presumably low-quality) knockoff products as the genuine article.
Trade secret is to prevent corporate espionage and such -- it's probably the single member of the set of terms called "IP" which has the weakest link to protecting the general public immediately.
So, yes -- IP does indeed protect the consumer, or at least was created with that intent. Go read the Federalist Papers if you want more background; I'm done with my history lesson for the day.
And re the hypothetical contract used to substitute for copyright -- to be effective, it would indeed need to be between each member in the chain-of-sale (publishers to printers to resellers obliging the next member to only distribute the book to individuals under contract; resellers to the general public obliging such members of the public not to make unauthorized copies or take other actions which would hurt the publishers' bottom lines).
Alsee's post echos my own sentiments; correspondingly, I'm going to avoid duplicating its arguments and only expound a bit on the personal philosophy that leads me to my position.
Personally, I don't abuse that freedom, but where the illegal uses so clearly outweigh the legal ones, I accept (in spite of being basically liberal in my views) that for the greater good, the freedom may have to be curtailed, at least until a more universally agreeable solution can be found to the abuse problem.
To me, freedom is more important than any perception (including my own) of what may be in "the greater good" or "the public interest". I certainly have my ideas of how people should behave -- but I don't see it as my, or anyone else's, position to be able to curtail the liberties of law-abiding individuals to enforce such good behaviour.
As before -- I'm not liberal, I'm libertarian. Greater freedoms, not greater good.
Sure, copyright doesn't prevent you from using contracts instead, but it's not even remotely the dominant way of doing things -- copyright is, because it's available.
If copyright weren't available (the situation posited in this thread), contract would be the only option -- so as much of a hassle as it is, it would be the status quo, and fair use would consequently suffer.
[I'm actually a little offended by the "what are you smoking?" bit, btw]
This has already been answered adequately -- cut/copy/save/print may indeed be reproduction but are not regulated by copyright when they're being done for a protected purpose. This includes purposes such as commentary or handouts for teaching classes (when reproducing materials in such a way doesn't deprive the copyright holder of income -- this is a grey area where the judge has a lot of discretion).
One of the core issues with regard to DRM is that it completely eliminates this grey area, where copying may or may not be allowed depending on what's done with it, the financial impact to the copyright holder, and so forth. Suddenly, all copying is prohibited (or limited according to some machine-enforcable black-and-white guideline unilaterally set by the copyright holder), even in cases where a judge would clearly find it within the realm of Fair Use.
That's the first line of argument. The second line of argument distills down to the idea that the user's computer should be acting as an agent of the user, not of the entity whose content it runs or displays. Taking away the user's control over their own property simply because it manipulates content covered by some 3rd party's copyrights is a cop-out, a cheap attempt to prevent some people from infringing upon some other people's rights, that in the process infringes on everyone's freedom of action as a whole.
I'm a registered Libertarian. I support private ownership of guns, sharp knives and SUVs, with the provisio that someone who hurts someone else with their property is going to suffer the consequences of their actions. "Dumbing down" computers to make it a little harder for people to hurt others with them thus rubs me against the grain... and thus my position here.
Hrm? No, Acrobat Reader doesn't violate my rights, it merely stops me (in some cases) from exercising them. That's still a Bad Thing, and moral grounds for circumventing it should I have a legitimate cause to execute said rights, but certainly not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
This is distinctly unlike crippleware, unless that crippleware were to (for instance) disable some OS-level functionality until it's paid for.
Web content shouldn't be able to affect browser functionality without the user's consent, just the same as an application shouldn't be able to disable a part of the OS.
Finally, and I've said this elsewhere: It's not "someone else's" material in the sense that they have complete and total ownership; it's "someone else's" material in the sense that they own copyright over it. Copyright is, by intent, limited: It controls reproduction, public performance, and several other actions, and no more. It also have a number of execeptions where reproduction and so forth can be permitted (for instance, exerpting for a review).
Pretending that ownership of the exclusive right to reproduce (and some other actions as well) is equivalent to complete and total control is a modern myth -- but if folks folks don't fight for that distinction, we may well lose it; and in that case, it's the public as a whole that misses out.
Heh. There are other ways to arrange for compensation besides copyright. Contract, for instance. You buy a book, you sign a contract agreeing that you won't do $FOO, $BAR or $BAZ.
Except that sucks for the consumer, because the folks writing the contracts won't put things like fair use exceptions or a term expiration in. So copyright law exists and is a Good Thing, not because it protects the publishers, but because it protects the consumers. Patents were explicitly instituted not to protect inventors, but rather to benefit the public.
The problem is when the folks controlling contract and patent law forget that their final responsibility is to the public -- exactly what's happened today.
You seem to misunderstand something. The content that you access through your browser is NOT YOURS. It belongs to someone else and they should be free to restrict your access in whatever way they see fit.
Nuh-uh. They don't own that content completely and totally, they own copyright to that content. They can legally and morally prevent me from reproducing it, displaying it publicly, and doing the other things that copyright regulates -- nothing more. They have no moral right to regulate use beyond these limited ways -- and if they try, I consider myself well and far within my rights to stop them.
Ahh, yes. My argument did indeed apply to sports cars quite specifically, and sports utility vehicles are indeed very different beasts (of which I'm less fond). I basically agree with the argument you make, and fail to accept the end result strictly because my priorities (wrt liberty and safety) are differently set than yours.
The only thing I dispute is the argument that folks in dull cars are less likely to be reckless drivers than were the same person in a less-dull vehicle; rather, I suspect that there's a separate relationship between the personality type that prefers flashy cars and the personality type that drives recklessly. Barring publicly-reviewable evidence on either side, though, perhaps we should agree to disagree on this point and call the argument moot.
I doubt that forcing people out of their sports cars will make them safer drivers.
As I've alluded to earlier, I spent several years driving the epitome of small, fast road vehicles -- a motorcycle. I now drive a small car (a '92 Jetta). I'm quite sure that I was a vastly better driver on the motorcycle. Why? Knowing that I was in (on, rather) a small vehicle with minimal safety features forced me to pay much more attention to road conditions, other drivers, etc. than I would have (and do) otherwise. (Motorcycling also taught me to value predictive braking and early deceleration -- as one never knows when road conditions will be noncondusive to quick deceleration later -- and these habits have stayed with me even now that I drive a conventional vehicle). Additionally, as a motorcyclist, I was better able to avoid crashes via having far better manuverability than most other vehicles on the road.
While sports cars are a lesser case of this, they share some like features -- because having a high power/weight ratio is among their design goals, they're made of flimsier materials than most vehicles they share the road with. Additionally, they are (like a motorcycle) more manuverable than conventional vehicles. Consequently, an individual with a reasonable sense of self-preservation will be driving a sports car with more care than that same individual would use to drive a more conventional vehicle, and additionally will have greater ability to avoid accidents should they find themselves in a situation where one is likely.
(Finally -- very few of your statements are genuinely supportive of your premise. For instance, it's entirely possible that all drivers are not equal and that many who drive recreational vehicles just "for fun" are more hazardous than other drivers, but that these individuals would be just as hazardous if not more were they not driving a recreational vehicle. Likewise, I see very little other than blank assertion which is genuinely supportive of the idea that sports cars cause bad driving).
Hmm. Since you're making use of personal observations, perhaps you won't overly mind a bit of anecdotal evidence:
Two of the three traffic incidents I've been in have indeed involved a 3rd-party who was driving a sports car in a reckless manner (in one case, tailgating my motorcycle far too closely; in another, rear-ending my car at a traffic light).
That said, I don't see how eliminating the sports cars would have avoided either of these cases. In the former case, I was going at a speed which a traditional sedan can easily match; as for the latter, any vehicle can rear-end another.
That said, my larger concern is one of individual liberties. I support personal ownership of sports cars, in no small part, for the same reason I support personal ownership of guns and the legality of developing (but not violating valid contracts or copyright law via the use of) cracks for copy-protected software. A discussion of those principals, however, is no doubt far beyond the scope of this thread.
It's entirely legitimate to use force of law to remove potentially dangerous playground equipment from cases where it's available for public use for children whose guardians have not been adequately notified and given opportunity to consider its usage.
On the other hand, if I have some playground equipment in my fenced-in back yard, and my friend is over, and she makes an informed decision that it's safe enough for her children to play on, I don't see why it's any of your business (directly or via legislative process) to second-guess that decision.
Likewise, I drive a small car on public roads -- an action which involves some risk, but risk which I freely make an informed decision to accept. It's not capable of going particularly fast, but let's say it was. As long as I'm not breaking the law by driving recklessly, why is it your problem?
[Okay, my comparison was a bad one too -- the public roadway is nothing like my fenced-in yard. That said, sports cars aren't inherently dangerous -- reckless drivers are. Why are you trying to outlaw the sports car, when the real problem is the reckless driver, who will exist and pose a threat whether on not he's behind the wheel of such a vehicle?]
Mmm. I break with the Libertarian position a bit in supporting public education -- on county scale or lower, with perhaps some state-level involvement. From my perspective, the goal is that the bulk of government be as local as as practical -- in addition to making it harder to corrupt (since one needs to gain influence over a number of small organizations rather than one huge one), this allows people to vote with their feet.
Because I don't want to be forced to pay for your college education. I went to a cheap school and worked my way through. If I want to give money for you to go to school with, I'll do that -- but that money shouldn't be taken via taxes, without my willing consent.
Eh? I only read four figures (between $5,000 and $6,000), presumably plus any additional attourneys' costs that have come up since then. Where do you get six?
"Hard to reach consensus" is a feature, not a bug. Simply put, I'm far happier with a government that does nothing than a government that does the wrong thing.
So, yes -- give me deadlock! (That said, I'm not convinced that more groups means more deadlock -- after all, it can also be taken to mean that there's effectively someone in a tiebreaker role -- though I'm comforted as a Libertarian if it's my tiebreaker in place).
Are you so sure you'd never use them? Yes -- at least the "distributed" part.
Really? So, for instance, you've never wanted to do revision-controlled work on a project where you're not the maintainer? You've never been maintainer on a project where some 3rd party hands you a huge set of patches and wished you could trivially just apply one part of those changes, or ask the revision control system to leave one specific component of this 3rd party's changes out?
These are real problems that impact Free Software which distributed revision control, as implemented by Arch and BK, solves.
While I certainly like atomic commits, I'd go back to CVS in an instant if, for instance, the SVN maintainers became evil and started to sue everyone who had ever downloaded their software.
And I'd ditch Arch if Tom pulled something like that -- prolly would try Darcs or somesuch. Your point?
Slashdot Mirror
Roadways have police driving them and pulling over the offenders they catch. For offenses not repugnant or damaging enough for a 3rd party to report, only a fairly small subset of total offenders are actually pulled over -- but the penalties of being caught, while not completely unreasonable, are high enough for one to improve one's behaviour, at least somewhat. Generally speaking, one is either "caught in the act" for traffic offenses -- actually observed by an officer or third party -- or observed by cameras [web server logs], which results in a license plate number [IP address] that then needs to be traced back. These cameras, again, aren't ubiquitous, but their presence (either on public roads or private roads with the willing consent of the owner) is in practice Good Enough nonetheless. The trace doesn't always go all the way back to the right person immediately -- someone could be borrowing a friend's car [using a shared net connection], for instance -- but it, too, is in practice good enough. Individuals aren't (yet) obliged to have black boxes in their cars that record all of their activities for the police; and while roadways often have cameras, it's not mandatory that they do so or maintain a specific records-retention policy -- particularly in the case of privately owned roadways.
I find what you propose very much akin to mandating that every private stretch of road have a camera installed, with records to be maintained for $N years, and that every driver wear a wireless transmitter that identifies them individually (and not just the car they're driving [net connection they're using]). Such a proposal would be rejected posthaste were in proposed for the physical world, and would be unnecessary; in practice, merely pulling over those offenses that are observed or reported by the public results in a public roadway system which, despite the presence of massive numbers of individuals breaking the speed limit on a daily basis, manages to be safe and effective enough for almost everyone to get where they're going -- and without draconian steps being taken.
(For the avoidance of doubts, I'm talking about things like courts and their agents, and not things like the RIAA and their lawyers.)
And yet, if such powers are granted to the courts, they will make it down to the RIAA and their lawyers -- you've seen the bills permitting the RIAA to make other queries which legitimately should require court orders, no?
One of the points that the Libertarian party makes well is that the tendency of governmental powers to end up being used in a manner favorable to large corporations and unfavorable to individuals is contingent on goverenment having those powers in the first place.
Further, I'm convinced that some of the actions which would be necessary for this to come about would be of necessity be overly intrusive on the set of actions people are allowed to take with their own property. (Oh, you're writing blogging/polling/guestbook software for your personal website, but you didn't log the GUID/IP/whatever of the individual who made that post? Arrest him!) (Oh, you're building a new networking protocol, and didn't include provisions for identifying users?) (Oh, you're hiding your actions via an encrypted VPN?) (Oh, you're working on the Freenet project?)
Frankly, I think the status quo is acceptable, if we're just willing to be patient for a while. Better technology will eventually win out against viruses and spam; and society is already learning not to blindly accept assertions made anonymously (and others can already be delt with via legal process). To implement what you propose would mean a massive reduction in the range of actions that individuals would be able to take with their own [network-enabled] personal property; and from my perspective, that's an absolute travesty wrt human rights.
If we accept the underlying principle of copyright, perhaps it has become necessary to review the rights accorded to content providers and how they can be enforced effectively in practice. Unfortunately, many industries are too busy trying to flog a dead horse and/or sue their own customers to consider the idea of advocating a genuine change in the law that is in keeping with the common good but still addresses their (IMHO genuine) grievances.
Do you see potential for such an improved compromise that stays fair to that section of the public which behaves morally? I'd be curious to hear any suggestions.
...though I don't miss the Bay Area at all.
[Abridged version: I took a two-week vacation to Austin TX, and never got around to going back. The "oh, hey, I'm a remote employee now" bit was, entirely understandably, not well-received]
MontaVista's engineering department is absolutely the best place I've ever had the privilege of working. Really, really good people; clueful management (though I hear they've lost their VP of Engineering since I left -- that's a shame; I still haven't had a better manager); lots of opportunities to learn and do new things and come up with (and follow through on) R&D projects.
Not that my new job sucks, by any means -- I'm now the (pretty much only) systems-level generalist at a Java shop making a next-generation EMR system -- but it's not quite the same as spending ones' days hacking and debugging C (and Python, for some internal tools) surrounded by folks doing the same.
And indeed this case is a perfect example of the need for copyright. If the people supplying the content Google is using didn't get certain guarantees about how it would be used, they wouldn't publish it at all.
If your position is that the content owners would not publish to Google without copy+paste being disabled, you're not arguing the need for copyright. Rather, your argument is that this case is an example of the need for protections above and beyond copyright.
If your position is that no books at all would be published without copyright protection, then I can safely take the position that this is provably untrue. Private sale of books predates the establishment of copyright law. (That said, I firmly believe that copyright is a Good Thing; see here)
I really shouldn't be having to explain this. (Also, don't say "IP". Because you did, I'm going to have to talk about copyright, patent, trademark and trade secret, since they're completely different things and I don't know which subset you actually meant to refer to).
Patent law was created such that inventions would be made available for public use, by encouraging inventors to register detailed designs of their inventions with the patent office in return for a brief period of protection. After this protection, the design becomes available for the general public to use free of cost; hence, public good.
Copyright, IIRC, was originally created in Great Britain to enable censorship -- but the rationale behind its enablement in the USA was public good. Part of this, like patents, is wrt the expiration term (which was originally quite short).
Trademark is to prevent the public being defrauded by individuals selling (presumably low-quality) knockoff products as the genuine article.
Trade secret is to prevent corporate espionage and such -- it's probably the single member of the set of terms called "IP" which has the weakest link to protecting the general public immediately.
So, yes -- IP does indeed protect the consumer, or at least was created with that intent. Go read the Federalist Papers if you want more background; I'm done with my history lesson for the day.
And re the hypothetical contract used to substitute for copyright -- to be effective, it would indeed need to be between each member in the chain-of-sale (publishers to printers to resellers obliging the next member to only distribute the book to individuals under contract; resellers to the general public obliging such members of the public not to make unauthorized copies or take other actions which would hurt the publishers' bottom lines).
Alsee's post echos my own sentiments; correspondingly, I'm going to avoid duplicating its arguments and only expound a bit on the personal philosophy that leads me to my position.
Personally, I don't abuse that freedom, but where the illegal uses so clearly outweigh the legal ones, I accept (in spite of being basically liberal in my views) that for the greater good, the freedom may have to be curtailed, at least until a more universally agreeable solution can be found to the abuse problem.
To me, freedom is more important than any perception (including my own) of what may be in "the greater good" or "the public interest". I certainly have my ideas of how people should behave -- but I don't see it as my, or anyone else's, position to be able to curtail the liberties of law-abiding individuals to enforce such good behaviour.
As before -- I'm not liberal, I'm libertarian. Greater freedoms, not greater good.
If copyright weren't available (the situation posited in this thread), contract would be the only option -- so as much of a hassle as it is, it would be the status quo, and fair use would consequently suffer.
[I'm actually a little offended by the "what are you smoking?" bit, btw]
This has already been answered adequately -- cut/copy/save/print may indeed be reproduction but are not regulated by copyright when they're being done for a protected purpose. This includes purposes such as commentary or handouts for teaching classes (when reproducing materials in such a way doesn't deprive the copyright holder of income -- this is a grey area where the judge has a lot of discretion).
One of the core issues with regard to DRM is that it completely eliminates this grey area, where copying may or may not be allowed depending on what's done with it, the financial impact to the copyright holder, and so forth. Suddenly, all copying is prohibited (or limited according to some machine-enforcable black-and-white guideline unilaterally set by the copyright holder), even in cases where a judge would clearly find it within the realm of Fair Use.
That's the first line of argument. The second line of argument distills down to the idea that the user's computer should be acting as an agent of the user, not of the entity whose content it runs or displays. Taking away the user's control over their own property simply because it manipulates content covered by some 3rd party's copyrights is a cop-out, a cheap attempt to prevent some people from infringing upon some other people's rights, that in the process infringes on everyone's freedom of action as a whole.
I'm a registered Libertarian. I support private ownership of guns, sharp knives and SUVs, with the provisio that someone who hurts someone else with their property is going to suffer the consequences of their actions. "Dumbing down" computers to make it a little harder for people to hurt others with them thus rubs me against the grain... and thus my position here.
Hrm? No, Acrobat Reader doesn't violate my rights, it merely stops me (in some cases) from exercising them. That's still a Bad Thing, and moral grounds for circumventing it should I have a legitimate cause to execute said rights, but certainly not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
Please stop putting words in my mouth.
This is distinctly unlike crippleware, unless that crippleware were to (for instance) disable some OS-level functionality until it's paid for.
Web content shouldn't be able to affect browser functionality without the user's consent, just the same as an application shouldn't be able to disable a part of the OS.
Finally, and I've said this elsewhere: It's not "someone else's" material in the sense that they have complete and total ownership; it's "someone else's" material in the sense that they own copyright over it. Copyright is, by intent, limited: It controls reproduction, public performance, and several other actions, and no more. It also have a number of execeptions where reproduction and so forth can be permitted (for instance, exerpting for a review).
Pretending that ownership of the exclusive right to reproduce (and some other actions as well) is equivalent to complete and total control is a modern myth -- but if folks folks don't fight for that distinction, we may well lose it; and in that case, it's the public as a whole that misses out.
Heh. There are other ways to arrange for compensation besides copyright. Contract, for instance. You buy a book, you sign a contract agreeing that you won't do $FOO, $BAR or $BAZ.
Except that sucks for the consumer, because the folks writing the contracts won't put things like fair use exceptions or a term expiration in. So copyright law exists and is a Good Thing, not because it protects the publishers, but because it protects the consumers. Patents were explicitly instituted not to protect inventors, but rather to benefit the public.
The problem is when the folks controlling contract and patent law forget that their final responsibility is to the public -- exactly what's happened today.
You seem to misunderstand something. The content that you access through your browser is NOT YOURS. It belongs to someone else and they should be free to restrict your access in whatever way they see fit.
Nuh-uh. They don't own that content completely and totally, they own copyright to that content. They can legally and morally prevent me from reproducing it, displaying it publicly, and doing the other things that copyright regulates -- nothing more. They have no moral right to regulate use beyond these limited ways -- and if they try, I consider myself well and far within my rights to stop them.
Ahh, yes. My argument did indeed apply to sports cars quite specifically, and sports utility vehicles are indeed very different beasts (of which I'm less fond). I basically agree with the argument you make, and fail to accept the end result strictly because my priorities (wrt liberty and safety) are differently set than yours.
The only thing I dispute is the argument that folks in dull cars are less likely to be reckless drivers than were the same person in a less-dull vehicle; rather, I suspect that there's a separate relationship between the personality type that prefers flashy cars and the personality type that drives recklessly. Barring publicly-reviewable evidence on either side, though, perhaps we should agree to disagree on this point and call the argument moot.
This Xamlon forum topic invites customers (presumably potential as well as current) to discuss why they'd find a port of Xamlon to Mono useful.
Presumably such discussion is more likely to be taken into account should it go there rather than here.
To append a bit more:
I doubt that forcing people out of their sports cars will make them safer drivers.
As I've alluded to earlier, I spent several years driving the epitome of small, fast road vehicles -- a motorcycle. I now drive a small car (a '92 Jetta). I'm quite sure that I was a vastly better driver on the motorcycle. Why? Knowing that I was in (on, rather) a small vehicle with minimal safety features forced me to pay much more attention to road conditions, other drivers, etc. than I would have (and do) otherwise. (Motorcycling also taught me to value predictive braking and early deceleration -- as one never knows when road conditions will be noncondusive to quick deceleration later -- and these habits have stayed with me even now that I drive a conventional vehicle). Additionally, as a motorcyclist, I was better able to avoid crashes via having far better manuverability than most other vehicles on the road.
While sports cars are a lesser case of this, they share some like features -- because having a high power/weight ratio is among their design goals, they're made of flimsier materials than most vehicles they share the road with. Additionally, they are (like a motorcycle) more manuverable than conventional vehicles. Consequently, an individual with a reasonable sense of self-preservation will be driving a sports car with more care than that same individual would use to drive a more conventional vehicle, and additionally will have greater ability to avoid accidents should they find themselves in a situation where one is likely.
(Finally -- very few of your statements are genuinely supportive of your premise. For instance, it's entirely possible that all drivers are not equal and that many who drive recreational vehicles just "for fun" are more hazardous than other drivers, but that these individuals would be just as hazardous if not more were they not driving a recreational vehicle. Likewise, I see very little other than blank assertion which is genuinely supportive of the idea that sports cars cause bad driving).
Hmm. Since you're making use of personal observations, perhaps you won't overly mind a bit of anecdotal evidence:
Two of the three traffic incidents I've been in have indeed involved a 3rd-party who was driving a sports car in a reckless manner (in one case, tailgating my motorcycle far too closely; in another, rear-ending my car at a traffic light).
That said, I don't see how eliminating the sports cars would have avoided either of these cases. In the former case, I was going at a speed which a traditional sedan can easily match; as for the latter, any vehicle can rear-end another.
That said, my larger concern is one of individual liberties. I support personal ownership of sports cars, in no small part, for the same reason I support personal ownership of guns and the legality of developing (but not violating valid contracts or copyright law via the use of) cracks for copy-protected software. A discussion of those principals, however, is no doubt far beyond the scope of this thread.
It's entirely legitimate to use force of law to remove potentially dangerous playground equipment from cases where it's available for public use for children whose guardians have not been adequately notified and given opportunity to consider its usage.
On the other hand, if I have some playground equipment in my fenced-in back yard, and my friend is over, and she makes an informed decision that it's safe enough for her children to play on, I don't see why it's any of your business (directly or via legislative process) to second-guess that decision.
Likewise, I drive a small car on public roads -- an action which involves some risk, but risk which I freely make an informed decision to accept. It's not capable of going particularly fast, but let's say it was. As long as I'm not breaking the law by driving recklessly, why is it your problem?
[Okay, my comparison was a bad one too -- the public roadway is nothing like my fenced-in yard. That said, sports cars aren't inherently dangerous -- reckless drivers are. Why are you trying to outlaw the sports car, when the real problem is the reckless driver, who will exist and pose a threat whether on not he's behind the wheel of such a vehicle?]
Yes, the Government is no longer able to keep us from killing ourselves in the name of adventure.
That's a feature, not a bug.
Mmm. I break with the Libertarian position a bit in supporting public education -- on county scale or lower, with perhaps some state-level involvement. From my perspective, the goal is that the bulk of government be as local as as practical -- in addition to making it harder to corrupt (since one needs to gain influence over a number of small organizations rather than one huge one), this allows people to vote with their feet.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Why?
Because I don't want to be forced to pay for your college education. I went to a cheap school and worked my way through. If I want to give money for you to go to school with, I'll do that -- but that money shouldn't be taken via taxes, without my willing consent.
Eh? I only read four figures (between $5,000 and $6,000), presumably plus any additional attourneys' costs that have come up since then. Where do you get six?
"Hard to reach consensus" is a feature, not a bug. Simply put, I'm far happier with a government that does nothing than a government that does the wrong thing.
So, yes -- give me deadlock! (That said, I'm not convinced that more groups means more deadlock -- after all, it can also be taken to mean that there's effectively someone in a tiebreaker role -- though I'm comforted as a Libertarian if it's my tiebreaker in place).
Are you so sure you'd never use them? Yes -- at least the "distributed" part.
Really? So, for instance, you've never wanted to do revision-controlled work on a project where you're not the maintainer? You've never been maintainer on a project where some 3rd party hands you a huge set of patches and wished you could trivially just apply one part of those changes, or ask the revision control system to leave one specific component of this 3rd party's changes out?
These are real problems that impact Free Software which distributed revision control, as implemented by Arch and BK, solves.
While I certainly like atomic commits, I'd go back to CVS in an instant if, for instance, the SVN maintainers became evil and started to sue everyone who had ever downloaded their software.
And I'd ditch Arch if Tom pulled something like that -- prolly would try Darcs or somesuch. Your point?
*shrug*. Most of the people who've actually tried them like them. A lot.
I think Linus is the canonical example.