Money laundering is a funny thing. The victims are very difficult to identify--they are the employees and the investors, each in a small part. What's easier to identify in money laundering? The benefactors.
The 90s saw many many benefactors... and then the stock market fell apart. Each of us, in our own small way, was victimized while the CEOs and top investors walked away with billions (which they used to buy up all the real estate at rock-bottom rates while the rest of us were unemployed). They still do.
If I were that attorney, I wouldn't be returning phone calls, either.
It sounds like he rolled over to let other, more well positioned lawyers, begin racking up convictions to establish a precedent (to be cited later) to win longer convictions for anything having to do with an electronic device.
Should we simply allow crimes to be committed, no punishment?
Every crime should warrant a single sentence: death.
Now... can we get back to the more important pursuit of seriously considering what we define a crime as? We don't have too many criminals... WE HAVE TOO MANY LAWS!
Wasn't meaning to insult so much as to point out that throwing around terms like that should imply you understand what they actually mean
See, there it is again.
What does the terms communism, socialism, and republic, fascism mean to you? If you go only by the definitions in the dictionary then you'll come up with a mish-mash of interpretations which are almost indistringuishable from each other once put into practice. What we have in the US is a democratically elected fascist state, displaying striking similarities to both communist and socialist implementations, which purports to be a Republic as defined in the Constitution yet violates the 9th and 10th Amendments (the only real important ones) on an hourly basis.
I'm not the one throwing around terms without knowing what they actually mean.
Where your logic completely falls apart is back to the if !A then B
Are you trying to be cool? This is about severity. If I cut your arm off, you no longer have your arm. If I break your arm, you lose use for a little while. If I paint your arm blue then you deal with a blue arm. Painting an arm blue should not warrant a greater crime than breaking your arm.
Copying a product should not be a felony if physical destruction of the property isn't even a misdemeanor. It's as simple as that.
By making a zillion copies of a DVD, you dilute the value of a movie
That's a theory that assumes that a DVD has infinite value. Another theory is that a DVD has a finite value and that value is reached once the first copy is sold. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
If I steal stock from a company, that is just IP by printing duplicate certificates.
Good point. This has never been statistically shown. Stock has a finite limit. There are N shares available at any one time. If a company has a million copies of a CD, at $16/ea, and you produce and make 100 copies, then the value of the CD is still $16 million. The value per copy is slightly less than $16. Logically the only thing this proves is that the media company is overcharging.
Pretty nice argument... I'm leaving work. My final word is: I agree with IP. I do not, in any way, agree with our current implementation or enforcement of it. Personally I feel we'd be better off with a system that tells us to police ourselves. It would minimize abuse and would encourage only the truly talented and devoted people to succeed. The rest would become discouraged and quit. Cry me a river. They can serve my popcorn.
Copying for personal use usually fits in under fair use
Not in the US. Why not? Because no one ever drew a line on the limits and no one bothers to adhere to the original rulebook.
distribution is a felony
Distribution of _WHAT_? Distribution of someone else's copyrighted work? Do we have any original authors or inventors or creators up on the stands? No.
That means that nobody will care about what you do in your own house for personal use
We used to say that about backups for archival purposes, too.
However, if you buy 4 dozen recorders and start duplicating like crazy and selling them...that's distribution and thus a felony
I think the key word here is selling. There a clear connection can be made to loss of profit. Simply duplicating though... in the 80s, Madonna and Metallica called that free advertising. Without shared copies (not sold copies), Madonna would be some street junky and Metallica never would've made it out of the high school auditorium.
Just because you don't agree with the law, doesn't mean that it's not fair
This isn't about fair. This is about legally empowered. There is no legal empowerment to hunt down file-sharers or music traders. The legal empowerment is to protect original inventors and creators, not the mega-corp that bought the first copy.
you had it your way, we would only be in a cartel enforcing your own agenda and sense of right and wrong
Typical drivel which comes from people who are jealous because they rely on someone else to take care of them.
In terms of the law, everyone gets their word in
I think you're the one being idealistic now.
Are you suggesting that businesses should get absolutely no say in how the law is written?
I'm saying that 99.99% of the laws passed every year are passed under a false pretense of authority and empowerment.
The most important thing a politician can say is,"We're sorry. That's _NOT_ our job." In America they've forgotten how to do that.
If that were the case, people would screw businesses out of everything...and that would destroy our way of life.
Straw man argument. When left to themselves people will, in the vast majority, get along and cooperate without the involvement of a mega-government. If it were any other way you and I would be extinct or hunting our neighbors.
Let's be perfectly honest, then. This is the way our system works,"You're the weak and I am the tyranny of evil men." Make all the pretty political speeches you want--our system is a cartel that is no different from any other third world gang of thugs except that ours has the biggest nukes on the planet.
It also does not mean that copyrights have no place within the law
Our current implementation of the concept of copyright has no Constitutional empowerment.
If I write a book, you'd better believe that I want some protection from you and your sense of entitlement to other people's creative works
Maybe your book sucks and nobody cares about it. So you form a cartel of book writers, get them all pumped up on this straw man of some nerd with a Xerox machine, and get them to march on Washington to place government a federal officer next to every Xerox machine in the nation. You know what? The cost of paying those federal officers far outweighs any benefit your book has. Protect your own book, or don't sell it on an open market full of disingenuous people. You're not furthering anything good by stealing my money to pay for a bloated program which isn't going to stop someone with a camera. Next you'll want to federally regulate the materials used in the production of cameras.
Since you're incapable of drawing a line anywhere you're incapable to speak on anything of "law". In your eyes, the law goes as far as you want it to when you want it to.
Without copyrights, there would be no GPL
Hardly. The GPL is GNUs way of saying,"Copyrights suck but, if we have to play this game, this is our stance on copyright--EVERYONE HAS IT. Just be nice and play fair." If there were no copyrights, GNU would still make software.
There is no legally empowered federal authority which can raid people's homes or serve court summons for the crime of "copyright infringement". Constitutionally, the copyright is preserved for the inventor or the creator. If BMG, or Elektra, or RCA wants to the buy the first copy, that's fine, but they can't (legally) sic the feds on me anymore than I can sic them on you. Cite all the court cases you want. The only you'll be citing are blatant examples of the true nature of our world: might makes right. Deal with it.
Communist police state, because we allow large private entities
Since we know those private entities are owned by private citizens who, due to their ownership, often have very real and involved interests in politics... aren't you drawing delineations which don't really exist? It's all interconnected.
So, if we ignore our constitution, that automatically equates to communism?
If we ignored the constitution and had no government that would not be communism. However, if you model the function and structure of the current US gov't and compare it with the former USSR the resemblence is impeccable.
In a communist system, there is no private entity that can "own" something like a copyright
Enter reality: there are still private individuals, with private interests and personal agendas, in powerful oversight positions in a communist government.
Anyway, your total lack of political understanding of what you speak aside
unauthorized redistribution is not the same as copying off of someone's test in school
And it's also not the same as stealing or destroying an actual physical product. You will never be able to say anything which will convince anyone that there's more damage done in copying than in actual destruction. Unless the destruction of a videotape is a felony then copying should not be. It's as simple as that.
Well, first of all, it's hard to catch a violator
That is no excuse. If it's so hard to catch someone, perhaps you ought to think twice about whether or not they're really doing anything wrong. Try being sensible: if you make a product which is easily duplicated then you, as the producer, accept liability. It is not society's duty to watch your back. They didn't do it for Tucker, or Wankel, or Betamax, or Motorola, or any other good idea that was hatched by one person and taken by another with a legal,"Ha! Ha! You couldn't afford the patent so it's perfectly legal for us to steal this!" If you don't want to worry about copying then use a medium which isn't so easily copied... and find out just how important your product really is.
secondly, it undermines the entire copyright system
The current implementation of the copyright system undermines the Constitution. Which is the higher authority?
Copying a friends tape...nobody will turn any stones up for you
Rationalizing selective enforcement is no excuse for abuse.
But widespread distribution (ala BitTorrent et al) certainly does undermine that system
I'm not defending people who are into widespread distribution, and have a special amount of disdain for those who think they have a right to profit from redistributing someone else's work. That said, however, the copyright system is still an unconstitutional farce.
You may be idealisticly right...but in the eyes of the law, you're just wrong
Under what authority is that law enforced? Again, the Constitution only identifies inventors or creators, not the corporations who buy the first copy. It makes no provision for the assignment or transferral of copyright. If you want to enforce laws outside of the Constitution then accept that you're no better than the Taliban, or Hussein, or Iran, or former Eastern Bloc nations, or China. We have a rulebook which sets the framework for the Republic of the United States of America. If you want to disregard the rulebook so that you can browbeat 16-year old music traders that's your business--but quit taking cash out of my pocket (taxes to pay the police, the attorneys, the courts, and on) as if you're protecting our Nation.
a store can press misdemeanor charges for theft too
Sure can. That's a loss of physical property. Again. Destroy a tape, pay $16. Copy a tape, return the original, go to prison. It makes no sense.
The translated article explains exactly how and why it has become a felony case
Because of profit. But don't think it's stopping there. The *AA is going after anyone they can.
Under what authority is it a felony? I can rent a tape, mangle it, and toss it over the freeway. That's LEGITIMATE loss, and it's not a felony. However, if I take a tape and copy it, that is a felony.
It doesn't make sense unless you factor in the influence of greed and lobbyists.
Just because you don't believe it's right doesn't mean that it's not the law
Where do you draw the line? Under that sort of sentiment we do not live in a democratically elected Constitutional republic. If our laws are not based on the feelings of right and wrong within society, then we have nothing more than a cartel government similar to the Taliban enforcing their own personal agendas on the people within their geographical reach.
It means that the police are doing their jobs
So are spammers and malware writers. Where do you draw the line?
Unless you stick strictly to the Constitutionally granted powers of the feds then there is no line. You deteriorate to little better than cartel rulership.
Copyright law definitely says you're wrong. You're just being idealitic
Copyright law is a farce. It's a product of lobbyists. Call it idealism if you think that living in a police state is an acceptable alternative to idealism.
Our laws do not begin and end with the constitution
Yes, they do. The Constitution empowers the federal government. The government is free to ignore the Constitution, but then I don't want to hear any more bullsh_t about democracy, a republic, or anything but a carefully shrouded communist police state.
The federal government makes laws every day that don't touch the constitution
You're right. Every day they ignore the 9th and 10th Amendments with impunity. A few more years and the ACLU will be nothing but a coffee club for people who vaguely remember freedom, liberty, and the values that our soldiers have fought and died for over the last 200 years.
You know the dumb FBI warning at the beginning of VHS' and DVD's?
That's precisely my point. There is no such thing as "licensing". What you have is a glorified rental agreement. Flooding the political and judicial system with lobbyists to turn a rental agreement violation into a felony is a farce.
The police are not corporate henchmen any more than they would be your henchmen if you filed criminal charges against a burglar who broke into your house (you can file civil charges too).
As I (we've) said, the police are becoming corporate henchmen. Burglary has been a felonious offence since the beginning of man. Copying your friends work (eg. cheating on tests) has been, at most, something that gave you 30 minutes after school writing on the chalkboard.
Oh please, ownership itself is an artificial construct. If you're going to pass copyright off as bullshit, then you need to pass ownership of physical goods off as an artificial construct. Our entire system of laws is based around artificial constructs. For example, "rights" are an artificial construct.
Get it straight: possession is 99% of ownership. I possess this movie, so I own it, I can copy it, I can rip it, I can play it, and I can share it.
How does one possess copyright? Under what authority is copyright granted? Constitutional authority only covers inventors and creators. Constitutional authority says nothing about the corporate entities who purchase the first copy of a work and mass produce it.
If you stole from me (IP or physical), I would likely contact the police and file criminal charges. The police would arrest you, and in the US, the district attorney would decide on whether or not to prosecute
For a civil case, you can file a complaint, hire an attorney, and the court can send a summons to the alleged perp. The OP was right. The police are becoming paid corporate henchmen.
I've been questioning the definition of "licensing" for a long time. As near as I can tell, "licensing" is legal mumbo jumbo to turn the violation of a rental contract (not even a misdemeanor) into a felony offense just so that the burden of funding the attorneys is shifted from the corporations to the taxpayers.
I don't see the GPL as a copyright enforcer. I see the GPL mostly thumbing its nose at copyright. For the most part, as I read it, the GPL recognizes that everyone has the natural potential to make a copy of something and simply asks that if a person makes a modification that they share it both upstream and downstream. BSD recognizes that everyone has the natural potential to make a copy and makes no recommendations about sharing any changes.
I don't think that this sort of suggestion would hurt GPL but would only nudge GPL legally into the BSD realm. Those of us who are considerate would adhere to the GPL willingly and those corporate raiders who like to pirate code would still be reviled.
As for the official legal mumbo jumbo... We all know it's a load of hash anyways. It's just there to draw lines for the corporations to give the legal business its tithe.
I fail to see why a programmer who spends 40 hours writing a piece of software should be any less protected than a carpenter who spends 40 hours making a dining table or an artist who spends 40 hours creating a painting.
I've been a carpenter and I have a close friend who is the artist. Believe me, we're not protected either. We're not rich. We have no explicit rights over the things we create.
When the members of the committee protested that any one of them could have done that, Brunelleschi explained that this was exactly his point. If he told the committee how he planned to complete the task of the dome, all would claim that they could have done it.
In today's world that's called insubordination, not a team player, and grounds for immediate termination.
I fought with a manager for four years on this very issue. Everything I did was "anyone could've done that" but when I quit explaining everything they tried to run me out the door. After four years of being chased I quit.
if you sell the stuff without the permission of the copyright holder or rerelease some stuff as your own then you are hurting
Who is this copyright holder that you speak of? My Constitution only mentions the inventors and creators. The copyright holder is simply the person or company who bought what is effectively the first copy. As far as I'm concerned they have no more rights than I do buying the 83456219th copy.
The intent of copyright is to encourage progress in the arts and sciences by extending to creators of a work the right to control its distribution.
So why does all of my tax money go to debating the protection of the first company to buy what amounts to the first copy of the creation?
Your logic is accurate, but it misses the point completely because you're fighting a straw argument.
The point that is missed is that our laws do nothing to protect the creators.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what
Give it up.
And the world would be a gray, dull, unamusing place.
FUD.
Copying without due recompense eventually hurts us all.
Show me a single law which functions to protect the individual inventors. Don't show me laws which COULD protect the inventors. Show me a law which has been used to tell a corporate entity to pay up.
You know... something which annuls blanket employee agreements as an obvious unfair contract ("We own everything you do, or you can be homeless.") or the ability of a company to pay you $1 for patent rights ("Accept this $1 as payment for the transferral of all rights to this work, or you can be homeless.")
The law is only selectively enforced. Adware/spyware companies help launder billions of dollars every year. Unless they step on the toes of someone in a particular position of power there's no fear that a band of/. readers are going to hire an attorney to track them down and sue them. Politicians won't sue them because then Wall Street would pull funds. Wall Street won't sue them because it helps them launder funds. The regulators won't sue them because they are beholden to the politicians. The attorneys won't sue them because, well, there's no money in it. These companies are vaporous. If they get sued they just declare bankruptcy, dump the judgement on their insurance company, and the actual responsible people disappear to start the next one.
Yes, it is. Yes, the regulators see it. Yes, they're all laughing on the walk to the bank while the media blames the recession on the political party of the day.
Dash.com raised $50 million on this idea from venture capitalists such as AT&T Ventures and the JPMorgan Investment Corp. Now it was preparing to give any leftover cash back to investors and slink off into the dot-com void.
How many.com companies were in this exact same place? Forget the party line about the middle east, or 9/11, or anything else... _THIS_ is what caused the recession. _THIS_ is what the media won't tell you about the SEC. Those regulators saw this coming 5 years away. They knew what was going on. While the rest of us watched 401(k)s going down the tubes and lost our jobs, these knobs were sitting pretty on the executive salaries they made for five years and then dumped the rest of the losses onto the investors.
That and business bankruptcy insurance. And everyone wonders why auto, home, and health insurance costs have gone through the roof.
Slashdot Mirror
stealing from a company = one victim = one crime
Money laundering is a funny thing. The victims are very difficult to identify--they are the employees and the investors, each in a small part. What's easier to identify in money laundering? The benefactors.
The 90s saw many many benefactors... and then the stock market fell apart. Each of us, in our own small way, was victimized while the CEOs and top investors walked away with billions (which they used to buy up all the real estate at rock-bottom rates while the rest of us were unemployed). They still do.
If I were that attorney, I wouldn't be returning phone calls, either.
It sounds like he rolled over to let other, more well positioned lawyers, begin racking up convictions to establish a precedent (to be cited later) to win longer convictions for anything having to do with an electronic device.
Should we simply allow crimes to be committed, no punishment?
Every crime should warrant a single sentence: death.
Now... can we get back to the more important pursuit of seriously considering what we define a crime as? We don't have too many criminals... WE HAVE TOO MANY LAWS!
Wasn't meaning to insult so much as to point out that throwing around terms like that should imply you understand what they actually mean
See, there it is again.
What does the terms communism, socialism, and republic, fascism mean to you? If you go only by the definitions in the dictionary then you'll come up with a mish-mash of interpretations which are almost indistringuishable from each other once put into practice. What we have in the US is a democratically elected fascist state, displaying striking similarities to both communist and socialist implementations, which purports to be a Republic as defined in the Constitution yet violates the 9th and 10th Amendments (the only real important ones) on an hourly basis.
I'm not the one throwing around terms without knowing what they actually mean.
Where your logic completely falls apart is back to the if !A then B
Are you trying to be cool? This is about severity. If I cut your arm off, you no longer have your arm. If I break your arm, you lose use for a little while. If I paint your arm blue then you deal with a blue arm. Painting an arm blue should not warrant a greater crime than breaking your arm.
Copying a product should not be a felony if physical destruction of the property isn't even a misdemeanor. It's as simple as that.
By making a zillion copies of a DVD, you dilute the value of a movie
That's a theory that assumes that a DVD has infinite value. Another theory is that a DVD has a finite value and that value is reached once the first copy is sold. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
If I steal stock from a company, that is just IP by printing duplicate certificates.
Good point. This has never been statistically shown. Stock has a finite limit. There are N shares available at any one time. If a company has a million copies of a CD, at $16/ea, and you produce and make 100 copies, then the value of the CD is still $16 million. The value per copy is slightly less than $16. Logically the only thing this proves is that the media company is overcharging.
Pretty nice argument... I'm leaving work. My final word is: I agree with IP. I do not, in any way, agree with our current implementation or enforcement of it. Personally I feel we'd be better off with a system that tells us to police ourselves. It would minimize abuse and would encourage only the truly talented and devoted people to succeed. The rest would become discouraged and quit. Cry me a river. They can serve my popcorn.
Copying for personal use usually fits in under fair use
Not in the US. Why not? Because no one ever drew a line on the limits and no one bothers to adhere to the original rulebook.
distribution is a felony
Distribution of _WHAT_? Distribution of someone else's copyrighted work? Do we have any original authors or inventors or creators up on the stands? No.
That means that nobody will care about what you do in your own house for personal use
We used to say that about backups for archival purposes, too.
However, if you buy 4 dozen recorders and start duplicating like crazy and selling them...that's distribution and thus a felony
I think the key word here is selling. There a clear connection can be made to loss of profit. Simply duplicating though... in the 80s, Madonna and Metallica called that free advertising. Without shared copies (not sold copies), Madonna would be some street junky and Metallica never would've made it out of the high school auditorium.
Just because you don't agree with the law, doesn't mean that it's not fair
This isn't about fair. This is about legally empowered. There is no legal empowerment to hunt down file-sharers or music traders. The legal empowerment is to protect original inventors and creators, not the mega-corp that bought the first copy.
you had it your way, we would only be in a cartel enforcing your own agenda and sense of right and wrong
Typical drivel which comes from people who are jealous because they rely on someone else to take care of them.
In terms of the law, everyone gets their word in
I think you're the one being idealistic now.
Are you suggesting that businesses should get absolutely no say in how the law is written?
I'm saying that 99.99% of the laws passed every year are passed under a false pretense of authority and empowerment.
The most important thing a politician can say is,"We're sorry. That's _NOT_ our job." In America they've forgotten how to do that.
If that were the case, people would screw businesses out of everything...and that would destroy our way of life.
Straw man argument. When left to themselves people will, in the vast majority, get along and cooperate without the involvement of a mega-government. If it were any other way you and I would be extinct or hunting our neighbors.
You are distorting how things really work.
Let's be perfectly honest, then. This is the way our system works,"You're the weak and I am the tyranny of evil men." Make all the pretty political speeches you want--our system is a cartel that is no different from any other third world gang of thugs except that ours has the biggest nukes on the planet.
It also does not mean that copyrights have no place within the law
Our current implementation of the concept of copyright has no Constitutional empowerment.
If I write a book, you'd better believe that I want some protection from you and your sense of entitlement to other people's creative works
Maybe your book sucks and nobody cares about it. So you form a cartel of book writers, get them all pumped up on this straw man of some nerd with a Xerox machine, and get them to march on Washington to place government a federal officer next to every Xerox machine in the nation. You know what? The cost of paying those federal officers far outweighs any benefit your book has. Protect your own book, or don't sell it on an open market full of disingenuous people. You're not furthering anything good by stealing my money to pay for a bloated program which isn't going to stop someone with a camera. Next you'll want to federally regulate the materials used in the production of cameras.
Since you're incapable of drawing a line anywhere you're incapable to speak on anything of "law". In your eyes, the law goes as far as you want it to when you want it to.
Without copyrights, there would be no GPL
Hardly. The GPL is GNUs way of saying,"Copyrights suck but, if we have to play this game, this is our stance on copyright--EVERYONE HAS IT. Just be nice and play fair." If there were no copyrights, GNU would still make software.
There is no legally empowered federal authority which can raid people's homes or serve court summons for the crime of "copyright infringement". Constitutionally, the copyright is preserved for the inventor or the creator. If BMG, or Elektra, or RCA wants to the buy the first copy, that's fine, but they can't (legally) sic the feds on me anymore than I can sic them on you. Cite all the court cases you want. The only you'll be citing are blatant examples of the true nature of our world: might makes right. Deal with it.
Communist police state, because we allow large private entities
Since we know those private entities are owned by private citizens who, due to their ownership, often have very real and involved interests in politics... aren't you drawing delineations which don't really exist? It's all interconnected.
So, if we ignore our constitution, that automatically equates to communism?
If we ignored the constitution and had no government that would not be communism. However, if you model the function and structure of the current US gov't and compare it with the former USSR the resemblence is impeccable.
In a communist system, there is no private entity that can "own" something like a copyright
Enter reality: there are still private individuals, with private interests and personal agendas, in powerful oversight positions in a communist government.
Anyway, your total lack of political understanding of what you speak aside
Insults get you no where.
unauthorized redistribution is not the same as copying off of someone's test in school
And it's also not the same as stealing or destroying an actual physical product. You will never be able to say anything which will convince anyone that there's more damage done in copying than in actual destruction. Unless the destruction of a videotape is a felony then copying should not be. It's as simple as that.
Well, first of all, it's hard to catch a violator
That is no excuse. If it's so hard to catch someone, perhaps you ought to think twice about whether or not they're really doing anything wrong. Try being sensible: if you make a product which is easily duplicated then you, as the producer, accept liability. It is not society's duty to watch your back. They didn't do it for Tucker, or Wankel, or Betamax, or Motorola, or any other good idea that was hatched by one person and taken by another with a legal,"Ha! Ha! You couldn't afford the patent so it's perfectly legal for us to steal this!" If you don't want to worry about copying then use a medium which isn't so easily copied... and find out just how important your product really is.
secondly, it undermines the entire copyright system
The current implementation of the copyright system undermines the Constitution. Which is the higher authority?
Copying a friends tape...nobody will turn any stones up for you
Rationalizing selective enforcement is no excuse for abuse.
But widespread distribution (ala BitTorrent et al) certainly does undermine that system
I'm not defending people who are into widespread distribution, and have a special amount of disdain for those who think they have a right to profit from redistributing someone else's work. That said, however, the copyright system is still an unconstitutional farce.
You may be idealisticly right...but in the eyes of the law, you're just wrong
Under what authority is that law enforced? Again, the Constitution only identifies inventors or creators, not the corporations who buy the first copy. It makes no provision for the assignment or transferral of copyright. If you want to enforce laws outside of the Constitution then accept that you're no better than the Taliban, or Hussein, or Iran, or former Eastern Bloc nations, or China. We have a rulebook which sets the framework for the Republic of the United States of America. If you want to disregard the rulebook so that you can browbeat 16-year old music traders that's your business--but quit taking cash out of my pocket (taxes to pay the police, the attorneys, the courts, and on) as if you're protecting our Nation.
a store can press misdemeanor charges for theft too
Sure can. That's a loss of physical property. Again. Destroy a tape, pay $16. Copy a tape, return the original, go to prison. It makes no sense.
The translated article explains exactly how and why it has become a felony case
Because of profit. But don't think it's stopping there. The *AA is going after anyone they can.
And unauthorized redistribution is a felony
Under what authority is it a felony? I can rent a tape, mangle it, and toss it over the freeway. That's LEGITIMATE loss, and it's not a felony. However, if I take a tape and copy it, that is a felony.
It doesn't make sense unless you factor in the influence of greed and lobbyists.
Just because you don't believe it's right doesn't mean that it's not the law
Where do you draw the line? Under that sort of sentiment we do not live in a democratically elected Constitutional republic. If our laws are not based on the feelings of right and wrong within society, then we have nothing more than a cartel government similar to the Taliban enforcing their own personal agendas on the people within their geographical reach.
It means that the police are doing their jobs
So are spammers and malware writers. Where do you draw the line?
Unless you stick strictly to the Constitutionally granted powers of the feds then there is no line. You deteriorate to little better than cartel rulership.
Copyright law definitely says you're wrong. You're just being idealitic
Copyright law is a farce. It's a product of lobbyists. Call it idealism if you think that living in a police state is an acceptable alternative to idealism.
Our laws do not begin and end with the constitution
Yes, they do. The Constitution empowers the federal government. The government is free to ignore the Constitution, but then I don't want to hear any more bullsh_t about democracy, a republic, or anything but a carefully shrouded communist police state.
The federal government makes laws every day that don't touch the constitution
You're right. Every day they ignore the 9th and 10th Amendments with impunity. A few more years and the ACLU will be nothing but a coffee club for people who vaguely remember freedom, liberty, and the values that our soldiers have fought and died for over the last 200 years.
You know the dumb FBI warning at the beginning of VHS' and DVD's?
That's precisely my point. There is no such thing as "licensing". What you have is a glorified rental agreement. Flooding the political and judicial system with lobbyists to turn a rental agreement violation into a felony is a farce.
The police are not corporate henchmen any more than they would be your henchmen if you filed criminal charges against a burglar who broke into your house (you can file civil charges too).
As I (we've) said, the police are becoming corporate henchmen. Burglary has been a felonious offence since the beginning of man. Copying your friends work (eg. cheating on tests) has been, at most, something that gave you 30 minutes after school writing on the chalkboard.
Oh please, ownership itself is an artificial construct. If you're going to pass copyright off as bullshit, then you need to pass ownership of physical goods off as an artificial construct. Our entire system of laws is based around artificial constructs. For example, "rights" are an artificial construct.
Get it straight: possession is 99% of ownership. I possess this movie, so I own it, I can copy it, I can rip it, I can play it, and I can share it.
How does one possess copyright? Under what authority is copyright granted? Constitutional authority only covers inventors and creators. Constitutional authority says nothing about the corporate entities who purchase the first copy of a work and mass produce it.
If you stole from me (IP or physical), I would likely contact the police and file criminal charges. The police would arrest you, and in the US, the district attorney would decide on whether or not to prosecute
For a civil case, you can file a complaint, hire an attorney, and the court can send a summons to the alleged perp. The OP was right. The police are becoming paid corporate henchmen.
I've been questioning the definition of "licensing" for a long time. As near as I can tell, "licensing" is legal mumbo jumbo to turn the violation of a rental contract (not even a misdemeanor) into a felony offense just so that the burden of funding the attorneys is shifted from the corporations to the taxpayers.
Why oh why is this so difficult?
I don't see the GPL as a copyright enforcer. I see the GPL mostly thumbing its nose at copyright. For the most part, as I read it, the GPL recognizes that everyone has the natural potential to make a copy of something and simply asks that if a person makes a modification that they share it both upstream and downstream. BSD recognizes that everyone has the natural potential to make a copy and makes no recommendations about sharing any changes.
I don't think that this sort of suggestion would hurt GPL but would only nudge GPL legally into the BSD realm. Those of us who are considerate would adhere to the GPL willingly and those corporate raiders who like to pirate code would still be reviled.
As for the official legal mumbo jumbo... We all know it's a load of hash anyways. It's just there to draw lines for the corporations to give the legal business its tithe.
I fail to see why a programmer who spends 40 hours writing a piece of software should be any less protected than a carpenter who spends 40 hours making a dining table or an artist who spends 40 hours creating a painting.
I've been a carpenter and I have a close friend who is the artist. Believe me, we're not protected either. We're not rich. We have no explicit rights over the things we create.
I really like your point of view... but who pays your rent?
When the members of the committee protested that any one of them could have done that, Brunelleschi explained that this was exactly his point. If he told the committee how he planned to complete the task of the dome, all would claim that they could have done it.
In today's world that's called insubordination, not a team player, and grounds for immediate termination.
I fought with a manager for four years on this very issue. Everything I did was "anyone could've done that" but when I quit explaining everything they tried to run me out the door. After four years of being chased I quit.
if you sell the stuff without the permission of the copyright holder or rerelease some stuff as your own then you are hurting
Who is this copyright holder that you speak of? My Constitution only mentions the inventors and creators. The copyright holder is simply the person or company who bought what is effectively the first copy. As far as I'm concerned they have no more rights than I do buying the 83456219th copy.
The intent of copyright is to encourage progress in the arts and sciences by extending to creators of a work the right to control its distribution.
So why does all of my tax money go to debating the protection of the first company to buy what amounts to the first copy of the creation?
Your logic is accurate, but it misses the point completely because you're fighting a straw argument.
The point that is missed is that our laws do nothing to protect the creators.
What would the authors of those packages do? They'd quit writing Free software, that's what
Give it up.
And the world would be a gray, dull, unamusing place.
FUD.
Copying without due recompense eventually hurts us all.
Show me a single law which functions to protect the individual inventors. Don't show me laws which COULD protect the inventors. Show me a law which has been used to tell a corporate entity to pay up.
You know... something which annuls blanket employee agreements as an obvious unfair contract ("We own everything you do, or you can be homeless.") or the ability of a company to pay you $1 for patent rights ("Accept this $1 as payment for the transferral of all rights to this work, or you can be homeless.")
add one sentence to the beginning of an EULA?
Don't you know that it gets buried in the middle?
The law is only selectively enforced. Adware/spyware companies help launder billions of dollars every year. Unless they step on the toes of someone in a particular position of power there's no fear that a band of /. readers are going to hire an attorney to track them down and sue them. Politicians won't sue them because then Wall Street would pull funds. Wall Street won't sue them because it helps them launder funds. The regulators won't sue them because they are beholden to the politicians. The attorneys won't sue them because, well, there's no money in it. These companies are vaporous. If they get sued they just declare bankruptcy, dump the judgement on their insurance company, and the actual responsible people disappear to start the next one.
Yes, it is. Yes, the regulators see it. Yes, they're all laughing on the walk to the bank while the media blames the recession on the political party of the day.
Dash.com raised $50 million on this idea from venture capitalists such as AT&T Ventures and the JPMorgan Investment Corp. Now it was preparing to give any leftover cash back to investors and slink off into the dot-com void.
.com companies were in this exact same place? Forget the party line about the middle east, or 9/11, or anything else... _THIS_ is what caused the recession. _THIS_ is what the media won't tell you about the SEC. Those regulators saw this coming 5 years away. They knew what was going on. While the rest of us watched 401(k)s going down the tubes and lost our jobs, these knobs were sitting pretty on the executive salaries they made for five years and then dumped the rest of the losses onto the investors.
How many
That and business bankruptcy insurance. And everyone wonders why auto, home, and health insurance costs have gone through the roof.
Hmmmmm... 2+2=4?
Have a look at medical journals some time... You have to be VERY careful when putting stock in the findings of studies
I wish more people would remember this when they're in the patent discussions or the pharmaceutical discussions.
The very first thing people do when they get sick is to put 100% faith in all medical studies as they get in their car and drive to the HMO.