There are tons of other reasons to file appearls, but the RIAA has enough time and enough money to litigate that woman into bankruptcy 500 times over.
Two words: pro bono. There are tons of lawyers out there itching like mad to take this case. And lawyers are supposed to spend a certain percentage of their hours working for free, in order to 'give back to the community'. Seriously.
Holy shit, don't give them ideas! I've got enough problems with people on their cell phones. Can you imagine if people started getting pop-ups in their HUD? "You seem to be in an accident. Would you like to buy Microsoft Lawyer?"
I don't usually reply to my earlier posts, especially after a few days, but I thought a useful analogy might be in order.
Suppose I'm selling knives. (Grokster wasn't selling anything, but we're both "distributors" for the sake of the Grokster case.) I advertise my knives as great for slicing bread. The Supreme Court doesn't say too much about this, because it's perfectly legal. Now I advertise my knives as great for slicing up people, something that I portray in a positive light. Now I'm inducing crime, and the Supreme Court says that's bad. According to the rule, if anyone uses my knives to commit that crime, I'm liable. That's plain common sense. Now the Grokster rule doesn't go quite that far (it limits inducement liability to copyright infringement, not all crimes), but that's the general idea.
Here's what the court had to say about Sony:
In sum, this case is significantly different from Sony and reliance on that case to rule in favor of StreamCast and Grokster was error. Sony dealt with a claim of liability based solely on distributing a product with alternative lawful and unlawful uses, with knowledge that some users would follow the unlawful course. The case struck a balance between the interests of protection and innovation by holding that the product's capability of substantial lawful employment should bar the imputation of fault and consequent secondary liability for the unlawful acts of others.
MGM's evidence in this case most obviously addresses a different basis of liability for distributing a product open to alternative uses. Here, evidence of the distributors' words and deeds going beyond distribution as such shows a purpose to cause and profit from third-party acts of copyright infringement. If liability for inducing infringement is ultimately found, it will not be on the basis of presuming or imputing fault, but from inferring a patently illegal objective from statements and actions showing what that objective was.
125 S. Ct. at 2782. Applying the rule to Grokster themselves, they clearly advertised the use of their software to infringe copyright. The Supreme Court didn't reverse the decision, most likely because Grokster could potentially have argued that they weren't inducing, which means the issue might have made it to a jury. They did, however, give very strong hints in their opinion as to how the trial should come out: "There is substantial evidence in MGM's favor on all elements of inducement . . .." Id.
For those of you keeping score, Justice Breyer wrote a concurring opinion, which Stevens and O'Connor joined, finding that the software has substantial, non-infringing uses, and hence passes the Sony test. Id. at 2787. He also makes a lot of arguments that have been made here on Slashdot. For instance, he notes that advances in technology have discouraged unlawful copying by making lawful copying cheaper and easier to achieve, and that several services now sell music for less than $ 1 per song. Id. at 2795. He also notes that more advanced types of non-music-oriented P2P networks have started to develop, drawing in part on the lessons of Grokster. Id. at 2796. Without naming names, I think we all know who he's talking about.
Despite Grokster going down in flames, I think there's evidence of decent support for the Slashdot mindset on the court. With O'Connor leaving, possibly to be replaced by Judge Alito, I'm not sure if some of that support will wane. I attended a constitutional law panel discussion yesterday, where several professors discussed his political leanings, and at least one of them specifically described him as a civil libertarian. I take that to mean that he would tend to favor Justice Breyer's views, at least on this issue, but this is all guessing on my part. I suppose we'll find out soon enough.
On June 27, 2005, the US Supreme Court decided to hold companies that make file-sharing software responsible for copyright infringements perpetrated by the software's users. Everyone expected that they would rule as they did when Universal City Studios sued Sony over the Betamax in 1984: there were legitimate uses of the technology, and it shouldn't be held responsible simply because it can be used unlawfully. Instead, however, they ruled that file-sharing software actively encourages piracy and the makers should be held accountable.
This conclusion grossly misconstrues the opinion. Instead, they held that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. MGM Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 125 S. Ct. 2764, 2780 (2005). They never said the software itself was illegal. They went on to reiterate the Sony rule:
[M]ere knowledge of infringing potential or of actual infringing uses would not be enough here to subject a distributor to liability. Nor would ordinary acts incident to product distribution, such as offering customers technical support or product updates, support liability in themselves. The inducement rule, instead, premises liability on purposeful, culpable expression and conduct, and thus does nothing to compromise legitimate commerce or discourage innovation having a lawful promise. Id.
One small note: the liability attaches to those who distribute, not those who create. They didn't get Grokster for the coding work, only for distributing the software while advertising its illegal uses.
A small procedural note: they didn't actually reverse the lower court, they vacated (threw out) the lower court's opinion, and sent it back for further trial on inducement. Grokster capitulated before the trial continuation finished, probably because they knew they had a losing case.
The rest of the article goes on to troll some more, but I won't give it credence by rebutting it. I just thought I'd help clear up any confusion anyone has about the Grokster holding.
Is there any gray area, any balance that can be struck between privacy and the desire of those charged with the protection of the United States to protect it, and indeed what I would regard a very important need to protect it from catastrophic harm?
This is the whole point, no more and no less, of the search warrant. Note that the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause, and the intervention of a judge (so the Executive Branch can't unilaterally put people on Double Secret Probation). As a side note, one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement is exigent circumstances -- the link calls it the Emergency Exception.
If the collection of "human intelligence" is appropriate overseas, why is the same collection not appropriate in the context of people planning the same type of attacks against the US or its interests, but who are operating within our own borders?
Because we recognize a right of privacy to exist for our citizens, but not citizens of other countries.
It's not that it's hard to believe that humans are responsible for global warming. In fact, it's easy to believe, because of our self-deprecating nature. It's precisely that it's so easy to believe (positive belief bias) that we should spend time to figure out whether or not it's actually true. It would be the same if it were hard to believe (negative belief bias), but research might be harder to justify. The point is that either way, our personal bias doesn't affect what actually is going on out there.
All of the evidence you point to is circumstantial. Does pumping more gaseous CO2 into the atmosphere increase the levels of airborne CO2 globally? Maybe, maybe not. How much is absorbed? Where is it absorbed? How much is converted to other chemical compounds? I don't have a degree in atmospheric sciences, so I don't know the answer. The point is that some people do have the degrees, and they're working on the problem. Let's leave them alone to draw their own rational, scientific conclusions. The laboratory of public opinion should be left to the pollsters and social psychologists.
FTFA: "Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power..."
Yet another hydrino troll. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and all I've heard from Randell Mills is a lot of hype. He applied classical EM theory to the hydrogen atom, and advanced science all the way back to the 1913 Bohr atom. No wonder it 'overthrows' quantum mechanics, since that didn't come along for another 10 years or so. He keeps popping up every few years, promising clean, cheap, limitless energy if you'll just invest $10m in his company, <blink>BL@CKL1GHT P0W3R!!11!!1!!!!1</blink>. See here for more info.
marshrew: Note that your core business may change slowly over time. If and when that happens, you have to be able to identify the change, because #2 requires that you then hire (and fire) people. When you get big enough, you will be able to slightly over-hire in case of contingencies, but that sounds like it's a ways down the road for you yet. The key is to take the time to find the right mix of people. Finally, #3 doesn't mean you have to outsource overseas. Everyone outsources their payroll, but usually to domestic companies.
To answer the original question. Good teams need a common goal to unite around, but before they can 'gel' they need to all buy in to the goal. It sounds like you have that goal -- you said yourself you have a prototype coming out of R&D. But if your product truly is unique, then so are your goals. It's unreasonable to say "I've got brand new software goals that just came out of R&D" and then ask "who else has already rallied around those goals and is assembled and gelled".
All this seems a little too much analysis, however. You said yourself that you don't have the time to go through a proper recruiting cycle. That indicates to me that you aren't willing to put in the time to make your business a success. Running a commercial software business that requires hiring a dev team for months at a time is not for the lazy or the otherwise employed. You also said you want to 'get our product out the door'. This shows me that you're more interested in profit than making a good product. While you may be able to afford such luxuries once you're established, right now you don't have the choice. And not only should they help you make your product, you might "possibly continue working with" them. On your core product?
My advice to you: realign your priorities. Make sure this is really something you want to pursue. If it is, grab it with both arms and run with it. Do it right. Otherwise, you risk a lot of disappointment down the road.
So why is it that now when the dissemination of information is essentially instantaneous and free we are working hard at creating artificial barriers to impede progress?
I've been saying this for awhile. IP doesn't mesh with capitalism. The latter is a system to regulate the distribution of scarce goods. Ideas are not scarce. All IP schemes attempt to introduce artificial scarcity into ideaspace, but the truth is that these are artificial measures only. Any community that decides not to impose these measures will, all things being equal, innovate more that those that do, simply because there are fewer restrictions.
Now I've heard the argument that creating a monopoly concentrates research on a particular item in one place, and that doing so is more efficient. I call BS. Knowing that the guy down the street is working on the same thing is a hell of an incentive. I think the many-eyes paradigm applies here. If you're truly working on something no one has done before, then you don't have to worry too much, now do you? But if you're working in a tightly crowded ideaspace, then you don't need to give incentives to innovation -- you're already tightly crowded. Duh.
To answer the question, the reason people use IP is because they don't know what else to do with ideas. They want their ideas protected (as if ideas were small children), and the only way they can do that is by restricting their use. Hence patent, copyright, and trademark. Once the government puts use restrictions on, then the game is already over. The whole argument about 'we'll give you back your ideas in 20 years or 120 years' or whatever it is, is just a shallow attempt to make the monopoly more palatable. The fundamental issue is control. As long as the government continues to endorse the idea of IP, there will be a power struggle over who controls ideas.
As far as I'm concerned, the justification given for IP, economic incentives to innovate, doesn't outweigh the damage to society that such a power struggle engenders.
Campaign finance laws are blatantly unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court doesn't think so. Before you critize, read their opinion and the dissents. You'll be reading for awhile, because they total 300 pages long. Section I of the first majority opinion gives a decent history of campaign financing issues for the past hundred years. Section II is procedural. Section III is where the meat of the opinion begins. III(A) covers your First Amendment concerns, III(B) talks about the Elections Clause, Article I section 4, and the principles of Federalism, and III(C) talks about Fifth Amendment Due Process. Note I said first majority opinion, there were three majority opinions, covering different parts of the BCRA.
1) This creates a tremendous incentive for companies to lie about how much their R&D cost them. Every dollar they can fake on paper is another dollar they get from their monopoly. If it's a big enough number, they'll make more than they would have under the current 20-year system. And big companies will spend $200k on a court case if it gets them an extra $10m in covered 'costs'.
2) Throwing more money at a problem does not solve it. With due respect to the PTO, giving more money to patent examiners doesn't make them smarter or faster. And hiring more patent examiners makes the system even bigger, which means more dumb patents get cranked out. It sounds like you're just trying to punish patent holders. And how does this strategy jive with your simple formula? There's no allowance for patent fees, so the patentee could end up underwater anyway. Adding fees to the formula defeats the purpose of raising the fees in the first place.
You have no right to have your speech hosted for free.
True, but that won't stop people from giving Google a PR black eye if Google takes away their 'free' speech. AFAIK, Google hasn't done very much to piss people off yet. People choose other companies, but not because 'Google is evil.' If they put a fee on Blogger, people will start talking.
The ProCD court didn't say that the EULA was a contract -- they said they were treating it like a contract, because that's what the district court did. ProCD v. Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447, 1450 (7th Cir. Wis. 1996). The court explicitly refused to address the equivalence (or non-equivalence) of the two schemes.
"Whether there are legal differences between 'contracts' and 'licenses' (which may matter under the copyright doctrine of first sale) is a subject for another day. . .. Zeidenberg does argue, and the district court held, that placing the package of software on the shelf is an 'offer,' which the customer 'accepts' by paying the asking price and leaving the store with the goods."
Id. Zeidenberg wasn't arguing license, he was arguing contract. If he had been arguing license, the court might have cleared up some of the confusion surrounding EULAs. Instead, the court looked at the situation as if a contract had been formed, and analogized that the EULA wouldn't be enforceable as a contract if it weren't enforceable for the usual contract reasons. Id. at 1448. They spent the rest of the opinion talking in contract terms (UCC, unconscionability, etc.), not license terms (permission and revocation, etc). The 7th Circuit reiterated their non-decision in Hill v. Gateway 2000, 105 F.3d 1147, 1149 (7th Cir. Ill. 1996) ("ProCD did not depend on the fact that the seller characterized the transaction as a license rather than as a contract; we treated it as a contract for the sale of goods and reserved the question whether for other purposes a 'license' characterization might be preferable.").
Technically, the UCC doesn't govern EULAs. I. Lan Sys. v. Netscout Serv. Level Corp., 183 F. Supp. 2d 328, 332 (D. Mass. 2002). Recent work in this direction has taken the form of UCITA, but only Maryland and Virginia have adopted the 'uniform' law. Id. California, on the other hand, has taken some steps to say that EULAs are licenses, not contracts. See Novell, Inc. v. Unicom Sales, Inc., 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16861, *39 (N.D. Cal.); Adobe Sys. v. Stargate Software, Inc., 216 F. Supp. 2d 1051, 1059 (N.D. Cal. 2002). Of course, these decisions are only at the trial court, and are not binding precedent.
I'm waiting for someone to claim license over contract in a federal appeals case, so we can get some real law laid down on the subject.
The U.S. sure as hellfire hasn't gone Objectivist. But don't take my word for it:
"In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church." -- Ayn Rand, 1962
If we were Objectivist capitalist, the government would have abolished all economic regulation, full stop. As in 'removed the Interstate Commerce Clause from the Constitution'. That would destroy all federal labor law, banking regulations, the FAA, FCC, SEC, EPA, most of the laws passed by Congress for the past hundred years or so, etc. etc. Then the big businesses would crush the little ones, and we'd be spectacularly boned.
Businesses aren't individuals so Rand's individualist ethics doesn't apply to them. The sole purpose of business is to make money, by any means necessary. That doesn't quite jive with Rand's 'make money as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.' Businesses don't want free, voluntary exchange -- it's bad for the bottom line, and it forces them to actually make a product. Businesses want monopoly power, coercive power, and unequal bargaining power (in their favor, of course). Rand doesn't much like 'businesses', or any other groups of people.
"... a board of directors is one or two ambitious men -- and a lot of ballast. I mean that groups of men are vacuums. Great big empty nothings. They say we can't visualize a total nothing. Hell, sit at any committee meeting.... Men are brothers, you know, and they have a great instinct for brotherhood -- except in boards, unions, corporations and other chain gangs." -- Kent Lansing (Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead)
The subject of the decision is 35 U.S.C. 101, which covers what subject matter can be patented. You could conceivably patent strawberry lima-bean hollandaise sauce. No joke. It would qualify as a "new and useful . . . composition of matter," assuming the rest of the statutory provisions are met. On the other hand, apparently crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches aren't patentable.
DH had 25.51 million viewers this week, with an 11.3/25 share in the 18-49 demographic. (Source). Given that one point is worth 1.096m households (Source), that works out to 12.38m households in this demo, which is work-aged (with disposable income) and tech-savvy (not scared of Internet downloads). I bet you could balance the supply and demand curves (through market research) to come out with a price earning you pretty close to $12m, especially since you're now free to offer commercial-free episodes.
Repeat this analysis for every other TV show, taking into account their respective price-per-minute/ratings ratios.
Re:Presidents that work for terrorists
on
Google Terror Threat
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Actually, terrorism is about fear (terror), but I agree that we shouldn't emphasize it. The worst thing you can do is be afraid of a terrorist, because then he's won. Media companies make the problem 10 times worse by giving terrorists mind-share. Every time they flash the latest "terror alert level", some dude in a terror cell is snickering.
Ignore terrorism, and shun people who push it as an agenda. This policy has three effects: one, you aren't scared all the time (defeats terrorism); two, it removes credence from the terrorists; three, it gives less power to the promoters of terrorism. Duh. Terrorists play the 'terror card' to accomplish political gain. Bush is playing the terror card to stay in power and take away your civil liberties with crap like the PATRIOT Act. The 'liberal media elite' is playing the terror card to win viewers. They are all reprehensible. Because they all create fear for political or economic gain, they are all terrorists. The difference is that Al-Qaeda are trying to make us scared of being killed. Bush and the media are trying to make us scared of the threat of an attack, as a psychological tool to manipulate us.
I honestly don't know which is worse. At least if I'm dead, I still have my country.
Think of it this way: if you take a cell's DNA and run it through the protein ringer, zillions of proteins will pop out. One of them will be one you want (the Good protein), the other zillions will be ones you don't want (the Bad ones). Some of the Bad ones may even prevent your gene from expressing, or destroy your protein, or mess with its kinetics, or reduce its effectiveness, etc etc etc. That sucks. But if you figure out a way to isolate just the Good gene that makes the Good protein, now you don't have any of those problems any more. That's damn useful, and that's why genes are patentable.
Yes, not counting the slaves. Lest we forget, slaves weren't considered people at the time, they were property. Hence, their vote did not matter before the 15th Amendment. To say anything else is historical revisionism. Same goes for women before 1920 and the 19th Amendment.
Several years ago, I had a talk with a judge sitting on a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. (Name and circuit withheld for obvious reasons.) We talked about the sci-fi future, in which autonomous robots walked the earth. I asked him whether such robots, if fully sentient, would have any legal rights. He said no, of course not, because they are property and not people, and rights only exist between people.
Sometimes we forget that as enlightened as we think we are now, the people of the past thought the same thing, and look how wrong they were.
I block ads for the same reason I always have: they detract from my surfing experience. I don't view TV ads because I have a TiVo. I don't read magazines, I get my information from the Internet. I don't get ads at movies, since I don't go to movies. (I don't support the MPAA's stance on copyright lawsuits.)
Slashdot Mirror
Two words: pro bono. There are tons of lawyers out there itching like mad to take this case. And lawyers are supposed to spend a certain percentage of their hours working for free, in order to 'give back to the community'. Seriously.
Holy shit, don't give them ideas! I've got enough problems with people on their cell phones. Can you imagine if people started getting pop-ups in their HUD? "You seem to be in an accident. Would you like to buy Microsoft Lawyer?"
Suppose I'm selling knives. (Grokster wasn't selling anything, but we're both "distributors" for the sake of the Grokster case.) I advertise my knives as great for slicing bread. The Supreme Court doesn't say too much about this, because it's perfectly legal. Now I advertise my knives as great for slicing up people, something that I portray in a positive light. Now I'm inducing crime, and the Supreme Court says that's bad. According to the rule, if anyone uses my knives to commit that crime, I'm liable. That's plain common sense. Now the Grokster rule doesn't go quite that far (it limits inducement liability to copyright infringement, not all crimes), but that's the general idea.
Here's what the court had to say about Sony:
125 S. Ct. at 2782. Applying the rule to Grokster themselves, they clearly advertised the use of their software to infringe copyright. The Supreme Court didn't reverse the decision, most likely because Grokster could potentially have argued that they weren't inducing, which means the issue might have made it to a jury. They did, however, give very strong hints in their opinion as to how the trial should come out: "There is substantial evidence in MGM's favor on all elements of inducement . . .For those of you keeping score, Justice Breyer wrote a concurring opinion, which Stevens and O'Connor joined, finding that the software has substantial, non-infringing uses, and hence passes the Sony test. Id. at 2787. He also makes a lot of arguments that have been made here on Slashdot. For instance, he notes that advances in technology have discouraged unlawful copying by making lawful copying cheaper and easier to achieve, and that several services now sell music for less than $ 1 per song. Id. at 2795. He also notes that more advanced types of non-music-oriented P2P networks have started to develop, drawing in part on the lessons of Grokster. Id. at 2796. Without naming names, I think we all know who he's talking about.
Despite Grokster going down in flames, I think there's evidence of decent support for the Slashdot mindset on the court. With O'Connor leaving, possibly to be replaced by Judge Alito, I'm not sure if some of that support will wane. I attended a constitutional law panel discussion yesterday, where several professors discussed his political leanings, and at least one of them specifically described him as a civil libertarian. I take that to mean that he would tend to favor Justice Breyer's views, at least on this issue, but this is all guessing on my part. I suppose we'll find out soon enough.
North Carolina replies, "go ahead, I've had better".
This conclusion grossly misconstrues the opinion. Instead, they held that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. MGM Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 125 S. Ct. 2764, 2780 (2005). They never said the software itself was illegal. They went on to reiterate the Sony rule:
One small note: the liability attaches to those who distribute, not those who create. They didn't get Grokster for the coding work, only for distributing the software while advertising its illegal uses.A small procedural note: they didn't actually reverse the lower court, they vacated (threw out) the lower court's opinion, and sent it back for further trial on inducement. Grokster capitulated before the trial continuation finished, probably because they knew they had a losing case.
The rest of the article goes on to troll some more, but I won't give it credence by rebutting it. I just thought I'd help clear up any confusion anyone has about the Grokster holding.
There's always the doctrine of exigent circumstances.
Is there any gray area, any balance that can be struck between privacy and the desire of those charged with the protection of the United States to protect it, and indeed what I would regard a very important need to protect it from catastrophic harm?
This is the whole point, no more and no less, of the search warrant. Note that the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause, and the intervention of a judge (so the Executive Branch can't unilaterally put people on Double Secret Probation). As a side note, one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement is exigent circumstances -- the link calls it the Emergency Exception.
If the collection of "human intelligence" is appropriate overseas, why is the same collection not appropriate in the context of people planning the same type of attacks against the US or its interests, but who are operating within our own borders?
Because we recognize a right of privacy to exist for our citizens, but not citizens of other countries.
All of the evidence you point to is circumstantial. Does pumping more gaseous CO2 into the atmosphere increase the levels of airborne CO2 globally? Maybe, maybe not. How much is absorbed? Where is it absorbed? How much is converted to other chemical compounds? I don't have a degree in atmospheric sciences, so I don't know the answer. The point is that some people do have the degrees, and they're working on the problem. Let's leave them alone to draw their own rational, scientific conclusions. The laboratory of public opinion should be left to the pollsters and social psychologists.
Yet another hydrino troll. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and all I've heard from Randell Mills is a lot of hype. He applied classical EM theory to the hydrogen atom, and advanced science all the way back to the 1913 Bohr atom. No wonder it 'overthrows' quantum mechanics, since that didn't come along for another 10 years or so. He keeps popping up every few years, promising clean, cheap, limitless energy if you'll just invest $10m in his company, <blink>BL@CKL1GHT P0W3R!!11!!1!!!!1</blink>. See here for more info.
marshrew: Note that your core business may change slowly over time. If and when that happens, you have to be able to identify the change, because #2 requires that you then hire (and fire) people. When you get big enough, you will be able to slightly over-hire in case of contingencies, but that sounds like it's a ways down the road for you yet. The key is to take the time to find the right mix of people. Finally, #3 doesn't mean you have to outsource overseas. Everyone outsources their payroll, but usually to domestic companies.
To answer the original question. Good teams need a common goal to unite around, but before they can 'gel' they need to all buy in to the goal. It sounds like you have that goal -- you said yourself you have a prototype coming out of R&D. But if your product truly is unique, then so are your goals. It's unreasonable to say "I've got brand new software goals that just came out of R&D" and then ask "who else has already rallied around those goals and is assembled and gelled".
All this seems a little too much analysis, however. You said yourself that you don't have the time to go through a proper recruiting cycle. That indicates to me that you aren't willing to put in the time to make your business a success. Running a commercial software business that requires hiring a dev team for months at a time is not for the lazy or the otherwise employed. You also said you want to 'get our product out the door'. This shows me that you're more interested in profit than making a good product. While you may be able to afford such luxuries once you're established, right now you don't have the choice. And not only should they help you make your product, you might "possibly continue working with" them. On your core product?
My advice to you: realign your priorities. Make sure this is really something you want to pursue. If it is, grab it with both arms and run with it. Do it right. Otherwise, you risk a lot of disappointment down the road.
I've been saying this for awhile. IP doesn't mesh with capitalism. The latter is a system to regulate the distribution of scarce goods. Ideas are not scarce. All IP schemes attempt to introduce artificial scarcity into ideaspace, but the truth is that these are artificial measures only. Any community that decides not to impose these measures will, all things being equal, innovate more that those that do, simply because there are fewer restrictions.
Now I've heard the argument that creating a monopoly concentrates research on a particular item in one place, and that doing so is more efficient. I call BS. Knowing that the guy down the street is working on the same thing is a hell of an incentive. I think the many-eyes paradigm applies here. If you're truly working on something no one has done before, then you don't have to worry too much, now do you? But if you're working in a tightly crowded ideaspace, then you don't need to give incentives to innovation -- you're already tightly crowded. Duh.
To answer the question, the reason people use IP is because they don't know what else to do with ideas. They want their ideas protected (as if ideas were small children), and the only way they can do that is by restricting their use. Hence patent, copyright, and trademark. Once the government puts use restrictions on, then the game is already over. The whole argument about 'we'll give you back your ideas in 20 years or 120 years' or whatever it is, is just a shallow attempt to make the monopoly more palatable. The fundamental issue is control. As long as the government continues to endorse the idea of IP, there will be a power struggle over who controls ideas.
As far as I'm concerned, the justification given for IP, economic incentives to innovate, doesn't outweigh the damage to society that such a power struggle engenders.
The Supreme Court doesn't think so. Before you critize, read their opinion and the dissents. You'll be reading for awhile, because they total 300 pages long. Section I of the first majority opinion gives a decent history of campaign financing issues for the past hundred years. Section II is procedural. Section III is where the meat of the opinion begins. III(A) covers your First Amendment concerns, III(B) talks about the Elections Clause, Article I section 4, and the principles of Federalism, and III(C) talks about Fifth Amendment Due Process. Note I said first majority opinion, there were three majority opinions, covering different parts of the BCRA.
2) Throwing more money at a problem does not solve it. With due respect to the PTO, giving more money to patent examiners doesn't make them smarter or faster. And hiring more patent examiners makes the system even bigger, which means more dumb patents get cranked out. It sounds like you're just trying to punish patent holders. And how does this strategy jive with your simple formula? There's no allowance for patent fees, so the patentee could end up underwater anyway. Adding fees to the formula defeats the purpose of raising the fees in the first place.
Nobody tell them about TiVo Desktop.
Read lines 44 through 46 of init/calibrate.c.
True, but that won't stop people from giving Google a PR black eye if Google takes away their 'free' speech. AFAIK, Google hasn't done very much to piss people off yet. People choose other companies, but not because 'Google is evil.' If they put a fee on Blogger, people will start talking.
Technically, the UCC doesn't govern EULAs. I. Lan Sys. v. Netscout Serv. Level Corp., 183 F. Supp. 2d 328, 332 (D. Mass. 2002). Recent work in this direction has taken the form of UCITA, but only Maryland and Virginia have adopted the 'uniform' law. Id. California, on the other hand, has taken some steps to say that EULAs are licenses, not contracts. See Novell, Inc. v. Unicom Sales, Inc., 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16861, *39 (N.D. Cal.); Adobe Sys. v. Stargate Software, Inc., 216 F. Supp. 2d 1051, 1059 (N.D. Cal. 2002). Of course, these decisions are only at the trial court, and are not binding precedent.
I'm waiting for someone to claim license over contract in a federal appeals case, so we can get some real law laid down on the subject.
On the other hand, it doesn't prevent someone from using a competitor who doesn't charge. And it's a bar to free speech.
Businesses aren't individuals so Rand's individualist ethics doesn't apply to them. The sole purpose of business is to make money, by any means necessary. That doesn't quite jive with Rand's 'make money as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit.' Businesses don't want free, voluntary exchange -- it's bad for the bottom line, and it forces them to actually make a product. Businesses want monopoly power, coercive power, and unequal bargaining power (in their favor, of course). Rand doesn't much like 'businesses', or any other groups of people.
The subject of the decision is 35 U.S.C. 101, which covers what subject matter can be patented. You could conceivably patent strawberry lima-bean hollandaise sauce. No joke. It would qualify as a "new and useful . . . composition of matter," assuming the rest of the statutory provisions are met. On the other hand, apparently crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches aren't patentable.
Repeat this analysis for every other TV show, taking into account their respective price-per-minute/ratings ratios.
Ignore terrorism, and shun people who push it as an agenda. This policy has three effects: one, you aren't scared all the time (defeats terrorism); two, it removes credence from the terrorists; three, it gives less power to the promoters of terrorism. Duh. Terrorists play the 'terror card' to accomplish political gain. Bush is playing the terror card to stay in power and take away your civil liberties with crap like the PATRIOT Act. The 'liberal media elite' is playing the terror card to win viewers. They are all reprehensible. Because they all create fear for political or economic gain, they are all terrorists. The difference is that Al-Qaeda are trying to make us scared of being killed. Bush and the media are trying to make us scared of the threat of an attack, as a psychological tool to manipulate us.
I honestly don't know which is worse. At least if I'm dead, I still have my country.
Think of it this way: if you take a cell's DNA and run it through the protein ringer, zillions of proteins will pop out. One of them will be one you want (the Good protein), the other zillions will be ones you don't want (the Bad ones). Some of the Bad ones may even prevent your gene from expressing, or destroy your protein, or mess with its kinetics, or reduce its effectiveness, etc etc etc. That sucks. But if you figure out a way to isolate just the Good gene that makes the Good protein, now you don't have any of those problems any more. That's damn useful, and that's why genes are patentable.
I want to know whose bank accounts they seized.
Several years ago, I had a talk with a judge sitting on a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. (Name and circuit withheld for obvious reasons.) We talked about the sci-fi future, in which autonomous robots walked the earth. I asked him whether such robots, if fully sentient, would have any legal rights. He said no, of course not, because they are property and not people, and rights only exist between people.
Sometimes we forget that as enlightened as we think we are now, the people of the past thought the same thing, and look how wrong they were.
I block ads for the same reason I always have: they detract from my surfing experience. I don't view TV ads because I have a TiVo. I don't read magazines, I get my information from the Internet. I don't get ads at movies, since I don't go to movies. (I don't support the MPAA's stance on copyright lawsuits.)