They seemed to work well enough back in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Then again, Ben Franklin never patented any of his inventions -- the Franklin Stove, bifocals, etc. -- so maybe he was skeptical from the beginning.)
Or in other words, the analogy here is not that we're trying to isolate ourselves from casual observation, but rather that we're trying to fight back against a stalker.
This is simply anti-capitalism stated on a single sentence. Basically, from what I grasp, the idea is "we need to avoid that competitor's action because we would lose money if competition were to happen".
Patents are inherently anti-competitive. In fact, limiting competition is their entire function.
(I almost said "their entire purpose," but then corrected myself: the "purpose" of patents is to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." Whether patents' purpose and function jive with each other is another issue entirely...)
It's too bad: I'd seriously consider paying $299 for a Nexus 7 made in the USA (especially if it were the 16GB version at only a $50 premium).
Unfortunately, I don't see the point of the Nexus Q and am not planning to buy it regardless of price or country of origin. I just hope that Google doesn't blame being made in the USA for its eventual failure in the market.
It's MY router, I bought it. and it's not some quasi-goods digital product. This is a physical item. You want to back-door my router and install crippled firmware? I'll sign up with the class action if this is the case.
This should not be a class-action (civil) issue; this should be a hacking and data theft (criminal) issue with the people responsible ending up in Federal prison!
Thanks; I for one am indeed interested. I just need to decide whether the better performance and whatnot is worth giving up my physical keyboard (I'm currently using a VM Samsung Intercept).
(I also need to look into which option is best for acting as a wi-fi hotspot/tethering to a Nexus 7.)
When I got Comcast a few months ago* the phone salesperson offered me 20Mbps for $29.99/month. When the bill came in, they charged $39.99. After fighting with them (and not paying the bill for 3 months), a Better Business Bureau complaint resulted in me getting the price I was offered (at least for the remainder of a year).
* I HATE Comcast, but I had essentially no choice: neither alternative (Clear WiMax or AT&T DSL) could do better than <1Mbps in my area.
If the political spectrum were a circle with Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right, and Libertarians far off to the right where the two ends meet, then where do totalitarians (e.g. Nazis, Stalinist Communists, etc.) fit? Since they're the opposite of Libertarians, they'd fit between the Democrats and Republicans (right in the area most people would label "moderate").
But they're not moderate of course, which proves one thing: that the political spectrum cannot be expressed as a circle, but instead ought to be expressed as a grid along (at least) 2 dimensions.
As for agriculture strains, those are natural (though changed through generations of controlled breeding). Copyright doesn't apply there. Are you trying to tell me it'd be illegal to make a clone of someone's pedigreed pet dog? Bullshit.
You should try explaining your point of view to Monsanto some time...
What about ARM tablets? What about the fact that Macs are getting more and more locked-down (the "retina display" Macbook Pro has the RAM soldered in and the battery glued down, for crying out loud!)?
What makes you think that OEMs will provide any non-"Secure" hardware for folks like System76 to sell?
The "vast majority of users" don't want to run in secure mode because they not only have no idea what it is but wouldn't give a shit even if they did. It's Microsoft and only Microsoft that wants it, and the reason Microsoft wants it is purely anti-competitive.
(But in all serious, the actual Monsanto reaction to that is to patent the new plant and sue everyone who interferes with their profit, including not only other horticulturists doing selective breeding, and not only their customers who wish to save seed rather than buying from them again next year, but even the farmers in neighboring fields who are trying to save seeds from their own crop that was accidentally contaminated with pollen from the Monsanto plants next door!)
A house (or other object) has value because I can use it. But an idea has value precisely because I communicated it to others -- the value is created by the act of sharing it.
Your argument doesn't go far enough: I argue that getting works into the Public Domain is the whole purpose; paying the artists is merely a means to that end.
I'm saying that the arguement you're using to promote filesharing is a very weak one, and you need to latch on to the better ones if you hope to make your point.
Okay, how about this:
Morally speaking, information belongs to the Public Domain. This is self-evident by the fact that an idea has no value until it is shared. The US Constitution recognizes this, and allows creators to obtain what is essentially a loan from the Public Domain for the sole and express purpose of "Promoting the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts." The reason these loans (copyrights and patents) were allowed is that they were the best way 18th Century politicians could think of to maximize the creation and spread of new ideas.
However, here in the 21st Century, we have a new way to maximize the creation and spread of ideas: the Internet. Filesharing makes copyright as a mechanism for the dissemination of culture obsolete; therefore copyright should be abolished.
The creators of an idea are not the owners of that idea; the idea inherently belongs to the Public Domain. The public is morally right to fileshare!
And yet, 12 years is still vastly shorter than the duration of D2's copyright.
It's also vastly shorter than the span of time many other creative works have remained popular. I see no reason why my right to play a video game I bought should be any less robust than my right to read a book I bought.
The bottom line is this: although maintaining the hardware and whatnot to accomplish it is my responsibility (not Blizzard's), I damn well do expect to still have the right to play the game I bought 50 years from now!
You can play literally every game they've ever released online still (D1 is still up and running...)
The first Diablo was released in 1997, 15 years ago. That's way too short of a duration to be meaningful, especially considering that the copyright on that game won't expire until 2093.
At the risk of sounding AOL-ish, I'll throw in a "me too!" (Heck, I quit buying Sony when they were merely annoyingly proprietary -- when they insisted on putting MemorySticks in everything -- before they started being actively malicious to their customers.)
Besides, even if all you care about is getting a good product, there's probably still one by another brand that's at least equally good, so why not pick that one instead?
You missed the three most important reasons: because Blizzard has violated your property rights by performing a technological end-run around the First Sale Doctrine, because your property will eventually evaporate when (not if) Blizzard turns the servers off, and because Blizzard has stolen it from it's rightful eventual place in the Public Domain.
Slashdot Mirror
They seemed to work well enough back in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Then again, Ben Franklin never patented any of his inventions -- the Franklin Stove, bifocals, etc. -- so maybe he was skeptical from the beginning.)
Or in other words, the analogy here is not that we're trying to isolate ourselves from casual observation, but rather that we're trying to fight back against a stalker.
Patents are inherently anti-competitive. In fact, limiting competition is their entire function.
(I almost said "their entire purpose," but then corrected myself: the "purpose" of patents is to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." Whether patents' purpose and function jive with each other is another issue entirely...)
If the $299 was for the Nexus 7 16GB version (so only a $50 premium), I'd probably pay it.
It's too bad: I'd seriously consider paying $299 for a Nexus 7 made in the USA (especially if it were the 16GB version at only a $50 premium).
Unfortunately, I don't see the point of the Nexus Q and am not planning to buy it regardless of price or country of origin. I just hope that Google doesn't blame being made in the USA for its eventual failure in the market.
So can you tell us who at Cisco we should direct the FBI to prosecute for hacking our routers and stealing our data?
This should not be a class-action (civil) issue; this should be a hacking and data theft (criminal) issue with the people responsible ending up in Federal prison!
Thanks; I for one am indeed interested. I just need to decide whether the better performance and whatnot is worth giving up my physical keyboard (I'm currently using a VM Samsung Intercept).
(I also need to look into which option is best for acting as a wi-fi hotspot/tethering to a Nexus 7.)
When I got Comcast a few months ago* the phone salesperson offered me 20Mbps for $29.99/month. When the bill came in, they charged $39.99. After fighting with them (and not paying the bill for 3 months), a Better Business Bureau complaint resulted in me getting the price I was offered (at least for the remainder of a year).
* I HATE Comcast, but I had essentially no choice: neither alternative (Clear WiMax or AT&T DSL) could do better than <1Mbps in my area.
If the political spectrum were a circle with Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right, and Libertarians far off to the right where the two ends meet, then where do totalitarians (e.g. Nazis, Stalinist Communists, etc.) fit? Since they're the opposite of Libertarians, they'd fit between the Democrats and Republicans (right in the area most people would label "moderate").
But they're not moderate of course, which proves one thing: that the political spectrum cannot be expressed as a circle, but instead ought to be expressed as a grid along (at least) 2 dimensions.
Speak for yourself, sir. I plan to live forever!
You should try explaining your point of view to Monsanto some time...
What about ARM tablets? What about the fact that Macs are getting more and more locked-down (the "retina display" Macbook Pro has the RAM soldered in and the battery glued down, for crying out loud!)?
What makes you think that OEMs will provide any non-"Secure" hardware for folks like System76 to sell?
That's already been done; it's called a TPM.
The "vast majority of users" don't want to run in secure mode because they not only have no idea what it is but wouldn't give a shit even if they did. It's Microsoft and only Microsoft that wants it, and the reason Microsoft wants it is purely anti-competitive.
Cue the Monsanto hit-men in 3...2...1...
(But in all serious, the actual Monsanto reaction to that is to patent the new plant and sue everyone who interferes with their profit, including not only other horticulturists doing selective breeding, and not only their customers who wish to save seed rather than buying from them again next year, but even the farmers in neighboring fields who are trying to save seeds from their own crop that was accidentally contaminated with pollen from the Monsanto plants next door!)
A house (or other object) has value because I can use it. But an idea has value precisely because I communicated it to others -- the value is created by the act of sharing it.
Your argument doesn't go far enough: I argue that getting works into the Public Domain is the whole purpose; paying the artists is merely a means to that end.
Okay, how about this:
Morally speaking, information belongs to the Public Domain. This is self-evident by the fact that an idea has no value until it is shared. The US Constitution recognizes this, and allows creators to obtain what is essentially a loan from the Public Domain for the sole and express purpose of "Promoting the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts." The reason these loans (copyrights and patents) were allowed is that they were the best way 18th Century politicians could think of to maximize the creation and spread of new ideas.
However, here in the 21st Century, we have a new way to maximize the creation and spread of ideas: the Internet. Filesharing makes copyright as a mechanism for the dissemination of culture obsolete; therefore copyright should be abolished.
The creators of an idea are not the owners of that idea; the idea inherently belongs to the Public Domain. The public is morally right to fileshare!
So what you're saying is that we should end the program not because it violates our privacy, but because it's ineffective and worthless? Fine by me!
And yet, 12 years is still vastly shorter than the duration of D2's copyright.
It's also vastly shorter than the span of time many other creative works have remained popular. I see no reason why my right to play a video game I bought should be any less robust than my right to read a book I bought.
The bottom line is this: although maintaining the hardware and whatnot to accomplish it is my responsibility (not Blizzard's), I damn well do expect to still have the right to play the game I bought 50 years from now!
The first Diablo was released in 1997, 15 years ago. That's way too short of a duration to be meaningful, especially considering that the copyright on that game won't expire until 2093.
At the risk of sounding AOL-ish, I'll throw in a "me too!" (Heck, I quit buying Sony when they were merely annoyingly proprietary -- when they insisted on putting MemorySticks in everything -- before they started being actively malicious to their customers.)
Besides, even if all you care about is getting a good product, there's probably still one by another brand that's at least equally good, so why not pick that one instead?
...because what Blizzard is "selling" is something considerably inferior to ownership!
You missed the three most important reasons: because Blizzard has violated your property rights by performing a technological end-run around the First Sale Doctrine, because your property will eventually evaporate when (not if) Blizzard turns the servers off, and because Blizzard has stolen it from it's rightful eventual place in the Public Domain.