Yep. All IP law must go out the window. We will still have good medical care, just not by Lilly or Pfizer. They can go to hell. Somebody else will fill the void.
Because without patents, there would not be significant private sector research...
There will be plenty of research. What there be less of, is less money for advertisement and bribing government officials and doctors. Here again we actually see a slowdown because of IP law. While rich white folks can get the best HIV cocktails, the vast majority of suffers will die. So IP law is doing nothing for the majority. These companies don't want to cure anything. They make much more money with ongoing treatments. I don't expect them to ever produce a cure for AIDS when treatment is so much more profitable. Same goes for malaria, which has very few rich sufferers, so why bother, right? And if you've noticed, they're always pushing for legislation to outlaw alternatives. I don't credit the drug companies with our longer lifespan. I credit good nutrition and sanitary practices for that. It's the lack of those two things that causes the vast majority of illness and death. Those people aren't being helped one whit by IP law. The arguments you provide simply don't hold water. It's too bad that people continue to parrot such nonsense. And if you want good government research, convince your friends and neighbors to vote for a government that provides for that research, instead of a phony tax cut that will never materialize or will be eaten up by some other expenses, like more expensive medical insurance that pays for all those patent lawyers, and doctors' and congress peoples' vacations in the Bahamas.
I mean, to create OS X you'd have to shell out a few billion dollars.
While certain free software while having some catching up to do, most doesn't cost nearly so much. That could all change with the recent licensing difficulties some people are having.
...but then there'd be less competition, and thus less innovation.
No, there will be just as much, if not more, it will just be motivated by something different. Copyright only serves to slow that down with useless legalities. It also motivates people to produce useless inventions that require huge advertising budgets to push push out the door. These are the things that make innovation prohibitively expensive. Every invention needs a lawyer behind it to "protect" it. And I'll bet that Apple budgets more money for the lawyers and marketing than they do for software developement. It produces pretty packages and great profits, but not necessarily great software. Copyright forces you to spend huge sums to protect it from the likes of Microsoft who could, with that same copyright law prevent you from using it at all. See the excellent, if a bit overused, example of what happened to the inventor of FM radio. SCO should be a good lesson of what copyright law is about. This is the ultimate result of copyright law. It can't go any other way. The only real beneficiaries are the lawyers. They get paid no matter who's side they're on. And they stand the most to lose with its abolishment. Everybody else(except the greedy) will do just fine.
For one thing, trade secrets through contract provisions.
Now you're talking about signed contracts by all involved. That's an entirely different matter. I didn't sign any contract that prohibits me from doing what I wish with my possessions. If I sign an EULA then I will abide by it. Otherwise it's just a lot of print that's too small to read and not worth my time.
Ah, patronage, is it? This is what copyright was created to avoid -- a system at which every single artist on the planet is controlled by a few wealthy elite.
No it was created to control access to a printing press. A new invention at the time. It was created to protect the interests of the writers guild(publishers of the time), who's job suddenly became obsolete. And groups like the ??AAs are using it for that exact same purpose. To protect their now obsolete publishing and distribution business. To prevent self publication by outlawing technology that makes it possible. See mini-disk recorders for an example, you had to buy a "pro" version with XLR connectors to make digital copies, of your own work even! It cost two or three times the price of the consumer version. DRM on our new and upcoming hardware and compulsory licenses serves the same purpose.
The law was not created to aid innovation and protect the creators. That's merely the spin put on it so most people will accept it. And I have to admit, it's working wonderfully. Good job on their part. It's got so many people fished in. It has you all convinced that the world would be in complete chaos without it. It is there to protect established(entrenched) businesses. It is a tool to be used for censorship(Scientology?). Troll law if there ever was one.
OK! OK! What I'm saying is that without copyright, there is no law to protect that source from being disassembled or reverse engineered. I can employ the bits and pieces into another program, whatever. I just want to remove the cartels' power of law. I don't always need exact copies, but I do want to be able to build on it. And besides, everything we have was built on the work of previous authors, inventors, etc. Removing copyright will only make it easier and more productive.
It's like claiming that without copyright, you could split an MP3 into each original instrument track.
It is possible to separate instruments out to a certain extent. Cover bands do a fairly good job of it.
which is a statement of physics and existence, not of legality...
Which is the only thing that means anything. The law is fleeting. It comes and goes on a whim. Physics and existence are a bit more permanent. No amount of man made law will ever change it.
As for Windows not existing without copyright, that's just not true. Somebody will write up contract to have it made because they need it, just as the old cliche says. They will not and should not be granted any exclusivity over it. All things will be made because of the necessity, not to make easier to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos.
So what if I don't have access to the original code? I can still find the information inside very useful. I can still use and modify(by attaching modules for instance?) it. I can still adequately reverse engineer an ATI or nVidia card to write drivers. I don't need anybody's permission. It's my card that I possess.
Ok, fine. There would be no such thing as legally enforced closed source.
So explain to me how you fix a bug in a derived version that you only have a binary for?
Well, the fact that you can disassemble, reverse engineer, up load it to anybody else who's interested, etc. to your heart's content without having to worry about the cops busting down your door, could provide a little incentive. GPL simply exists because of and as an alternative to "regular" copyright. And without copyright, you have all the freedom you want to study, explore, improve, redistribute any program. It is copyright that prevents you from doing those things. GPL is just taking a brick out of that wall. We need to knock it down completely.
Even if you can't reconstruct it exactly, you can still still use it without any legal hassles. Nobody can stop you. You can make and give out all the copies you want. You can still build on top of it, and improve it even if it is a bit more kludgy than Wondows already is. You can use bits and pieces for for your own purposes. You can do all sorts of things that copyright prohibits. And the best part is that even without copyright everybody still gets paid when they perform what they were contracted to do. Copyright has only one purpose in life. That's to restrict the flow of information and who can distribute. It serves as one of the biggest impediments to human progress we have today. Just look at OSS. The biggist thing there has become licensing, distracting the developers from accomplishing any real work. We shouldn't need a CVS repository for GPL. We don't want a 25KB license in a 5KB program. Copyright is a ball and chain that serves the interests of very few people and groups.
Now if you want to have some fun, chain link vnc desktops all the way through back to your host machine. Set your screens up right and you can make your cursor do the wave.
Very nice, but my point is, why that? It smells of advertisement, and I wonder what kind of deal was made to pull this off. Somebody is financing this, and if it was a group of alunmi that wish to remain anonymous, or simply the "elders" or whoever, then fine. But here it looks like somebody is expecting something in return. Maybe it's paying rent for outside streaming services, etc. through product placement. It is otherwise unecessary to use this format. What advantage does it have over others that are more easily accessable with less cumbersome software?
If someone is stupid (or drunk) enough to pull a weapon on a flight, they'd get shot about a hundred times in five seconds.
...Ok, how about a Mexican standoff? 50 half drunk people pull out their guns. Quick! Which one's the bad guy? Oh, god, I hope somebody has a camera rolling for that one.
The average consumer will just stick to prior generation technology to avoid the hassle...
Then the average consumer will watch their electrolytic capacitors explode, and the only thing left to replace it with is a shiny, new, DRM encumbered, sealed in epoxy "media center" that will not allow uploads. Basically a tv with a modem instead of an antenna. Which is probably what they really want anyway.
Thank you. You spelled it out the way I intended for it to be. I wasn't advocating that you could leave stuff undone. I'm just saying you need to avoid tunnel vision of focusing on only one thing.
Au contraire (Tish, that's French!) When I took any tests in school, I always got the easy questions out of the way first. Image not getting to questions you could have answered when the time runs out and you are told to put down your pens. And getting some of the easy stuff done first might make the more difficult stuff a little less so. It also gives a moral boosting illusion of progress.
Don't count on it. Planned obsolescence isn't going away anytime soon. Make the machine "too reliable" and the industry will be crying about lousy sales.
Slashdot Mirror
...patents. Do you want to get rid of those, too?
Yep. All IP law must go out the window. We will still have good medical care, just not by Lilly or Pfizer. They can go to hell. Somebody else will fill the void.
Because without patents, there would not be significant private sector research...
There will be plenty of research. What there be less of, is less money for advertisement and bribing government officials and doctors. Here again we actually see a slowdown because of IP law. While rich white folks can get the best HIV cocktails, the vast majority of suffers will die. So IP law is doing nothing for the majority. These companies don't want to cure anything. They make much more money with ongoing treatments. I don't expect them to ever produce a cure for AIDS when treatment is so much more profitable. Same goes for malaria, which has very few rich sufferers, so why bother, right? And if you've noticed, they're always pushing for legislation to outlaw alternatives. I don't credit the drug companies with our longer lifespan. I credit good nutrition and sanitary practices for that. It's the lack of those two things that causes the vast majority of illness and death. Those people aren't being helped one whit by IP law. The arguments you provide simply don't hold water. It's too bad that people continue to parrot such nonsense. And if you want good government research, convince your friends and neighbors to vote for a government that provides for that research, instead of a phony tax cut that will never materialize or will be eaten up by some other expenses, like more expensive medical insurance that pays for all those patent lawyers, and doctors' and congress peoples' vacations in the Bahamas.
I mean, to create OS X you'd have to shell out a few billion dollars.
...but then there'd be less competition, and thus less innovation.
While certain free software while having some catching up to do, most doesn't cost nearly so much. That could all change with the recent licensing difficulties some people are having.
No, there will be just as much, if not more, it will just be motivated by something different. Copyright only serves to slow that down with useless legalities. It also motivates people to produce useless inventions that require huge advertising budgets to push push out the door. These are the things that make innovation prohibitively expensive. Every invention needs a lawyer behind it to "protect" it. And I'll bet that Apple budgets more money for the lawyers and marketing than they do for software developement. It produces pretty packages and great profits, but not necessarily great software. Copyright forces you to spend huge sums to protect it from the likes of Microsoft who could, with that same copyright law prevent you from using it at all. See the excellent, if a bit overused, example of what happened to the inventor of FM radio. SCO should be a good lesson of what copyright law is about. This is the ultimate result of copyright law. It can't go any other way. The only real beneficiaries are the lawyers. They get paid no matter who's side they're on. And they stand the most to lose with its abolishment. Everybody else(except the greedy) will do just fine.
For one thing, trade secrets through contract provisions.
Now you're talking about signed contracts by all involved. That's an entirely different matter. I didn't sign any contract that prohibits me from doing what I wish with my possessions. If I sign an EULA then I will abide by it. Otherwise it's just a lot of print that's too small to read and not worth my time.
Ah, patronage, is it? This is what copyright was created to avoid -- a system at which every single artist on the planet is controlled by a few wealthy elite.
No it was created to control access to a printing press. A new invention at the time. It was created to protect the interests of the writers guild(publishers of the time), who's job suddenly became obsolete. And groups like the ??AAs are using it for that exact same purpose. To protect their now obsolete publishing and distribution business. To prevent self publication by outlawing technology that makes it possible. See mini-disk recorders for an example, you had to buy a "pro" version with XLR connectors to make digital copies, of your own work even! It cost two or three times the price of the consumer version. DRM on our new and upcoming hardware and compulsory licenses serves the same purpose.
The law was not created to aid innovation and protect the creators. That's merely the spin put on it so most people will accept it. And I have to admit, it's working wonderfully. Good job on their part. It's got so many people fished in. It has you all convinced that the world would be in complete chaos without it. It is there to protect established(entrenched) businesses. It is a tool to be used for censorship(Scientology?). Troll law if there ever was one.
Sorry. I thought "closed source" was a legal term. Meaning it is illegal to disassemble, etc.
OK! OK! What I'm saying is that without copyright, there is no law to protect that source from being disassembled or reverse engineered. I can employ the bits and pieces into another program, whatever. I just want to remove the cartels' power of law. I don't always need exact copies, but I do want to be able to build on it. And besides, everything we have was built on the work of previous authors, inventors, etc. Removing copyright will only make it easier and more productive.
It's like claiming that without copyright, you could split an MP3 into each original instrument track.
It is possible to separate instruments out to a certain extent. Cover bands do a fairly good job of it.
which is a statement of physics and existence, not of legality...
Which is the only thing that means anything. The law is fleeting. It comes and goes on a whim. Physics and existence are a bit more permanent. No amount of man made law will ever change it.
As for Windows not existing without copyright, that's just not true. Somebody will write up contract to have it made because they need it, just as the old cliche says. They will not and should not be granted any exclusivity over it. All things will be made because of the necessity, not to make easier to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos.
So what if I don't have access to the original code? I can still find the information inside very useful. I can still use and modify(by attaching modules for instance?) it. I can still adequately reverse engineer an ATI or nVidia card to write drivers. I don't need anybody's permission. It's my card that I possess.
Ok, fine. There would be no such thing as legally enforced closed source.
So explain to me how you fix a bug in a derived version that you only have a binary for?
Well, the fact that you can disassemble, reverse engineer, up load it to anybody else who's interested, etc. to your heart's content without having to worry about the cops busting down your door, could provide a little incentive. GPL simply exists because of and as an alternative to "regular" copyright. And without copyright, you have all the freedom you want to study, explore, improve, redistribute any program. It is copyright that prevents you from doing those things. GPL is just taking a brick out of that wall. We need to knock it down completely.
Even if you can't reconstruct it exactly, you can still still use it without any legal hassles. Nobody can stop you. You can make and give out all the copies you want. You can still build on top of it, and improve it even if it is a bit more kludgy than Wondows already is. You can use bits and pieces for for your own purposes. You can do all sorts of things that copyright prohibits. And the best part is that even without copyright everybody still gets paid when they perform what they were contracted to do. Copyright has only one purpose in life. That's to restrict the flow of information and who can distribute. It serves as one of the biggest impediments to human progress we have today. Just look at OSS. The biggist thing there has become licensing, distracting the developers from accomplishing any real work. We shouldn't need a CVS repository for GPL. We don't want a 25KB license in a 5KB program. Copyright is a ball and chain that serves the interests of very few people and groups.
Take away copyrights, and anybody can take GPL software and release it as closed source.
Oh come on. Without copyright there IS no closed source. There would be no law to keep me from using it.
iPuto? "No me gusta".
...If memory serves...
Now if you want to have some fun, chain link vnc desktops all the way through back to your host machine. Set your screens up right and you can make your cursor do the wave.
--
NAY!
I guess security through obscurity works after all.
...someone sue the lawyers bringing up these lawsuits...
Hmmm, suing people who sue people to show that suing people is wrong
Very nice, but my point is, why that? It smells of advertisement, and I wonder what kind of deal was made to pull this off. Somebody is financing this, and if it was a group of alunmi that wish to remain anonymous, or simply the "elders" or whoever, then fine. But here it looks like somebody is expecting something in return. Maybe it's paying rent for outside streaming services, etc. through product placement. It is otherwise unecessary to use this format. What advantage does it have over others that are more easily accessable with less cumbersome software?
If someone is stupid (or drunk) enough to pull a weapon on a flight, they'd get shot about a hundred times in five seconds.
...Ok, how about a Mexican standoff? 50 half drunk people pull out their guns. Quick! Which one's the bad guy? Oh, god, I hope somebody has a camera rolling for that one.
Real Player. Thanks a lot guys!
Luckily these guys are still around. I hope they make a big comeback. Homemade chips...hmmmm. Now I got the munchies.
The average consumer will just stick to prior generation technology to avoid the hassle...
Then the average consumer will watch their electrolytic capacitors explode, and the only thing left to replace it with is a shiny, new, DRM encumbered, sealed in epoxy "media center" that will not allow uploads. Basically a tv with a modem instead of an antenna. Which is probably what they really want anyway.
Today is a good day for DRM to die...
Don't bet on it.
"Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes it doesn't."
picks up the red phone
"No, the WHITE phone"
Thank you. You spelled it out the way I intended for it to be. I wasn't advocating that you could leave stuff undone. I'm just saying you need to avoid tunnel vision of focusing on only one thing.
That means we should be picking up their "70s Show" right about now.
Real Estate salesman: Wow, we don't see many vampires around here.
Vampire: Yeah well, at these prices you won't see many more.
This is why you should do the hard parts first.
Au contraire (Tish, that's French!) When I took any tests in school, I always got the easy questions out of the way first. Image not getting to questions you could have answered when the time runs out and you are told to put down your pens. And getting some of the easy stuff done first might make the more difficult stuff a little less so. It also gives a moral boosting illusion of progress.
...more reliable machines.
Don't count on it. Planned obsolescence isn't going away anytime soon. Make the machine "too reliable" and the industry will be crying about lousy sales.