Switchgrass gets you more ethanol than corn sure, but that's all you get. Growing corn gets you fuel and food. Growing hemp gets you fuel, food, and fiber.
No, growing switchgrass gives you food as well. Because corn for ethanol was diverted there's less food, but with switchgrass no corn is diverted. Also because not all of the switchgrass is converted to ethanol you also have some good compost, however that's true of corn and hemp too.
Why would anyone else be obliged to honor your wishes and not distribute it further after they have paid for and received your work ?
That's called the First sale doctrine. I have every right to sale someone else a book I bought and paid for, even after I read it, but I have no right to copy that book and sale the copy but keep the one I bought.
What moral principle gives you any power over a work you produced after you have sold it, when no other producer - of, say, cars - have such power ?
That's called Work for Hire. If I work for an auto manufacture I get paid for the work I do making cars, but I don't have the right to be paid every tyme a car is sold to someone else.
Now if working for myself I create the next killer app, while I don't have the right to expect to be paid every tyme someone transfers ownership of the app to someone else, I do have the right to expect them to delete the app from their own computer and to hand over or destroy any backups of it they made of it.
Red vs Blue is obviously a simplification, but the mere population density axis alone is indeed an extremely powerful predictor in the US on almost all political issues.
Way over simplified I think. I'd like to see a breakdown along economic, governmental, and social issues. Myself, I am fiscally and governmentally conservative, ie I support small government. And socially I'm liberal, ie I believe government should stay out of people's lives except when they harm others. Therefore if and when I consider what party affiliation I have I consider myself Libertarian. Actually "liberalism" meant small government, Thomas Jefferon was a liberal and believed in liberty and small government, but it has since been distorted in the US. So now I typically qualify it as Classical Liberal.
Folks here on/. make up quite a small percentage, and though most (all, I presume) of us know about and probably participate in at least casual P2P activities (legal and otherwise)
Though I know about P2P I have never used it at all. I don't even have client software installed, unless the computer came with it in which case I don't know it. And other than updates the only files, other than web files such as html, js, flash, and what have you I've downloaded are FOOS and shareware programs from sites like CNet and tucows.
I'm very serious, why should they be able to control their work? "Because they should" or "Because it's right" or similar are not answers.
Because they worked to create it. Do you work for free?
However I believe copyrights have gone way out of bounds. The longest I'd have copyrights last is the original 14 years copyrights used to last. But because copyrights exist to encourage the arts I lean towards shortening them. Reducing the length of copyrights would mean people would have to create more to continue to be paid. How long they should last though I have no clue. Some have taken years to write something whereas others can compleat a book or something in a year.
That is not entirely true, at least it does not cover the whole world.
I don't know about Swedish law but in the US, perhaps I should have included that in my original post, the only tax an IP holder has to pay is the initial filing fee for the patent, trademark, or copyright.
And regarding copyrights, there is no fee at all.
There is a fee in the US.
we cannot register copyrights to get additional damages in case of infringements, which if I understand correctly is possible e.g. in the US.
No it's not possible, the most a person can do about infringement if they did not register a copyright is to get a cease and desist order wherein the infringer is ordered to stop copying. In the US the only way to be awarded damages in infringement cases is if the copyright was registered before the infringement happened.
What chance is there for the small businessman whose product can be shared for nothing by thousands the day after release? I speak here of the indie games developer. Want to hurt them? I sure don't, but if filesharing gets totally legalised, people will think anything on the net is theres for the taking, which is *entirely* wrong.
File sharing should never ever be illegal. The only thing that may be illegal is to share specific files. If I create something, like this post, I should be able to share it with the world, again as I am.
People drive too fast all the time. I mean, who hasn't had a ticket for speeding?
I got my first, and I've only had 2, speeding tickets after driving more than 20 years.
However, that doesn't mean that they aren't doing the right thing. They are putting people in jeopardy this way. I can't count the times that I have been nearly hit by a car that was driving WAY too fast and too reckless.
It's not speed that's dangerous, it reckless driving that is. And reckless driving includes driving too slow as well as too fast for road conditions. It also includes talking on your cellphone while you're driving and are supposed to be paying attention to traffic!!!
These days, since the feds lightened up, Montana took the reins of this issue and declared no speed limit BUT the police can pull you over and give you a REAL traffic ticket (with customary fines) for driving "unsafe" at any speed.
Stricter driving tests won't work because they don't test how you can handle your car if something unexpected happens. Now if everybody had to take what used to be called defensive driving classes, then I'd agree. As for me, I'm sending my kid to race driving school - not because I want to have them learn how to drive fast, but because you learn situational awareness (something that I've *never* seen in any other driving class) and what to do when you exceed your car's capabilities.
When I was young, maybe 12 years old if not sooner, my dad used to take me out into a field to practice driving. I'm pretty sure that if there had been a race track we could have used he'd have had me driving on it too. He'd have me do donuts, stomp on the gas then suddenly brake, and other things. I was expected to be able to recover from a number of things that could happen while driving, such as how to keep control of the car when the car fishtailed. Then when I took a driver's ed class in high school, which because of the off road driving I did I thought was a joke, I had no problem driving.
While there's a political divide in the US, actually more than one, I doubt that many of them are so much rural vs urban as other divides. The only one I may say are rural vs urban is with farm subsidies. The problem with this though is that I doubt many people, especially those living in cities, actually know that agricultural businesses receive billions of tax payer dollars in subsidies.
It's largely the rural supposedly "small government keep the government out of my life" types who have nothing to fear from terrorist attack who are marching around waving the flag and demanding Big Government police state intruding into our lives and take away our freedom
I don't see it that way, I see as many, if not more, cities dwellers who are afraid of terrorism as are rural people. Take a look at NYC's mayor Bloomberg's plan to install CC cameras all over New York City, duplicating London's nanny state.
Without copyright, everybody would be forced to self-publish... which may not seem to be a problem by itself, except that those with more money or affluence would be in a better position to receive recognition for their contributions than those who are not in as good a position, even though the latter might have something of equal or potentially greater worth to contribute. Even worse, a highly successful person or organization could potentially take over the publication of something that somebody else who had failed to get noticed did, cutting the original author out of any compensation whatsoever.
Oh, I agree. Copyrights are very important. I used to write myself, mostly short stories and poems but at one tyme I was working on a book and some articles for magazines. Something unfortunate ended my writing. I just wanted to point out that copyrights are a new thing.
That sort of is what happens with patents (I think, maybe). I remember hearing that companies have to pay fees to the patent office annually to keep their patents.
Not in the US. All that has to be paid for a patent in the US is when an application is submitted.
Surely the large IP holders already pay a fee or tax of sorts in that they have to retain representation to protect their IP portfolios?
No, IP holder don't pay a fee or tax on IP. It's not real property wherein they have to pay property tax. All IP holders have to pay is for the patent or copyright application, which is a one shot deal, as well as a tax on any profit made from the IP. If there's no profit they don't have to pay.
The only reason a vast segment of the population does it in the first place is because it's so easy to do and so easy to get away with without being caught. Prohibition isn't really a good example because drinking alchohol was not illegal from the outset, where copyright infringement was illegal LONG before the internet ever existed.
However copyright is a pretty recent invention. Thousands of years went by without copyrights.
Filesharing _is_ a crime in Sweden and people have been prosieuted for it
Is file sharing illegal or is it illegal to share files that are copyrighted and the person sharing the file does not have the authority to share it? Under the first one, if I write and produce my own music I can't share it whereas under the second someone else can't share the music I created unless I give them permission to share it.
Every time I sent well written and not excessively long letters to senators, etc there was nothing but canned responses (let alone as if they even read letters in the first place).
While it'd be nice if senators answered all letters it's really unreasonable to expect them to do so. If a senator represents just 1 million people and only 1 in 100 write 1 letter to the senator that's still 10,000 letters. Maybe what would help is to increase the number of senators per state. Then again if senators were required to answer every letter, then they wouldn't have tyme to propose some crazy new laws. However it I don't think it would really be a big problem if senators used the USA Constitution as a guideline, if it doesn't give the government the authority to create law X then proposed law X should be tossed in the garbage.
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Switchgrass gets you more ethanol than corn sure, but that's all you get. Growing corn gets you fuel and food. Growing hemp gets you fuel, food, and fiber.
No, growing switchgrass gives you food as well. Because corn for ethanol was diverted there's less food, but with switchgrass no corn is diverted. Also because not all of the switchgrass is converted to ethanol you also have some good compost, however that's true of corn and hemp too.
FalconOh, that's right. When people copy your stuff without permission that suddenly becomes stealing. But taking other people's stuff is OK, right? Right?
Copying isn't stealing, it is infringement if it is a copyrighted or patented item.
FalconWhy would anyone else be obliged to honor your wishes and not distribute it further after they have paid for and received your work ?
That's called the First sale doctrine. I have every right to sale someone else a book I bought and paid for, even after I read it, but I have no right to copy that book and sale the copy but keep the one I bought.
What moral principle gives you any power over a work you produced after you have sold it, when no other producer - of, say, cars - have such power ?
That's called Work for Hire. If I work for an auto manufacture I get paid for the work I do making cars, but I don't have the right to be paid every tyme a car is sold to someone else.
Now if working for myself I create the next killer app, while I don't have the right to expect to be paid every tyme someone transfers ownership of the app to someone else, I do have the right to expect them to delete the app from their own computer and to hand over or destroy any backups of it they made of it.
FalconThe essence of the web is file sharing, even a web page is a shared file. I'm talking about files that require payment, of which there are many.
But most people don't know that the web is all about sharing files. They don't know it's not just sharing music, movies, or software.
FalconRed vs Blue is obviously a simplification, but the mere population density axis alone is indeed an extremely powerful predictor in the US on almost all political issues.
Way over simplified I think. I'd like to see a breakdown along economic, governmental, and social issues. Myself, I am fiscally and governmentally conservative, ie I support small government. And socially I'm liberal, ie I believe government should stay out of people's lives except when they harm others. Therefore if and when I consider what party affiliation I have I consider myself Libertarian. Actually "liberalism" meant small government, Thomas Jefferon was a liberal and believed in liberty and small government, but it has since been distorted in the US. So now I typically qualify it as Classical Liberal.
FalconFolks here on /. make up quite a small percentage, and though most (all, I presume) of us know about and probably participate in at least casual P2P activities (legal and otherwise)
Though I know about P2P I have never used it at all. I don't even have client software installed, unless the computer came with it in which case I don't know it. And other than updates the only files, other than web files such as html, js, flash, and what have you I've downloaded are FOOS and shareware programs from sites like CNet and tucows.
FalconI'm very serious, why should they be able to control their work? "Because they should" or "Because it's right" or similar are not answers.
Because they worked to create it. Do you work for free?
However I believe copyrights have gone way out of bounds. The longest I'd have copyrights last is the original 14 years copyrights used to last. But because copyrights exist to encourage the arts I lean towards shortening them. Reducing the length of copyrights would mean people would have to create more to continue to be paid. How long they should last though I have no clue. Some have taken years to write something whereas others can compleat a book or something in a year.
Falconin the US column, we haven't had a war with any of our (immediate) neighbors since 1812, so we're doing pretty good on that front.
The NAZIs tried to get Mexico to attack the US.
FalconThat is not entirely true, at least it does not cover the whole world.
I don't know about Swedish law but in the US, perhaps I should have included that in my original post, the only tax an IP holder has to pay is the initial filing fee for the patent, trademark, or copyright.
And regarding copyrights, there is no fee at all.
There is a fee in the US.
we cannot register copyrights to get additional damages in case of infringements, which if I understand correctly is possible e.g. in the US.
No it's not possible, the most a person can do about infringement if they did not register a copyright is to get a cease and desist order wherein the infringer is ordered to stop copying. In the US the only way to be awarded damages in infringement cases is if the copyright was registered before the infringement happened.
FalconAnd I think you miss the point that IP holders don't pay a tax on their IP.
I do not miss this point, in fact, I never stated that IP holders do pay a tax on their IP.
Why then did you accuse me of missing the point when I said IP holders don't pay taxes? I even included the part of the post I was replying to, "Surely the large IP holders already pay a fee or tax of sorts in that they have to retain representation to protect their IP portfolios?"
FalconWhat chance is there for the small businessman whose product can be shared for nothing by thousands the day after release? I speak here of the indie games developer. Want to hurt them? I sure don't, but if filesharing gets totally legalised, people will think anything on the net is theres for the taking, which is *entirely* wrong.
File sharing should never ever be illegal. The only thing that may be illegal is to share specific files. If I create something, like this post, I should be able to share it with the world, again as I am.
FalconPeople drive too fast all the time. I mean, who hasn't had a ticket for speeding?
I got my first, and I've only had 2, speeding tickets after driving more than 20 years.
However, that doesn't mean that they aren't doing the right thing. They are putting people in jeopardy this way. I can't count the times that I have been nearly hit by a car that was driving WAY too fast and too reckless.
It's not speed that's dangerous, it reckless driving that is. And reckless driving includes driving too slow as well as too fast for road conditions. It also includes talking on your cellphone while you're driving and are supposed to be paying attention to traffic!!!
FalconThese days, since the feds lightened up, Montana took the reins of this issue and declared no speed limit BUT the police can pull you over and give you a REAL traffic ticket (with customary fines) for driving "unsafe" at any speed.
Which is how it should be.
FalconStricter driving tests won't work because they don't test how you can handle your car if something unexpected happens. Now if everybody had to take what used to be called defensive driving classes, then I'd agree. As for me, I'm sending my kid to race driving school - not because I want to have them learn how to drive fast, but because you learn situational awareness (something that I've *never* seen in any other driving class) and what to do when you exceed your car's capabilities.
When I was young, maybe 12 years old if not sooner, my dad used to take me out into a field to practice driving. I'm pretty sure that if there had been a race track we could have used he'd have had me driving on it too. He'd have me do donuts, stomp on the gas then suddenly brake, and other things. I was expected to be able to recover from a number of things that could happen while driving, such as how to keep control of the car when the car fishtailed. Then when I took a driver's ed class in high school, which because of the off road driving I did I thought was a joke, I had no problem driving.
FalconThere don't need to be laws against speeding, there need to be laws against reckless driving.
On this I agree.
Falconrural
While there's a political divide in the US, actually more than one, I doubt that many of them are so much rural vs urban as other divides. The only one I may say are rural vs urban is with farm subsidies. The problem with this though is that I doubt many people, especially those living in cities, actually know that agricultural businesses receive billions of tax payer dollars in subsidies.
It's largely the rural supposedly "small government keep the government out of my life" types who have nothing to fear from terrorist attack who are marching around waving the flag and demanding Big Government police state intruding into our lives and take away our freedom
I don't see it that way, I see as many, if not more, cities dwellers who are afraid of terrorism as are rural people. Take a look at NYC's mayor Bloomberg's plan to install CC cameras all over New York City, duplicating London's nanny state.
Most of the time, the existing politicians sense this is about to happen ahead of time, and change the law themselves.
Accept in the US politicians pass laws favorable to the MPAA and RIAA not to the population.
FalconI think you miss the point that the patent or copyright application is irrelevant
And I think you miss the point that IP holders don't pay a tax on their IP.
FalconWithout copyright, everybody would be forced to self-publish... which may not seem to be a problem by itself, except that those with more money or affluence would be in a better position to receive recognition for their contributions than those who are not in as good a position, even though the latter might have something of equal or potentially greater worth to contribute. Even worse, a highly successful person or organization could potentially take over the publication of something that somebody else who had failed to get noticed did, cutting the original author out of any compensation whatsoever.
Oh, I agree. Copyrights are very important. I used to write myself, mostly short stories and poems but at one tyme I was working on a book and some articles for magazines. Something unfortunate ended my writing. I just wanted to point out that copyrights are a new thing.
FalconThat sort of is what happens with patents (I think, maybe). I remember hearing that companies have to pay fees to the patent office annually to keep their patents.
Not in the US. All that has to be paid for a patent in the US is when an application is submitted.
FalconSurely the large IP holders already pay a fee or tax of sorts in that they have to retain representation to protect their IP portfolios?
No, IP holder don't pay a fee or tax on IP. It's not real property wherein they have to pay property tax. All IP holders have to pay is for the patent or copyright application, which is a one shot deal, as well as a tax on any profit made from the IP. If there's no profit they don't have to pay.
FalconThe only reason a vast segment of the population does it in the first place is because it's so easy to do and so easy to get away with without being caught. Prohibition isn't really a good example because drinking alchohol was not illegal from the outset, where copyright infringement was illegal LONG before the internet ever existed.
However copyright is a pretty recent invention. Thousands of years went by without copyrights.
FalconFilesharing _is_ a crime in Sweden and people have been prosieuted for it
Is file sharing illegal or is it illegal to share files that are copyrighted and the person sharing the file does not have the authority to share it? Under the first one, if I write and produce my own music I can't share it whereas under the second someone else can't share the music I created unless I give them permission to share it.
FalconEvery time I sent well written and not excessively long letters to senators, etc there was nothing but canned responses (let alone as if they even read letters in the first place).
While it'd be nice if senators answered all letters it's really unreasonable to expect them to do so. If a senator represents just 1 million people and only 1 in 100 write 1 letter to the senator that's still 10,000 letters. Maybe what would help is to increase the number of senators per state. Then again if senators were required to answer every letter, then they wouldn't have tyme to propose some crazy new laws. However it I don't think it would really be a big problem if senators used the USA Constitution as a guideline, if it doesn't give the government the authority to create law X then proposed law X should be tossed in the garbage.
FalconWhile I like my Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top I also liked Abba. And, shockingly, I also like Swing music.
Falcon