I still don't see how clickthrough EULAs can possibly be seen as a "contract". My friend Mike buys a program and since he's not technologically savvy, he has me (or his son) install it for him.
Agency law, buddy. By having you install the software for him, he is delegating authority within the scope of your "employment" to you. This is just like how if I am FedEx and my driver negligently runs you over, liability is imputed to me.
Think of an agent as your avatar. Once you give him authority, he has authority to bind you.
I'm pretty sure rms discovered cheese by looking in his beard and hair.
Face it: The world would be a lot freer if Brad Pitt were the head of the FSF. rms is a truly influential man, but surely he should realize that society prejudges unkempt individuals as untrustworthy or crazy. Whether you like it or not, it's true.
But the man doesn't compromise himself, not ethics, nor code, nor coiffure.;)
However, legal obligations change. If we have no copyright and you license code X to person Y under a non-distribution covenant, if person Y distributes, you can only sue Y for damages. Not me, or anyone else who gets the code from person Y.
However, under copyright law, you could sue each of us for infringement as well.
The Black Friend Argument is perfectly logical; it's just unfortunately overused and has become a joke. The argument is used anticipatorily: You make a negative comment about some group of black people. You anticipate someone to call you a hater of black people. To head off this line of attack, you point out that you have a black friend and therefore by definition do not hate black people.
It doesn't head off all lines of attack. It just heads off the attack that you are hate-filled.
It should be noted that the Black Friend Argument doesn't head off accusations of racism, though. (Racism can be unintentionally negative or (un)intentionally positive comments as well.)
I structured that last sentence incorrectly. It should have been
You don't think a new version of Photoshop CS has its copyright protection already partially deducted based on how many years it's been since Photoshop 1.0 came out, do you?
No. The changes made in the past year would get a year's protection. The changes made in 1990 would have been protected from 1990 to, say, 1991. Lines of code are separable.
You don't think Adobe Photoshop 1.0 gets its copyright protection reset to "begin countdown" every time a new CS version comes out, do you?
So he ended up having to do what the purist way would have required (writing a new SCM if none of the available ones were suitable)
I think you don't understand what pragmatism means. By virtue of your usage of "if none of the ones available are suitable," a pragmatist would also have written his own.
If nothing suitable is available, a pragmatist creates his own. See, e.g., how Linus, a pragmatist, started Linux because "nothing suitable was available."
The purist seeks to change the world to fit him, whereas the pragmatist changes himself to fit the world.
What a load of poetic dung. It obfuscates the fact that a purist is unwilling to bend and would rather accomplish 0% of his goal than accomplish 90% of his goal. A pragmatist would rather accomplish 90% than 0% at the risk of losing his chance to achieve 100% of his goal.
A purist refuses to compromise.
A pragmatist is willing to compromise if it moves him closer to his goals.
No amount of gussying up these definitional facts can hide the simple truth: A pragmatist is an ideologist with one core belief: Do what works.
Never mind, my argument is not made completely. Just ignore my other post.
I do think it's an interesting proposal, the FairTax. However, I haven't really been persuaded that a complete overhaul of our tax system by the entrenched politicians in Washington would do anything other than benefit the wealthy.
This is the same reason I don't support rewriting any part of the Constitution through another Convention: I just know something like "national religion = Christianity" or "saying 'nigger' is not protected speech" or "flag burning is unconstitutional" would show up in those efforts.
That is true. However, it seems that the FairTax does not have such exemptions. But I do agree that that is a good idea. However, at some point in the wealthier brackets, it would still become regressive as investment takes over the outflow of capital from wealthy individuals' coffers. Except maybe then it would be regressive against the middle class.
You could still make an argument that this is a good way to incentivize investment, but I still think it would cause the rich-poor gap to widen.
I agree with the sentiment about the complexity of the current tax code (I've foregone learning the law during my bar studies because I don't have the time to study it all).
However, I think the fair tax is a lot less progressive against poor people. The fair tax taxes expenditures, and as poor people spend more (in proportion) than rich people (rich people invest more), the poor are taxed more than the rich proportionally compared to the current tax structure.
See this graph of data created by Boston University:
Also note that this is basically the edge of my knowledge on the FairTax and tax structures in general, so don't expect a list of brilliant retorts and policy arguments to follow any response to this.:)
Again, you're ignoring my argument completely. You are the one who initially made an argument based on timing ("someone who bought in 2000 would not have made any money"). I responded 100% in kind. Your current argument against what I said is equally an argument against what you initially said.
OK, fine. Anyone who bought stock in March and has now sold it has made 20% ROI. (Actually more like 40%, but whatever.)
So now what's your point? I still don't get it. It seems like you're saying anyone who has bought stock and has held it has not made money. Well duh. That's like saying anyone who has made any investment ever and has not cashed it in yet has made no (or little) money. It's practically a tautaulogy, meaningless in every argument. Like saying x=x.
Did you have some other point you were making? I'll admit, it seems very much like you were trying to argue that investing in the stock market is a bad idea because if you invested in 2000, you'd have made no money (but would have lost due to opportunity cost of money). I simply pointed out that a change in initial investment time would have yielded massive profits.
OK, fair enough. But I don't think the guy was trying to use "free market" in its technical sense. I think he was saying that, functionally, it is a free market only for the wealthy. I see no problem with using the term in that way, because people should realize what he meant:
So it's the free market of people who already have a lot of money and time, or simply an enormous amount of money.
There's the relevant quote for reference. Of course he's not literally saying that it's a free market for wealthy. He's pointing out that, while not literally a free market for the wealthy only, it's effectively one. And that's pretty much true because non-wealthy are excluded by barriers to entry and therefore can be treated as nonexistent from a practical POV.
You lack reading ability apparently. He never claimed rich people didn't have to pay all those costs. He pointed out that the non-rich people cannot afford to pay the costs, but rich people can. The cost of development is a barrier to entry. It's the same way that you couldn't start a telecom tomorrow on a Joe's salary and expect to get anywhere. And no matter how savvy you are, a Joe isn't going to get wealthy backers by saying "I've been a computer programmer for 15 years."
Perhaps from an ever-widening gap between the rich and poor and a destruction of the middle class that is directly related to income taxes not being progressive enough?
As someone who has gone through law school and met a lot of people from wealthy families, I've learned that there are nearly sure-fire moneymaking schemes out there that only wealthy people can buy into. International arbitrage is where it's at. An interesting moneymaking pattern is this: The Indian government apparently currently is incentivizing power plant construction by guaranteeing an X% rate of return every year for Y years plus recoupment of complete investment costs. X is significantly higher than the investment plans available to the hoi polloi because the investor has to be willing to front the initial multimillion dollar investment of building the plant.
So wealthy people sink their $30M or whatever into building one of these and, provided the Indian government doesn't go tits up, the investors get ridiculous returns on their investment with little to no risk.
There are tons of other opportunities like this out there that wealthy families take advantage of on a regular basis. I've heard the stories and I know the involved parties. I just can't afford to participate because of the costs of entry.
like what happens when I write a program, and the compiler output played as audio happens to be a copyrighted song
It is impossible for a work to infringe if it is independently created.
Now if you purposefully wrote your program to cause the compiler to play a copyrighted song, I think it's obvious this is just like compressing a song to an MP3.
Hell, if he lost in district court, I can still pull the decision. I'll publish it for everyone here, judicial decisions being in the public domain and all.
His citation is that he's an idiot who knows nothing of copyright law. The facts of his care are "I made up everything off the top of my head." You, who straightforwardly disclaims with IANAL, are closer to being a lawyer than this Hungus guy. Were I not in the middle of studying for the bar (starts in five days), I would explain better. No doubt someone else here will, but as there is no response to your post, I'll make a very brief explanation without any links. With my input, though, finding links should be trivial even for a non-lawyer.
1. things in the public domain, no matter how many copies there are, remain in the public domain 2. you can copy anything in the public domain with impunity from infringement lawsuits 3. if someone makes a copy and infuses in that copy some new, even relatively trivial, amount of artistic expression, the copy is copyrightable, but only the added elements, not the original elements 4. it is very close to 100% likely that "putting a book in a scanner and hitting 'scan'" doesn't count as adding new artistic expression 5. thus, the copy has no copyright protection 6. thus, hungus is posting way beyond his pay grade
Beyond that, because the only newly copyrighted things are the added artistic elements and not the underlying public domain expression, you could look at the images and re-transcribe the original words with impunity.
So much bullshit. I wish I were not in the middle of studying for the bar: I could write a 50 page paper on how much you should shut up about things you don't understand. And the +5 Informative moderation.
Slashdot Mirror
Agency law, buddy. By having you install the software for him, he is delegating authority within the scope of your "employment" to you. This is just like how if I am FedEx and my driver negligently runs you over, liability is imputed to me.
Think of an agent as your avatar. Once you give him authority, he has authority to bind you.
You wouldn't have their code.
In the short term, yes. In the long term, fuck no.
I'm pretty sure rms discovered cheese by looking in his beard and hair.
Face it: The world would be a lot freer if Brad Pitt were the head of the FSF. rms is a truly influential man, but surely he should realize that society prejudges unkempt individuals as untrustworthy or crazy. Whether you like it or not, it's true.
But the man doesn't compromise himself, not ethics, nor code, nor coiffure. ;)
However, legal obligations change. If we have no copyright and you license code X to person Y under a non-distribution covenant, if person Y distributes, you can only sue Y for damages. Not me, or anyone else who gets the code from person Y.
However, under copyright law, you could sue each of us for infringement as well.
It's likely GP was referring to the new anti-Tivoization clauses of GPL3 and the anti-patent clauses of GPL2, added in these respective versions.
The Black Friend Argument is perfectly logical; it's just unfortunately overused and has become a joke. The argument is used anticipatorily: You make a negative comment about some group of black people. You anticipate someone to call you a hater of black people. To head off this line of attack, you point out that you have a black friend and therefore by definition do not hate black people.
It doesn't head off all lines of attack. It just heads off the attack that you are hate-filled.
It should be noted that the Black Friend Argument doesn't head off accusations of racism, though. (Racism can be unintentionally negative or (un)intentionally positive comments as well.)
I structured that last sentence incorrectly. It should have been
No. The changes made in the past year would get a year's protection. The changes made in 1990 would have been protected from 1990 to, say, 1991. Lines of code are separable.
You don't think Adobe Photoshop 1.0 gets its copyright protection reset to "begin countdown" every time a new CS version comes out, do you?
I think you don't understand what pragmatism means. By virtue of your usage of "if none of the ones available are suitable," a pragmatist would also have written his own.
If nothing suitable is available, a pragmatist creates his own. See, e.g., how Linus, a pragmatist, started Linux because "nothing suitable was available."
What a load of poetic dung. It obfuscates the fact that a purist is unwilling to bend and would rather accomplish 0% of his goal than accomplish 90% of his goal. A pragmatist would rather accomplish 90% than 0% at the risk of losing his chance to achieve 100% of his goal.
A purist refuses to compromise.
A pragmatist is willing to compromise if it moves him closer to his goals.
No amount of gussying up these definitional facts can hide the simple truth: A pragmatist is an ideologist with one core belief: Do what works.
Never mind, my argument is not made completely. Just ignore my other post.
I do think it's an interesting proposal, the FairTax. However, I haven't really been persuaded that a complete overhaul of our tax system by the entrenched politicians in Washington would do anything other than benefit the wealthy.
This is the same reason I don't support rewriting any part of the Constitution through another Convention: I just know something like "national religion = Christianity" or "saying 'nigger' is not protected speech" or "flag burning is unconstitutional" would show up in those efforts.
I thought trickle-down economics was discredited a long time ago.
Wages go up as demand goes up, not as money supply goes up.
When you earn more in salary, do you start offering thrice the price for the same loaf of bread?
That is true. However, it seems that the FairTax does not have such exemptions. But I do agree that that is a good idea. However, at some point in the wealthier brackets, it would still become regressive as investment takes over the outflow of capital from wealthy individuals' coffers. Except maybe then it would be regressive against the middle class.
You could still make an argument that this is a good way to incentivize investment, but I still think it would cause the rich-poor gap to widen.
I agree with the sentiment about the complexity of the current tax code (I've foregone learning the law during my bar studies because I don't have the time to study it all).
However, I think the fair tax is a lot less progressive against poor people. The fair tax taxes expenditures, and as poor people spend more (in proportion) than rich people (rich people invest more), the poor are taxed more than the rich proportionally compared to the current tax structure.
See this graph of data created by Boston University:
Also note that this is basically the edge of my knowledge on the FairTax and tax structures in general, so don't expect a list of brilliant retorts and policy arguments to follow any response to this. :)
Again, you're ignoring my argument completely. You are the one who initially made an argument based on timing ("someone who bought in 2000 would not have made any money"). I responded 100% in kind. Your current argument against what I said is equally an argument against what you initially said.
OK, fine. Anyone who bought stock in March and has now sold it has made 20% ROI. (Actually more like 40%, but whatever.)
So now what's your point? I still don't get it. It seems like you're saying anyone who has bought stock and has held it has not made money. Well duh. That's like saying anyone who has made any investment ever and has not cashed it in yet has made no (or little) money. It's practically a tautaulogy, meaningless in every argument. Like saying x=x.
Did you have some other point you were making? I'll admit, it seems very much like you were trying to argue that investing in the stock market is a bad idea because if you invested in 2000, you'd have made no money (but would have lost due to opportunity cost of money). I simply pointed out that a change in initial investment time would have yielded massive profits.
OK, fair enough. But I don't think the guy was trying to use "free market" in its technical sense. I think he was saying that, functionally, it is a free market only for the wealthy. I see no problem with using the term in that way, because people should realize what he meant:
There's the relevant quote for reference. Of course he's not literally saying that it's a free market for wealthy. He's pointing out that, while not literally a free market for the wealthy only, it's effectively one. And that's pretty much true because non-wealthy are excluded by barriers to entry and therefore can be treated as nonexistent from a practical POV.
Sure, and everyone who bought stock in February has made at least a 20% ROI by now. What's your point?
You lack reading ability apparently. He never claimed rich people didn't have to pay all those costs. He pointed out that the non-rich people cannot afford to pay the costs, but rich people can. The cost of development is a barrier to entry. It's the same way that you couldn't start a telecom tomorrow on a Joe's salary and expect to get anywhere. And no matter how savvy you are, a Joe isn't going to get wealthy backers by saying "I've been a computer programmer for 15 years."
Perhaps from an ever-widening gap between the rich and poor and a destruction of the middle class that is directly related to income taxes not being progressive enough?
As someone who has gone through law school and met a lot of people from wealthy families, I've learned that there are nearly sure-fire moneymaking schemes out there that only wealthy people can buy into. International arbitrage is where it's at. An interesting moneymaking pattern is this: The Indian government apparently currently is incentivizing power plant construction by guaranteeing an X% rate of return every year for Y years plus recoupment of complete investment costs. X is significantly higher than the investment plans available to the hoi polloi because the investor has to be willing to front the initial multimillion dollar investment of building the plant.
So wealthy people sink their $30M or whatever into building one of these and, provided the Indian government doesn't go tits up, the investors get ridiculous returns on their investment with little to no risk.
There are tons of other opportunities like this out there that wealthy families take advantage of on a regular basis. I've heard the stories and I know the involved parties. I just can't afford to participate because of the costs of entry.
It is impossible for a work to infringe if it is independently created.
Now if you purposefully wrote your program to cause the compiler to play a copyrighted song, I think it's obvious this is just like compressing a song to an MP3.
Hell, if he lost in district court, I can still pull the decision. I'll publish it for everyone here, judicial decisions being in the public domain and all.
His citation is that he's an idiot who knows nothing of copyright law. The facts of his care are "I made up everything off the top of my head." You, who straightforwardly disclaims with IANAL, are closer to being a lawyer than this Hungus guy. Were I not in the middle of studying for the bar (starts in five days), I would explain better. No doubt someone else here will, but as there is no response to your post, I'll make a very brief explanation without any links. With my input, though, finding links should be trivial even for a non-lawyer.
1. things in the public domain, no matter how many copies there are, remain in the public domain
2. you can copy anything in the public domain with impunity from infringement lawsuits
3. if someone makes a copy and infuses in that copy some new, even relatively trivial, amount of artistic expression, the copy is copyrightable, but only the added elements, not the original elements
4. it is very close to 100% likely that "putting a book in a scanner and hitting 'scan'" doesn't count as adding new artistic expression
5. thus, the copy has no copyright protection
6. thus, hungus is posting way beyond his pay grade
Beyond that, because the only newly copyrighted things are the added artistic elements and not the underlying public domain expression, you could look at the images and re-transcribe the original words with impunity.
So much bullshit. I wish I were not in the middle of studying for the bar: I could write a 50 page paper on how much you should shut up about things you don't understand. And the +5 Informative moderation.
I wish I could quit you, Slashdot.