His argument is simple: (1) math cannot be patented (2) all algorithms are math (3) all software is one or more algorithms and so follows that software cannot be patentable.
Knuth is super intelligent, but his logic is flawed. Not all algorithms are math; most algorithms use some math. Algorithms are not a fact or discoverable, like mathematics. Instead, most algorithms are man-made, artificial software machines created by combining other smaller machine parts (more algorithms). In general, an invention, in all fields, whether it's computers, engineering, or carpentry, involves combining existing pieces to create a new, nonobvious piece.
If an electronics engineer can invent something by combining logic gates, flip flops and transistors, a mechanical engineer can invent a machine by combining gears, nuts, bolts, plastic and metal, then why can't a programmer invent a software machine by combining existing software machines? The concept is exactly the same, only the pieces (algorithms vs gears vs flip flops) are different.
How did get a patent for another obvious idea? Web pages are similar to e-books -- both have formatted text and images. Web pages have had ads since forever. Why is it innovative to stick ads in ebooks?
It's society who gives and takes "rights". What have you done to deserve freedom of speech, or the right not to be discriminated?
LOL, society owns squat. God created this planet and all its creatures. Now you have power to limit what other people can do, but not the "right". Individuals are no longer slave to some tyrannical dictator, but slave to the mob rule of "society". There can never be true freedom of speech, because people in power will always hate subjects who speak against them or their core values -- just look at slashdot moderation. As for the right not to be discriminated, that's illegal, same as murder or theft. Do you have any real arguments against my points or are you going to stoop to personal attacks?
As for the copy cats, do you think people would choose to buy "BartMan" instead of "Batman"?
You should read up on the reasoning behind trademarks to find the answer to that question.
1a. It sucks. People buying it decide that ALL "Batman" stuff sucks. Nobody gets any money for stuff that sucks.
There is another mechanism to prevent that, and which is generally agreed upon as positive: trademarks. You are conflating trademarks with derivative works.
It's very amusing that you find the protections provided by trademarks suddenly okay, but those provided by copyright as not okay. In any case, what gives you or anyone else the right to create knockoffs of Batman? You did not do a thing to deserve it.
You can register a trademark for the "leading" Batman comic (e.g. a distinct graphical symbol.. no idea what that could be) to distinguish it from those from competing authors, and only license it to works you approve of
That's not good enough. Batman is not just famous his name, he is more famous for his look -- dark cape, pointed ears etc. Without copyright protection, any joe shmoe can create his own Batman style comic, only he will name it "BartMan" or "Vampire Man" to work around your trademark restriction. Yes, all these copyright and trademark laws exist so the one created or owns the works benefits from it, and not some copycat parasite.
Name a single species, on this planet, other than human, that works primarily for the benefit of others
Ants, bees, wolves, meercats, I could go on if you'd like.
Wrong! Wolves partner with other wolves, creating wolf-packs, to attack animals stronger than a single wolf could take on. The wolf benefits from this partnering. If a copyright author does not get paid, he works primarily for the benefits of his users. Ants and bees do the same partnering for self benefit at the cost of working for others. Ants and bees partner with their own kind for self benefit at the cost of helping others. A single ant enjoys more food and comfort by working with other ants than he could have foraging food alone.
A lot of copyright holders put effort into creating a consistent Universe with high quality story lines.
You nailed it. How many people on YouTube watch Naruto AMVs (just remixed scenes from the anime with their favorite song)? Just a few, because the videos are crap and the remixer is just a hack who lacks the creativity and skill required by true artists. If every wannabe was allowed to create and distribute their own Batman, Superman, Naruto etc. the video content will be the same crap quality as YouTube AMVs. If you force copyright holders to allow derived works, market will be flooded with so many crap Batman comics and movies, nobody will associate Batman with good shows.
I, for one, am sick of the low-quality reality TV shows, low-quality youtube videos, low quality web blogs -- all free. When you demand free stuff, this is the quality you get.
Secondly, I don't understand the entitlement attitude most people have towards copyrighted works. The author used his own time and skill to create a work for your enjoyment. He does not owe you any work unless he is your slave. Therefore, he has the right to charge a reasonable price for his work for his own personal benefit. School, religion and OSS type propaganda has brainwashed you into slaving your life away for the benefit of others, when in reality you should be spending your time primarily for your own benefit. Name a single species, on this planet, other than human, that works primarily for the benefit of others -- none.
No Govt wants to use Google's actions to f**k up the copyright system and turn it into some open-source, communist type system. The copyright laws have served the world well and there is no need to destroy them and shaft the authors of books -- they get shafted enough by the public and publishers.
Don't change any laws -- there's nothing wrong with copyright law. Don't fix what's not broken!
Google should simply give equal access to the books to other publishers as well.
If NBIS owns (copyright owner) the data, he has to pay whatever they charge. If the San Francisco local government owns the data, then it's probably public data, I'm not sure. NBIS may own copyrights on that data because they have invested tens or hundreds of thousands in employees and installing those transponders. They can only recoup the cost + make a profit by charging tens of thousands per month.
It's just business -- you can't walk into a BMW dealership and demand they give you a new car for $1,000. The seller sets the price, and if you don't like it, don't buy it.
The article summary talks about a one-sided approach to copyright and claims things are being "stolen." But as we've learned from Slashdot's pro-piracy articles, piracy isn't theft, remember? Talk about one-sided.
Slashdot, like GPL, is anti-profit -- and they switch sides and talk from both sides of their figurative mouths to achieve their agenda. They don't want anyone to make money off copyrighted works. How can you "steal" a public domain book? It's available to everyone to use for free or profit, to modify as you see fit -- true freedom. Now they want to add more restrictions in the name of protecting the user and the works.
Trillions spent/lost in dot-com crash, 9-11, Iraq war, mortgage meltdown and now "stimulus" projects. Why don't they stop spending money for a few years until the economy recovers? The US is heading for bankruptcy if they keep wasting so much money.
DMCA prevents copyrighted material being ripped off by other leeches. Imagine spending years writing hundreds of web pages and then working to make your website a success -- ad money is rolling in. Then some leech, tempted by your profits, spends less than one week, using the curl tool to download your site and recreate it. The profits of the original site start to rapidly dwindle and go towards the leeches, and more leeches join the fray.
DMCA can be used to quickly shut down this leech sites. After a while, few people will be interested in investing years of their lives to supporting leeches or the indifferent consumers who don't care about anyone except getting their product for free or cheap.
Do you really believe people like OSS because they can access source code? Heck, source code looks like brain-hurting goobleygook unless they spend weeks, or months understanding the code. No, the real attraction of OSS is free programs, as in $0 -- blind greed.
This statement-of-opinion-with-no-justification game is fun!
Trying to justify to shameless pirates why media should be copyrighted is no fun! Copyright ensures creators get paid (benefit) for their work while consumers get the benefit of using their work -- fair. Without copyright, creators get zilch, and consumers get everything for free.
Because you, and your kind want artists to work for free -- as a result of no weakened/destroyed copyright laws.
If 95% of [insert poor helpless group] can't make any income from [insert some lifestyle choice they want] it is not society's problems
Gaining benefit from the artists' work while not paying anything in return is robbery of artists by "society". Or put another way, according to you, society's menial, mundane jobs deserve to get paid, while artists' work is so worthless they don't even deserve to get paid minimum wage.
It's not wrong that artists should seek to make money off their work. But don't connect artistic quality with financial rewards, because that's a fallacy.
But there is a rather big connection -- creating good art requires a lot of time, talent, effort and money. If art does not pay, then the artist cannot devote time to this endeavor. For example, "Star Trek, the TV series" is of lower production quality than "Star Trek, the Movie" because revenue from TV advertising is tiny compared to revenue from ticket and DVD sales of movies.
Another example -- quality of a dead-tree written book very often exceeds the quality of free web blogs. The book was written by an experienced author who was paid an advance by the publisher so that he can afford to expend time creating high-quality work. Meanwhile the blog was written by an amateur who cannot expend as much time creating his work because of the tiny amount of advertising revenue from his blog.
Laws are also passed to protect the minority (artists) from exploitation by the majority (art consumers). The current copyright laws benefit both artists and consumers and are more or less fair.
Mozart, Beethoven, Picasso all died more or less penniless, while the business-savvy people who owned their works made a fortune. It's true most artists create stuff for the sake of creating it. But good artists have very poor business sense, which means they will get taken advantage of by the business people. The situation has become so terrible that the creator of many copyrighted works has no right over his/her own work, and will not gain royalty, nor credit -- especially computer programmers.
In the end, it all boils down to fairness -- does the consuming public, government, and business want to reward artists fairly, with money. Or just be a cunning shylock and pay them with only words and superficial admiration. Lack of financial rewards will force the artists to work second jobs, and most of them are quite poor at any job other than their art. Just because you can take advantage of someone doesn't mean you should.
The study says "Piracy (filesharing) was the driving force behind increased creative output" -- more movies, songs etc., which is complete nonsense. The real reason is the cost of producing and distributing art has dropped due to new software for creating the art and using the web for distribution.
The study encourages artists to use complements -- "speaking tours, concerts, t-shirts etc." to make income. Well, that only works for famous, top 5% artists. What about the remaining 95%? They are not famous enough to make any income from such "complements."
They cannot. Once they sign a contract with the label, the label becomes the publisher/distributor. And unless the artists have money/talent to market their album, signing that contract is the only way to make any decent profit.
Musicians probably earn more performing concerts because the music labels take a huge percentage of the revenue from selling CDs, leaving only a tiny percent for the musicians. The number of concerts would drop if musicians got a bigger percentage of the CDs.
The powers that be want to weaken/destroy copyright so that musicians/writers/programmers/designers/etc cannot make any income from selling the final product -- rather they expect these people to become salaried professionals, getting paid by the hour or work for free. Programmers are already in that group.
The day copyright dies, the artistic output quality will drop drastically as few artists will work to benefit the leechers who will directly rip or remix existing art for personal use/gain.
Slashdot Mirror
Knuth is super intelligent, but his logic is flawed. Not all algorithms are math; most algorithms use some math. Algorithms are not a fact or discoverable, like mathematics. Instead, most algorithms are man-made, artificial software machines created by combining other smaller machine parts (more algorithms). In general, an invention, in all fields, whether it's computers, engineering, or carpentry, involves combining existing pieces to create a new, nonobvious piece.
If an electronics engineer can invent something by combining logic gates, flip flops and transistors, a mechanical engineer can invent a machine by combining gears, nuts, bolts, plastic and metal, then why can't a programmer invent a software machine by combining existing software machines? The concept is exactly the same, only the pieces (algorithms vs gears vs flip flops) are different.
How did get a patent for another obvious idea? Web pages are similar to e-books -- both have formatted text and images. Web pages have had ads since forever. Why is it innovative to stick ads in ebooks?
LOL, society owns squat. God created this planet and all its creatures. Now you have power to limit what other people can do, but not the "right". Individuals are no longer slave to some tyrannical dictator, but slave to the mob rule of "society". There can never be true freedom of speech, because people in power will always hate subjects who speak against them or their core values -- just look at slashdot moderation. As for the right not to be discriminated, that's illegal, same as murder or theft. Do you have any real arguments against my points or are you going to stoop to personal attacks?
You should read up on the reasoning behind trademarks to find the answer to that question.
It's very amusing that you find the protections provided by trademarks suddenly okay, but those provided by copyright as not okay. In any case, what gives you or anyone else the right to create knockoffs of Batman? You did not do a thing to deserve it.
That's not good enough. Batman is not just famous his name, he is more famous for his look -- dark cape, pointed ears etc. Without copyright protection, any joe shmoe can create his own Batman style comic, only he will name it "BartMan" or "Vampire Man" to work around your trademark restriction. Yes, all these copyright and trademark laws exist so the one created or owns the works benefits from it, and not some copycat parasite.
Wrong! Wolves partner with other wolves, creating wolf-packs, to attack animals stronger than a single wolf could take on. The wolf benefits from this partnering. If a copyright author does not get paid, he works primarily for the benefits of his users. Ants and bees do the same partnering for self benefit at the cost of working for others. Ants and bees partner with their own kind for self benefit at the cost of helping others. A single ant enjoys more food and comfort by working with other ants than he could have foraging food alone.
You nailed it. How many people on YouTube watch Naruto AMVs (just remixed scenes from the anime with their favorite song)? Just a few, because the videos are crap and the remixer is just a hack who lacks the creativity and skill required by true artists. If every wannabe was allowed to create and distribute their own Batman, Superman, Naruto etc. the video content will be the same crap quality as YouTube AMVs. If you force copyright holders to allow derived works, market will be flooded with so many crap Batman comics and movies, nobody will associate Batman with good shows.
I, for one, am sick of the low-quality reality TV shows, low-quality youtube videos, low quality web blogs -- all free. When you demand free stuff, this is the quality you get.
Secondly, I don't understand the entitlement attitude most people have towards copyrighted works. The author used his own time and skill to create a work for your enjoyment. He does not owe you any work unless he is your slave. Therefore, he has the right to charge a reasonable price for his work for his own personal benefit. School, religion and OSS type propaganda has brainwashed you into slaving your life away for the benefit of others, when in reality you should be spending your time primarily for your own benefit. Name a single species, on this planet, other than human, that works primarily for the benefit of others -- none.
No Govt wants to use Google's actions to f**k up the copyright system and turn it into some open-source, communist type system. The copyright laws have served the world well and there is no need to destroy them and shaft the authors of books -- they get shafted enough by the public and publishers.
Don't change any laws -- there's nothing wrong with copyright law. Don't fix what's not broken!
Google should simply give equal access to the books to other publishers as well.
If NBIS owns (copyright owner) the data, he has to pay whatever they charge. If the San Francisco local government owns the data, then it's probably public data, I'm not sure. NBIS may own copyrights on that data because they have invested tens or hundreds of thousands in employees and installing those transponders. They can only recoup the cost + make a profit by charging tens of thousands per month.
It's just business -- you can't walk into a BMW dealership and demand they give you a new car for $1,000. The seller sets the price, and if you don't like it, don't buy it.
This is like 1984, everything is upside down. Downloading copyrighted material is okay, but selling public domain work is a crime.
Slashdot, like GPL, is anti-profit -- and they switch sides and talk from both sides of their figurative mouths to achieve their agenda. They don't want anyone to make money off copyrighted works. How can you "steal" a public domain book? It's available to everyone to use for free or profit, to modify as you see fit -- true freedom. Now they want to add more restrictions in the name of protecting the user and the works.
Trillions spent/lost in dot-com crash, 9-11, Iraq war, mortgage meltdown and now "stimulus" projects. Why don't they stop spending money for a few years until the economy recovers? The US is heading for bankruptcy if they keep wasting so much money.
He got ripped off.. like taking candy from a kid. A patent would have earned him millions.
Yeah, but are any of those things useful? A lot of patents are for products that have no consumer demand.
DMCA prevents copyrighted material being ripped off by other leeches. Imagine spending years writing hundreds of web pages and then working to make your website a success -- ad money is rolling in. Then some leech, tempted by your profits, spends less than one week, using the curl tool to download your site and recreate it. The profits of the original site start to rapidly dwindle and go towards the leeches, and more leeches join the fray.
DMCA can be used to quickly shut down this leech sites. After a while, few people will be interested in investing years of their lives to supporting leeches or the indifferent consumers who don't care about anyone except getting their product for free or cheap.
Do you really believe people like OSS because they can access source code? Heck, source code looks like brain-hurting goobleygook unless they spend weeks, or months understanding the code. No, the real attraction of OSS is free programs, as in $0 -- blind greed.
Trying to justify to shameless pirates why media should be copyrighted is no fun! Copyright ensures creators get paid (benefit) for their work while consumers get the benefit of using their work -- fair. Without copyright, creators get zilch, and consumers get everything for free.
Correction, everyone wants other people's information to be free!
Because you, and your kind want artists to work for free -- as a result of no weakened/destroyed copyright laws.
Gaining benefit from the artists' work while not paying anything in return is robbery of artists by "society". Or put another way, according to you, society's menial, mundane jobs deserve to get paid, while artists' work is so worthless they don't even deserve to get paid minimum wage.
But there is a rather big connection -- creating good art requires a lot of time, talent, effort and money. If art does not pay, then the artist cannot devote time to this endeavor. For example, "Star Trek, the TV series" is of lower production quality than "Star Trek, the Movie" because revenue from TV advertising is tiny compared to revenue from ticket and DVD sales of movies.
Another example -- quality of a dead-tree written book very often exceeds the quality of free web blogs. The book was written by an experienced author who was paid an advance by the publisher so that he can afford to expend time creating high-quality work. Meanwhile the blog was written by an amateur who cannot expend as much time creating his work because of the tiny amount of advertising revenue from his blog.
Laws are also passed to protect the minority (artists) from exploitation by the majority (art consumers). The current copyright laws benefit both artists and consumers and are more or less fair.
Mozart, Beethoven, Picasso all died more or less penniless, while the business-savvy people who owned their works made a fortune. It's true most artists create stuff for the sake of creating it. But good artists have very poor business sense, which means they will get taken advantage of by the business people. The situation has become so terrible that the creator of many copyrighted works has no right over his/her own work, and will not gain royalty, nor credit -- especially computer programmers.
In the end, it all boils down to fairness -- does the consuming public, government, and business want to reward artists fairly, with money. Or just be a cunning shylock and pay them with only words and superficial admiration. Lack of financial rewards will force the artists to work second jobs, and most of them are quite poor at any job other than their art. Just because you can take advantage of someone doesn't mean you should.
The study says "Piracy (filesharing) was the driving force behind increased creative output" -- more movies, songs etc., which is complete nonsense. The real reason is the cost of producing and distributing art has dropped due to new software for creating the art and using the web for distribution.
The study encourages artists to use complements -- "speaking tours, concerts, t-shirts etc." to make income. Well, that only works for famous, top 5% artists. What about the remaining 95%? They are not famous enough to make any income from such "complements."
They cannot. Once they sign a contract with the label, the label becomes the publisher/distributor. And unless the artists have money/talent to market their album, signing that contract is the only way to make any decent profit.
Musicians probably earn more performing concerts because the music labels take a huge percentage of the revenue from selling CDs, leaving only a tiny percent for the musicians. The number of concerts would drop if musicians got a bigger percentage of the CDs.
The powers that be want to weaken/destroy copyright so that musicians/writers/programmers/designers/etc cannot make any income from selling the final product -- rather they expect these people to become salaried professionals, getting paid by the hour or work for free. Programmers are already in that group.
The day copyright dies, the artistic output quality will drop drastically as few artists will work to benefit the leechers who will directly rip or remix existing art for personal use/gain.