So what is your contribution to the world other then repeating the drivel from some of the Dragonfly lunatics? (and with that I don't mean Matt, he has a founded opinion, tho one you can disagree with, and actually contributes things)
The code has become fragile and unreadable. Too many hacked in "fixes" have left nasty sharp corners which will snag you unexpectedly.
AH yes.. like whats Dragonfly's package system of the day? and hey, we are goign to move everything from under giant real soon (but not for now)..
Or.. like how NetBSD 2.0 manages to keep up for a whopping 12 hours on average on my quad hypersparc machine before crashing?
Don't get me wrong, both are nice systems, but have their own issues.
It is unfortunate that the US system pretty much requires lawyers, but that stems from more than just legalese. Since we have so many levels a law can exist at, and so many things that reference each other, a profession was bound to pop up for people we just knew them already.
I agree that legalese is not the only problem, and for as far as used between legal professionals, it is not a problem at all for as far as I am concerned.
That said, if people are supposed to keep to the rules, then those rules should be written in a way they can understand at least at the basic level. That there are complexities to a law system (the USA is not unique in that really) is a different matter, and for an exact understanding, especially in more complex cases, I don't think it is a problem at all that a specialist (lawyer) is needed. When you need a lawyer to get a basic understanding of an everyday situation then something is terribly broken.
It is still possible to know and understand the law, but it is too difficult for the average person because there are simply too many laws. I think we both agree that this situation is a definite problem.
Indeed.
The last point I wanted to make about the definition topic is to agree that words change. If you codify a definition into law, or set it through case law and precident, it fixes the meaning. Since words change, you will end with legal definition mismatched from common definition. Piracy is just one of the many of these.
I understand the problem of change, and except for suggesting expiration and review of laws, I don't know a solution that might work to prevent the problems it can cause.
I have a different opinion however about the specific example of piracy. It seems to me that courts needed a word to describe a practise, and picked or more likely accepted this one (accepted as in, it is my understanding it was used first in the context of copyright infringement by prosecution, not by judges or law texts)
The example I gave you is another one where change is really not the issue, in the case of obviousness, it seems courts defined it to mean an extremely tiny subset of its normal meaning, which lost the actual concept of the meaning of the word in normal language. I am not aware of substantial changes to the meaning of the word obviousness over the last 50 (or for that matter, 250) years.
So the only unfortunate thing happening in both cases seems to be courts adapting specific meanings of words that had at that time no foundation in the everyday meaning of those words, and still don't.
I do understand in both cases how courts mau have come to their specific definitions, but I don't think that they did a good job in either case.
The courts use codified definitions so that things are exacting, fair, and not open to interpretation as much as possible. You wouldn't want the courts using vernacular because it would open up for tremendous abuse.
I am aware of that, and I see the need for it. That doesn't mean that courts can go on and use definitions that are unlike the ones used in general.
The simple reason for this is that as a citizen of the USA (and many other countries) you are supposed to 'know and understand the law'. This can only work if that law is in fact understandable (at least the basics of it) to the general public.
Strict definitions are needed, but to define soemthing completely different from its generally accepted meaning is just plain wrong.
The piracy thing is one example, but there are many others. To illustrate, many young people now consider sex to only be vaginal intercourse, so oral/anal would not be sex. Would you want the courts to use that definition of sex? Perhaps abortion becomes first degree murder. Et cetera, ad infinitum.
Well.. it seems to have worked that way for one of the former presidents of the USA in some quite high pitched legal fight now didn't it?
He no doubt knew he was wrong there, but still, you simply cannot expect people to keep to the rules if those rules don't use a language they can understand. WHat you are doing in that case is creating the room for a profession of 'interpreter of rules', aka lawyers (lawyers involved in defence of a suspect is something different, and is much needed to get a fair system)
Another more on topic one... the media equates copyright infringment to theft, which means many people believe it is. In your setup, that would mean that all copyright infringers could now be charged with theft.
The article that we seem to be discussing here suggests the exact opposite. While media companies may believe it equals theft, most people do not. Since the law is there to serve society, one could indeed argue that that means it simply is not theft, and should not be treated that way either.
The legal definitions of things are very important because it limits scope by creating more exacting boundaries.
Agreed. We don't seem to disagree about needing strict definitions, but about the actual definitions being used.
A imho very good example of a legal definition that is pretty much unlike the meaning of the same word in 'normal' use is the word 'obviousness' as applied in patent law.
ROughly spoken, for patent law it means 'logical combination of pre-existing or known techniques/inventions' while normal use is more like 'easy to come up with'.
They do in fact come from the same thing, and you can interpret the general meaning to say the same as the legal meaning. That is however not how most people will interpret it, rather, it describes one very specific and 'obvious' way for soemthign to be obvious. When comparing the interpretation to the actual text in the law and the parts of the US constitution it is based on, one can very well argue that the legal definition is not the definition as was intended by the original law.
The legal definition of obviousness was created on the fly while applying patent law, and was not pre-defined together with that specific law. As such, it was defined as seemed appropriate at the moment it was needed, and wasn't an intentional limitation on the scope of patent law or such.
For some details and discussion regardign this specific legal definition, see for example this discussion
Anyway, again, I couldn't agree more. Limitations on copyright terms should be reviewed, and should be kept reasonable so society can get its part of the deal also.
(b) As you suggested, the subject could be dealing with a medical (or other) emergency. I don't really buy this as a valid reason to not stop for the police, because the emergency could probably be dealt with quicker with the help of the police (by getting an escort to the hospital, etc.)
Well, in the particular case I witnessed, judges disagreed with your point of view. But depending on the circumstances, you can be correct there of course.
(c) The fact that some police forces are corrupt is an implementation issue, not a theoretical issue. I would agree that we need to un-corrupt police before starting work on other crime-related problems.
I was not just refering to corruption, I was refering more to the structured harassing of certain groups by police. As one of my Jamaican friends used to say: 'Each time I avoid the police, it saves half a day of my time, eventho I have not commited any crimes.'
That the police will try to stop someone running from them is something I can understand and think is correect. Use of measures that have a high potential of killing someone is not something I can understand in such a situation.
This has to do with something called proportionality. When the measures you take have likely consequences that are bigger then the problem you are trying to solve then you have lost your justification for the action you are taking. Unless you are trying to argue that everyone who 'runs from the police' has at least attempted murder, shooting IS way over the top.
Your philosophy seems to be that it's better for ten thousand criminals to get away than for one innocent person to suffer injury or death. I guess I just don't agree with that. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
You are wrong about the numbers.
I believe it is better to have a criminal not being caught then to have an innocent person in jail. A view which incidentely is shared by those who created the initial legal system in the USA as well as many people who actually studied such matters.
The opposite view has been proven wrong throughout history, it results in greater injustice and more damage done to society.
Copyright was initially introduced so that the author of the invention could benefit from his efforts
Not really.
Copyright was initially introduced as a means for the crown to control availability of art, mostly for the purpose of filtering out undesirable things (aka censorship)
Whemn the US constitution was written, the possibility of copyrights was mentioned for the explicit purpose of promoting usefull arts.
The author getting compensation for the efford is just a side effect of that, it is a means, not a goal.
You don't have to get killed. The police are giving you a choice when they tell you to stop. As far as I can tell, if you keep running, it's because you believe that whatever you did was bad enough to warrant punishment.
There are quite a few alternative reasons for not stopping for the police, that are in no way linked to any criminal activity whatsoever.
ie, I can be in a hurry to the hospital with soemone in the back of my car who needs help, and know that every minute counts, and yes, I know someone who had that happen, and got the fines related to ignoring the police removed by court because of having a valid reason, and the police actually not having had a valid enough reason to stop the person.
The first mistake in your assumption is that the police is always right THe second one is that there can only be one reason to not stop The third one is that you seem to believe peopel have no reason to fear the police other then having commited a crime. I think that a large majority of the Latinos, Arabs, African Americans and such can tell you an entirely different story about that, at least for as far as the USA goes.
Also, the USA is not really known for its low crime rate, esp. not when compared to other relatively rich western countries, so it is debatable how well it works.
If you look further down the road, however, it is not in society's best interests to grant perpetual monopolies to the creators of the music. It will eventually lead to the same state that the software/OS industry is in now, and the RR industry was in during the 19th century.
I completely agree (also see my previous posts on this subject).
I was merely pointing out the short-sightedness of the post I replied to.
Well, what I ask for is practically nothing too, around $3. Too much?
I'm not too experienced with DVDs, but I realize prices are a bit higher then with CDs..
Anyway, lets see.. price of decent enough CD burner.. $80? (not going cheap here..) How many discs can you burn with it.. lets say.. 100 ? (its a lot more then that actually, but 100 is easy for calculating with)
So.. that would make this relatively expensive CD writer cost 80 cents/disc.
Then the price of blank media, lets over-estimate this a bit as well and say that a blank disc costs $1 (I actually pay something a lot closer to $0.30 for them, and that is still not cheap)
So.. that makes the cost you incured for making the copy $1.80.
THose numebrs are all much higher then they have to be, and more realistically, it will cost you less then $0.80 to make a copy.
But if somebody is only touching up their family pictures, they don't need Photoshop. They could get The Gimp - for all the things where it's not Photoshop,
Well.. except for the large majority of peopel having very little clue how to actually toch up pictures, but have tons of tutorials on hte net telling them how to.. Too bad virtually all those are geared at Photoshop and most people have too little clue to firgure out the concept and apply it to another program.
Don't get me wrong btw, I use the Gimp for the exact reason you mention. I do however understand something about graphics editing, and can usually figure out how to use Gimp for the desired effect. I have lots of peopel around me who can't, but who can achieve similar results with Photoshop and a small tutorial still.
There is a personal edition of Photoshop that lacks some of the advanced features, but is pretty usable still. I usually tell people to go get that one of they insist on needing photoshop for their pictures.
I just hope that enough tutorials for the Gimp will be published and its UI will become simpler so that it becomes viable to tell the average person wanting to work a bit with their pictures to use it, but for now thats just not a real option.
You're discussing the nature of a crime. You are wrong to not use the legal definition! The legal definition of piracy is, in fact, exactly what was stated about the high seas. Copyright infringment is neither theft nor piracy. The legal term for it is, you guessed it, copyright infringment.
The legal system is not there to serve itself, it is there to serve society.
If the legal system uses definitions that are not based on the society it is supposed to serve then those definitions are wrong.
You seem to forget (rather willingly) that you are allowed to create one backup for music, movies etcetera that you already OWN. If you borrow a CD from your friend, make a copy of that one and return it, you are breaking the law.
I can't speak for the rest of EUrope, but in the Netherlands, what you say is absolutely not true.
You are allowed to make one single copy for personal use, REGARDLESS of how you obtain the source for that copy. This was cofirmed by parliament, involved members of government as well as the courts. What is more, according to our current government, the law does not even require the source to be 'legal'.
Not so. Laws are also made to protect individuals from society and "the greater good". It obviously is in everybody's best interest to seize someone's land to build a high school or freeway... except if you're the person whose land is being seized. Still, we have laws to prevent that sort of thing (or at least grant the landowner certain rights if it happens).
Seizing someone's land that way is only in the benefit of society if you completely ignore the consequences. The uncertainty it brings will cause more damage (in the form of people refusing to invet in property etc) then whatever advantage you are going to get from it.
It is a nice example you give however, because what I just said is true in virtually all cases, you just have to look a little bit further then the direct effects.
You should also keep in mind that in the USA (as well as anywhere else in the world) the government can and will take your land for the greater good anyway in certain cases (and if they can defend doing so as being required for national security, you may even find that you have extremely little rights do do anything about it)
Exactly. Allowing people to freely copy music is in everyone's best interest... unless you happen to be that musician hoping to earn a living by selling CDs. Besides, if less people decide to produce works of art because they cannot prevent people from copying it as they please, society's interests are not being served either.
You are contradicting yourself here.
If people want music then it is in their best interest to further the conditions that allow artists to make music. Boundless copying and not compensating artists is not going to achieve that, hence it is NOT in everyones best interest. Again, you have to look a little bit further, which in this case you did.. why not draw the obvious conclusion then?
But enough about language nitpicks. The point of the article was not that many people think that the definition of "stealing", as laid down in dictionary, does not exactly fit the crime of copyright infringement". The point was that many people do not see copyright infringement as immoral, or at most as a minor misdemeanor.
Where I live (the Netherlands) we pay a levy on any kind of recordable media we buy, and we indeed have a right to borrow a CD from a friend and make a copy for personal use. What is more, I am allowed to borrow a CD or DVD from the library and do the same.. Even better, I can download things from the internet and put them on a recordable CD legally (and without using iTUnes)
Thats not how our local variations on the RIAA and such wanted it to be, but they failed to forsee the consequences of trying to squeeze money out of everything.
As to your last point: There are some people, myself included, who believe that artists should be able to reap the fruits of their work, and retain full rights to them. I think that copyright is a basic moral right that in principle belongs with the artist, and is not something to be lightly toyed with in order to maximise the benefit to society, as if we're communists dividing up the harvest.
Uh, what does being communist have to do with this? do you even know what it is to be communist? Hint, it has nothing whatsoever to do with taking the needs of society into account, at least not in any realworld implementation of communism. I do know why you used it, and I'll tell you that using that specific tactic just makes you look like an idiot, please refrain from it if you want a normal discussion. The thought behind using the word communists here is the exact kind of thought that Godwin's law deals with, even if the word here isn't nazism.
The simple reason to consider society as a whole here is that if people did not take it into account in what they do, you and I would not have existed at all most likely, neither would those artists.
At any rate....
The normal way of things is that any human who hears about an idea, hears some tune, sees some picture etc etc, will remember that idea/tune/picture and will unconsiously reproduce it and share it with others.
The natural way of things contradicts the protection copyright tries to offer.
I do agree that copyright is a moral right, but only because I believe that society as a whole has an obligation to try to make things fair for an as large part of its members as possible.
It is fair that an artist gets compensation and reward for creating something that is liked or even usefull.
Giving that reward is a moral obligation, and well, that means you can argue that copyright is a moral right? maybe, but it is in conflict with the natural way in which information, ideas, sounds, images and whatnot get shared between people. It can only ever work if it takes that into account.
Execpt for animation and sound it's about acontent/placement, behavior.
I quite agree.
For what I do on my own sites the rules are quite simple: - no messing with browser windows in any way - no animation - ads come after content, and should relate to that content. (if an article sparks interest in a product then it is a service to provide people with a place where they can buy it, that is the basic idea here)
Graphics are ok as long as they are not too distracting.
I use adblock to block anything that doesn't roughly comply with the above list when browsing, and I agree completely that there is a lot of annoying ads out there.
As far as your site goes: the iframe is to small for my minimum font size, but I don't know how much control you have over that.
Well, Google (and others) don't allow changing the code.. in theory I could change it of course since it has to be embedded into my pages.
Just wondering, I am using a somewhat bigger font myself due to being visually impaired.. what font and size are you using?
That's just what I can think of at the moment and of course only talks about well behaved ads
Hrm, that sounds more like non well behaved ads (that it can be worse still doesn't matter really)
If you take a peek at my website you'll see that its quite possibel to have ads wthout most or all if the issues that you mention (and no, I don't get anything for page impressions, only for clicks, so don't worry).
Dark emotions like hatred and rage might give you a temporary boost of power, but in the end always corrupted both the results of your actions and your very personality. Take it far enough and this corruption would even change your body.
In episode 6, Obi Wan tells Luke something like: 'Strong are your feelings and they serve you well. Burry them deap or they may become a tool for the emperor'.
During the scenes in Jaba's palace, Luke behaves a lot like a user of the dark side, but exactly because of his intentions and feelings he is not.
Seems to me he isn't saying that thse feelings are bad and will always corrupt the result of your actions and personality, more that they can also be used to that effect by the dark side.
And why should they charge you less just because it doesn't have those apps which you could download for free?
Do you think they charge by the MB? Do you think it costs them less for you to buy the OS without those apps?
I think it is you who is rather mistaken.
Their programmers don't work for free, so regardless of them giving some software away, it still costs money to make. There are promotional reasons for giving it away for free, but that in no way indicates that it actually costs nothing.
One of the major problems with bundling like MS does is that it kills competition by giving the impression that you get lots of things for free that you'd have to pay for when getting them from an alternative source. It seems they managed this very well with regards to you.
The rule of 2 really meant only 2. It was installed by Darth Bane who managed to survive the infighting among the Sith. He instaleld the rule to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.
this does not exclude other users of the dark side of the Force, but it does exclude other Sith.
Remember that Darth Tyranus had to die before Anakin could become the new apprentice. If what you suggest was true, he could have become the equivalent of a knight.
Sure, a nice emotionally written troll but it asks for a simple reply still:
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple.
Brilliant.
Now, please come back when the music and movie industry have stopped stealing from society.
WHat do I mean by that?
The recording industry has for a long time prevented society to reap their side of the benefits from copyright: getting work into the public domain.
When copyright is reduced to a normal term, many people will have far less of a problem actually keeping to the rules.
Now, go find a new business model, one that actually works in the time you happen to live in, and tell your overlords to do the same.
No treaty no matter what it says can supersede the constitution.
Which is not what I claimed anyway. What I claim is that when the USA enters a traty, ratifies it properly, then that treaty is binding. This is also what the constitution says for all I can tell. If the president ratifies a treaty that is unconstitutional, then there is a problem and the traty may not be valid for as far as the USA goes. So while you are right that the constitution superseeds international treaties, that does not mean that such treaties are not binding.
And contrary to popular belief outside of the US of A, there is a growing movement in our justice system to use international law as precendent for domestic courts.
That is a problem with the justice system, not with international treaties. That said, when the USA happens to be a party to some treaty, even when that treaty has something to say about domestic law (ie, international declaration of human rights) then it is bound to it. THe USA entered into obligations when ratifying the treaty, and will have to live up to that, alternative is to not ratify it.
No treaty has the ability under our constitution to dictate domestic law. Find me the section that says that and I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong. Treaties may be able to dictate our relations with other nations but they have no business or function in domestic affairs. That is what I object to.
Imho you have a very shallow understanding of the subject. I do understand your sentiment, and I don't think that it is wrong, but I also see that your understanding of what an international treaty is, and how it gets approved and incorperated into 'the law of the country' is rather incorrect. What you think is happening is simply not happening. You think it is happening because you lack the proper information and understanding.
oh and again, the USA has little trouble whatsoever trying to force traties onto others even when those others are not a party to that treaty, I'd expect you to object to that based on what you have been expressing here.
Slashdot Mirror
So what is your contribution to the world other then repeating the drivel from some of the Dragonfly lunatics? (and with that I don't mean Matt, he has a founded opinion, tho one you can disagree with, and actually contributes things)
The code has become fragile and unreadable. Too many hacked in "fixes" have left nasty sharp corners which will snag you unexpectedly.
AH yes.. like whats Dragonfly's package system of the day? and hey, we are goign to move everything from under giant real soon (but not for now)..
Or.. like how NetBSD 2.0 manages to keep up for a whopping 12 hours on average on my quad hypersparc machine before crashing?
Don't get me wrong, both are nice systems, but have their own issues.
It is unfortunate that the US system pretty much requires lawyers, but that stems from more than just legalese. Since we have so many levels a law can exist at, and so many things that reference each other, a profession was bound to pop up for people we just knew them already.
I agree that legalese is not the only problem, and for as far as used between legal professionals, it is not a problem at all for as far as I am concerned.
That said, if people are supposed to keep to the rules, then those rules should be written in a way they can understand at least at the basic level. That there are complexities to a law system (the USA is not unique in that really) is a different matter, and for an exact understanding, especially in more complex cases, I don't think it is a problem at all that a specialist (lawyer) is needed. When you need a lawyer to get a basic understanding of an everyday situation then something is terribly broken.
It is still possible to know and understand the law, but it is too difficult for the average person because there are simply too many laws. I think we both agree that this situation is a definite problem.
Indeed.
The last point I wanted to make about the definition topic is to agree that words change. If you codify a definition into law, or set it through case law and precident, it fixes the meaning. Since words change, you will end with legal definition mismatched from common definition. Piracy is just one of the many of these.
I understand the problem of change, and except for suggesting expiration and review of laws, I don't know a solution that might work to prevent the problems it can cause.
I have a different opinion however about the specific example of piracy. It seems to me that courts needed a word to describe a practise, and picked or more likely accepted this one (accepted as in, it is my understanding it was used first in the context of copyright infringement by prosecution, not by judges or law texts)
The example I gave you is another one where change is really not the issue, in the case of obviousness, it seems courts defined it to mean an extremely tiny subset of its normal meaning, which lost the actual concept of the meaning of the word in normal language. I am not aware of substantial changes to the meaning of the word obviousness over the last 50 (or for that matter, 250) years.
So the only unfortunate thing happening in both cases seems to be courts adapting specific meanings of words that had at that time no foundation in the everyday meaning of those words, and still don't.
I do understand in both cases how courts mau have come to their specific definitions, but I don't think that they did a good job in either case.
The courts use codified definitions so that things are exacting, fair, and not open to interpretation as much as possible. You wouldn't want the courts using vernacular because it would open up for tremendous abuse.
I am aware of that, and I see the need for it. That doesn't mean that courts can go on and use definitions that are unlike the ones used in general.
The simple reason for this is that as a citizen of the USA (and many other countries) you are supposed to 'know and understand the law'. This can only work if that law is in fact understandable (at least the basics of it) to the general public.
Strict definitions are needed, but to define soemthing completely different from its generally accepted meaning is just plain wrong.
The piracy thing is one example, but there are many others. To illustrate, many young people now consider sex to only be vaginal intercourse, so oral/anal would not be sex. Would you want the courts to use that definition of sex? Perhaps abortion becomes first degree murder. Et cetera, ad infinitum.
Well.. it seems to have worked that way for one of the former presidents of the USA in some quite high pitched legal fight now didn't it?
He no doubt knew he was wrong there, but still, you simply cannot expect people to keep to the rules if those rules don't use a language they can understand. WHat you are doing in that case is creating the room for a profession of 'interpreter of rules', aka lawyers (lawyers involved in defence of a suspect is something different, and is much needed to get a fair system)
Another more on topic one... the media equates copyright infringment to theft, which means many people believe it is. In your setup, that would mean that all copyright infringers could now be charged with theft.
The article that we seem to be discussing here suggests the exact opposite. While media companies may believe it equals theft, most people do not.
Since the law is there to serve society, one could indeed argue that that means it simply is not theft, and should not be treated that way either.
The legal definitions of things are very important because it limits scope by creating more exacting boundaries.
Agreed. We don't seem to disagree about needing strict definitions, but about the actual definitions being used.
A imho very good example of a legal definition that is pretty much unlike the meaning of the same word in 'normal' use is the word 'obviousness' as applied in patent law.
ROughly spoken, for patent law it means 'logical combination of pre-existing or known techniques/inventions' while normal use is more like 'easy to come up with'.
They do in fact come from the same thing, and you can interpret the general meaning to say the same as the legal meaning. That is however not how most people will interpret it, rather, it describes one very specific and 'obvious' way for soemthign to be obvious. When comparing the interpretation to the actual text in the law and the parts of the US constitution it is based on, one can very well argue that the legal definition is not the definition as was intended by the original law.
The legal definition of obviousness was created on the fly while applying patent law, and was not pre-defined together with that specific law. As such, it was defined as seemed appropriate at the moment it was needed, and wasn't an intentional limitation on the scope of patent law or such.
For some details and discussion regardign this specific legal definition, see for example
this discussion
Sorry for replying twice.. but I just remembered I have written something about this all quite some time ago and posted it to my weblog:
Check The Quest For Fair Copyright
Also, for fun, check this somewhat recent post about this subject..
Anyway, again, I couldn't agree more. Limitations on copyright terms should be reviewed, and should be kept reasonable so society can get its part of the deal also.
(b) As you suggested, the subject could be dealing with a medical (or other) emergency. I don't really buy this as a valid reason to not stop for the police, because the emergency could probably be dealt with quicker with the help of the police (by getting an escort to the hospital, etc.)
Well, in the particular case I witnessed, judges disagreed with your point of view. But depending on the circumstances, you can be correct there of course.
(c) The fact that some police forces are corrupt is an implementation issue, not a theoretical issue. I would agree that we need to un-corrupt police before starting work on other crime-related problems.
I was not just refering to corruption, I was refering more to the structured harassing of certain groups by police. As one of my Jamaican friends used to say: 'Each time I avoid the police, it saves half a day of my time, eventho I have not commited any crimes.'
That the police will try to stop someone running from them is something I can understand and think is correect. Use of measures that have a high potential of killing someone is not something I can understand in such a situation.
This has to do with something called proportionality. When the measures you take have likely consequences that are bigger then the problem you are trying to solve then you have lost your justification for the action you are taking. Unless you are trying to argue that everyone who 'runs from the police' has at least attempted murder, shooting IS way over the top.
Your philosophy seems to be that it's better for ten thousand criminals to get away than for one innocent person to suffer injury or death. I guess I just don't agree with that. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
You are wrong about the numbers.
I believe it is better to have a criminal not being caught then to have an innocent person in jail. A view which incidentely is shared by those who created the initial legal system in the USA as well as many people who actually studied such matters.
The opposite view has been proven wrong throughout history, it results in greater injustice and more damage done to society.
Copyright was initially introduced so that the author of the invention could benefit from his efforts
Not really.
Copyright was initially introduced as a means for the crown to control availability of art, mostly for the purpose of filtering out undesirable things (aka censorship)
Whemn the US constitution was written, the possibility of copyrights was mentioned for the explicit purpose of promoting usefull arts.
The author getting compensation for the efford is just a side effect of that, it is a means, not a goal.
You don't have to get killed. The police are giving you a choice when they tell you to stop. As far as I can tell, if you keep running, it's because you believe that whatever you did was bad enough to warrant punishment.
There are quite a few alternative reasons for not stopping for the police, that are in no way linked to any criminal activity whatsoever.
ie, I can be in a hurry to the hospital with soemone in the back of my car who needs help, and know that every minute counts, and yes, I know someone who had that happen, and got the fines related to ignoring the police removed by court because of having a valid reason, and the police actually not having had a valid enough reason to stop the person.
The first mistake in your assumption is that the police is always right
THe second one is that there can only be one reason to not stop
The third one is that you seem to believe peopel have no reason to fear the police other then having commited a crime. I think that a large majority of the Latinos, Arabs, African Americans and such can tell you an entirely different story about that, at least for as far as the USA goes.
Also, the USA is not really known for its low crime rate, esp. not when compared to other relatively rich western countries, so it is debatable how well it works.
If you look further down the road, however, it is not in society's best interests to grant perpetual monopolies to the creators of the music. It will eventually lead to the same state that the software/OS industry is in now, and the RR industry was in during the 19th century.
I completely agree (also see my previous posts on this subject).
I was merely pointing out the short-sightedness of the post I replied to.
Well, what I ask for is practically nothing too, around $3. Too much?
I'm not too experienced with DVDs, but I realize prices are a bit higher then with CDs..
Anyway, lets see.. price of decent enough CD burner.. $80? (not going cheap here..)
How many discs can you burn with it.. lets say.. 100 ? (its a lot more then that actually, but 100 is easy for calculating with)
So.. that would make this relatively expensive CD writer cost 80 cents/disc.
Then the price of blank media, lets over-estimate this a bit as well and say that a blank disc costs $1 (I actually pay something a lot closer to $0.30 for them, and that is still not cheap)
So.. that makes the cost you incured for making the copy $1.80.
THose numebrs are all much higher then they have to be, and more realistically, it will cost you less then $0.80 to make a copy.
So.. $3 is indeed profitting from it.
But if somebody is only touching up their family pictures, they don't need Photoshop. They could get The Gimp - for all the things where it's not Photoshop,
Well.. except for the large majority of peopel having very little clue how to actually toch up pictures, but have tons of tutorials on hte net telling them how to.. Too bad virtually all those are geared at Photoshop and most people have too little clue to firgure out the concept and apply it to another program.
Don't get me wrong btw, I use the Gimp for the exact reason you mention. I do however understand something about graphics editing, and can usually figure out how to use Gimp for the desired effect. I have lots of peopel around me who can't, but who can achieve similar results with Photoshop and a small tutorial still.
There is a personal edition of Photoshop that lacks some of the advanced features, but is pretty usable still. I usually tell people to go get that one of they insist on needing photoshop for their pictures.
I just hope that enough tutorials for the Gimp will be published and its UI will become simpler so that it becomes viable to tell the average person wanting to work a bit with their pictures to use it, but for now thats just not a real option.
Um... that's very acceptable. Why wouldn't you stop when told to by the police? Got something to hide?
Since when is possibly hiding soemthign enough reason to get killed?
You're discussing the nature of a crime. You are wrong to not use the legal definition! The legal definition of piracy is, in fact, exactly what was stated about the high seas. Copyright infringment is neither theft nor piracy. The legal term for it is, you guessed it, copyright infringment.
The legal system is not there to serve itself, it is there to serve society.
If the legal system uses definitions that are not based on the society it is supposed to serve then those definitions are wrong.
You seem to forget (rather willingly) that you are allowed to create one backup for music, movies etcetera that you already OWN. If you borrow a CD from your friend, make a copy of that one and return it, you are breaking the law.
I can't speak for the rest of EUrope, but in the Netherlands, what you say is absolutely not true.
You are allowed to make one single copy for personal use, REGARDLESS of how you obtain the source for that copy. This was cofirmed by parliament, involved members of government as well as the courts. What is more, according to our current government, the law does not even require the source to be 'legal'.
Not so. Laws are also made to protect individuals from society and "the greater good". It obviously is in everybody's best interest to seize someone's land to build a high school or freeway... except if you're the person whose land is being seized. Still, we have laws to prevent that sort of thing (or at least grant the landowner certain rights if it happens).
Seizing someone's land that way is only in the benefit of society if you completely ignore the consequences. The uncertainty it brings will cause more damage (in the form of people refusing to invet in property etc) then whatever advantage you are going to get from it.
It is a nice example you give however, because what I just said is true in virtually all cases, you just have to look a little bit further then the direct effects.
You should also keep in mind that in the USA (as well as anywhere else in the world) the government can and will take your land for the greater good anyway in certain cases (and if they can defend doing so as being required for national security, you may even find that you have extremely little rights do do anything about it)
Exactly. Allowing people to freely copy music is in everyone's best interest... unless you happen to be that musician hoping to earn a living by selling CDs. Besides, if less people decide to produce works of art because they cannot prevent people from copying it as they please, society's interests are not being served either.
You are contradicting yourself here.
If people want music then it is in their best interest to further the conditions that allow artists to make music. Boundless copying and not compensating artists is not going to achieve that, hence it is NOT in everyones best interest. Again, you have to look a little bit further, which in this case you did.. why not draw the obvious conclusion then?
But enough about language nitpicks. The point of the article was not that many people think that the definition of "stealing", as laid down in dictionary, does not exactly fit the crime of copyright infringement". The point was that many people do not see copyright infringement as immoral, or at most as a minor misdemeanor.
Where I live (the Netherlands) we pay a levy on any kind of recordable media we buy, and we indeed have a right to borrow a CD from a friend and make a copy for personal use. What is more, I am allowed to borrow a CD or DVD from the library and do the same.. Even better, I can download things from the internet and put them on a recordable CD legally (and without using iTUnes)
Thats not how our local variations on the RIAA and such wanted it to be, but they failed to forsee the consequences of trying to squeeze money out of everything.
As to your last point: There are some people, myself included, who believe that artists should be able to reap the fruits of their work, and retain full rights to them. I think that copyright is a basic moral right that in principle belongs with the artist, and is not something to be lightly toyed with in order to maximise the benefit to society, as if we're communists dividing up the harvest.
Uh, what does being communist have to do with this? do you even know what it is to be communist?
Hint, it has nothing whatsoever to do with taking the needs of society into account, at least not in any realworld implementation of communism. I do know why you used it, and I'll tell you that using that specific tactic just makes you look like an idiot, please refrain from it if you want a normal discussion. The thought behind using the word communists here is the exact kind of thought that Godwin's law deals with, even if the word here isn't nazism.
The simple reason to consider society as a whole here is that if people did not take it into account in what they do, you and I would not have existed at all most likely, neither would those artists.
At any rate....
The normal way of things is that any human who hears about an idea, hears some tune, sees some picture etc etc, will remember that idea/tune/picture and will unconsiously reproduce it and share it with others.
The natural way of things contradicts the protection copyright tries to offer.
I do agree that copyright is a moral right, but only because I believe that society as a whole has an obligation to try to make things fair for an as large part of its members as possible.
It is fair that an artist gets compensation and reward for creating something that is liked or even usefull.
Giving that reward is a moral obligation, and well, that means you can argue that copyright is a moral right? maybe, but it is in conflict with the natural way in which information, ideas, sounds, images and whatnot get shared between people. It can only ever work if it takes that into account.
They are really there :)
:)
Bottom of the index pages, or in between articles and comments.
But looks like I succeeded in keeping them 'non annoying', thanks for confirming that
Execpt for animation and sound it's about acontent/placement, behavior.
I quite agree.
For what I do on my own sites the rules are quite simple:
- no messing with browser windows in any way
- no animation
- ads come after content, and should relate to that content. (if an article sparks interest in a product then it is a service to provide people with a place where they can buy it, that is the basic idea here)
Graphics are ok as long as they are not too distracting.
I use adblock to block anything that doesn't roughly comply with the above list when browsing, and I agree completely that there is a lot of annoying ads out there.
As far as your site goes: the iframe is to small for my minimum font size, but I don't know how much control you have over that.
Well, Google (and others) don't allow changing the code.. in theory I could change it of course since it has to be embedded into my pages.
Just wondering, I am using a somewhat bigger font myself due to being visually impaired.. what font and size are you using?
That's just what I can think of at the moment and of course only talks about well behaved ads
Hrm, that sounds more like non well behaved ads (that it can be worse still doesn't matter really)
If you take a peek at my website you'll see that its quite possibel to have ads wthout most or all if the issues that you mention (and no, I don't get anything for page impressions, only for clicks, so don't worry).
Dark emotions like hatred and rage might give you a temporary boost of power, but in the end always corrupted both the results of your actions and your very personality. Take it far enough and this corruption would even change your body.
In episode 6, Obi Wan tells Luke something like:
'Strong are your feelings and they serve you well. Burry them deap or they may become a tool for the emperor'.
During the scenes in Jaba's palace, Luke behaves a lot like a user of the dark side, but exactly because of his intentions and feelings he is not.
Seems to me he isn't saying that thse feelings are bad and will always corrupt the result of your actions and personality, more that they can also be used to that effect by the dark side.
And why should they charge you less just because it doesn't have those apps which you could download for free?
Do you think they charge by the MB? Do you think it costs them less for you to buy the OS without those apps?
I think it is you who is rather mistaken.
Their programmers don't work for free, so regardless of them giving some software away, it still costs money to make. There are promotional reasons for giving it away for free, but that in no way indicates that it actually costs nothing.
One of the major problems with bundling like MS does is that it kills competition by giving the impression that you get lots of things for free that you'd have to pay for when getting them from an alternative source. It seems they managed this very well with regards to you.
The rule of 2 really meant only 2. It was installed by Darth Bane who managed to survive the infighting among the Sith. He instaleld the rule to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.
this does not exclude other users of the dark side of the Force, but it does exclude other Sith.
Remember that Darth Tyranus had to die before Anakin could become the new apprentice. If what you suggest was true, he could have become the equivalent of a knight.
Nah, they just copy/paste their 'story' over and over to some weblog about 'stuff that matters'.
Sure, a nice emotionally written troll but it asks for a simple reply still:
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple.
Brilliant.
Now, please come back when the music and movie industry have stopped stealing from society.
WHat do I mean by that?
The recording industry has for a long time prevented society to reap their side of the benefits from copyright: getting work into the public domain.
When copyright is reduced to a normal term, many people will have far less of a problem actually keeping to the rules.
Now, go find a new business model, one that actually works in the time you happen to live in, and tell your overlords to do the same.
No treaty no matter what it says can supersede the constitution.
Which is not what I claimed anyway. What I claim is that when the USA enters a traty, ratifies it properly, then that treaty is binding. This is also what the constitution says for all I can tell. If the president ratifies a treaty that is unconstitutional, then there is a problem and the traty may not be valid for as far as the USA goes. So while you are right that the constitution superseeds international treaties, that does not mean that such treaties are not binding.
And contrary to popular belief outside of the US of A, there is a growing movement in our justice system to use international law as precendent for domestic courts.
That is a problem with the justice system, not with international treaties. That said, when the USA happens to be a party to some treaty, even when that treaty has something to say about domestic law (ie, international declaration of human rights) then it is bound to it. THe USA entered into obligations when ratifying the treaty, and will have to live up to that, alternative is to not ratify it.
No treaty has the ability under our constitution to dictate domestic law. Find me the section that says that and I'll be happy to admit I'm wrong. Treaties may be able to dictate our relations with other nations but they have no business or function in domestic affairs. That is what I object to.
Imho you have a very shallow understanding of the subject. I do understand your sentiment, and I don't think that it is wrong, but I also see that your understanding of what an international treaty is, and how it gets approved and incorperated into 'the law of the country' is rather incorrect. What you think is happening is simply not happening. You think it is happening because you lack the proper information and understanding.
oh and again, the USA has little trouble whatsoever trying to force traties onto others even when those others are not a party to that treaty, I'd expect you to object to that based on what you have been expressing here.
That's the same argument people make for the erosion of privacy.
No it is not.
The main difference is that with the erosion of privacy, everyone pays the price in order to prevent small personal loss by a few.