The objections already raised here are valid, but there's one more idea I haven't see anyone mention yet (apologies to whoever posted it if I missed it):
What makes this guy think Congress is in any way qualified to make such a determination? We're talking about the very same group of people who sat around chuckling in amusement at the SOPA hearings as they proudly proclaimed themselves not to understand any of the technical issues because they weren't nerds. It's highly doubtful that any of these buffoons would be able to enter someone's number into their cell phone contacts, yet someone's proposing they should decide whether a new technology would be disruptive?
But then again, what difference would it make? I think we all know who would be doing the actual deciding anyway.
So, it would seem to me that this would require giving the... uh, object, and by extension Larsen himself, access to your eBay account if you win. Unless I'm missing something, that would seem to be the only way it could start a new auction.
While I'm sure he doesn't have any ideas about ripping people off (beyond the stated idea behind the auction itself, in regard to which I'm in the "scam" camp), that just doesn't sit right with me.
# After I'm finished reading, I can sell my Kindle book back to a used Kindle bookstore?
Actually, it occurs to me that this might be a consumer-friendly use that DRM could facilitate. If you've purchased a plain text file or an "unprotected" pdf or whatnot, the store has every reason not to buy it back because there's no incentive for the customer to delete the copy he purchased. Some probably would, but too many wouldn't.
There would be no physical copy to return, so that the store could resell it. But if they can "deactivate" your copy, why not offer the option to sell it back? Maybe they could offer the choice at the time of purchase:
( ) Click here to purchase a DRM-free copy. You will not be able to sell it back to us.
( ) Click here to purchase a DRM-encrusted copy. You will, if you want, be able to "sell it back" to us later for half of your original purchase price.
Or something. I don't know; the idea came to me just now and I haven't thought it through very far. Maybe there's some reason why it wouldn't work at all.
If we went back to the original system, if the authors want to earn more money after their copyrights expire, they would have to get up off of their asses and work some more, just like the rest of us have to. If they don't want to have to work later in life, they should put some of their current earnings into a 401k, like the rest of us have to.
It also should not be overlooked that if copyright terms were shortened, it wouldn't prevent the artist from continuing to profit from his work. Those profits would undoubtedly drop when the work falls into the public domain, since he's now (probably) competing with free versions and (possibly) other publishers putting out other editions. But still...
If, for example, Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" were out of copyright and I were looking to replace my CD copy, I would probably get the "official" version that Beefheart himself would collect royalties from (assuming he were to have such a version available). Now, this is just a "probably" because (a) the official version might have some quality issues I would object to, and/or (b) there might be a competing edition with some compelling value-added features I couldn't overlook -- although Beefheart himself would be in a unique position to add some killer bonus features himself if he wanted. At any rate, the official version would be the first one I'd consider.
Admittedly, that's just me. But I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
While I feel sorry for deaths and accidents caused by human stupidity you can't legislate against it, I would be more for looking into the viability of equipping cars with attention monitoring devices to see whether such a thing is viable or not, kind of like a blackbox to keep a record of the persons idiocy that can be used as evidence in court.
I don't know. What I see here is one more thing on the car that's going to cost me $1000 to repair when, as is inevitable, it breaks.
I would love to see the wording of the questions because, honestly, I cannot imagine why anyone would not want to see ads (assuming you have to see _an_ ad) that is targeted at their interests rather than just any random ad.
Because--just speaking strictly for myself--if it's accurately targeted, then maybe there's a greater chance that I'll be suckered into buying something I don't need but think I want, thereby wasting money and contributing to the overall clutter in the house.
If you see a painting and your only reaction is "oh, that's pretty" it's probably NOT art. If it takes your breath away and makes you say "WOW!" it is art.
This might be valid as the starting point for a discussion if you're sitting in Philosophy 101 and aesthetics is the current topic. But if you have a court case in which the question "Is it art?" might play a role, you can't very well apply that standard, can you?
Its how "the system" has worked since nearly the beginning of human time, and really a non story.
The world runs on politics and deceit..
You're right. You're absolutely right...
Show me something that isn't the status quo, and we have a story.
...but the point isn't whether it's "a story" or not. The point is whether people are doing things they shouldn't be doing and possibly acting to the detriment of the public good. Just because it's "business as usual" doesn't make it all right.
And "the news" isn't supposed to exist simply to satisfy the public's craving for a steady supply of entertaining stories (yes, I know how naive I sound saying that because that's not really how it works).
All major corporations have strategic meetings about their main competition. Why is this so different just because its Mircosoft doing it?
If you can reasonably describe them as "strategic meetings," it's certainly not news no matter who's doing it.
If you have words like "lobbyists" and "discredit" in the story, it warrants some attention -- again, no matter who's doing it.
These people make an unpopular argument for an opinion they themselves support, with the intent to discuss the topic.
But the syllabus doesn't require discussion. It merely requires 10 posts. You could hit 10 different web sites on a Saturday afternoon and do that with very little thought or preparation, and then it's Miller Time. If Dr. Dembski wants discussion, he/she needs to say so because many students will do as little as they think they can get away with - which is not something to be encouraged or condoned, but it is the reality and something one should account for.
You have to make a stand and really be able to defend your beliefs, and defend them well because there are some really well versed atheists out there, both in terms of science and theology.
Maybe so, for some (but not all) of them. I see a problem, though, if copying and pasting text to an internet message board is sufficient. That has no educational value.
A lot of people like Miley Cyrus and don't care if it's not skillfully performed music.
Oh, but it's very skillfully performed music. Very slick and professional and highly polished. But the problem is, there's little or nothing more to it than that.
If I were a bad guy, I might want to look for a system that had no requirements on how to create a password. Then I would assume that 90-plus percent of users would just use an ordinary "dictionary word" in all lower-case and proceed accordingly.
I'm not a computer security guy, and I don't know if I'm way off-base with this or not. Just sayin'...
There's another problem at the work place. I have to change my password every 4 months to a moderately strong password. It cannot be a password I have used in the last 6 months or any of my last 6 passwords. The result? My password is prominently tacked up on my cubical wall. Seriously I can only remember so many passwords before I just can't do it anymore. If I enter the wrong password 3 times, my account locks up.
We have this policy on our timekeeping system. I re-use the same password with a number from 1 to 6 appended to the end. When it's time to change the password, I just change the last number. After 6, go back to 1.
The Streisand Effect generates unwanted attention. I'm not convinced that this publicity is unwanted. TFA points out that the settlement turns the links into ads for the law firm without doing anything to resolve the issue they actually complained about.
Im sure they would love to ban used CD sales ( books and movies by their respective cartels ).
They probably would, but in my view it would decrease the value of new CDs, just a wee little bit. I think a lot of folks would be a lot more careful about what they choose to buy if they think they might be stuck with it if it turns out to be crap, or if somewhere down the road their tastes change and it becomes crap, or if years later they might have to move and need to get rid of a lot of stuff, or whatever. Why should you be stuck with CDs you don't want if they might have some resale value (admittedly small, but it's something)?
Microsoft in Reading have little cctv camera's in their visitors waiting lounge that employees can log into and check if their expected visitor has arrived.
I found it invasive and extremely unpleasant as the little camera panned back and forth, focussing on the various people there, yet it is apparently entirely acceptable behaviour, which shows what I know.
Any time I step outside the door of my own house, I always assume it's possible that I'm on camera somehow. It might be surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles or some bozo with a cell phone camera who just happens to be shooting pictures and I just happen to be in the background, or whatever.
I don't think it makes much difference in the way I behave, except that maybe I think twice before going for the nose pick.
Google is correct. Try to figure out, for example, if one in the USA today can survive without a bank account. My company won't pay me without direct deposit, and if I worked for one that issued paper checks, I'd still need to provide documentation to some bank to cash them. There is no way to be private in today's world, unless you try very, very, very hard.
The way you describe it here, you're voluntarily giving up some measure of privacy in exchange for a service you consider valuable.
With the Google thing, it's not voluntary and you're not getting anything in return. It's more like someone hacking into your bank's computers and putting your account info on the net. How does that sound?
Most often when [sic] is used it is meant to show the person being quoted as being too stupid to get it right.
What I haven't seen mentioned here (although I might have overlooked it) is that [sic] originated well before the computer age, when any text in an article, including quotations from another published source, would have been typed and or handwritten and/or typeset letter-by-letter. So [sic] would assure the reader that the mistake is an accurate reproduction of the original. Whether individuals used it with the attitude that the original speaker/writer was an uneducated buffoon is, of course, a separate question.
But it's different today. Now, even the most low-budget, amateurish publication is likely to use computers. Quoting from an online source such as Yahoo Answers is simply a matter of copy and paste, so there's no question about accuracy in an instance like that.
It's not so much the duration sampled as the use to which you are putting the content that's important.
Are you using the sample because it's a convenient way to get a nice sound (not fair use) or because the original work it came from is important to the meaning of your new work (possibly fair use)?
My understanding is that you also have to look at how important the sampled piece is, in the context of the new work you're using it in. For example, if you take a song hook and loop it for the duration of your entire piece and add nothing more than a few extra embellishments here and there, that would be different from just quoting a single occurrence of someone else's riff in the body of your own, much larger work. In the first case, it can be argued that your new work is pretty much based on the already-existing song. Not so in the second case.
I think what he's trying to get at is the assumption that illegal downloaders don't buy music. He's saying that they *are* buying music, but just not in a way that we can track along with the download.
I don't know if this is what he means, but here's something I've noticed: People I know who pirate music (or movies) to any significant extent, whether it's downloading or burning CDs or whatever, generally spend as much as they can afford on legitimate copies of the stuff they really want. What they pirate is simply music (or movies) of a lower priority, simply for the sake of accumulating more music (or movies). I don't claim this is typical, though. It's just what I've seen.
But saying "bundling always favors the seller giving them more power and money" is not true; for example, you can see cars as a huge bundle of tires, motor, etc; but it actually serves the consumer that it is bundled, because the economical impact of scaling is so big that cars can be made much cheaper than the sum of their gears.
I don't think a car is a "bundle" in any meaningful way, in the context of this discussion. You don't have a complete car capable of fulfilling its intended purpose unless you have the tires, motor, etc. People think of a complete car as a single item.
The way I see it, a better car analogy would go like this: Basic internet access would be like the car. Music access via the internet would be like an option such as a factory CD player.
Why does swiss army knife bundle some functions? Because if you add up the cost and difficulties of entirely customzing knives, it does not compensate the savings made by removing the can opener.
A lot of people are willing to pay to have the multifunctionality. I have a couple of Swiss army knives and I love'em. But -- and this is a big but -- I wouldn't want the Swiss army knife to be my only choice for a knife.
IANAL, but that reads like a license to the patents, not to copyright of the recording. Those patents would have long since expired.
There was no copyright protection of audio recordings until 1909.
The license mentions patents specifically. On the other hand, the bit about "copying or counterfeiting this record" seems fairly copyright-specific to me, but I, too, am not a lawer.
I'll take your word for the 1909 thing, but then again... I'm doubtful that that would have prevented the company lawyers from writing up a license that exceeded the scope of what the law provided for.
No, it would be way more expensive. Apples DRM-free songs are over 30% more expensive then the ones with DRM (figure that: get your song, plus DRM, and pay less!:-))
Only if you buy individual tracks. The standard price for a whole album is the same.
Plus, if you're going to try to manipulate a stock so as to short it, (a) there are many candidates that are far better than Apple for such a scheme, and (b) this e-mail incident is a pretty lame way to go about it, whether it's Apple or any other company.
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What makes this guy think Congress is in any way qualified to make such a determination? We're talking about the very same group of people who sat around chuckling in amusement at the SOPA hearings as they proudly proclaimed themselves not to understand any of the technical issues because they weren't nerds. It's highly doubtful that any of these buffoons would be able to enter someone's number into their cell phone contacts, yet someone's proposing they should decide whether a new technology would be disruptive?
But then again, what difference would it make? I think we all know who would be doing the actual deciding anyway.
So, it would seem to me that this would require giving the... uh, object, and by extension Larsen himself, access to your eBay account if you win. Unless I'm missing something, that would seem to be the only way it could start a new auction.
While I'm sure he doesn't have any ideas about ripping people off (beyond the stated idea behind the auction itself, in regard to which I'm in the "scam" camp), that just doesn't sit right with me.
Actually, it occurs to me that this might be a consumer-friendly use that DRM could facilitate. If you've purchased a plain text file or an "unprotected" pdf or whatnot, the store has every reason not to buy it back because there's no incentive for the customer to delete the copy he purchased. Some probably would, but too many wouldn't.
There would be no physical copy to return, so that the store could resell it. But if they can "deactivate" your copy, why not offer the option to sell it back? Maybe they could offer the choice at the time of purchase:
( ) Click here to purchase a DRM-free copy. You will not be able to sell it back to us.
( ) Click here to purchase a DRM-encrusted copy. You will, if you want, be able to "sell it back" to us later for half of your original purchase price.
Or something. I don't know; the idea came to me just now and I haven't thought it through very far. Maybe there's some reason why it wouldn't work at all.
It also should not be overlooked that if copyright terms were shortened, it wouldn't prevent the artist from continuing to profit from his work. Those profits would undoubtedly drop when the work falls into the public domain, since he's now (probably) competing with free versions and (possibly) other publishers putting out other editions. But still... If, for example, Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" were out of copyright and I were looking to replace my CD copy, I would probably get the "official" version that Beefheart himself would collect royalties from (assuming he were to have such a version available). Now, this is just a "probably" because (a) the official version might have some quality issues I would object to, and/or (b) there might be a competing edition with some compelling value-added features I couldn't overlook -- although Beefheart himself would be in a unique position to add some killer bonus features himself if he wanted. At any rate, the official version would be the first one I'd consider.
Admittedly, that's just me. But I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
I don't know. What I see here is one more thing on the car that's going to cost me $1000 to repair when, as is inevitable, it breaks.
Because--just speaking strictly for myself--if it's accurately targeted, then maybe there's a greater chance that I'll be suckered into buying something I don't need but think I want, thereby wasting money and contributing to the overall clutter in the house.
Screw that.
This might be valid as the starting point for a discussion if you're sitting in Philosophy 101 and aesthetics is the current topic. But if you have a court case in which the question "Is it art?" might play a role, you can't very well apply that standard, can you?
You're right. You're absolutely right...
And "the news" isn't supposed to exist simply to satisfy the public's craving for a steady supply of entertaining stories (yes, I know how naive I sound saying that because that's not really how it works).
If you can reasonably describe them as "strategic meetings," it's certainly not news no matter who's doing it. If you have words like "lobbyists" and "discredit" in the story, it warrants some attention -- again, no matter who's doing it.
But the syllabus doesn't require discussion. It merely requires 10 posts. You could hit 10 different web sites on a Saturday afternoon and do that with very little thought or preparation, and then it's Miller Time. If Dr. Dembski wants discussion, he/she needs to say so because many students will do as little as they think they can get away with - which is not something to be encouraged or condoned, but it is the reality and something one should account for.
Maybe so, for some (but not all) of them. I see a problem, though, if copying and pasting text to an internet message board is sufficient. That has no educational value.
Oh, but it's very skillfully performed music. Very slick and professional and highly polished. But the problem is, there's little or nothing more to it than that.
If I were a bad guy, I might want to look for a system that had no requirements on how to create a password. Then I would assume that 90-plus percent of users would just use an ordinary "dictionary word" in all lower-case and proceed accordingly. I'm not a computer security guy, and I don't know if I'm way off-base with this or not. Just sayin'...
We have this policy on our timekeeping system. I re-use the same password with a number from 1 to 6 appended to the end. When it's time to change the password, I just change the last number. After 6, go back to 1.
The Streisand Effect generates unwanted attention. I'm not convinced that this publicity is unwanted. TFA points out that the settlement turns the links into ads for the law firm without doing anything to resolve the issue they actually complained about.
They probably would, but in my view it would decrease the value of new CDs, just a wee little bit. I think a lot of folks would be a lot more careful about what they choose to buy if they think they might be stuck with it if it turns out to be crap, or if somewhere down the road their tastes change and it becomes crap, or if years later they might have to move and need to get rid of a lot of stuff, or whatever. Why should you be stuck with CDs you don't want if they might have some resale value (admittedly small, but it's something)?
Any time I step outside the door of my own house, I always assume it's possible that I'm on camera somehow. It might be surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles or some bozo with a cell phone camera who just happens to be shooting pictures and I just happen to be in the background, or whatever.
I don't think it makes much difference in the way I behave, except that maybe I think twice before going for the nose pick.
The way you describe it here, you're voluntarily giving up some measure of privacy in exchange for a service you consider valuable. With the Google thing, it's not voluntary and you're not getting anything in return. It's more like someone hacking into your bank's computers and putting your account info on the net. How does that sound?
What I haven't seen mentioned here (although I might have overlooked it) is that [sic] originated well before the computer age, when any text in an article, including quotations from another published source, would have been typed and or handwritten and/or typeset letter-by-letter. So [sic] would assure the reader that the mistake is an accurate reproduction of the original. Whether individuals used it with the attitude that the original speaker/writer was an uneducated buffoon is, of course, a separate question.
But it's different today. Now, even the most low-budget, amateurish publication is likely to use computers. Quoting from an online source such as Yahoo Answers is simply a matter of copy and paste, so there's no question about accuracy in an instance like that.
My understanding is that you also have to look at how important the sampled piece is, in the context of the new work you're using it in. For example, if you take a song hook and loop it for the duration of your entire piece and add nothing more than a few extra embellishments here and there, that would be different from just quoting a single occurrence of someone else's riff in the body of your own, much larger work. In the first case, it can be argued that your new work is pretty much based on the already-existing song. Not so in the second case.
But IANAL.
Plus, if you're going to try to manipulate a stock so as to short it, (a) there are many candidates that are far better than Apple for such a scheme, and (b) this e-mail incident is a pretty lame way to go about it, whether it's Apple or any other company.