No, I'm not telling you that isn't me. The way you can tell I wasn't telling you that was -- wait for it -- I didn't tell you that.
What I told you, and will repeat here, is that the facts you quoted are significantly wrong. Looking at the record you refer to rather than at your post, the date is wrong - by years; the claim of conviction is flat-out incorrect; the stated offense is also wrong, as was your recasting of it.
Your misuse of bad data, and your incorrect recasting of it, caused your post to rise above its original lame attempt to derail my post and brought it well into proving my exact point in the GP.
Facebook's real name policy makes it a much more pleasant place to hang out than here.
No doubt. The classic "on the Intertubez, every Anon. Coward is superman." And there are other benefits - particularly commercial ones for Facebook itself, and the concomitant benefit for its customers, the companies who mine your information in order to optimize sales. However, these benefits do not, in my estimation, outweigh the harm that can be done by these same policies as I outlined above.
Now if there was a tech discussion site which had real names and a proper friend/ignore mechanism, that would beat Slashdot hands down.
Would it? I've seen quite a few technical revelations here that would not have been made in a non-anonymous context. I guess I have to go with, I don't actually need to know your name. In fact, if you're actually a friend of mine, or family, I probably already know your name. It's Facebook that wants/needs to know your name. And Google. Since you appear to be comfortable with that, I certainly respect your position -- but it really doesn't affect mine.
But you are "spoilt" for Facebook, where everyone else is... aren't you. And this is the problem. There is considerably less benefit to engaging in a discussion on a site where there are just a few people, none of whom you know or really care about you, as compared to where your family, friends, job, local government, and a lot of sites comment sections now reside, isn't there?
Don't you think it's at least a little disingenuous to suggest that having a discussion on, say, Kuro5hin.org, has serious parity with the same discussion, but as it would take place on Facebook?
fine, but they must add these little stipends(sic):
I believe you probably meant "stipulations." I'll proceed on that assumption.
First of all, there's no "must." You want these things, you will have to fight for them. If you want the fight to be successful, you'll have to lobby. Civil disobedience doesn't work in a society that has monetized incarceration. They want to arrest you.
1. reasonable copyright limits. no one should be able to milk a work for their entire life. 10-15 years, maximum.
Yep, I like that. Might argue for longer for really expensive undertakings... do you understand it takes a good portion of that 15 years just to get a drug through the government hoops? Kinda of makes it a bad idea to undertake anything long term, you see. But WRT movies, books, etc... yes, I agree, 15 years seems like more than enough to me.
to be protected, the product must be available for purchase. fuck that out of print (or worse, back in the vault) bullshit in this digital age.
No, don't think so. I'd give 'em the same 15 years. I don't see any reasonable basis for obtaining rights based on what *I* think someone else should be doing with them.
3. get rid of all regions. this is the internet age and old school barriers have no place in it. play globally or gtfo.
Um. Well, countries, borders, sovereignty? You want to be subject to Sharia law? You think the Arabs want to be subject to US law? You think the French want to be forced to allow the sale of Nazi memorabilia, or materials, solidly protected in the US, that support racist views? You want the Taliban to come in here and wrap your sister or sweetheart in a Burka? No, again, I don't think so. Different regions have different laws, different rules, different ideas... and I'm ok with that. If you live in one of those regions where you don't like the laws, either work against them, or move somewhere more palatable, or don't expect anything but the status quo.
5. make the recording and archiving of television as easy as vcrs were. i can timeshift into the next decade if i so choose.
I think at least in the US, this is actually the result of misinterpretation or actual oath-breaking on the part of lawmakers. You do have the right to copy a work for your own use, as long as it isn't for profit and as long as it doesn't impact the financial space of the rights-holder(s.) Unless they can show that you redistributed the work, or showed the work to an audience that extends beyond the terms of the right(s) you purchased, it would be correct for you to prevail in court.
6. cutting out the middle men (pressing, packaging, shipping, retail logistics) should cut the prices of digital distribution in at least half, if not more.
Well, again, there are several ways to go here. You can just not buy, encourage everyone you can to do the same, and hope there will be a drop the price in response. You can lobby congress for legal change (regulation), but this is extremely expensive, and since your compatriots are people who are trying quite hard, even to the point of some rather insane rationalizations, to avoid paying anyone anything, perhaps not really a great choice for you, or you can engage in civil disobedience, hoping that your fine and/or arrest will draw enough attention to your cause that the laws will change. Of course, that won't reverse your conviction (in the USA), and do keep in mind that the US has monetized its prison system and will welcome you with open arms into your very own mattress equipped involuntary anal sex paradise.
Not just law. Also, the constitution. Also, the senate. Also, the house. Also, the executive. Also, the judiciary. Also, business. Also, pretty much anyone who is well educated, formally or otherwise. Also, pretty much anyone who has created significant IP.
in younger people (18-29), 70% have committed copyright infringement, so we'll see in a few years how large is that support.
Yes, we will. And if they manage to defeat the ideas of copyright and patent without a suitable replacement, we'll see how many great new movies and songs they get to enjoy as well. Because the relationship there is very solid. Unless the demographic you speak of elects to tax themselves in order to support all technological development and all art, the day they emasculate copyright and patent law is the day they begin a long slope downwards towards a much lesser state type of IP beneficiary. We had star wars and avatar and the IPad and the PC.... they'll likely end up with IP comparable to "artistic" shaky camera work in the woods, chasing badly portrayed "witches", and a very inexpensive bottle of "colloidal silver" for that cancer that's ailing them.
Actually, much IP is worth nothing or less than nothing. For instance this post is IP, are you going to pay me for writing it?
The marketplace -- ie, me -- deems it worthy of handing you a post in return.
Not really. We want people to produce quality scientific advancements and entertainment. Most IP is neither and much only becomes valuable when a government granted monopoly restricts other people from using similar material or methods.
But the IP we're actually talking about does fit into that category. To say that something has no worth, while you connive to take it from someone who did not offer it to you freely, seems to be only evidence of cognitive discord. If IP has no worth, there's no need to take it, is there? And if IP *does* have worth, then the right thing to do is pay for it, yes? And if the IP has worth, but not enough for you to pay... then it seems to me that you should (a) keep your money and (b) not use it, and all will be well, because the invention thus discouraged is so affected by the fact that the IP isn't of great note..
Nope. Pretty much anyone who can write, talk, or operate a camera is an IP producer.
Um. Well, yes, but again, individually valuable IP isn't typically produced by someone without a clue, as youtube and most blogs amply demonstrate. The IP under discussion is that which is taken from someone who is attempting to exchange some rights to it for recompense. Other IP isn't at issue here. Fair enough?
Creating the work the IP is derived from may be expensive or time-consuming but the work is not the IP.
Certainly not. But the work is the cost of the IP creation to the producer; and if that work is not adequately compensated, that most likely will signal the end of your ability to mine that source for more IP.
Actually, society does not see "sharing" as criminal behaviour.
Actually, society does. Those who have been habitually stealing movies and music and are either desperate to excuse their bad behavior, or simply do not grasp the ideas laid out in the constitution (if they've even read it yet) typically do not -- but you will find that among real businesses and real law and well educated citizens and within the constitution itself, the idea isn't even in question. There has not been one single post on slashdot, ever, that has laid out a socially persuasive case for creation/invention having no value -- and every argument for copyright infringement of even moderately recent vintage material rests upon such a rationalization.
"I did it to pay my mortgage" is likely to be the 21st century's "I was only following orders"
Seriously? You would compare an inventors hope of compensation for the act of inventing, with a Nazi's ducking of responsibility for torture and murder? I guess we've come to the end of your even moderately sane points, then.
The current copyright regime is unsustainable.
Well, perhaps that is so. In which case, legislation will have to change. You can write congress (pretty much useless) or lobby them (better, odds of success are strictly a matter of how much funding you can apply, and how widely) for change, or, you can engage in civil disobedience -- lawbreaking on principle -- at which point you need to be prepared for fines, or jail, or both, while not being assured in any way of success.
Then pay them, as you would pay a farmer to grow crops, which too have value.
I do pay them. Without fail. Movies, commercial software, music, shareware, etc.
Don't you think you're being a bit elitist by assuming that intelligence isn't equally distributed among mankind?
No. Because intelligence isn't equally distributed among all mankind, and neither is creativity. Fact. We have to deal with it until we get a whole lot better at genetic manipulation. Einstein's contribution wasn't ever going to be made by Elton John. Elton John's contribution wasn't ever going to be made by Marie Curie. Marie Curie's contribution wasn't ever going to be made by George Bush 2. And George Bush 2... well, I guess he only screwed us royally and is dumber than a bag of hammers as well so my "contribution" chain breaks there; but my demonstration that intelligence, creativity and skillsets land here -- but not there -- is only made more solid.
Well, I am a part of society, I'm all for paying IP producers for their work, but not for them living on the profits of their past work without producing new one.
So how long do they get? A day? A week? 1 microsecond after one copy gets out in the wild? How long should an inventor be allowed to "live on the profits" of an invention? Say someone invents a cure for cancer. What's that worth? A week of lunches at Denny's? Just a note in the newspaper? What about Photoshop? All those tools, all that capability... what's it really worth? And how come you get to decide? C'mon, tell us.
Instead, I see defrauding people of the right to use their intellect to solve their problems, for the sole reason that someone else had reserved the rights for that procedure, as unethical behaviour, even unhuman in certain cases.
Hold on now... this isn't the same issue at all -- you've moved the goalposts. I agree completely: If indeed one uses one's own intellect to solve a problem, one should have the absolute right to use the fruits of that solution. This is not constitutionally prohibited, or even mentioned, nor is it readily defensible. It's just really bad law, like a lot of law. Photoshop exists; this has no bearing on your right to use, or invent, the Gimp, or Paintshop Pro, or Aperture. Ibuprofin exists; this should have no bearing on your right to invent, or use, bufferin or aspirin (similar drugs with similar ingredients.)
The latter manage to get a living without governmental protection, perhaps IP producers could do the same
But we're back to scarcity -- the playing fields are not even slightly comparable. I can find a bricklayer easily. In fact, with just a little bit of training and a willingness to sweat, I can do my own (and I have.) I can also do my own gardening, and have, in a similar fashion. But when I need software that does X, where X is very difficult to do and may be also very difficult to understand, and may take a great deal of time, and may cost me a lot of money... I will have to get this software either by expending a lot of treasure, which imbues the process with debt that I will want to compensate for somehow, or by expending enough time of my own in order to solve it -- and if that problem isn't in my domain (or even if it is), it may take quite some time to solve. Again, I will want that time to be compensated for at a rate equal, at least, to other uses of my time, or -- obviously -- when next I'm faced with such a thing, I will not likely be willing to attempt a solution. None of this is even slightly compatible with the idea of "it's on teh Intertubez, I can have it for free!"
The value of a good idea is directly related to how widely it is used.
There are two "values" here. One is the value to the inventor; we want that to be high so they will continue to invent for the benefit of society. The other is the value to society. If we take without recompense, we may very well have done ourselves out of the next idea, which might very well be even better. So we don't do that (well, some of us don't.) And the laws are designed around this idea. They also, by seeing to it that patents and copyrights expire, see to it that the ideas with value that transcend the moment eventually become available to all at no cost, having been given some amount of time to provide compensation to the inventor. The idea is laid out in the constitution, and implemented by legislation.
This system prevents the value of an idea from being maximized.
On the contrary. The system ensures that the best ideas are maximized quite well. In some cases, the system sees to it that the ideas are actualized in the first place (drug development is the poster child for this.) When creating an idea is very expensive in terms of consuming something the inventor had to put into the task that said inventor valued highly, if we take it from the inventor, we can be quite sure that the inventor will find something else to do -- like work at McDonalds -- instead of working on the next idea in line. I can tell you authoritatively that it is quite frustrating to create an expensive commercial product and find binaries, program keys and the like on the net shortly after release.
And, with the onward march of technology, the percentage of the population with idle time to create goes up, and the amount of idle time goes up.
Aha. Well, when we get to 100% idle time, free robots do all the work we would prefer not to do, we all have personally satisfactory shelter and exquisite medical care, no one needs income to support themselves and their family, materials and time are available freely to all, and invention is therefore actually costless, I'll be happy to revisit this idea with you. However, until those conditions obtain, you're quite wrong.
My creations have dramatically improved the quality of life for all mankind.
Fascinating. How have your inventions improved my life? Perhaps I owe you a donation. Please elaborate.
So, take your BS about protecting the rights of creators and SHOVE IT UP YOUR FUCKING ASS. Find a way to determine that I deserve to be fed and clothed and sheltered and I'll weave magic that makes everyones life better till the day I die. Because THAT'S JUST WHAT I DO.
lol... Sounds to me that what you do is push poorly thought-out, childish philosophy somewhat incoherently on the Intertubez... but ok, fella, whatever. You go on with your bad self, a legend in your own lunchtime.
Because it can very easily put people at risk of harm.
If you want privacy, don't subscribe to a social network. Simple as that.
You think so? Clearly, you've not thought it through, then. Suppose someone is already subscribed to a social network and their situation changes; a spouse becomes violent, a repressive government decides they have said something too much or too far, they "whistleblow" on some illegal activity thereby making powerful enemies, they become victims of bullying, or perhaps they become a target of a private group such as white supremicists or the like. What then? I guess they should have known beforehand, eh? Or, what if they want to join in order to create a social group that discusses issues of considerable divisiveness? Must they expose their lives and their families to possible retribution from those who disagree, or is it your contention that if they don't hew to some imaginary set of safe subject matter you approve of, that they don't deserve to participate in a social network? Perhaps you're overdue for a re-think.
How does that make them ethically bankrupt?
When you artificially class people into haves and have-nots, and/or insist on endangering them, under the guise of "the social" (or darn near anything else), you're ethically bankrupt. Clear enough for you?
Is there some sort of forced sign-up that I'm not aware of?
For a lot of people, there is something almost as compelling: their family and friends and social groups and the businesses they associate with and/or work for are there. Google+ not so much, they pretty much shot themselves in the foot as far as I can see -- but in the case of Facebook, certainly.
Quit with the hyperbole, Chicken Little.
There's no hyperbole here. Perhaps instead, you might wish to learn to recognize valid criticism of serious social issues.
The issues that I find problematic include the security of people who have violent spouses, oppressive government regimes who have it in for individuals one way or another, or where individuals find their speech restricted for any reason associated with who they are, and/or where they work.
Also, you got the conviction, and the date, and the religious tweeting, and the interpretation of the 2nd, significantly wrong. While I'm willing to discuss any of that at any juncture it would actually be relevant, the main thing you've done here is prove my point: You went data mining, you got quite a few things wrong, and then your misuse of your inaccurate gatherings was in a blatant attempt to poison a perfectly valid and ethical viewpoint: incompetent gathering followed by intentional misuse. You are precisely the type of person that shows why actual privacy is an excellent idea. And of course, you posted anonymously to protect yourself, which is of course wholly understandable. Thanks for making my point through your own considerable failings.
This nerd isn't on Google+, or Facebook, and won't be until they officially abandon their "real name" policies. I find it odious that these companies intentionally lock out those who have a need, or even just a desire, for privacy. There are numerous situations where privacy is a critical component of security.
the idea of owning an information pattern itself is philosophically ridiculous.
When you cause your storage hardware to take on a unique information pattern that I brought into being, and you have copied this pattern against my will and consent, you now have an actual physical instance of my pattern, one that can do real work and/or really entertain you, that I am 100% justified in erasing from your storage hardware -- by force. After all, by your own reasoning, you don't own the pattern, so you have no right to retain or maintain it, and consequently you have no right to protect the physical instantiation you have caused to come into being.
If you don't like the terms I offer in exchange for providing that pattern to you, then you can legitimately refuse the terms and the pattern. If you take the pattern anyway, you have now qualified for a visit from the police, who operate -- quite correctly -- under the guidance of the constitution, which specifically provides for legislative mechanisms to protect those who generate new value for society in the form of art or invention.
Society will always benefit from invention; society will always be harmed by discouraging inventors. This means that your simplistic so-called philosophy that "information patterns cannot be owned" will always be at odds with society. Legally speaking, the behavior you champion here should result in fine, and/or imprisonment when detected -- and that is just how things should be.
Wind power suffers similarly... we get very high winds on a regular enough basis that windmill costs for survivable windmills are very high. I'm located in the high plains in Montana.
The fun part is we have lots of sun, and lots of wind. Difficult to use it, though.
I mean, do you really want to see your fellow Americans living in the same conditions as most Chinese factory workers? Because that's what deregulation means.
Yes, that'd be fine with me -- low wages are better than no wages. And you know, a lot of the supposed plight of Chinese workers is severely overblown. Faxconn workers in dormitories, etc... those folks are making out just fine. They laid out the math for the pay, the wages, the food, the cost of the living space... not too bad, and at the end of the month, they've saved hundreds more than the average worker here can, presuming they could find a comparable job. Not so terrible.
I want to see wages have some kind of rational association with the value of the work, that's what I want. I want rational housing prices. I want people to be able to own a home and raise a family off of one job -- the idea that a tiny-ass two bedroom home can be hundreds of thousands of dollars... that's just sick. But when government makes it uber-expensive to replace the building, somehow it magically increases in "value." I want medical care that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars an hour. When I was a kid, I burned myself pretty bad, area about a foot square on my back. Leaned against the stove, sweater caught fire, things went downhill from there. My mother took me to the doctor, who took care of everything, charged us $15 for the 15 minutes or so and the dressing and ointment, and that was the end of that. I want prisons that aren't profiteering involuntary ass-fuck/beating emporiums. I want punishment to equate to rehabilitation so ex-cons are employable and have a chance at a real life just like anyone else's. I want an end to the "list and database into the hopeless felon class" mentality. I want all the lawyers employed at McDonalds. I want interest rates that don't fit the classic definition of usury. I want to be able to lend money without having to be licensed to do so, so I *can* offer such interest rates. I want a stable currency based on something of actual exchange value -- gold, plutonium, square feet of land, whatever. I don't want the government telling people what they can -- or can't -- ingest. I don't want the government snooping on everything I do. I want prohibition 2 to end ASAP. I want us out of the constantly-at-war business.
Every one of those problems can be traced back to regulation one way or another. Every one. Government is constantly, constantly expanding its role, and then torching our economy to pay for same. It makes land and home and business ownership more expensive; it puts ridiculous false values on homes; it imposes its will on countries that it has absolutely zero legitimate authority within... sorry, not buying into "regulation is good." The evidence says otherwise.
We've never been more regulated, and we've never been in such trouble, either. Almost our entire industrial base has crashed; nearly every significant manufacturing business we have has moved manufacturing -- and its jobs -- offshore; regulation insists on minimum wage, and regulation makes manufacturing ultra expensive here... unions insisted upon concessions that destroyed the companies they worked for with legislative support, when what they *should* have gotten was arrest for conspiracy to extort. Are our economic troubles just coincidence? Hardly.
We need some regulation. It can't be ok to pollute. It can't be ok to arbitrarily refuse to hire on non-choice issues such as nationality, race, creed or sex. We really need very little, though, and certainly not the incredible load of crap we have now. It should be ok to build a house without windows; it should be ok to stable a horse on your own land in the middle of town, it should be ok to drive a car without seatbelts; it should be ok to opt out of universal healthcare (but then you shouldn't *get* any from the system.) It should be ok to put up a flag or an antenna on your own home or land; it should be ok to try an experimental drug before the stupid government rubber-stamps it (and you should NOT be able to sue if that goes badly!) etc., etc., etc.
But... it doesn't matter now anyway, our economy has already been destroyed. We're simply coasting along on inertia and some slight of hand courtesy of the fed. Our currency represents debt, not wealth; our government wastes its time "regulating" personal choice; we have to import almost everything we use in daily life, agriculture is down to a fraction of a percent of employment, I can't even hire someone to mow my lawn or watch a kid without paying wages suitable for a skilled worker AND I'm supposed to check their "papers" as if I were a Nazi official. I can't take a photo of many buildings without being questioned (or worse), and I can't fly without enduring a series of abuses that it would raise my blood pressure to even write about.
You can take most government regulation and throw it in the toilet, right where it belongs. Our government has shoved us right down the rabbit hole. They're idiots and have no idea what is right; they have repeatedly broken their oaths to the constitution, they make obviously illegal laws.... the supreme court crafts the most transparently sophist arguments to back them up... you know what, just fuck them, and fuck 99.999% of their regulations.
Here too... then we have to ask, how does this affect the efficiency, heat dissipation, installation cost, what is the lifetime of the cover (plastic turning dark purple won't help PV efficiency), and so on. And then there's windloading on the plastic... 70 mph winds see big sheets of anything as a clever way to remove large chunks of your roof, lol.
The "money" in GPL software as compared to commercial software isnt a good way to judge its worth to society.
Agreed. But it is an excellent way to judge its worth to the individual -- and we are all individuals, trapped by society into trading what worth we can accrue for the mundane, but necessary -- and long -- list of life's must-haves: Food. Clothing. Shelter. Health. Every subitem within those categories. Optional, but highly desired things like children, their education, entertainment, security.
Advancing society's technical position at the constant expense of the individual's personal position isn't an ethical win. And that's just one of the reasons the GPL is something I carefully avoid.
The world isn't "moving into the cloud." The cloud is a marketing gimmick designed to make (lots of) money off of a false premise: that you shouldn't be storing your content locally; it is predicated upon artificial bandwidth limits we've let the telecomm companies impose on us, and a simple lack of the ability to serve one's own content from one's own machine(s), also artificially imposed. It brings with it huge down sides, in particular the potential for the sudden loss of a lot of content for a lot of people simultaneously. We've already seen this, and the cloud is barely a wisp thus far.
Personally, I think we should take the intertubes away from the commercial interests for gross mismanagement and abuse of their customers, then make a "Manhattan project" out of connecting everyone, everywhere, via the highest throughput fiber we can manage. You'd see what the "cloud" was really worth then -- absolutely nothing.
There's nothing inherently wrong or unfair about this. It's their software.
You have it right. What the problem is, is that they market this software as "free." It's often not free. It can have a real cost, and that cost can be very high indeed for a commercial effort.
If you want to release truly free software, instead of the obligation-ware like the GPL, release it PD. Put no restrictions on anyone. That's actually free on every count. There is no cost for it; there are no gotchas to using it; there's no requirement for payback or acknowledgement; you can embed it, improve it, etc., ad infinitum. This will roll the wheels of progress along the furthest and the fastest. No lawyers are required by either the author or the user or the enduser; the patent system is defeated by numerous end-runs of publicly available prior art; and if you want to feel good, you can do so for the best of reasons.
On the other hand, if you want to put dinner on the table for you, for your family, for your employees.... stay as far away as possible from the GPL, and never, ever, release your source code.
And, it seems, they are slashdot moderators. I write freeware (as in take the executable and enjoy), freesource (as in PD... no license, take the source and go nutz) software, and commercial software. I can't tell you how many serious, sensible posts of mine about the many problems with the pay for service model, how the lack of a free to use GUI on linux holds back small commercial developers, the GPL's poisoning of commercial efforts, etc., have been mod-bombed here with "troll" and other stand-ins for "I disagree." I don't mind all that much, as moderation here really kinda sucks anyway -- I have to read at -1 in order to be sure I'll see the best posts -- but it seems pretty clear that one or more of the site mods is an over the top linux aficionado, and that screws those people who (mistakenly) put their trust in the/. mod system.
No, the trick is to keep the government out of business entirely. Every place they step in, they screw things up -- and that most definitely includes where they are legitimately trying to make things better*
Right now, "regulation" simply means "benefits for the businesses with the lobbyists who hand out the most money." Government is 100% corrupt at every level.
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*I believe the last time they did that, though, was about fifty years ago when they squashed the last legislative vestiges of top level prejudice.
Ultracaps... that's where we need to go for short term storage. If they can stem the leakage they're prone to, then long term as well. Other than storage density, they're really a spectacular well of desirable characteristics already.
But these new solar cells... the question is, when can we buy them, as it always seems to be with these breakthroughs. And for my area, how well will they withstand hail?
Slashdot Mirror
No, I'm not telling you that isn't me. The way you can tell I wasn't telling you that was -- wait for it -- I didn't tell you that.
What I told you, and will repeat here, is that the facts you quoted are significantly wrong. Looking at the record you refer to rather than at your post, the date is wrong - by years; the claim of conviction is flat-out incorrect; the stated offense is also wrong, as was your recasting of it.
Your misuse of bad data, and your incorrect recasting of it, caused your post to rise above its original lame attempt to derail my post and brought it well into proving my exact point in the GP.
No doubt. The classic "on the Intertubez, every Anon. Coward is superman." And there are other benefits - particularly commercial ones for Facebook itself, and the concomitant benefit for its customers, the companies who mine your information in order to optimize sales. However, these benefits do not, in my estimation, outweigh the harm that can be done by these same policies as I outlined above.
Would it? I've seen quite a few technical revelations here that would not have been made in a non-anonymous context. I guess I have to go with, I don't actually need to know your name. In fact, if you're actually a friend of mine, or family, I probably already know your name. It's Facebook that wants/needs to know your name. And Google. Since you appear to be comfortable with that, I certainly respect your position -- but it really doesn't affect mine.
But you are "spoilt" for Facebook, where everyone else is... aren't you. And this is the problem. There is considerably less benefit to engaging in a discussion on a site where there are just a few people, none of whom you know or really care about you, as compared to where your family, friends, job, local government, and a lot of sites comment sections now reside, isn't there?
Don't you think it's at least a little disingenuous to suggest that having a discussion on, say, Kuro5hin.org, has serious parity with the same discussion, but as it would take place on Facebook?
I believe you probably meant "stipulations." I'll proceed on that assumption.
First of all, there's no "must." You want these things, you will have to fight for them. If you want the fight to be successful, you'll have to lobby. Civil disobedience doesn't work in a society that has monetized incarceration. They want to arrest you.
Yep, I like that. Might argue for longer for really expensive undertakings... do you understand it takes a good portion of that 15 years just to get a drug through the government hoops? Kinda of makes it a bad idea to undertake anything long term, you see. But WRT movies, books, etc... yes, I agree, 15 years seems like more than enough to me.
No, don't think so. I'd give 'em the same 15 years. I don't see any reasonable basis for obtaining rights based on what *I* think someone else should be doing with them.
Um. Well, countries, borders, sovereignty? You want to be subject to Sharia law? You think the Arabs want to be subject to US law? You think the French want to be forced to allow the sale of Nazi memorabilia, or materials, solidly protected in the US, that support racist views? You want the Taliban to come in here and wrap your sister or sweetheart in a Burka? No, again, I don't think so. Different regions have different laws, different rules, different ideas... and I'm ok with that. If you live in one of those regions where you don't like the laws, either work against them, or move somewhere more palatable, or don't expect anything but the status quo.
I think at least in the US, this is actually the result of misinterpretation or actual oath-breaking on the part of lawmakers. You do have the right to copy a work for your own use, as long as it isn't for profit and as long as it doesn't impact the financial space of the rights-holder(s.) Unless they can show that you redistributed the work, or showed the work to an audience that extends beyond the terms of the right(s) you purchased, it would be correct for you to prevail in court.
Well, again, there are several ways to go here. You can just not buy, encourage everyone you can to do the same, and hope there will be a drop the price in response. You can lobby congress for legal change (regulation), but this is extremely expensive, and since your compatriots are people who are trying quite hard, even to the point of some rather insane rationalizations, to avoid paying anyone anything, perhaps not really a great choice for you, or you can engage in civil disobedience, hoping that your fine and/or arrest will draw enough attention to your cause that the laws will change. Of course, that won't reverse your conviction (in the USA), and do keep in mind that the US has monetized its prison system and will welcome you with open arms into your very own mattress equipped involuntary anal sex paradise.
Not just law. Also, the constitution. Also, the senate. Also, the house. Also, the executive. Also, the judiciary. Also, business. Also, pretty much anyone who is well educated, formally or otherwise. Also, pretty much anyone who has created significant IP.
Yes, we will. And if they manage to defeat the ideas of copyright and patent without a suitable replacement, we'll see how many great new movies and songs they get to enjoy as well. Because the relationship there is very solid. Unless the demographic you speak of elects to tax themselves in order to support all technological development and all art, the day they emasculate copyright and patent law is the day they begin a long slope downwards towards a much lesser state type of IP beneficiary. We had star wars and avatar and the IPad and the PC.... they'll likely end up with IP comparable to "artistic" shaky camera work in the woods, chasing badly portrayed "witches", and a very inexpensive bottle of "colloidal silver" for that cancer that's ailing them.
The marketplace -- ie, me -- deems it worthy of handing you a post in return.
But the IP we're actually talking about does fit into that category. To say that something has no worth, while you connive to take it from someone who did not offer it to you freely, seems to be only evidence of cognitive discord. If IP has no worth, there's no need to take it, is there? And if IP *does* have worth, then the right thing to do is pay for it, yes? And if the IP has worth, but not enough for you to pay... then it seems to me that you should (a) keep your money and (b) not use it, and all will be well, because the invention thus discouraged is so affected by the fact that the IP isn't of great note..
Um. Well, yes, but again, individually valuable IP isn't typically produced by someone without a clue, as youtube and most blogs amply demonstrate. The IP under discussion is that which is taken from someone who is attempting to exchange some rights to it for recompense. Other IP isn't at issue here. Fair enough?
Certainly not. But the work is the cost of the IP creation to the producer; and if that work is not adequately compensated, that most likely will signal the end of your ability to mine that source for more IP.
Actually, society does. Those who have been habitually stealing movies and music and are either desperate to excuse their bad behavior, or simply do not grasp the ideas laid out in the constitution (if they've even read it yet) typically do not -- but you will find that among real businesses and real law and well educated citizens and within the constitution itself, the idea isn't even in question. There has not been one single post on slashdot, ever, that has laid out a socially persuasive case for creation/invention having no value -- and every argument for copyright infringement of even moderately recent vintage material rests upon such a rationalization.
Seriously? You would compare an inventors hope of compensation for the act of inventing, with a Nazi's ducking of responsibility for torture and murder? I guess we've come to the end of your even moderately sane points, then.
Well, perhaps that is so. In which case, legislation will have to change. You can write congress (pretty much useless) or lobby them (better, odds of success are strictly a matter of how much funding you can apply, and how widely) for change, or, you can engage in civil disobedience -- lawbreaking on principle -- at which point you need to be prepared for fines, or jail, or both, while not being assured in any way of success.
I do pay them. Without fail. Movies, commercial software, music, shareware, etc.
No. Because intelligence isn't equally distributed among all mankind, and neither is creativity. Fact. We have to deal with it until we get a whole lot better at genetic manipulation. Einstein's contribution wasn't ever going to be made by Elton John. Elton John's contribution wasn't ever going to be made by Marie Curie. Marie Curie's contribution wasn't ever going to be made by George Bush 2. And George Bush 2... well, I guess he only screwed us royally and is dumber than a bag of hammers as well so my "contribution" chain breaks there; but my demonstration that intelligence, creativity and skillsets land here -- but not there -- is only made more solid.
So how long do they get? A day? A week? 1 microsecond after one copy gets out in the wild? How long should an inventor be allowed to "live on the profits" of an invention? Say someone invents a cure for cancer. What's that worth? A week of lunches at Denny's? Just a note in the newspaper? What about Photoshop? All those tools, all that capability... what's it really worth? And how come you get to decide? C'mon, tell us.
Hold on now... this isn't the same issue at all -- you've moved the goalposts. I agree completely: If indeed one uses one's own intellect to solve a problem, one should have the absolute right to use the fruits of that solution. This is not constitutionally prohibited, or even mentioned, nor is it readily defensible. It's just really bad law, like a lot of law. Photoshop exists; this has no bearing on your right to use, or invent, the Gimp, or Paintshop Pro, or Aperture. Ibuprofin exists; this should have no bearing on your right to invent, or use, bufferin or aspirin (similar drugs with similar ingredients.)
But we're back to scarcity -- the playing fields are not even slightly comparable. I can find a bricklayer easily. In fact, with just a little bit of training and a willingness to sweat, I can do my own (and I have.) I can also do my own gardening, and have, in a similar fashion. But when I need software that does X, where X is very difficult to do and may be also very difficult to understand, and may take a great deal of time, and may cost me a lot of money... I will have to get this software either by expending a lot of treasure, which imbues the process with debt that I will want to compensate for somehow, or by expending enough time of my own in order to solve it -- and if that problem isn't in my domain (or even if it is), it may take quite some time to solve. Again, I will want that time to be compensated for at a rate equal, at least, to other uses of my time, or -- obviously -- when next I'm faced with such a thing, I will not likely be willing to attempt a solution. None of this is even slightly compatible with the idea of "it's on teh Intertubez, I can have it for free!"
There are two "values" here. One is the value to the inventor; we want that to be high so they will continue to invent for the benefit of society. The other is the value to society. If we take without recompense, we may very well have done ourselves out of the next idea, which might very well be even better. So we don't do that (well, some of us don't.) And the laws are designed around this idea. They also, by seeing to it that patents and copyrights expire, see to it that the ideas with value that transcend the moment eventually become available to all at no cost, having been given some amount of time to provide compensation to the inventor. The idea is laid out in the constitution, and implemented by legislation.
On the contrary. The system ensures that the best ideas are maximized quite well. In some cases, the system sees to it that the ideas are actualized in the first place (drug development is the poster child for this.) When creating an idea is very expensive in terms of consuming something the inventor had to put into the task that said inventor valued highly, if we take it from the inventor, we can be quite sure that the inventor will find something else to do -- like work at McDonalds -- instead of working on the next idea in line. I can tell you authoritatively that it is quite frustrating to create an expensive commercial product and find binaries, program keys and the like on the net shortly after release.
Aha. Well, when we get to 100% idle time, free robots do all the work we would prefer not to do, we all have personally satisfactory shelter and exquisite medical care, no one needs income to support themselves and their family, materials and time are available freely to all, and invention is therefore actually costless, I'll be happy to revisit this idea with you. However, until those conditions obtain, you're quite wrong.
Fascinating. How have your inventions improved my life? Perhaps I owe you a donation. Please elaborate.
lol... Sounds to me that what you do is push poorly thought-out, childish philosophy somewhat incoherently on the Intertubez... but ok, fella, whatever. You go on with your bad self, a legend in your own lunchtime.
Others have experienced problems.
Because it can very easily put people at risk of harm.
You think so? Clearly, you've not thought it through, then. Suppose someone is already subscribed to a social network and their situation changes; a spouse becomes violent, a repressive government decides they have said something too much or too far, they "whistleblow" on some illegal activity thereby making powerful enemies, they become victims of bullying, or perhaps they become a target of a private group such as white supremicists or the like. What then? I guess they should have known beforehand, eh? Or, what if they want to join in order to create a social group that discusses issues of considerable divisiveness? Must they expose their lives and their families to possible retribution from those who disagree, or is it your contention that if they don't hew to some imaginary set of safe subject matter you approve of, that they don't deserve to participate in a social network? Perhaps you're overdue for a re-think.
When you artificially class people into haves and have-nots, and/or insist on endangering them, under the guise of "the social" (or darn near anything else), you're ethically bankrupt. Clear enough for you?
For a lot of people, there is something almost as compelling: their family and friends and social groups and the businesses they associate with and/or work for are there. Google+ not so much, they pretty much shot themselves in the foot as far as I can see -- but in the case of Facebook, certainly.
There's no hyperbole here. Perhaps instead, you might wish to learn to recognize valid criticism of serious social issues.
The issues that I find problematic include the security of people who have violent spouses, oppressive government regimes who have it in for individuals one way or another, or where individuals find their speech restricted for any reason associated with who they are, and/or where they work.
Also, you got the conviction, and the date, and the religious tweeting, and the interpretation of the 2nd, significantly wrong. While I'm willing to discuss any of that at any juncture it would actually be relevant, the main thing you've done here is prove my point: You went data mining, you got quite a few things wrong, and then your misuse of your inaccurate gatherings was in a blatant attempt to poison a perfectly valid and ethical viewpoint: incompetent gathering followed by intentional misuse. You are precisely the type of person that shows why actual privacy is an excellent idea. And of course, you posted anonymously to protect yourself, which is of course wholly understandable. Thanks for making my point through your own considerable failings.
Perhaps you will.
This nerd isn't on Google+, or Facebook, and won't be until they officially abandon their "real name" policies. I find it odious that these companies intentionally lock out those who have a need, or even just a desire, for privacy. There are numerous situations where privacy is a critical component of security.
When you cause your storage hardware to take on a unique information pattern that I brought into being, and you have copied this pattern against my will and consent, you now have an actual physical instance of my pattern, one that can do real work and/or really entertain you, that I am 100% justified in erasing from your storage hardware -- by force. After all, by your own reasoning, you don't own the pattern, so you have no right to retain or maintain it, and consequently you have no right to protect the physical instantiation you have caused to come into being.
If you don't like the terms I offer in exchange for providing that pattern to you, then you can legitimately refuse the terms and the pattern. If you take the pattern anyway, you have now qualified for a visit from the police, who operate -- quite correctly -- under the guidance of the constitution, which specifically provides for legislative mechanisms to protect those who generate new value for society in the form of art or invention.
Society will always benefit from invention; society will always be harmed by discouraging inventors. This means that your simplistic so-called philosophy that "information patterns cannot be owned" will always be at odds with society. Legally speaking, the behavior you champion here should result in fine, and/or imprisonment when detected -- and that is just how things should be.
^^This^^
Information may want to be free, but IP producers want to pay the mortgage.
Wind power suffers similarly... we get very high winds on a regular enough basis that windmill costs for survivable windmills are very high. I'm located in the high plains in Montana.
The fun part is we have lots of sun, and lots of wind. Difficult to use it, though.
Yes, that'd be fine with me -- low wages are better than no wages. And you know, a lot of the supposed plight of Chinese workers is severely overblown. Faxconn workers in dormitories, etc... those folks are making out just fine. They laid out the math for the pay, the wages, the food, the cost of the living space... not too bad, and at the end of the month, they've saved hundreds more than the average worker here can, presuming they could find a comparable job. Not so terrible.
I want to see wages have some kind of rational association with the value of the work, that's what I want. I want rational housing prices. I want people to be able to own a home and raise a family off of one job -- the idea that a tiny-ass two bedroom home can be hundreds of thousands of dollars... that's just sick. But when government makes it uber-expensive to replace the building, somehow it magically increases in "value." I want medical care that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars an hour. When I was a kid, I burned myself pretty bad, area about a foot square on my back. Leaned against the stove, sweater caught fire, things went downhill from there. My mother took me to the doctor, who took care of everything, charged us $15 for the 15 minutes or so and the dressing and ointment, and that was the end of that. I want prisons that aren't profiteering involuntary ass-fuck/beating emporiums. I want punishment to equate to rehabilitation so ex-cons are employable and have a chance at a real life just like anyone else's. I want an end to the "list and database into the hopeless felon class" mentality. I want all the lawyers employed at McDonalds. I want interest rates that don't fit the classic definition of usury. I want to be able to lend money without having to be licensed to do so, so I *can* offer such interest rates. I want a stable currency based on something of actual exchange value -- gold, plutonium, square feet of land, whatever. I don't want the government telling people what they can -- or can't -- ingest. I don't want the government snooping on everything I do. I want prohibition 2 to end ASAP. I want us out of the constantly-at-war business.
Every one of those problems can be traced back to regulation one way or another. Every one. Government is constantly, constantly expanding its role, and then torching our economy to pay for same. It makes land and home and business ownership more expensive; it puts ridiculous false values on homes; it imposes its will on countries that it has absolutely zero legitimate authority within... sorry, not buying into "regulation is good." The evidence says otherwise.
We've never been more regulated, and we've never been in such trouble, either. Almost our entire industrial base has crashed; nearly every significant manufacturing business we have has moved manufacturing -- and its jobs -- offshore; regulation insists on minimum wage, and regulation makes manufacturing ultra expensive here... unions insisted upon concessions that destroyed the companies they worked for with legislative support, when what they *should* have gotten was arrest for conspiracy to extort. Are our economic troubles just coincidence? Hardly.
We need some regulation. It can't be ok to pollute. It can't be ok to arbitrarily refuse to hire on non-choice issues such as nationality, race, creed or sex. We really need very little, though, and certainly not the incredible load of crap we have now. It should be ok to build a house without windows; it should be ok to stable a horse on your own land in the middle of town, it should be ok to drive a car without seatbelts; it should be ok to opt out of universal healthcare (but then you shouldn't *get* any from the system.) It should be ok to put up a flag or an antenna on your own home or land; it should be ok to try an experimental drug before the stupid government rubber-stamps it (and you should NOT be able to sue if that goes badly!) etc., etc., etc.
But... it doesn't matter now anyway, our economy has already been destroyed. We're simply coasting along on inertia and some slight of hand courtesy of the fed. Our currency represents debt, not wealth; our government wastes its time "regulating" personal choice; we have to import almost everything we use in daily life, agriculture is down to a fraction of a percent of employment, I can't even hire someone to mow my lawn or watch a kid without paying wages suitable for a skilled worker AND I'm supposed to check their "papers" as if I were a Nazi official. I can't take a photo of many buildings without being questioned (or worse), and I can't fly without enduring a series of abuses that it would raise my blood pressure to even write about.
You can take most government regulation and throw it in the toilet, right where it belongs. Our government has shoved us right down the rabbit hole. They're idiots and have no idea what is right; they have repeatedly broken their oaths to the constitution, they make obviously illegal laws.... the supreme court crafts the most transparently sophist arguments to back them up... you know what, just fuck them, and fuck 99.999% of their regulations.
Here too... then we have to ask, how does this affect the efficiency, heat dissipation, installation cost, what is the lifetime of the cover (plastic turning dark purple won't help PV efficiency), and so on. And then there's windloading on the plastic... 70 mph winds see big sheets of anything as a clever way to remove large chunks of your roof, lol.
Agreed. But it is an excellent way to judge its worth to the individual -- and we are all individuals, trapped by society into trading what worth we can accrue for the mundane, but necessary -- and long -- list of life's must-haves: Food. Clothing. Shelter. Health. Every subitem within those categories. Optional, but highly desired things like children, their education, entertainment, security.
Advancing society's technical position at the constant expense of the individual's personal position isn't an ethical win. And that's just one of the reasons the GPL is something I carefully avoid.
The world isn't "moving into the cloud." The cloud is a marketing gimmick designed to make (lots of) money off of a false premise: that you shouldn't be storing your content locally; it is predicated upon artificial bandwidth limits we've let the telecomm companies impose on us, and a simple lack of the ability to serve one's own content from one's own machine(s), also artificially imposed. It brings with it huge down sides, in particular the potential for the sudden loss of a lot of content for a lot of people simultaneously. We've already seen this, and the cloud is barely a wisp thus far.
Personally, I think we should take the intertubes away from the commercial interests for gross mismanagement and abuse of their customers, then make a "Manhattan project" out of connecting everyone, everywhere, via the highest throughput fiber we can manage. You'd see what the "cloud" was really worth then -- absolutely nothing.
You have it right. What the problem is, is that they market this software as "free." It's often not free. It can have a real cost, and that cost can be very high indeed for a commercial effort.
If you want to release truly free software, instead of the obligation-ware like the GPL, release it PD. Put no restrictions on anyone. That's actually free on every count. There is no cost for it; there are no gotchas to using it; there's no requirement for payback or acknowledgement; you can embed it, improve it, etc., ad infinitum. This will roll the wheels of progress along the furthest and the fastest. No lawyers are required by either the author or the user or the enduser; the patent system is defeated by numerous end-runs of publicly available prior art; and if you want to feel good, you can do so for the best of reasons.
On the other hand, if you want to put dinner on the table for you, for your family, for your employees.... stay as far away as possible from the GPL, and never, ever, release your source code.
And, it seems, they are slashdot moderators. I write freeware (as in take the executable and enjoy), freesource (as in PD... no license, take the source and go nutz) software, and commercial software. I can't tell you how many serious, sensible posts of mine about the many problems with the pay for service model, how the lack of a free to use GUI on linux holds back small commercial developers, the GPL's poisoning of commercial efforts, etc., have been mod-bombed here with "troll" and other stand-ins for "I disagree." I don't mind all that much, as moderation here really kinda sucks anyway -- I have to read at -1 in order to be sure I'll see the best posts -- but it seems pretty clear that one or more of the site mods is an over the top linux aficionado, and that screws those people who (mistakenly) put their trust in the /. mod system.
No, the trick is to keep the government out of business entirely. Every place they step in, they screw things up -- and that most definitely includes where they are legitimately trying to make things better*
Right now, "regulation" simply means "benefits for the businesses with the lobbyists who hand out the most money." Government is 100% corrupt at every level.
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*I believe the last time they did that, though, was about fifty years ago when they squashed the last legislative vestiges of top level prejudice.
Ultracaps... that's where we need to go for short term storage. If they can stem the leakage they're prone to, then long term as well. Other than storage density, they're really a spectacular well of desirable characteristics already.
But these new solar cells... the question is, when can we buy them, as it always seems to be with these breakthroughs. And for my area, how well will they withstand hail?