On what grounds? Encryption has already been ruled to have substantial legal use, therefore, under Betamax, they cannot attack a technology just because it encrypts. Similarly, P2P apps have substantial legal use, therefore they cannot attack a program just on the basis that it's P2P. So what argument will the good old MPAA make?
Your logic seems a bit flawed...what if I say "Every person is a good person?" Who am I comparing them to then? I can say "Everyone who works on this project with me is a good programmer", and there's no logical inconsistency there either. Your logic is the dangerous type-assuming that building one thing up NECESSARILY REQUIRES tearing something(one) else down, that having good NECESSITATES the existence of evil. (Not just as a hypothetical construct, but in reality.)
All I'm saying, when I make a statement on something like that (good programmer) is just a statement that, in theory, such a thing as a crappy programmer could exist. I'm not saying, however, that everyone besides that one person IS one, or that one even really exists. Just that it's possible.
I've -never- visited those remote machines, or been to Wisconsin (other then driving through on my way to PA) or Alberta (at all) for that matter. I've just been given access by those machines' owners for hosting.
Great, now what happens when I need to log into a remote server? I currently live in Colorado and have access to machines in Wisconsin and Alberta, and the great security of fingerprint biometrics aside, my arms just aren't that long. And if that remote machine will accept data from a reader at my own machine, well, that reader is vulnerable to tampering and outside their control, and we're back where we started.
At some point, we HAVE to realize that we just can't have some type of perfect security. Like a real safe or vault, someone determined enough to get in WILL get in. However, the better the security, the more chance that you will catch them in the act and prevent it, or deter the would-be attacker in the first place. This is the true goal of security.
Biometric security measures, in my opinion, would be too intrusive and unwieldy for use at the desktop level. If I want to let my friend Bob use my machine, I can give him my password, but I cannot hand him my retina. Of course, for ultrasensitive applications (bank vaults, national security information, nuclear power facilities) it would be an excellent alternative to the current cards and such which can be stolen.
As to the passphrase idea, it's not -terribly- hard to remember multiple phrases. And you don't need a different one for each site you visit-four or five different ones are sufficient for most people. And it's a lot harder for a would-be cracker to guess that your passphrase is "My daughter threw cake at the dog on her second birthday" then it is to look up your kid's date of birth.
In the -worst case- scenario, the risks of filesharing are economic, and in fact there's not even proof that it does economic damage. In essense, copyright laws create an artificial construct (intellectual property), an artificial problem (copyright infringement), and then uses real enforcement (massive monetary damages). Is it any surprise that people are angered when real lives are being destroyed to protect imaginary property?
Contrast that with speeding. It has real risks (a driver at higher speed is more likely to cause a wreck and will cause a worse one if he or she does), to real people (injury or death, in addition to a potential sharp blow to the checkbook.)
And yet, the penalties for that are so low no one follows the law, and enforcement is so spotty that no one figures it'll happen to them anyway. "Deterrent" penalties don't work. (If this is false, please explain to me how murders continue to occur despite the existence of the death penalty.) The punishment should fit the seriousness of the crime, not how seriously pissed off a CEO somewhere is. Copyright infringement is a nonviolent crime which deprives no one of anything other than an imaginary, artificial "right" of control over every copy of a single thought.
Let's not overdramatize here. If you steal my DVD, I don't have it anymore. If you copy it, I still do. Please don't keep trying to twist words and logic to say that the second is worse then the first.
Back under the bridge, troll. I've certainly seen historic preservation efforts supported by more than "socialists", and sometimes such preservation really is in the interest of everyone. Should we tear down the Parthanon, the countless Roman buildings left in Italy, or other historical gems, just because they aren't cost-effective anymore? Is that really the kind of world you want to live in?
And for the people who want to do it, we'll put them in cars, outfitted with the latest in radar-avoidance technology, and GPS. We'll then put that car on the autobahn at 100 mph (or, since this is Germany, its equivalent in kph), and take out the steering wheel, accelerator, and brake pedal. These will be obsolete and just add to the cost of manufacturing the car, and since the reliable new digital...
Oh? What's that? That's a bad idea, because...sometimes electronic systems fail? Well, none of us users of a computer knew about that!
It's not immoral. Not at all. However, the contrast is important. It is immoral to steal. It is not immoral to copy. Since you are saying that the two are one and the same, and my entire premise rests on the fact that they are not, that is more than a semantic debate, it is central to the concern in question.
Stealing is something we "naturally" dislike. When someone grabs something out of your hands and uses it themself, you no longer have it. If that thing is food, you go hungry. If that thing is a car, you can't go anywhere. When my car was stolen, it was the fact that I -didn't- have the car anymore that I found objectionable, not the fact that the other guy -did- have a car. Had he been able to sit down next to my car, copy it exactly, and drive away, I would not have objected a bit. When the police found the car undamaged, my first thought was not "Oh good, whoever stole it no longer has the benefit!" but "Oh good, I'm not taking the bus tomorrow, and I don't have to deal with the insurance anymore!"
The laws against theft address natural scarcity, scarcity which already exists and cannot be created or changed by law, only addressed. A limitless number of cars cannot be produced. Each one requires steel, plastics, wiring, glass...
You cannot "copy" and reuse these components. Each time you want to build a car, you need more steel, glass, plastic, wire, rubber, manpower, so on, so on. The law addresses the natural fact that me taking a car from you deprives you of it.
On the other hand, copyright creates artificial scarcity where none existed before. Enough copies of anything that can be digitized can be made to satisfy anyone who wishes to possess such a digital copy. It is not an attempt to deal with a natural situation-it is an attempt to impose an artificial one which would not, but for the law, exist at all. These copies can be made in such a way that one copy can be made into two, and two into four, and so on-the original owner need not be deprived of their copy in order that someone else have one.
In another post, you mentioned laws against punching someone in the face. Let's look at that one the same way. If I punch you in the face, you will be injured. Is that a natural problem (exists just because it exists) or an artificial one (created by the law so that the law might "solve" the problem it made?) Well, I submit that once again, it is natural, and the law simply seeks to deal with something that already exists and would continue to exist without the law.
The debate against copyright, then, is thus-it is a "problem" created entirely by law. If the copyright law were removed, so is the problem. There is no scarcity of what the law seeks to control once the law itself is removed-everyone can have one.
"But no one will create anything!" is your next argument. Alright...tell that to Homer, who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey. Copyright wasn't a thought in a single person's head at that time. Guess those weren't creative? How about the people who developed Linux, and -deliberately- left the software free of distribution restrictions? Guess that's not creativity?
Once again, the problem is created artificially-our overvaluing of money and material wealth. Want the law to address the fact that "creators" got to eat? Subsidize them directly. Easier, addresses -only- the problem in question without creating more, and doesn't needlessly criminalize or force. The law's power to coerce, while necessary, should never be used to solve a "problem" which the law itself creates. Don't believe me? Look at the success of the laws against drinking and driving (something which really is dangerous and a serious problem, and the laws and associated social taboos have driven this problem way down) against Prohibition (infringed on people's fundamental right to treat their bodies as they so choose, including deciding what to put into them. It resulted in the creation of gangs to supply the millions who ignored and refuse
-Likely- not, the general consensus, to my knowledge, is that a filename is not enough grounds to sue-the company suing must prove -content-. I doubt the Kazaa logs contain a bitprint of each file, likely just an IP address and filename.
Of course, that wouldn't stop them assembling a "people to watch" list-but in reality, I imagine that the **AA's have bots that host on Kazaa and every similar and compile such a list from every IP that comes through 'em. It would be trivial to write such a thing.
But as to launching a lawsuit based just on Kazaa's logs-likely not enough evidence.
Piratebay is hardly private, although I think your response is a bit of a troll-if they were doing that, they'd hardly have any users left, not to mention they'd be on PG's blacklist by now.
Evidence of what you're claiming aside, though, I've never used piratebay, although I have had a look at their legal correspondence. The site I use has, to my knowledge, not had its url posted here, and I'm not going to change that today.
A good private tracker, registration and ratio required, is a good degree of protection. I've never gotten -one- hit against my protowall while using those torrents.
...I am reminded of why I use a reputable, private bittorrent server and alternative (read: under-the-radar) means of P2P. Hasn't this been suspected about Kazaa for quite some time?
Well great. I'll just take this algorithm that I reverse-engineered out of some Windows program, improve upon it some, and use it in my own program. You're sure I'm not going to get sued for that, right?
Any you are welcome to make as many as you want for your own use
Well great! And here I was under the impression they were suing people for making copies for their own use, or allowing others to make copies for their own, so long as you don't sell them.
Oh wait...
You're correct that you should be allowed to make copies of something for your own use, even copyrighted or patented, or for a friend or even company's use, provided you don't sell it. You are incorrect, however, that this is how it -does- work, that's just how it -should- work.
Stealing is not okay. Reusing a good idea is. Where did people come up with this concept that you can steal something when you don't deprive someone of it?
Legally, I -might have- committed patent infringement. (Not theft.) Ethically, unless I sell the copied product, I don't feel I did anything wrong at all.
Still occurs when your software and protocols are open, and I can look at them and "interoperate" with them at will. Still, it was a very good letter, almost as convincing (and just as bogus) as the TCO garbage they were doing a bit ago. That got debunked, so they need a new non-sequitur to try and make real-that somehow, closed protocols are better at openness then open ones.
If I need to interoperate, the quickest way to ensure that is if I can get into BOTH your code AND mine. There isn't a better way, period, and no amount of FUD from Mr. Gates will change that.
No, because they can still buy adspace under their own name too, as well as generally coming up first for relevant results. It would be more like Ford buying a billboard near every Mazda dealership in a given city. Now, granted, I am a US citizen and not familiar with French law-that type of advertising tactic might be ruled illegal in France. But it certainly wouldn't be (and rightfully, wasn't) in the US.
To my knowledge, trademark infringement comes from a deliberate attempt to confuse the consumer-labeling Coke with a label exactly like Pepsi's, for instance. To my knowledge, it is not "trademark infringement" to try and get someone to buy your product instead of a competitor's.
In the example of, say, Microsoft vs. Red Hat, it would be like Microsoft buying the prime ads on Slashdot, where they know there are quite a few Linux users seeing them, even if that kept Red Hat from getting the best ad space here. Of course, it's also known that a lot of Red Hat users are going to be looking at a page with the search results for "Red Hat", so Microsoft might want to buy ad space there for its FUD total-cost-of-ownership garbage. If they do...well, that ad skates dangerously close to false advertising by presupposing an existing Windows installation for its claims, and never stating that, but that's against a different law. I see nothing wrong with buying prime ad space where users of a competitor's product are likely to see them.
If I reverse-engineer it, make my own processor, and it works, I haven't stolen anything, I've made something. Granted, I did so building on your design-but again, where do we draw the line? Is everyone who makes a processor stealing from the guy who made the first one, since they all build on previous designs?
My apologies, troll, but bittorrent sites are every bit a "community". I use one quite frequently, and indeed would continue to even if it weren't for its...erm...content. (Sure I'll tell you where the site is, I'd love to see it go the way of suprnova, and you'd have to register to see for yourself anyway.)
The users there know each other well, have helped each other with everything from technical problems to real-life crises, and of course discuss torrents and their content. To say that this doesn't constitute a "community" is ridiculous.
And yes, contrary to popular belief, many torrent users DO purchase what they download. But since effectively NO stores will allow you to return open DVD's or software, and movie theatres certainly will not refund your money if the movie sucks, it's generally wise to "try before you buy". (Yes, of course, there are those who never do buy...chances are, those never would have in the first place.)
Where do we draw the line? Is it illegal to loan a friend a movie? Invite the friend over to watch it? Give a book to someone after we're done reading it? All of these things cut into the creator's potential profits. To me, the ethical line (and yes, I know the legal one is in a different place) is here: Did you make money off someone else's work? If yes, you have done something unethical. If no, you have shared, and that's all.
For you to say that making a copy of something equates to stealing it is dumb. If I figure out how to build a computer by studying a Dell, am I "stealing" from Dell by buying components and doing it myself next time? Or doing the same for a friend? Your argument would indicate the answer is yes.
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On what grounds? Encryption has already been ruled to have substantial legal use, therefore, under Betamax, they cannot attack a technology just because it encrypts. Similarly, P2P apps have substantial legal use, therefore they cannot attack a program just on the basis that it's P2P. So what argument will the good old MPAA make?
Your logic seems a bit flawed...what if I say "Every person is a good person?" Who am I comparing them to then? I can say "Everyone who works on this project with me is a good programmer", and there's no logical inconsistency there either. Your logic is the dangerous type-assuming that building one thing up NECESSARILY REQUIRES tearing something(one) else down, that having good NECESSITATES the existence of evil. (Not just as a hypothetical construct, but in reality.)
All I'm saying, when I make a statement on something like that (good programmer) is just a statement that, in theory, such a thing as a crappy programmer could exist. I'm not saying, however, that everyone besides that one person IS one, or that one even really exists. Just that it's possible.
What idiot modded this flamebait? It's even funnier now that someone took it seriously.
I've -never- visited those remote machines, or been to Wisconsin (other then driving through on my way to PA) or Alberta (at all) for that matter. I've just been given access by those machines' owners for hosting.
Great, now what happens when I need to log into a remote server? I currently live in Colorado and have access to machines in Wisconsin and Alberta, and the great security of fingerprint biometrics aside, my arms just aren't that long. And if that remote machine will accept data from a reader at my own machine, well, that reader is vulnerable to tampering and outside their control, and we're back where we started.
At some point, we HAVE to realize that we just can't have some type of perfect security. Like a real safe or vault, someone determined enough to get in WILL get in. However, the better the security, the more chance that you will catch them in the act and prevent it, or deter the would-be attacker in the first place. This is the true goal of security.
Biometric security measures, in my opinion, would be too intrusive and unwieldy for use at the desktop level. If I want to let my friend Bob use my machine, I can give him my password, but I cannot hand him my retina. Of course, for ultrasensitive applications (bank vaults, national security information, nuclear power facilities) it would be an excellent alternative to the current cards and such which can be stolen.
As to the passphrase idea, it's not -terribly- hard to remember multiple phrases. And you don't need a different one for each site you visit-four or five different ones are sufficient for most people. And it's a lot harder for a would-be cracker to guess that your passphrase is "My daughter threw cake at the dog on her second birthday" then it is to look up your kid's date of birth.
In the -worst case- scenario, the risks of filesharing are economic, and in fact there's not even proof that it does economic damage. In essense, copyright laws create an artificial construct (intellectual property), an artificial problem (copyright infringement), and then uses real enforcement (massive monetary damages). Is it any surprise that people are angered when real lives are being destroyed to protect imaginary property?
Contrast that with speeding. It has real risks (a driver at higher speed is more likely to cause a wreck and will cause a worse one if he or she does), to real people (injury or death, in addition to a potential sharp blow to the checkbook.)
And yet, the penalties for that are so low no one follows the law, and enforcement is so spotty that no one figures it'll happen to them anyway. "Deterrent" penalties don't work. (If this is false, please explain to me how murders continue to occur despite the existence of the death penalty.) The punishment should fit the seriousness of the crime, not how seriously pissed off a CEO somewhere is. Copyright infringement is a nonviolent crime which deprives no one of anything other than an imaginary, artificial "right" of control over every copy of a single thought.
Let's not overdramatize here. If you steal my DVD, I don't have it anymore. If you copy it, I still do. Please don't keep trying to twist words and logic to say that the second is worse then the first.
Great idea!
I'm a skeptic! Can I go? Please?
Erm...I mean, prove it to me, you lying bastards.
That's as may be, now what about the pleasure boater out on his sailboat, -relying- on his personal GPS? Or a smaller fisherman?
Oops! It got wet. Tends to happen on the water.
Back under the bridge, troll. I've certainly seen historic preservation efforts supported by more than "socialists", and sometimes such preservation really is in the interest of everyone. Should we tear down the Parthanon, the countless Roman buildings left in Italy, or other historical gems, just because they aren't cost-effective anymore? Is that really the kind of world you want to live in?
And for the people who want to do it, we'll put them in cars, outfitted with the latest in radar-avoidance technology, and GPS. We'll then put that car on the autobahn at 100 mph (or, since this is Germany, its equivalent in kph), and take out the steering wheel, accelerator, and brake pedal. These will be obsolete and just add to the cost of manufacturing the car, and since the reliable new digital...
Oh? What's that? That's a bad idea, because...sometimes electronic systems fail? Well, none of us users of a computer knew about that!
Erm, if you say so, guess so. I was stating what I've found to work.
Alright, then here we go-
It's not immoral. Not at all. However, the contrast is important. It is immoral to steal. It is not immoral to copy. Since you are saying that the two are one and the same, and my entire premise rests on the fact that they are not, that is more than a semantic debate, it is central to the concern in question.
Stealing is something we "naturally" dislike. When someone grabs something out of your hands and uses it themself, you no longer have it. If that thing is food, you go hungry. If that thing is a car, you can't go anywhere. When my car was stolen, it was the fact that I -didn't- have the car anymore that I found objectionable, not the fact that the other guy -did- have a car. Had he been able to sit down next to my car, copy it exactly, and drive away, I would not have objected a bit. When the police found the car undamaged, my first thought was not "Oh good, whoever stole it no longer has the benefit!" but "Oh good, I'm not taking the bus tomorrow, and I don't have to deal with the insurance anymore!"
The laws against theft address natural scarcity, scarcity which already exists and cannot be created or changed by law, only addressed. A limitless number of cars cannot be produced. Each one requires steel, plastics, wiring, glass...
You cannot "copy" and reuse these components. Each time you want to build a car, you need more steel, glass, plastic, wire, rubber, manpower, so on, so on. The law addresses the natural fact that me taking a car from you deprives you of it.
On the other hand, copyright creates artificial scarcity where none existed before. Enough copies of anything that can be digitized can be made to satisfy anyone who wishes to possess such a digital copy. It is not an attempt to deal with a natural situation-it is an attempt to impose an artificial one which would not, but for the law, exist at all. These copies can be made in such a way that one copy can be made into two, and two into four, and so on-the original owner need not be deprived of their copy in order that someone else have one.
In another post, you mentioned laws against punching someone in the face. Let's look at that one the same way. If I punch you in the face, you will be injured. Is that a natural problem (exists just because it exists) or an artificial one (created by the law so that the law might "solve" the problem it made?) Well, I submit that once again, it is natural, and the law simply seeks to deal with something that already exists and would continue to exist without the law.
The debate against copyright, then, is thus-it is a "problem" created entirely by law. If the copyright law were removed, so is the problem. There is no scarcity of what the law seeks to control once the law itself is removed-everyone can have one.
"But no one will create anything!" is your next argument. Alright...tell that to Homer, who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey. Copyright wasn't a thought in a single person's head at that time. Guess those weren't creative? How about the people who developed Linux, and -deliberately- left the software free of distribution restrictions? Guess that's not creativity?
Once again, the problem is created artificially-our overvaluing of money and material wealth. Want the law to address the fact that "creators" got to eat? Subsidize them directly. Easier, addresses -only- the problem in question without creating more, and doesn't needlessly criminalize or force. The law's power to coerce, while necessary, should never be used to solve a "problem" which the law itself creates. Don't believe me? Look at the success of the laws against drinking and driving (something which really is dangerous and a serious problem, and the laws and associated social taboos have driven this problem way down) against Prohibition (infringed on people's fundamental right to treat their bodies as they so choose, including deciding what to put into them. It resulted in the creation of gangs to supply the millions who ignored and refuse
-Likely- not, the general consensus, to my knowledge, is that a filename is not enough grounds to sue-the company suing must prove -content-. I doubt the Kazaa logs contain a bitprint of each file, likely just an IP address and filename.
Of course, that wouldn't stop them assembling a "people to watch" list-but in reality, I imagine that the **AA's have bots that host on Kazaa and every similar and compile such a list from every IP that comes through 'em. It would be trivial to write such a thing.
But as to launching a lawsuit based just on Kazaa's logs-likely not enough evidence.
Piratebay is hardly private, although I think your response is a bit of a troll-if they were doing that, they'd hardly have any users left, not to mention they'd be on PG's blacklist by now.
Evidence of what you're claiming aside, though, I've never used piratebay, although I have had a look at their legal correspondence. The site I use has, to my knowledge, not had its url posted here, and I'm not going to change that today.
A good private tracker, registration and ratio required, is a good degree of protection. I've never gotten -one- hit against my protowall while using those torrents.
...I am reminded of why I use a reputable, private bittorrent server and alternative (read: under-the-radar) means of P2P. Hasn't this been suspected about Kazaa for quite some time?
Well great. I'll just take this algorithm that I reverse-engineered out of some Windows program, improve upon it some, and use it in my own program. You're sure I'm not going to get sued for that, right?
"Read own sig"? I'm presuming that was intended to make some form of sense...
Any you are welcome to make as many as you want for your own use
Well great! And here I was under the impression they were suing people for making copies for their own use, or allowing others to make copies for their own, so long as you don't sell them.
Oh wait...
You're correct that you should be allowed to make copies of something for your own use, even copyrighted or patented, or for a friend or even company's use, provided you don't sell it. You are incorrect, however, that this is how it -does- work, that's just how it -should- work.
Stealing is not okay. Reusing a good idea is. Where did people come up with this concept that you can steal something when you don't deprive someone of it?
Redundant? It's the first on-topic comment to this article, and was not mentioned in the article, how'n hells is this redundant?
Legally, I -might have- committed patent infringement. (Not theft.) Ethically, unless I sell the copied product, I don't feel I did anything wrong at all.
Still occurs when your software and protocols are open, and I can look at them and "interoperate" with them at will. Still, it was a very good letter, almost as convincing (and just as bogus) as the TCO garbage they were doing a bit ago. That got debunked, so they need a new non-sequitur to try and make real-that somehow, closed protocols are better at openness then open ones.
If I need to interoperate, the quickest way to ensure that is if I can get into BOTH your code AND mine. There isn't a better way, period, and no amount of FUD from Mr. Gates will change that.
No, because they can still buy adspace under their own name too, as well as generally coming up first for relevant results. It would be more like Ford buying a billboard near every Mazda dealership in a given city. Now, granted, I am a US citizen and not familiar with French law-that type of advertising tactic might be ruled illegal in France. But it certainly wouldn't be (and rightfully, wasn't) in the US.
To my knowledge, trademark infringement comes from a deliberate attempt to confuse the consumer-labeling Coke with a label exactly like Pepsi's, for instance. To my knowledge, it is not "trademark infringement" to try and get someone to buy your product instead of a competitor's.
In the example of, say, Microsoft vs. Red Hat, it would be like Microsoft buying the prime ads on Slashdot, where they know there are quite a few Linux users seeing them, even if that kept Red Hat from getting the best ad space here. Of course, it's also known that a lot of Red Hat users are going to be looking at a page with the search results for "Red Hat", so Microsoft might want to buy ad space there for its FUD total-cost-of-ownership garbage. If they do...well, that ad skates dangerously close to false advertising by presupposing an existing Windows installation for its claims, and never stating that, but that's against a different law. I see nothing wrong with buying prime ad space where users of a competitor's product are likely to see them.
If I reverse-engineer it, make my own processor, and it works, I haven't stolen anything, I've made something. Granted, I did so building on your design-but again, where do we draw the line? Is everyone who makes a processor stealing from the guy who made the first one, since they all build on previous designs?
My apologies, troll, but bittorrent sites are every bit a "community". I use one quite frequently, and indeed would continue to even if it weren't for its...erm...content. (Sure I'll tell you where the site is, I'd love to see it go the way of suprnova, and you'd have to register to see for yourself anyway.)
The users there know each other well, have helped each other with everything from technical problems to real-life crises, and of course discuss torrents and their content. To say that this doesn't constitute a "community" is ridiculous.
And yes, contrary to popular belief, many torrent users DO purchase what they download. But since effectively NO stores will allow you to return open DVD's or software, and movie theatres certainly will not refund your money if the movie sucks, it's generally wise to "try before you buy". (Yes, of course, there are those who never do buy...chances are, those never would have in the first place.)
Where do we draw the line? Is it illegal to loan a friend a movie? Invite the friend over to watch it? Give a book to someone after we're done reading it? All of these things cut into the creator's potential profits. To me, the ethical line (and yes, I know the legal one is in a different place) is here: Did you make money off someone else's work? If yes, you have done something unethical. If no, you have shared, and that's all.
For you to say that making a copy of something equates to stealing it is dumb. If I figure out how to build a computer by studying a Dell, am I "stealing" from Dell by buying components and doing it myself next time? Or doing the same for a friend? Your argument would indicate the answer is yes.