Seriously, why do you think fonts should not be copyrightable? Is it just the generic Slashdot "I should be entitled to copy anything I like" mentality, or can you actually come up with a rational reason why you should be allowed to take a creative product -- one that may represent years of hard work -- and use it without compensating the creator?
I'm sorry, but I refuse to accept that a new way (or method) of drawing a stylised letter "A" is a sufficiently "creative" activity worthy of the extreme levels of promotion and protection that copyright offers. Especially when the differences between this "new" letter "A" (I can't believe I'm writing this) and some other version are so minimal only typeface experts can tell the difference; the very typeface experts who benefit most from font copyrights to begin with. I smell a guild at work.
And as for the notion of the hard work that goes into fonts; I don't dispute that. But if that's a good enough reason for copyrights, then what about the bricklayer who builds a wall, or the carpenter who makes a door? Why don't the people they sell to have to pay rent forever more? Why should people have to pay rent for using a Letter "P" with a long tail? Is it really that special? Especially when the people who made the original scribble have been dead for 50 years.
Copyright on fonts is not a concept that can be taken seriously, no matter how many typeface makers had friends in the English Parliament all those years ago. Tellingly, even the US has thus far declined to promote this supposed artistic field, with only a dubious software loophole still permitting typeface makers to extort people. Making a fancy letter "A" is not an activity that should need any greater reward than a single paycheck.
If you crowdsource AIDS Research/Treatment, you'll find that upwards of 50% of treatments will be complete crackpottery/homoeothermy/witch doctors, 45% of finds will be from religious groups/AIDS denialists, and the remaining 5% will be paid astroturfing from pharmaceutical companies. A vanishingly small percentage of suggestions will be from actual medical researchers.
The internet is a cesspool of misinformation, junk and lies. Sorry but that's just the way it is. If you give everyone on earth their own personal, worldwide soapbox, don't expect quality content on average. I'm not saying there isn't quality information out there. I'm just saying that it is very, very difficult to find without trustworthy quality control, or which there is precisely none whatsoever at this point in time.
Sure we can talk about a "marketplace of ideas", but as anyone with three brain cells and the attention span of a goldfish can attest, marketplaces are neither rational, efficient or likely to work without moderating forces. Left to the crowds in their clouds, the HIV virus is going to remain even more inscrutable than if it was just left to professional researchers. People will turn up so many loose ends and red herrings that the whole enterprise will be a giant waste of time.
Just when we all though the font copyright had been consigned to the realm of history....
A whole new industry with it patents and pitfalls is going to be brought screaming into the 21st century. Soon there will be legions of lawyers and PR drones promoting the idea that some way of drawing the letter 'A' is worthy of copyright and patent protection. For a while there, it looked like that nonsense was behind us, but I suppose that was just wishful thinking.
That means they can vote, and they can risk their lives in our foreign wars. In my opinion, that makes them adults, and that gives them responsibility over their use of time.
In Nanny states, the concept of an adult capable of independent thought and action is an outdated and dangerous one. People need protecting from absolutely everything, especially themselves.
For a program like octave, having no GUI is very forgiveable. There is really no way to work with the system outside of prompt commands. Even Matlab is very prompt based.
What is unforgivable in Octave's case is its graphing capabilities. Octave used Gnuplot for drawing which basically means it is stuck in the 1990s when it comes to making plots. 3D plots are slow, difficult and complicated things to create. Animations are out of the question. 99% of the time, you're better off exporting to png (itself a nighmare), and animating from those. 3D data is all but ungraphable on Linux systems anyway, so I suppose Octave is not alone here.
It seems the 'tech' companies have shifted their focus on making money by suing others rather than selling things.
Either way, tech companies are no longer making things anymore. Nowadays, that's all done by ultra-capitalists in China who don't give two fiddlers about Imaginary Property rights.
Funny story. The Pythagoreans in fact believed(religiously) that all numbers were in fact rational; that is very number can be expressed as a/b, where a and b are integers. When a mathematician called Hippasus proved (using the Pythagorean theorem) that the square root of 2 was irrational, the Pythagorean were so offended, they killed him.
Having digressed, I will return to the topic at hand by saying that most people often for get that just because you can do something, that doesn't mean that you should. Just because we now have the technology to tag, monitor, follow and record everyone at all times, it is not necessarily going to be good for anyone if we do so.
This and many similar suggestions are based on what Edmund Burke--writing in the wake of the French Revolution--called "levelling reason". Without some kind of grounding; without a philosophical or moral compass, people and societies can lose their way particularly when enabled by new technologies. Ridiculous ideas and notions, contrary to all prior reason, are lauded as rational, neccessary and beneficial developments and will indeed may appear as such especially to those devoid of any real education or philosophical grounding. Unfortunately, this group now encompasses the majority of those entrusted with making decisions in society, as well as their backers. No one listens to calm thinkers anymore; everyone just listens to PR men.
We are turning into the society Burke feared. One dominated by emotive, shallow views which applies naive levelling reason to all problems it encounters. This is why our prisons are filling up as crime goes down; why our internet is being censored even as our society becomes more tolerant; why our politics becomes more polarised even as our political parties become more homogeneous. And it is why we seek to gather vast, unprecedented amounts of data about ourselves without bothering to really try and use it, or to consider the consequences of doing so.
For most stories like this, despite the modern age and technologies involved, ninety percent of these--usually negative--consequences can be discovered by a simple reading of Aesop's Fables. Not that anyone--particularly the people who report them--will bother to. As a society, uur reasoning remains at a primary school level and rationality is something we can only apply to numbers, not ourselves.
In my opinion: if the city hires you, you are subservient to the city. You do not give passwords to your inferiors. Ever. You do, however, give passwords to your superiors when asked. Always.
Gainful Employment does not mean you have joined some kind of army, even if your employer is the Government. Though I understand a lot of American managers are actually ex-army, so perhaps the US view of management is coloured by this somewhat.
Lets try this from the other persepective: Your Employer: Give me the password. You: But you told me I'd be liable for anything that happens if I give it to you. Your Employer: Give me the password!! You: No. I don't want to be liable. Your Employer: You're fired!!! You: Fine. Your Employer: Give me the password!!!! You: I don't work for you anymore. And I still don't want to be liable. Your Employer: Peon!!!! I own you!!!!!! I'll grind you into dust!!!!! Lawyers! Destroy him!!! And they did.
You know what the moral of this story is? Don't work for anyone.
If ever there was a rationale for "misuse of copyright", this is it.
Copyright is quickly become the big business go-to concept for invalidating constitutions everywhere. Wiretapping, prior restraint, first sale rights, presumption of innocence, parody and satire, academic freedoms, etc, etc. People have rights that are getting in your way? Then get yourself some Copyrights!; Ten times more potent than the average right.
Oh, and we should be able to import prescription drugs at much lower prices from other countries too!
That settles it then. Whatever about small fry like video game companies and DVD distributors, there is no way that the US Supreme Court is going to upset the gravy train of something so massive as the pharmaceutical industry. No imports for you!
Slashdot Mirror
What would companies have to do with stock trading?
When my freedom's on the line, I'll still take that over a machine test any day of the week.
I'm sorry, but I refuse to accept that a new way (or method) of drawing a stylised letter "A" is a sufficiently "creative" activity worthy of the extreme levels of promotion and protection that copyright offers. Especially when the differences between this "new" letter "A" (I can't believe I'm writing this) and some other version are so minimal only typeface experts can tell the difference; the very typeface experts who benefit most from font copyrights to begin with. I smell a guild at work.
And as for the notion of the hard work that goes into fonts; I don't dispute that. But if that's a good enough reason for copyrights, then what about the bricklayer who builds a wall, or the carpenter who makes a door? Why don't the people they sell to have to pay rent forever more? Why should people have to pay rent for using a Letter "P" with a long tail? Is it really that special? Especially when the people who made the original scribble have been dead for 50 years.
Copyright on fonts is not a concept that can be taken seriously, no matter how many typeface makers had friends in the English Parliament all those years ago. Tellingly, even the US has thus far declined to promote this supposed artistic field, with only a dubious software loophole still permitting typeface makers to extort people. Making a fancy letter "A" is not an activity that should need any greater reward than a single paycheck.
If you crowdsource AIDS Research/Treatment, you'll find that upwards of 50% of treatments will be complete crackpottery/homoeothermy/witch doctors, 45% of finds will be from religious groups/AIDS denialists, and the remaining 5% will be paid astroturfing from pharmaceutical companies. A vanishingly small percentage of suggestions will be from actual medical researchers.
The internet is a cesspool of misinformation, junk and lies. Sorry but that's just the way it is. If you give everyone on earth their own personal, worldwide soapbox, don't expect quality content on average. I'm not saying there isn't quality information out there. I'm just saying that it is very, very difficult to find without trustworthy quality control, or which there is precisely none whatsoever at this point in time.
Sure we can talk about a "marketplace of ideas", but as anyone with three brain cells and the attention span of a goldfish can attest, marketplaces are neither rational, efficient or likely to work without moderating forces. Left to the crowds in their clouds, the HIV virus is going to remain even more inscrutable than if it was just left to professional researchers. People will turn up so many loose ends and red herrings that the whole enterprise will be a giant waste of time.
There is nothing wrong with comics sans. People use it in inappropriate situations, but that is not a technical issue with the font itself.
See also, Bittorrent.
Just when we all though the font copyright had been consigned to the realm of history....
A whole new industry with it patents and pitfalls is going to be brought screaming into the 21st century. Soon there will be legions of lawyers and PR drones promoting the idea that some way of drawing the letter 'A' is worthy of copyright and patent protection. For a while there, it looked like that nonsense was behind us, but I suppose that was just wishful thinking.
Something tells me their definition of "game audience" is what's at fault here.
Meme overload Captain!! She'll fly apart!
Again, if you want to trump just about any legal right other people have--get yourself some copyrights.
Available wherever politicians are sold!
In Nanny states, the concept of an adult capable of independent thought and action is an outdated and dangerous one. People need protecting from absolutely everything, especially themselves.
What! No Ecoles?!! Moscow State University? What's in here? University of Michigan!!!
This is an Anglophone poll if ever I saw one.
While I'm sure this will be quickly dropped for just this reason, I'm not convinced the same courtesy would be extended if the senator was a democrat.
Back in my day, they called it Wire Fraud. But I guess that's not as easy for paid media drones to defend.
For a program like octave, having no GUI is very forgiveable. There is really no way to work with the system outside of prompt commands. Even Matlab is very prompt based.
What is unforgivable in Octave's case is its graphing capabilities. Octave used Gnuplot for drawing which basically means it is stuck in the 1990s when it comes to making plots. 3D plots are slow, difficult and complicated things to create. Animations are out of the question. 99% of the time, you're better off exporting to png (itself a nighmare), and animating from those. 3D data is all but ungraphable on Linux systems anyway, so I suppose Octave is not alone here.
Either way, tech companies are no longer making things anymore. Nowadays, that's all done by ultra-capitalists in China who don't give two fiddlers about Imaginary Property rights.
Funny story. The Pythagoreans in fact believed(religiously) that all numbers were in fact rational; that is very number can be expressed as a/b, where a and b are integers. When a mathematician called Hippasus proved (using the Pythagorean theorem) that the square root of 2 was irrational, the Pythagorean were so offended, they killed him.
Having digressed, I will return to the topic at hand by saying that most people often for get that just because you can do something, that doesn't mean that you should. Just because we now have the technology to tag, monitor, follow and record everyone at all times, it is not necessarily going to be good for anyone if we do so.
This and many similar suggestions are based on what Edmund Burke--writing in the wake of the French Revolution--called "levelling reason". Without some kind of grounding; without a philosophical or moral compass, people and societies can lose their way particularly when enabled by new technologies. Ridiculous ideas and notions, contrary to all prior reason, are lauded as rational, neccessary and beneficial developments and will indeed may appear as such especially to those devoid of any real education or philosophical grounding. Unfortunately, this group now encompasses the majority of those entrusted with making decisions in society, as well as their backers. No one listens to calm thinkers anymore; everyone just listens to PR men.
We are turning into the society Burke feared. One dominated by emotive, shallow views which applies naive levelling reason to all problems it encounters. This is why our prisons are filling up as crime goes down; why our internet is being censored even as our society becomes more tolerant; why our politics becomes more polarised even as our political parties become more homogeneous. And it is why we seek to gather vast, unprecedented amounts of data about ourselves without bothering to really try and use it, or to consider the consequences of doing so.
For most stories like this, despite the modern age and technologies involved, ninety percent of these--usually negative--consequences can be discovered by a simple reading of Aesop's Fables. Not that anyone--particularly the people who report them--will bother to. As a society, uur reasoning remains at a primary school level and rationality is something we can only apply to numbers, not ourselves.
Well paedophiles create a market for selling child porn, but that doesn't mean we should either laud them or make it legal.
Gainful Employment does not mean you have joined some kind of army, even if your employer is the Government. Though I understand a lot of American managers are actually ex-army, so perhaps the US view of management is coloured by this somewhat.
As long as you're prepared to wait, oh 5 years or so.
In case you're a Christian--just to let you know--you might not want to mention that in church.
Lets try this from the other persepective:
Your Employer: Give me the password.
You: But you told me I'd be liable for anything that happens if I give it to you.
Your Employer: Give me the password!!
You: No. I don't want to be liable.
Your Employer: You're fired!!!
You: Fine.
Your Employer: Give me the password!!!!
You: I don't work for you anymore. And I still don't want to be liable.
Your Employer: Peon!!!! I own you!!!!!! I'll grind you into dust!!!!! Lawyers! Destroy him!!!
And they did.
You know what the moral of this story is? Don't work for anyone.
Copyright is quickly become the big business go-to concept for invalidating constitutions everywhere. Wiretapping, prior restraint, first sale rights, presumption of innocence, parody and satire, academic freedoms, etc, etc. People have rights that are getting in your way? Then get yourself some Copyrights!; Ten times more potent than the average right.
That settles it then. Whatever about small fry like video game companies and DVD distributors, there is no way that the US Supreme Court is going to upset the gravy train of something so massive as the pharmaceutical industry. No imports for you!
...have negative charge. To be fair to Franklin though, it was a 50/50 chance.