Care to give an example? Even in countries being famous for copyright infringement it's forbidden by law (China comes to mind).
Of course there is the right for private copies in some countries, but as some poor RIAA representative put it during Napster's peak: "Ok, it makes a difference wether you share some music with your close friends or thousands of 'friends' over the net."
Just a little sidenote: Many countries have a problem with the sheer flood of indictions coming from *AA lawyers*. I see this as the true reason for legislation to change the rules by either: Giving the copyright holders direct access to the names of those pirating (making it an issue for civil-law), or by introducing a minimum level of damage before the jurisdiction is allowed to act. Of course I prefer the latter, but AFAIK no country had the guts to go this way yet. The UK and France are pretty close with the idea of simply blocking access for those infringing, but I somehow doubt that this will get popular.
*Just a little example from Germany: Over here content creators can't get the name behind an ip-address. So they indict, which leads to the following actions: The state's prosecutor knows it's not worth the hassle, but he has to investigate the identity of the other party - the file will usually be closed after this. The lawyer requests access of records and sends a monition to the person behind the ip-address. In this document he/she offers to drop all civil charges in exchange for a sum which is at a price point significantly lower than anything you would spend in court. For this reason 99% are settled this way, but it's still not a cheap deal for those affected. The problem with this system is that some lawyers send thousands of such requests automatically to one single prosecutor, thereby bringing the legal system to a grinding halt. Therefore legislation has seriously considered to introduce an exemption, below which prosecutors don't act.
Apple wants no interpreted code so there is no way any software can get onto the iPhone that they haven't approved -- and they aren't going to approve a lot of the types of software that regular people are going to want (IM that works when they're on a phone call or surfing the net, for example).
The last sentence is not true as of now. Quoting from here:
I'm a programmer and I just tried it [using the iPhone SDK] and you can keep your app running in the background in the normal way ApolloIM and iFob do it. I.e. overriding applicationSuspend.
If they approve such apps for their new store is a different story. However, neglecting certain appls like IM would be outright stupid.
I don't want to judge Apple's practice, but I see a trend here: Reduce functionality and make sure that things work the way they are supposed to. Instead of designing the ultimate device they deliberately skipped features which would cause trouble: GPS, 3G, battery replacement. The same applies to software: Instead of implementing a feature list with many broken things which don't work too well on a mobile phone (Flash being the most prominent), they made sure that the key components work as well as they can. Mobile browse and e-mail use statistics prove them right after all. Applying the same limitations to 3rd party software just seems to be the next logical step - why would you enable them to ruin the main selling point, which still is ease of use?
Or we could just focus on improving the efficiency of solar and wind power generation.
At the current growth rate of the technologies you mentioned it simply isn't going to make a significant difference. Of course there is the possibility that improvements in efficiency will make up for it (by some miracle invention), but that's like betting on the slowest horse in a race because it offers the highest win - wouldn't do it with anything else but with some spare change I keep for entertainment.
The power consumption of devices is really important to me. For idealistic reasons I buy devices featuring high energy efficiency. Plus there is an economic dimension: In my country one kWh costs around $0.31 and one gallon is aroung $7.5. I must admit that the current dollar/euro ratio inflates these prices, but even if the exchange ratio was 1.30 the numbers would still look rather high. But even when I give preference to low-power devices I have no doubt that anything saved by me (and the western world in general) will be compensated by higher demand in emerging markets.
Btw: A high share of the prices mentioned above go into subvention of biofuel, wind- and solar-power. But even with high subventions the market share of regenerative energies is around 5% over here. In my very greenish opinion the best way to archive sustainability is the following: Tax energy consumption, but use the money coming from it for something else than subvention. This will make sure that demand is reduced on the customer side. On the production side legislation should regulate: Install a emission trading system like in Europe (but better) and sign international treaties like the Kyoto protocol. Producers could still use coal plants, but the economic benefit would strongly favor other sources of energy. I strongly believe that any other system will result in billions spend in nonsense.
I must admit that my Hebrew is not what it used to be;), but it seems to be similar to rapidshare with the added benefit of searching the content.
Makes you wonder why rapidshare didn't implement this, oh wait - that would prove that most of the traffic is infringing copyright. Plus it would make it easier to sue those uploading. *AA must love httpshare.
On a more serious note I'm still surprised by the concept of keeping piracy down by going after those distributing it on the internet. Maybe that's the only way to go if you can't win in the long run. I'm still waiting for the hdd offering enough capacity to store all music ever produced. After that the one storing all movies is just a matter of time. Just calculate the current size of the ITMS and compare it to the growth rate of hard disks - makes it kinda silly to talk about this issue anymore...
In addition (to what TubeSteak already said) google is way too big and very present on the European market. To give a counter-example: Facebook used to be quite safe from EU regulations, because even though they had many registered users in the EU they were operating solely from the US. And since their service is "for free" there was no money trail to go for. However, this changed recently: They now have venues in the UK and Germany (and Spain IIRC).
A company has to obey the laws in the countries they do business in. Even if the laws are stupid (China, anyone?), but that's a different story...
...until they'll realize that all the efforts the **AA has gone through will result in some people exchanging data on physical media. I'm amazed that they still believe everything will be fixed if the internet has been regulated beyond reason.
There's a theory which says that all music produced up to now will fit on a single hdd within a decade. I'm certain that they will stop chasing universities the moment they'll realize that some people carry all music available in their purse;)
Even though I'm very pacifist* in my beliefs and curriculum (there's still a general draft in my country but I decided to help the disabled to make up for it, which is possible), I totally agree with your viewpoint. The only problem I see is that any technical solution will be overridden by anyone with computer skills, thereby rendering any measures in that direction counterproductive.
I just studied in China for a term and I was really worried about access to my usual news sources, which were blocked by the "great firewall". At least to me China is like a different planet - it was really important to me to read and interact with stuff I'm familiar with. So after facing some problems I started using free proxies and voila: Wikipedia, CNN, blogspot and many others back at my fingertips. Of course my first thought was "I could do better" - for some weird reason I always want to find the best technical solution to a problem, even if the "problem" is not morally sound. However, even if you filter content there is at least one (swiss?) project which converts all the content of websites to images and maps. I'm sorry for not providing a link, but I wasn't able to find it right now.
There's no way any large organization is going to run OCR on *everything* passing through the network . And even if there was I'm sure it wouldn't prove efficient. It's basically a fight you can't win, so a better strategy would be to fully embrace the concept of free information and use it for your own good. I'm sure any other approach will result in a decline in spirit. After all the situation is very different to WWI, WWII, Vietnam or even the first Gulf war- Joe Sixpack didn't have cell phones, satellite dishes or the internet back then. To get back to my China ventures: I saw an American celebrity by accident in Shanghai, I took a picture with my phone and send it to my sister in good old Europe by e-mail (unlike me she's interested in what Paris Hilton is doing). It took about 3 minutes from taking the picture to her seeing it on her laptop. I'm not sure the military of any nation is capable of intercepting such a quick flow of information in the long run.
*Disclaimer: I'm using the term pacifist as freely as I can - of course I realize that any nation has a need to defend itself. I simply saw more use in changing diapers for a couple more months than running through the forest pretending that I'm training for the real thing - my country wouldn't stand any sort of invasion of neighboring countries. We are quite lucky that it's so unlikely that we don't have to worry about it.
All I wanted to point out was that there is no profit in watching a movie at least in economic terms. And yes, I've taken it too far - I blame my profession:)
Of course copyright infringement is always wrong, but just like many others here I believe that the higher profit/loss makes it more objectionable.
I know this can be criticized as a double standard, but if I'm guilty, most legal systems are as well...
Sure. The improvement in morale from being entertained makes me more productive (among other things). I can also discuss the movie with other people and improve my social standing.
All true, but your are not trading personal enjoyment for those things. You are consuming a good which serves the needs you mentioned. By your logic I could trade detergent for cleanliness, music for well being or bread for fullness. Those are not trades - they are goods I can consume with the effect of being clean, enjoyed or full.
Of course I can trade all 3 goods mentioned above, but then I would need at least one other person and something I get in exchange other than the things those goods can give me.
The size of the loss shouldn't have anything to do with it. If someone sneaks into my house and steals a penny, I'm fully within my rights to go after them, even though the size of the loss is trivial. A trivial loss is one that's not worth the time and effort to recover, not one that's excused.
Of course you have the right to seek compensation for whatever small loss you had. However, in your example the trespassing would outweigh the stolen penny by far. Let's imagine 2 people sneak into your house, one stealing a penny and the other one $2000. Would you demand that both compensate equally and receive the same penalty? Now let's say your resources are limited and you can only go after one guy. Which one would you rather pursue?
From my perspective you are mixing up consumption and production of goods here. You can use profit for your personal enjoyment (or you can steal something for it). But could you watch a movie and trade the enjoyment you had for something else afterwards? I don't think so.
A way to look at it is the loss caused: If you watch a movie you didn't pay for you are causing a theoretical loss in the range of an overnight rental and the full DVD price. If you use scenes from said movie for promoting your company you are in a totally different price range. You are making very real profit (in money) by using these scenes. Therefore the copyright owner should expect a fair share from it.
What if I take the picture, turn it into desktop wallpaper, and post it on my web site to drive up hits?
Do you have ads on your website? If that's not the case your are only driving up your bandwith cost;)
But in all seriousness: Many copyright owners grant licenses for non commercial purposes. I always ask kindly before I use anything from other websites.
Hostile takeovers can be done to relatively small companies that nobody pays much attention to provided that they are done quickly and without any forewarning.
One very simple example which proves this wrong is the Vodafone takeover of Mannesmann (yes, another example from Germany). They paid around $282 billion and it even worked out in the long run....
I can't be the only European to ask my self who the hell Ralph Nader is.
He's mentioned in Europe quite often when describing the state of the US' party system. I'm sure I read about him before I knew that George H. W. Bush had any kids with political ambitions.
In the US your tax preparer calls it short term capital gains, taxed at ordinary rate. To get the long term at 15%, you hold it at least @@ta-da@, a whole year.
That's a different system. You are giving an incentive to keep the shares for more than one year by reducing the normal rate - the system I described and the system I favor work differently. I personally don't see any reason why earnings from labor and capital should be taxed any different. My suggestion was to tax income from capital extra if it was gained in less than one year.
But thanks for playing Mr. Uninformed Obama voter.
I wonder where in my original post you got the impression that I'm eligible to participate in the next US elections. I can assure you that I can't and I don't have any intention of playing any kind of uninformed voter in this regard:)
This is not really the case anymore and it is mostly used for pure speculative purposes that hardly have anything to do with reality of anyone company making profits or not.
Many countries have or had a "speculation tax" to counter this development. In Germany for example you have to pay income tax if you sell shares which you held for less than one year. Of course this isn't a very practical measure anymore because it only affects people who pay taxes within the country (opposed to foreign investors, who pay taxes in their countries). Another problem is that after one year any profits from selling shares is basically tax free, thereby turning a progressive tax system upside-down. For those reasons (among others) this system will be replaced by some sort of flat-tax on income from capital.
I kind of liked the concept though. If major nations could reach consent on such a tax and if it would be added to normal income tax it would even work - hey, one can dream:)
As an individual shareholder I probably would not sue, at least if I'm interested in long-term profit. I personally don't see how Yahoo can generate more wealth if they belong to a company which has managed to gain around 6% market share by investing billions. The logic behind it seems to be very flawed.
But like you said the pension funds don't seem to be interested in long-term growth - they'll most likely pull out the money right after the companies have merged (it's not that they hold the stock much longer in case they don't merge). I don't like to judge this behavior. Pension funds are obligated to do whatever is necessary to maximize the profit of their investment. One might argue that this is very much the same case if you hold stock as an individual, but I'd argue that there is less freedom of choice if you manage the money of maybe hundreds or thousands of individuals.
you can't tell the guys at customs and immigration you were there on your return or you may find yourself getting fined
This makes me curious: Don't they put a stamp or visa in your passport when you enter/leave Cuba? All countries I've been to do this (including US for non-US citizens). In that case it would be fairly easy for customs to figure.
No, I'm not an early adopter, I'm just in a different country where flatrates used to be rare. I should have considered this when posting
.However, this is not the point I was trying to make. Back in the mid-90's there was a variety of plans available for all sorts of usage patterns. Today even the most casual user has a flatrate. Most users would be better off with a (cheaper) volume or time based contract but of course the ISPs don't want that.
Having been in Shanghai last autumn I'm wondering why people are surprised right now. I've seen more iPhones on the street there than in Germany. The electronics markets are full of them.
Broadband, like dialup, is subsidized by the low use casual customers.
In other words the casual user is paying too much. Dialup was actually more fair in this regard, because the more you used it, the more you paid.
A related note: Mail- and webservers usually don't serve content at more than 1 mbit, so all those speedboost features are not that useful at all. Just monitor your bandwith usage when you are retriving lots of mails...
Wikipedia is your friend. However, as the section "political impact" explains, their archivements are of rather symbolic nature as of now (the English wiki is slightly outdated, but there are no landslide victories to report anyways).
Even though they are at a very early (and sometimes chaotic) stage I like to compare them to the green movement in Europe. In the early 80's many green parties formed in various countries because none of the existing parties served the aims of environmentalists. Nowadays they are well represented (check seats in the EU parliament) and their biggest enemies are the other parties picking up their cause. I'd love to see a similar development for all the pirate parties (especially regarding privacy).
I wasn't aware this was a problem specific to cable. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
A slightly ot note: When our cable company wanted us to switch to digital cable and internet over cable they only wanted to replace the converter in the basement of our house and replace the in-house infrastructure to a star topology (we have 16 parties living in the house). I wasn't aware that the cable type they currently use poses a problem. But we dropped cable anyways because they wanted us to sign a 15 year contract in exchange for the "upgrades". Satellite and DSL are not cheaper for us, but being bound to one technology for 15 years seems rather insane at the current stage of development. Who knows if there will be traditional television in 2023?
I meta moderate about every other day, and I almost always rate the troll mods as "unfair".
Most times I check the context of a post which was moderated troll when I'm meta-moderating and the mods are usually right about it imo. Mods don't mod someone troll lightly, because they know they will get meta-moderated (of course there are exceptions like the fp)
I don't know if this has any effect, but just so you know.
It has the effect that mods favor posts they can mod up instead of sifting through the trivial/dumb/pointless stuff normal readers don't want to read. IMO it hurts the balance of the mod system and diminishes the overall quality of posts you see at a normal threshold.
Slashdot Mirror
Care to give an example? Even in countries being famous for copyright infringement it's forbidden by law (China comes to mind).
Of course there is the right for private copies in some countries, but as some poor RIAA representative put it during Napster's peak: "Ok, it makes a difference wether you share some music with your close friends or thousands of 'friends' over the net."
Just a little sidenote: Many countries have a problem with the sheer flood of indictions coming from *AA lawyers*. I see this as the true reason for legislation to change the rules by either: Giving the copyright holders direct access to the names of those pirating (making it an issue for civil-law), or by introducing a minimum level of damage before the jurisdiction is allowed to act. Of course I prefer the latter, but AFAIK no country had the guts to go this way yet. The UK and France are pretty close with the idea of simply blocking access for those infringing, but I somehow doubt that this will get popular.
*Just a little example from Germany: Over here content creators can't get the name behind an ip-address. So they indict, which leads to the following actions: The state's prosecutor knows it's not worth the hassle, but he has to investigate the identity of the other party - the file will usually be closed after this. The lawyer requests access of records and sends a monition to the person behind the ip-address. In this document he/she offers to drop all civil charges in exchange for a sum which is at a price point significantly lower than anything you would spend in court. For this reason 99% are settled this way, but it's still not a cheap deal for those affected. The problem with this system is that some lawyers send thousands of such requests automatically to one single prosecutor, thereby bringing the legal system to a grinding halt. Therefore legislation has seriously considered to introduce an exemption, below which prosecutors don't act.
I don't want to judge Apple's practice, but I see a trend here: Reduce functionality and make sure that things work the way they are supposed to. Instead of designing the ultimate device they deliberately skipped features which would cause trouble: GPS, 3G, battery replacement. The same applies to software: Instead of implementing a feature list with many broken things which don't work too well on a mobile phone (Flash being the most prominent), they made sure that the key components work as well as they can. Mobile browse and e-mail use statistics prove them right after all. Applying the same limitations to 3rd party software just seems to be the next logical step - why would you enable them to ruin the main selling point, which still is ease of use?
The power consumption of devices is really important to me. For idealistic reasons I buy devices featuring high energy efficiency. Plus there is an economic dimension: In my country one kWh costs around $0.31 and one gallon is aroung $7.5. I must admit that the current dollar/euro ratio inflates these prices, but even if the exchange ratio was 1.30 the numbers would still look rather high. But even when I give preference to low-power devices I have no doubt that anything saved by me (and the western world in general) will be compensated by higher demand in emerging markets.
Btw: A high share of the prices mentioned above go into subvention of biofuel, wind- and solar-power. But even with high subventions the market share of regenerative energies is around 5% over here. In my very greenish opinion the best way to archive sustainability is the following: Tax energy consumption, but use the money coming from it for something else than subvention. This will make sure that demand is reduced on the customer side. On the production side legislation should regulate: Install a emission trading system like in Europe (but better) and sign international treaties like the Kyoto protocol. Producers could still use coal plants, but the economic benefit would strongly favor other sources of energy. I strongly believe that any other system will result in billions spend in nonsense.
I must admit that my Hebrew is not what it used to be ;), but it seems to be similar to rapidshare with the added benefit of searching the content.
Makes you wonder why rapidshare didn't implement this, oh wait - that would prove that most of the traffic is infringing copyright. Plus it would make it easier to sue those uploading. *AA must love httpshare.
On a more serious note I'm still surprised by the concept of keeping piracy down by going after those distributing it on the internet. Maybe that's the only way to go if you can't win in the long run. I'm still waiting for the hdd offering enough capacity to store all music ever produced. After that the one storing all movies is just a matter of time. Just calculate the current size of the ITMS and compare it to the growth rate of hard disks - makes it kinda silly to talk about this issue anymore...
In addition (to what TubeSteak already said) google is way too big and very present on the European market. To give a counter-example: Facebook used to be quite safe from EU regulations, because even though they had many registered users in the EU they were operating solely from the US. And since their service is "for free" there was no money trail to go for. However, this changed recently: They now have venues in the UK and Germany (and Spain IIRC).
A company has to obey the laws in the countries they do business in. Even if the laws are stupid (China, anyone?), but that's a different story...
...until they'll realize that all the efforts the **AA has gone through will result in some people exchanging data on physical media. I'm amazed that they still believe everything will be fixed if the internet has been regulated beyond reason.
;)
There's a theory which says that all music produced up to now will fit on a single hdd within a decade. I'm certain that they will stop chasing universities the moment they'll realize that some people carry all music available in their purse
Even though I'm very pacifist* in my beliefs and curriculum (there's still a general draft in my country but I decided to help the disabled to make up for it, which is possible), I totally agree with your viewpoint. The only problem I see is that any technical solution will be overridden by anyone with computer skills, thereby rendering any measures in that direction counterproductive.
I just studied in China for a term and I was really worried about access to my usual news sources, which were blocked by the "great firewall". At least to me China is like a different planet - it was really important to me to read and interact with stuff I'm familiar with. So after facing some problems I started using free proxies and voila: Wikipedia, CNN, blogspot and many others back at my fingertips. Of course my first thought was "I could do better" - for some weird reason I always want to find the best technical solution to a problem, even if the "problem" is not morally sound. However, even if you filter content there is at least one (swiss?) project which converts all the content of websites to images and maps. I'm sorry for not providing a link, but I wasn't able to find it right now.
There's no way any large organization is going to run OCR on *everything* passing through the network . And even if there was I'm sure it wouldn't prove efficient. It's basically a fight you can't win, so a better strategy would be to fully embrace the concept of free information and use it for your own good. I'm sure any other approach will result in a decline in spirit. After all the situation is very different to WWI, WWII, Vietnam or even the first Gulf war- Joe Sixpack didn't have cell phones, satellite dishes or the internet back then. To get back to my China ventures: I saw an American celebrity by accident in Shanghai, I took a picture with my phone and send it to my sister in good old Europe by e-mail (unlike me she's interested in what Paris Hilton is doing). It took about 3 minutes from taking the picture to her seeing it on her laptop. I'm not sure the military of any nation is capable of intercepting such a quick flow of information in the long run.
*Disclaimer: I'm using the term pacifist as freely as I can - of course I realize that any nation has a need to defend itself. I simply saw more use in changing diapers for a couple more months than running through the forest pretending that I'm training for the real thing - my country wouldn't stand any sort of invasion of neighboring countries. We are quite lucky that it's so unlikely that we don't have to worry about it.
All I wanted to point out was that there is no profit in watching a movie at least in economic terms. And yes, I've taken it too far - I blame my profession :)
Of course copyright infringement is always wrong, but just like many others here I believe that the higher profit/loss makes it more objectionable.
I know this can be criticized as a double standard, but if I'm guilty, most legal systems are as well...
Of course I can trade all 3 goods mentioned above, but then I would need at least one other person and something I get in exchange other than the things those goods can give me. Of course you have the right to seek compensation for whatever small loss you had. However, in your example the trespassing would outweigh the stolen penny by far.
Let's imagine 2 people sneak into your house, one stealing a penny and the other one $2000. Would you demand that both compensate equally and receive the same penalty? Now let's say your resources are limited and you can only go after one guy. Which one would you rather pursue?
A way to look at it is the loss caused: If you watch a movie you didn't pay for you are causing a theoretical loss in the range of an overnight rental and the full DVD price. If you use scenes from said movie for promoting your company you are in a totally different price range. You are making very real profit (in money) by using these scenes. Therefore the copyright owner should expect a fair share from it. Do you have ads on your website? If that's not the case your are only driving up your bandwith cost
But in all seriousness: Many copyright owners grant licenses for non commercial purposes. I always ask kindly before I use anything from other websites.
GP was referring to quad core CPUs. Maybe I missed recent news, but AFAIK all quad core CPUs Intel has released so far are dual-die.
I kind of liked the concept though. If major nations could reach consent on such a tax and if it would be added to normal income tax it would even work - hey, one can dream
As an individual shareholder I probably would not sue, at least if I'm interested in long-term profit. I personally don't see how Yahoo can generate more wealth if they belong to a company which has managed to gain around 6% market share by investing billions. The logic behind it seems to be very flawed.
But like you said the pension funds don't seem to be interested in long-term growth - they'll most likely pull out the money right after the companies have merged (it's not that they hold the stock much longer in case they don't merge). I don't like to judge this behavior. Pension funds are obligated to do whatever is necessary to maximize the profit of their investment. One might argue that this is very much the same case if you hold stock as an individual, but I'd argue that there is less freedom of choice if you manage the money of maybe hundreds or thousands of individuals.
Too bad most monitors like gkrellm don't let you select lo/lo0
No, I'm not an early adopter, I'm just in a different country where flatrates used to be rare. I should have considered this when posting
.However, this is not the point I was trying to make. Back in the mid-90's there was a variety of plans available for all sorts of usage patterns. Today even the most casual user has a flatrate. Most users would be better off with a (cheaper) volume or time based contract but of course the ISPs don't want that.
Having been in Shanghai last autumn I'm wondering why people are surprised right now. I've seen more iPhones on the street there than in Germany. The electronics markets are full of them.
A related note: Mail- and webservers usually don't serve content at more than 1 mbit, so all those speedboost features are not that useful at all. Just monitor your bandwith usage when you are retriving lots of mails...
Wikipedia is your friend. However, as the section "political impact" explains, their archivements are of rather symbolic nature as of now (the English wiki is slightly outdated, but there are no landslide victories to report anyways).
Even though they are at a very early (and sometimes chaotic) stage I like to compare them to the green movement in Europe. In the early 80's many green parties formed in various countries because none of the existing parties served the aims of environmentalists. Nowadays they are well represented (check seats in the EU parliament) and their biggest enemies are the other parties picking up their cause. I'd love to see a similar development for all the pirate parties (especially regarding privacy).
I wasn't aware this was a problem specific to cable. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
A slightly ot note: When our cable company wanted us to switch to digital cable and internet over cable they only wanted to replace the converter in the basement of our house and replace the in-house infrastructure to a star topology (we have 16 parties living in the house). I wasn't aware that the cable type they currently use poses a problem. But we dropped cable anyways because they wanted us to sign a 15 year contract in exchange for the "upgrades". Satellite and DSL are not cheaper for us, but being bound to one technology for 15 years seems rather insane at the current stage of development. Who knows if there will be traditional television in 2023?
You can do that, but then all mod points you gave are revoked and you don't get them back, so there is not much incentive to do so.
Posting without karma bonus since we're seriously ot here (and I believe most people read at 2)