Actually, the characters are protected by copyright too. It's pretty clearly a derivative work. The question is whether it's fair use and/or not enforceable. In any case, the filmmakers talked to the Tolkien estate and got permission, so long as the film was non-profit.
Well, I think the GP meant that the story of the Lord of the Rings is pretty well delineated in canon, so Jackson knew pretty well what the story was, even if he elected to change some things.
This movie is based on a few lines in the appendix of LOTR that discuss Gandalf and Aragorn pursuing Gollum between the events of The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring. That's much less to go on than a whole narrative hundreds of pages long.
Doesn't mean it's going to be bad, just means that they don't have as much canon to work with.
All litigation is a nuisance if you're the defendant.
Of course it is, but you have to admit that there's nuisances and then there's nuisances. Underhanded system-gaming happens. I agree that the practical focus should be on the patent quality, though.
But - as you noted - the right to exclude is fundamental - its even in the constitution.
Please don't tell me you're going to try to argue EBay was unconstitutional. "Exclusive right" is far from a mandate for injunctions. I sympathize with the argument that injunctions are particularly important in the patent arena, but I don't think they should be quite so easy to get as they were before EBay. Given the nature and source of the patent right, the public interest should trump the interest of the patent holder. Anyway, you make it sound like EBay banned all injunctions ever. The grant rate went from 95% to 75%. I don't think that's unreasonable.
I think part of the problem people (at least me) have with software patents is that, for one, they're double-protected by both patent and copyright. It seems like there's something wrong with that, and that it should have one or the other, but not both.
Another problem is that the twenty-year term of patents makes a lot more sense for a physical invention than it does for software, given the speed with which software becomes obsolete.
A more technical problem I have with software patents is that they rarely seem to be accompanied by a really useful disclosure. A lot of patent trolls could be driven from their bridges if they had to submit some example code.
"You got your incentive-to-produce in my incentive-to-disclose!"
"You got your incentive-to-disclose in my incentive-to-produce!"
It's really both of these things. The point is to promote the progress of the useful arts, and both of them do that.
On the free-rider issue, the reason why the time and effort spent on a computer program might be less worthy than the time and effort spent on a new crop implement or drug is because the time and effort spent on anything is irrelevant. Patents aren't about rewarding any individual inventor, and it surely isn't about sweat of the brow. It's about what best promotes innovation. If software will continue to be produced without the patent incentive, then we have no business putting the patent incentive into place.
Now, you can argue that the patent incentive is needed (for disclosure, for incentive, whatever), but please don't talk about the worthiness of the effort. That's not what it's about.
It's not a natural right (if you think such things exist) - but government can grant rights. If the government took away your patent without following the law, they'd be violating your right to due process under the constitution.
Hold on now...several of your lines there are pretty contentious. First off, venture capital groups do not automatically equate to patent trolling. I'm not one of those who says that any non-practicing entity is a troll. To my mind, the designation "patent troll" is only deserved when you're rolling with a certain combination of crappy patents, underhanded tactics, and nuisance litigation. I'm in favor of tightening up the patentability standards, personally, not trying to target any classes.
I agree with EBay v. MercExchange, though - there's no good reason why patents should be exempt from the normal equitable standard for injunctions. You're begging the question by saying that it denies the "full value" of the patent, because you're assuming that it had a larger value that was somehow removed. I say that if you don't have an equitable need for an injunction, then the value is right where it ought to be.
In other words you would deny the owner of a patent of his most basic right - the ability to sell it. (And what is a sale but a permanent exclusive license?)
While I agree that that's a problem with proposals like the GP's, I beg to differ as to selling a patent being the owner's "most basic right". The most basic right conferred by a patent is the right to exclude others from using your invention. Go back to the Constitution, Article I, Section 8:
"The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
The right to sell your patent is very useful, but it's not the core of the patent right.
And no, the sale of a patent is not a permanent exclusive license. Patent assignment is legally a very different animal.
Regardless of what your local officials are doing, they are in fact bound by the US Constitution (at least most of it). Try this article for more info.
Individuals are not bound by it (except for the Thirteenth Amendment - nobody can have slaves), corporations are only rarely bound by it, but almost every government entity is required to follow the Bill of Rights. There are many exceptions, and pretty much any right can be violated for a good enough reason, but that doesn't change the fact that, if they get called on it, a court is going to shoot them down for violating the constitution.
Now, much of the time local action doesn't end up getting challenged, even if it is in violation, so in effect they're often not bound by it, but you should really make sure you know the law before making such confident statements.
Ok...I'm an American, I agree that, objectively, there are no "good guys" or "bad guys" in war, I even disagree with the Iraq war, but I still think ShieldWolf's comment deserved to get modded into oblivion.
I don't know where you live, but does your country have a military? Would you expect them to fight to defend your country? If so, would you prefer the soldiers from your country to die, or the opposing soldiers? No third option.
That's why I support the US military using drones. That's why the engineers working on them don't deserve to be killed because ShieldWolf finds killing our enemies with robots to be distasteful.
Of course, we should be out of Iraq, we should never have been there in the first place, and we've killed a lot of innocent people there. But does that mean we should stop having a military? Or that we should stop trying to avoid US soldiers getting killed in combat? I don't think so. Maybe you do, but if your relativism goes so far as to deny your own self-preservation as a valid interest, then I think you should seriously rethink your philosophy.
Actually, judges have already agreed, at least with regard to art: Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.. While you are correct that a new court would have to apply precedent to see if scanning books counts as the same thing, everything I know about this field of law says that they don't have a chance in hell of getting a new copyright.
From a practical perspective, there is some danger, because the threat of litigation from a big company can be enough to shut down a small entity just because of the cost of going to court, even where the company doesn't have much of a chance of success. However, I think this is pretty clear-cut.
BTW, I am a law student, but I am not your lawyer. I'm not even your law student.
It sounds great to say that you "prefer a society where freedom is distributed equally", but that's a platitude. What exactly do you mean by it? That the police should respond just as quickly and frequently to the poor as to the rich? All else being equal, of course they should. As I said, police corruption is wrong and we should work to prevent it wherever we can.
That's not what I was objecting to in the earlier post, though. The GP was was claiming, in the context of a possible civil suit to protect an individual designer from a company, that the law doesn't protect those without means. Period. That's an obvious, painfully hyperbolic exaggeration. I objected because first, it's false, and second, in the context of civil suits, we wouldn't want to have it significantly otherwise, for the reasons I stated.
Your response isn't addressing my objection, because all you're doing is spouting platitudes. Of course we all support freedom, but unless you're actually addressing the messy, practical issues that living in a "free" society entails, platitudes are worthless.
My basic question to you is this: do you want to pay the taxes necessary to support a judicial system that doesn't charge fees, and pays all the lawyers' salaries as well? Do you also want to deal with the enormous increase in litigation that would result from eliminating the costs of bringing suit? Because that's what would be required for the poor to be on an equal footing with the rich.
Or, alternatively, we can just confiscate assets to the point where everyone is equal. When you want to see 100% be the top income tax rate, and the Takings Clause of the Constitution amended out, let me know.
Again we see the conflating of 'receiving pirated works' (which is 100% legal) and 'illegal distribution' (which is a civil matter).
Actually, no, it's not quite that simple. Setting aside the issue of whether buying a physical copy of a pirated movie would constitute infringement, it's far from clear whether downloading a copy of a movie from the internet is legal. Unlike in the physical copy situation, by downloading the file you are making a copy, which on its face is copyright infringement. The question then becomes whether that infringement is protected by fair use or one one the other exceptions. That is to some degree an open question, since there has only been one case on point that I know of. In that case, BMG Music v. Gonzalez, downloading copyrighted works was ruled not to be fair use. Now that's just one of the courts of appeal in the US, so there's no national standard, but it's still far from "100% legal".
Additionally, copyright infringement can become a criminal matter. The US Code allows for criminal sanctions for copyright infringement under a number of circumstances, mainly large-scale commercial distribution, but it has been applied to individuals as well. Take a look at the law.
Unfortunately, those senators were bought a long time ago.
I know it's popular to be all superiorly cynical here, and talk about how everything's a conspiracy against the little guy, and big corps/big gov are all necessarily evil, but come on guys - y'all are modding this high insightful? Anyone's who's paid any attention can see that the law in fact does protect those who can't "afford its protection", whatever that means. It doesn't protect them as well as it protects those who have the resources to vigorously protect their own rights, but frankly I don't think you want to live under a government where that's not the case. It's easy to say that the police are corrupt and such, and in some cases they are, but to make a system where the poor can go to court and sue people just as easily as the rich would mean either truly massive taxation, the nationalization of the legal profession, or placing artificial limits on how many rights you can protect that scale with your income. None of these sound particularly appealing to me.
Inequalities are a fact of life in a free society. It sucks, but it's better than the alternative.
I'm genuinely curious what you mean by that. Do you mean something along the lines of what I was suggesting, that any government-imposed limit on individual behavior is tyrannical? Or is it something more complex? Your sig suggests to me that you don't oppose all authoritative interference in individuals' lives - but then again, the death penalty can be imposed by individuals or a mob, if you're looking at it from a strictly justice-related, not government, perspective.
Mostly, I'm concerned that we're just arguing past each other's individually defined terms. If you believe that all government interference is tyrannical, but also either unavoidable or better than the alternatives, then I would suggest we're not actually disagreeing; we just have different views on what it means to be free.
Somehow, I knew someone would bring that up. I think that having that many cameras is probably a very bad thing, but one way or another you have to admit that it's significantly different from having a camera in your house. I think it's possible to have a free society with cameras on street corners. I don't think it's possible with cameras in houses.
Do you honestly think that it makes no difference whatsoever who gets elected to Congress? You can look at voting records and see actual differences on a number of issues. Just because your particular issue isn't one of them doesn't mean that we live in a dictatorship; it just means that the majority of your fellow citizens is probably against you. We can discuss political philosophy if you want, and argue that any system where the will of the individual is suppressed by others is a dictatorship, but at that point any government other than anarchy is a dictatorship. And if you're seriously advocating anarchy, that's a whole different kettle of fish.
I can't speak for the world as a whole, but I strongly believe that the juggernaut that the US Federal government has become has passed the threshold wherein the citizenry can affect meaningful change through the 'established channels.'
I understand the sentiment, but the way you've phrased it is false. The "citizenry" can very much still effect meaningful change in the federal government through established channels (i.e., voting); the difficulty is that small portions of the citizenry cannot. The majority of people in this country do not consider the growth of the Federal government to be particularly unconstitutional or inherently wrong, so those few who do think so have a hard time getting like-minded politicians elected. This principle hasn't changed since the founding, only the scale of the problem, and frankly, you have a hell of a lot greater chance of effecting meaningful change in the government if you're a woman or ethnic minority now than you did at any other point in this nation's history.
Personally, I don't think it's impossible to have a central government the size of the one in the current USA that doesn't infringe rights we care about, but I agree it's much more dangerous. I would guess that the majority of Americans are far less concerned about it than I am. And until you can get a cultural shift to a mindset that cares about that danger, you won't be able to effect the kind of change you're looking for. I'm sorry, but that's democracy, and even if our system were working perfectly, that wouldn't change.
As a matter of fact, I'm not a college student. I also doubt that I'm as numerically or politically naive as you think. I have an engineering degree, and I'm about to graduate law school, so I have a pretty strong grounding in both. I have no illusion that my individual vote is likely to be determinative, and I've done enough game theory to know the difficulties associated with voting. However, I don't think that it's reasonable to draw from that the conclusion that voting is pointless. First of all, since most of the time you only know the results after the vote, there is no way to tell beforehand whether or not your vote will be decisive, so it would be foolish to decide from this not to vote. However, I recognize that that doesn't change the fact that, most of the time, whether or not you individually vote doesn't change the outcome. That's why I didn't specifically talk about voting: there's a lot more to working for better government than just voting for better government.
I've seen myself the difference that advocacy and argument can make in elections, and by contributing your own efforts to a larger group, you can change many more votes than your own. Obviously, this won't always work, especially if you're advocating for positions that the majority of people either don't care about or are actively hostile to. I don't deny that no matter how much you as an individual may do to advocate for a cause, it may be that you will lose. However, it's not hard to look back over history and see examples where the settled authority has been forced to change by popular demand.
In short, I agree with your math, but I don't agree with what you take from it. I also can't say that our current government(s) is/are likely to get any better. In fact, things may get worse. Maybe we will slip into a 1984-style totalitarian state. All I can say is, we're not there yet, and if we do find ourselves there, then we'll have to deal with it the same way people have always dealt with oppressive governments: either go with the flow, or take up arms.* However, the fact remains that we're not there yet.
*I do not include passive resistance a la Ghandi here, because under a truly totalitarian government that probably won't do too much good.
Actually, I have imagined giving (insert big bad here) 24/7 information about my actions and health status. That's why I specifically mentioned that this technology raises the obvious spectre of that problem. However, what you're not addressing is the main thrust of the rant portion of my post, which is that perhaps we'd be better off taking action to prevent bad governments than simply decrying new technologies. Have you heard of this new technology called video cameras? Given the idea of government you're putting forward, I expect that we all have them in every room of our house, so that the big bad can more efficiently suck away our freedom. Oh, what's that? The government hasn't mandated that we all put cameras in our bedrooms? Well, I guess politics must be a complicated, messy thing that can't be accurately described as either 1984 or Utopia.
I'm glad someone in this thread isn't being ridiculous. I would love to be able to have a constant readout of my body's status. While you can determine some things using your own senses, there's nothing like a computer for precisely doing dull, repetitive tasks, like checking your pulse or taking your blood pressure.
While there are obvious privacy issues here, new technology doesn't have to always produce net evil results. I would have thought people on a tech board would understand that. If devices like this were built to only report results using a method that's sure to be noticed, and stupid governments don't pass laws mandating the results be given to the government, this would be an incredible tool not only for medical diagnosis, but also for learning to better control your body.
And before anyone starts yapping about how governments are always stupid and will always take your freedom, so we'd be better off not having this tech, I just have to say: grow up. Governments are masses of people, not monolithic freedom vampires, and if you seriously think that you can have no impact on the course of government, you don't deserve the freedoms a lot of people have worked hard and sacrificed for over the years. If you don't like the current state of government (and there's plenty not to like), then get genuinely politically active, instead of just anonymously whining on the internet.
First, whether the argument you're putting forward about physical transformation is valid does not depend on the originality of the invention; obviousness/anticipation and patentable subject matter are different analyses.
Anyway, I'm not sure I exactly understand the thrust of your argument. Are you saying that this should be patentable because its subject matter has economic significance, even though non-physical? That's not how patent law as it now stands works. Are you arguing that that's how it should work?
If I were representing the plaintiffs, I'd try to argue that this works a physical transformation of the underlying storage medium, making it more useful as a component in an ebook reader. However, I think this is a terrible argument, because carried to its logical conclusion, it would mean that anything is patentable, because it at least works a transformation of the neurons of my brain.
The transformation arm of Bilski's machine or transformation test actually is limited to reasonably physical subject matter, or to data that represents underlying physical subject matter. An ebook DRM scheme counts as neither.
Re:I think you jumped the gun a little.
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Watchmen Watched
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· Score: 2, Insightful
As someone who wholeheartedly supports the "engineers, the makers, the original inventors", I think the point of view you're arguing here is ridiculously naive. Of course the "middlemen" would have nothing to do without the creators, but do you seriously think that we could have a technologically advanced country the size of the united states without some of the middlemen? Do you seriously think that any non-trivial government could function without some lawyers?
If you want to argue that the middlemen are taking a larger share in our economy than they ought to, I don't think anyone's here's likely to disagree. But to say we should get rid of them entirely is idiotic. How exactly do you think you would be watching that movie in the comfort of your home without them? Somebody sold you your computer, and I doubt it was the manufacturer. Somebody invested the money to research the technology to make your computer possible, and I doubt it was the engineers. Somebody made sure that everybody paid their share along the way, and I can assure you that it was the lawyers. Try actually thinking about what it means to live in a complex technological society before you say stupid things about "putting lawyers up against the wall".
And yes, I'm a law student. I was originally an engineer. Both have value.
Slashdot Mirror
No, characters can be subject to copyright.
Try using google, if nothing else:
Protection of Fictional Characters
How can I tell if a character I have used is copyright protected?
And yes, aspects of them can be trademarked, too.
Actually, the characters are protected by copyright too. It's pretty clearly a derivative work. The question is whether it's fair use and/or not enforceable. In any case, the filmmakers talked to the Tolkien estate and got permission, so long as the film was non-profit.
Well, I think the GP meant that the story of the Lord of the Rings is pretty well delineated in canon, so Jackson knew pretty well what the story was, even if he elected to change some things.
This movie is based on a few lines in the appendix of LOTR that discuss Gandalf and Aragorn pursuing Gollum between the events of The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring. That's much less to go on than a whole narrative hundreds of pages long.
Doesn't mean it's going to be bad, just means that they don't have as much canon to work with.
All litigation is a nuisance if you're the defendant.
Of course it is, but you have to admit that there's nuisances and then there's nuisances. Underhanded system-gaming happens. I agree that the practical focus should be on the patent quality, though.
But - as you noted - the right to exclude is fundamental - its even in the constitution.
Please don't tell me you're going to try to argue EBay was unconstitutional. "Exclusive right" is far from a mandate for injunctions. I sympathize with the argument that injunctions are particularly important in the patent arena, but I don't think they should be quite so easy to get as they were before EBay. Given the nature and source of the patent right, the public interest should trump the interest of the patent holder. Anyway, you make it sound like EBay banned all injunctions ever. The grant rate went from 95% to 75%. I don't think that's unreasonable.
I think part of the problem people (at least me) have with software patents is that, for one, they're double-protected by both patent and copyright. It seems like there's something wrong with that, and that it should have one or the other, but not both.
Another problem is that the twenty-year term of patents makes a lot more sense for a physical invention than it does for software, given the speed with which software becomes obsolete.
A more technical problem I have with software patents is that they rarely seem to be accompanied by a really useful disclosure. A lot of patent trolls could be driven from their bridges if they had to submit some example code.
"You got your incentive-to-produce in my incentive-to-disclose!"
"You got your incentive-to-disclose in my incentive-to-produce!"
It's really both of these things. The point is to promote the progress of the useful arts, and both of them do that.
On the free-rider issue, the reason why the time and effort spent on a computer program might be less worthy than the time and effort spent on a new crop implement or drug is because the time and effort spent on anything is irrelevant. Patents aren't about rewarding any individual inventor, and it surely isn't about sweat of the brow. It's about what best promotes innovation. If software will continue to be produced without the patent incentive, then we have no business putting the patent incentive into place.
Now, you can argue that the patent incentive is needed (for disclosure, for incentive, whatever), but please don't talk about the worthiness of the effort. That's not what it's about.
It's not a natural right (if you think such things exist) - but government can grant rights. If the government took away your patent without following the law, they'd be violating your right to due process under the constitution.
Hold on now...several of your lines there are pretty contentious. First off, venture capital groups do not automatically equate to patent trolling. I'm not one of those who says that any non-practicing entity is a troll. To my mind, the designation "patent troll" is only deserved when you're rolling with a certain combination of crappy patents, underhanded tactics, and nuisance litigation. I'm in favor of tightening up the patentability standards, personally, not trying to target any classes.
I agree with EBay v. MercExchange, though - there's no good reason why patents should be exempt from the normal equitable standard for injunctions. You're begging the question by saying that it denies the "full value" of the patent, because you're assuming that it had a larger value that was somehow removed. I say that if you don't have an equitable need for an injunction, then the value is right where it ought to be.
In other words you would deny the owner of a patent of his most basic right - the ability to sell it. (And what is a sale but a permanent exclusive license?)
While I agree that that's a problem with proposals like the GP's, I beg to differ as to selling a patent being the owner's "most basic right". The most basic right conferred by a patent is the right to exclude others from using your invention. Go back to the Constitution, Article I, Section 8:
"The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
The right to sell your patent is very useful, but it's not the core of the patent right.
And no, the sale of a patent is not a permanent exclusive license. Patent assignment is legally a very different animal.
Regardless of what your local officials are doing, they are in fact bound by the US Constitution (at least most of it). Try this article for more info.
Individuals are not bound by it (except for the Thirteenth Amendment - nobody can have slaves), corporations are only rarely bound by it, but almost every government entity is required to follow the Bill of Rights. There are many exceptions, and pretty much any right can be violated for a good enough reason, but that doesn't change the fact that, if they get called on it, a court is going to shoot them down for violating the constitution.
Now, much of the time local action doesn't end up getting challenged, even if it is in violation, so in effect they're often not bound by it, but you should really make sure you know the law before making such confident statements.
Ok...I'm an American, I agree that, objectively, there are no "good guys" or "bad guys" in war, I even disagree with the Iraq war, but I still think ShieldWolf's comment deserved to get modded into oblivion.
I don't know where you live, but does your country have a military? Would you expect them to fight to defend your country? If so, would you prefer the soldiers from your country to die, or the opposing soldiers? No third option.
That's why I support the US military using drones. That's why the engineers working on them don't deserve to be killed because ShieldWolf finds killing our enemies with robots to be distasteful.
Of course, we should be out of Iraq, we should never have been there in the first place, and we've killed a lot of innocent people there. But does that mean we should stop having a military? Or that we should stop trying to avoid US soldiers getting killed in combat? I don't think so. Maybe you do, but if your relativism goes so far as to deny your own self-preservation as a valid interest, then I think you should seriously rethink your philosophy.
Actually, judges have already agreed, at least with regard to art: Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.. While you are correct that a new court would have to apply precedent to see if scanning books counts as the same thing, everything I know about this field of law says that they don't have a chance in hell of getting a new copyright.
From a practical perspective, there is some danger, because the threat of litigation from a big company can be enough to shut down a small entity just because of the cost of going to court, even where the company doesn't have much of a chance of success. However, I think this is pretty clear-cut.
BTW, I am a law student, but I am not your lawyer. I'm not even your law student.
It sounds great to say that you "prefer a society where freedom is distributed equally", but that's a platitude. What exactly do you mean by it? That the police should respond just as quickly and frequently to the poor as to the rich? All else being equal, of course they should. As I said, police corruption is wrong and we should work to prevent it wherever we can.
That's not what I was objecting to in the earlier post, though. The GP was was claiming, in the context of a possible civil suit to protect an individual designer from a company, that the law doesn't protect those without means. Period. That's an obvious, painfully hyperbolic exaggeration. I objected because first, it's false, and second, in the context of civil suits, we wouldn't want to have it significantly otherwise, for the reasons I stated.
Your response isn't addressing my objection, because all you're doing is spouting platitudes. Of course we all support freedom, but unless you're actually addressing the messy, practical issues that living in a "free" society entails, platitudes are worthless.
My basic question to you is this: do you want to pay the taxes necessary to support a judicial system that doesn't charge fees, and pays all the lawyers' salaries as well? Do you also want to deal with the enormous increase in litigation that would result from eliminating the costs of bringing suit? Because that's what would be required for the poor to be on an equal footing with the rich.
Or, alternatively, we can just confiscate assets to the point where everyone is equal. When you want to see 100% be the top income tax rate, and the Takings Clause of the Constitution amended out, let me know.
Again we see the conflating of 'receiving pirated works' (which is 100% legal) and 'illegal distribution' (which is a civil matter).
Actually, no, it's not quite that simple. Setting aside the issue of whether buying a physical copy of a pirated movie would constitute infringement, it's far from clear whether downloading a copy of a movie from the internet is legal. Unlike in the physical copy situation, by downloading the file you are making a copy, which on its face is copyright infringement. The question then becomes whether that infringement is protected by fair use or one one the other exceptions. That is to some degree an open question, since there has only been one case on point that I know of. In that case, BMG Music v. Gonzalez, downloading copyrighted works was ruled not to be fair use. Now that's just one of the courts of appeal in the US, so there's no national standard, but it's still far from "100% legal".
Additionally, copyright infringement can become a criminal matter. The US Code allows for criminal sanctions for copyright infringement under a number of circumstances, mainly large-scale commercial distribution, but it has been applied to individuals as well. Take a look at the law.
Unfortunately, those senators were bought a long time ago.
I know it's popular to be all superiorly cynical here, and talk about how everything's a conspiracy against the little guy, and big corps/big gov are all necessarily evil, but come on guys - y'all are modding this high insightful? Anyone's who's paid any attention can see that the law in fact does protect those who can't "afford its protection", whatever that means. It doesn't protect them as well as it protects those who have the resources to vigorously protect their own rights, but frankly I don't think you want to live under a government where that's not the case. It's easy to say that the police are corrupt and such, and in some cases they are, but to make a system where the poor can go to court and sue people just as easily as the rich would mean either truly massive taxation, the nationalization of the legal profession, or placing artificial limits on how many rights you can protect that scale with your income. None of these sound particularly appealing to me.
Inequalities are a fact of life in a free society. It sucks, but it's better than the alternative.
I'm genuinely curious what you mean by that. Do you mean something along the lines of what I was suggesting, that any government-imposed limit on individual behavior is tyrannical? Or is it something more complex? Your sig suggests to me that you don't oppose all authoritative interference in individuals' lives - but then again, the death penalty can be imposed by individuals or a mob, if you're looking at it from a strictly justice-related, not government, perspective.
Mostly, I'm concerned that we're just arguing past each other's individually defined terms. If you believe that all government interference is tyrannical, but also either unavoidable or better than the alternatives, then I would suggest we're not actually disagreeing; we just have different views on what it means to be free.
Somehow, I knew someone would bring that up. I think that having that many cameras is probably a very bad thing, but one way or another you have to admit that it's significantly different from having a camera in your house. I think it's possible to have a free society with cameras on street corners. I don't think it's possible with cameras in houses.
Do you honestly think that it makes no difference whatsoever who gets elected to Congress? You can look at voting records and see actual differences on a number of issues. Just because your particular issue isn't one of them doesn't mean that we live in a dictatorship; it just means that the majority of your fellow citizens is probably against you. We can discuss political philosophy if you want, and argue that any system where the will of the individual is suppressed by others is a dictatorship, but at that point any government other than anarchy is a dictatorship. And if you're seriously advocating anarchy, that's a whole different kettle of fish.
I can't speak for the world as a whole, but I strongly believe that the juggernaut that the US Federal government has become has passed the threshold wherein the citizenry can affect meaningful change through the 'established channels.'
I understand the sentiment, but the way you've phrased it is false. The "citizenry" can very much still effect meaningful change in the federal government through established channels (i.e., voting); the difficulty is that small portions of the citizenry cannot. The majority of people in this country do not consider the growth of the Federal government to be particularly unconstitutional or inherently wrong, so those few who do think so have a hard time getting like-minded politicians elected. This principle hasn't changed since the founding, only the scale of the problem, and frankly, you have a hell of a lot greater chance of effecting meaningful change in the government if you're a woman or ethnic minority now than you did at any other point in this nation's history.
Personally, I don't think it's impossible to have a central government the size of the one in the current USA that doesn't infringe rights we care about, but I agree it's much more dangerous. I would guess that the majority of Americans are far less concerned about it than I am. And until you can get a cultural shift to a mindset that cares about that danger, you won't be able to effect the kind of change you're looking for. I'm sorry, but that's democracy, and even if our system were working perfectly, that wouldn't change.
As a matter of fact, I'm not a college student. I also doubt that I'm as numerically or politically naive as you think. I have an engineering degree, and I'm about to graduate law school, so I have a pretty strong grounding in both. I have no illusion that my individual vote is likely to be determinative, and I've done enough game theory to know the difficulties associated with voting. However, I don't think that it's reasonable to draw from that the conclusion that voting is pointless. First of all, since most of the time you only know the results after the vote, there is no way to tell beforehand whether or not your vote will be decisive, so it would be foolish to decide from this not to vote. However, I recognize that that doesn't change the fact that, most of the time, whether or not you individually vote doesn't change the outcome. That's why I didn't specifically talk about voting: there's a lot more to working for better government than just voting for better government.
I've seen myself the difference that advocacy and argument can make in elections, and by contributing your own efforts to a larger group, you can change many more votes than your own. Obviously, this won't always work, especially if you're advocating for positions that the majority of people either don't care about or are actively hostile to. I don't deny that no matter how much you as an individual may do to advocate for a cause, it may be that you will lose. However, it's not hard to look back over history and see examples where the settled authority has been forced to change by popular demand.
In short, I agree with your math, but I don't agree with what you take from it. I also can't say that our current government(s) is/are likely to get any better. In fact, things may get worse. Maybe we will slip into a 1984-style totalitarian state. All I can say is, we're not there yet, and if we do find ourselves there, then we'll have to deal with it the same way people have always dealt with oppressive governments: either go with the flow, or take up arms.* However, the fact remains that we're not there yet.
*I do not include passive resistance a la Ghandi here, because under a truly totalitarian government that probably won't do too much good.
Actually, I have imagined giving (insert big bad here) 24/7 information about my actions and health status. That's why I specifically mentioned that this technology raises the obvious spectre of that problem. However, what you're not addressing is the main thrust of the rant portion of my post, which is that perhaps we'd be better off taking action to prevent bad governments than simply decrying new technologies. Have you heard of this new technology called video cameras? Given the idea of government you're putting forward, I expect that we all have them in every room of our house, so that the big bad can more efficiently suck away our freedom. Oh, what's that? The government hasn't mandated that we all put cameras in our bedrooms? Well, I guess politics must be a complicated, messy thing that can't be accurately described as either 1984 or Utopia.
Oops. Didn't see that one coming.
I'm glad someone in this thread isn't being ridiculous. I would love to be able to have a constant readout of my body's status. While you can determine some things using your own senses, there's nothing like a computer for precisely doing dull, repetitive tasks, like checking your pulse or taking your blood pressure.
/rant.
While there are obvious privacy issues here, new technology doesn't have to always produce net evil results. I would have thought people on a tech board would understand that. If devices like this were built to only report results using a method that's sure to be noticed, and stupid governments don't pass laws mandating the results be given to the government, this would be an incredible tool not only for medical diagnosis, but also for learning to better control your body.
And before anyone starts yapping about how governments are always stupid and will always take your freedom, so we'd be better off not having this tech, I just have to say: grow up. Governments are masses of people, not monolithic freedom vampires, and if you seriously think that you can have no impact on the course of government, you don't deserve the freedoms a lot of people have worked hard and sacrificed for over the years. If you don't like the current state of government (and there's plenty not to like), then get genuinely politically active, instead of just anonymously whining on the internet.
Sorry,
First, whether the argument you're putting forward about physical transformation is valid does not depend on the originality of the invention; obviousness/anticipation and patentable subject matter are different analyses.
Anyway, I'm not sure I exactly understand the thrust of your argument. Are you saying that this should be patentable because its subject matter has economic significance, even though non-physical? That's not how patent law as it now stands works. Are you arguing that that's how it should work?
If I were representing the plaintiffs, I'd try to argue that this works a physical transformation of the underlying storage medium, making it more useful as a component in an ebook reader. However, I think this is a terrible argument, because carried to its logical conclusion, it would mean that anything is patentable, because it at least works a transformation of the neurons of my brain.
The transformation arm of Bilski's machine or transformation test actually is limited to reasonably physical subject matter, or to data that represents underlying physical subject matter. An ebook DRM scheme counts as neither.
As someone who wholeheartedly supports the "engineers, the makers, the original inventors", I think the point of view you're arguing here is ridiculously naive. Of course the "middlemen" would have nothing to do without the creators, but do you seriously think that we could have a technologically advanced country the size of the united states without some of the middlemen? Do you seriously think that any non-trivial government could function without some lawyers?
If you want to argue that the middlemen are taking a larger share in our economy than they ought to, I don't think anyone's here's likely to disagree. But to say we should get rid of them entirely is idiotic. How exactly do you think you would be watching that movie in the comfort of your home without them? Somebody sold you your computer, and I doubt it was the manufacturer. Somebody invested the money to research the technology to make your computer possible, and I doubt it was the engineers. Somebody made sure that everybody paid their share along the way, and I can assure you that it was the lawyers. Try actually thinking about what it means to live in a complex technological society before you say stupid things about "putting lawyers up against the wall".
And yes, I'm a law student. I was originally an engineer. Both have value.