There are two command prompts in Windows: CMD.EXE, which is the 32-bit (or 64-bit) Windows command prompt, and COMMAND.COM, which is the 16-bit MS-DOS command prompt, and runs via an emulation subsystem on 32-bit (but does not run on 64-bit) Windows.
The key reason the (32-bit) Windows support for DOS is different from something like DOSBox is simply that it is integrated into the rest of the system. MS-DOS applications see any of the system drives (NTFS, SMB, etc.) as DOS drives, 16-bit Windows applications can create windows and such that are fully integrated into the desktop (because the 16-bit calls are actually translated and passed to the 32-bit Windows API), etc.
On either Windows or Linux, one can run the overwhelming majority of historical software through various emulators, virtual machines and so on. However, these are far from seamless, and if one frequently uses such legacy software, it can become a nuisance. The subsystem model in Windows, which is used not only for MS-DOS emulation but also for Unix emulation, and formerly for limited OS/2 1.x emulation, is far more seamless.
The Unix subsystem in Windows would actually be brilliant if Microsoft put more effort into it. It could easily offer an alternative to Linux, but since Microsoft only offer it on the more expensive versions of Windows and appear to allocate very little in the way of resources to it, its usefulness is unfortunately limited. I still prefer it to a virtual machine in most cases, but the quality of the ports to it (e.g. of the GNU development tools and the OpenBSD command-line tools) is quite poor.
Actually, it is an attempt to look at property ontologically. If you have a better suggestion for a test for determining whether or not something is property, feel free to let me know. So far it appears that you're just picking what you do and don't want to be property and saying that they're property because that's what you've picked. I don't see rhyme or reason to it.
Property is simply that which can be owned, as determined by the public will. In simplified terms, anything created by an individual, or acquired from nature through the efforts of that individual, is by default the property of that individual, and can generally be exchanged with or given to others. The rest of property springs from this simple basis, with of course various qualifications and exceptions which vary from one society to another.
Refusing to reward is correct. As for banks, if I were the customer of such a bank, and I found the bank's procedures to be cumbersome, I might take my business elsewhere.
Refusing to do business with a bank whose procedures you disapprove of, or an artist using DRM, is perfectly reasonable. However, would you favour a policy by which the state refuses to guarantee the property rights of such banks? This is what you are suggesting in the case of artists using DRM.
[Most], if not all DRM systems I'm aware of go well beyond merely protecting the rights of the copyright holder and infringe on the rights of the public as well. If the DRM-user is unwilling to respect my legal rights, why should I be even slightly sympathetic to him?
How do they infringe on your rights? Do you believe you have an inherent right to the thoughts expressed by another? If you dislike the way in which others choose to express their thoughts, you are absolutely free to ignore them. They are not harming you by not sharing the expression of their thoughts with you, or by sharing them only in a way you disapprove of. By default you have no access to these expressions.
[Events] have proven DRM to be utterly impotent. Consider DeCSS or AACS. If people are interested in the content, it is inevitable that they'll break or otherwise circumvent the DRM somehow. Often in ways which the DRM designers didn't anticipate. After all, DRM has to work every time; if the attackers get around it, even only once, that's all they need to start making DRM-free copies.
I agree with this in the specific case of nerds, but disagree with it in the general case. Most people still buy DVDs, for example, because it's easier than copying them. A growing number of people are also buying and downloading music protected with DRM, because it is actually easier for them than illegally downloading music that is not protected by DRM.
That's wrong, actually. Remember, whenever an author writes, he is using his right of free speech to do it. All else being equal, the state cannot tell him that he can express his ideas, but that his free speech right doesn't protect his specific expression of them. And likewise, when his idea is in the public domain, and I reprint them, I use the exact same right he did initially. Copyright is a temporary, limited, restriction on free speech, the burden of which is willingly shouldered by the people who give up their right in order to create the copyright. But they're only going to do so if it benefits them. Otherwise, they're just not going to do it.
Perhaps the view of whether it's 'right' or 'wrong' depends on the perspective. In constitutional legislation I am familiar with here in Europe, across a number of countries, the right to freely express ideas/thoughts/opinions is expressly recognised.
I'm saying that there is no fundamental right to postage, nor a fundamental right to a copyright.
Again, authors' rights are considered fundamental by many in Europe, and are not precisely equivalent to copyright in the common
Without the implication that it is unusual or unique, there is no reason to mention it. If all or nearly all fundamental rights conflict in certain circumstances with others, then why mention this when attacking a particular right?
Actually, my argument is that there are certain minimum requirements for anything to be property of any sort: 1) it has to be capable of being used by the owner; 2) it has to be capable of being lendable in some fashion to others, and recoverable by the owner, and; 3) it has to be capable of being disposed of by the owner, by destruction, sale, or other means. In 99.44% of cases, a creative work doesn't meet the requirements of 2 or 3. I don't care that a creative work is merely unlike land. I care that it has attributes which preclude exclusive use without the addition of artificial things such as copyrights.
This is only a minor modification, expanding upon the initial assumption. Your three requirements appear to have been derived from examining the attributes of land and personal property.
Honesty. I'm not the one making an appeal to existing emotions and norms about property for something which is sui generis. I'm willing to call a spade a spade. This is why, while I'd certainly like it if copyrights were not considered property for Takings Clause purposes if that would interfere with retroactively reducing the term and scope of the right, I'm fully prepared to acknowledge that it is unlikely and will simply have to be lived with. I don't want to try to redefine things to suit my purposes.
What is the basis of this definition? Why is it more honest than the definition of the WIPO, which coincides with the definition in my English dictionary? Have they all got it wrong, or is your definition out of step with the common understanding?
Your argument is like claiming a schipperke isn't actually a dog because you know dogs have tails, and schipperkes (generally) haven't. Your usage is completely at odds with the norm, and you can't reject standard usage as somehow incorrect simply because you disagree with it.
[DRM] makes it more difficult to do things which do not violate an author's rights, but which may make the author unhappy.
Bank security makes lawful banking activity more difficult and cumbersome that it would otherwise be, but it prevents criminal activity.
DRM does not stop me reading a passage from a book and typing in a copy of it, nor creating an analogue copy of audio/video material.
Yet.
If one can read a book, how do you suggest DRM can ever prevent one manually copying passages from it?
So you're saying that the public should not be able to reap the benefit of improved technology, but that authors should be able to reap the benefit of it for themselves, and also be able to stop its use by others?
No, not at all. You are suggesting punishing (or perhaps in your view refusing to reward) authors who take advantage of technology to enforce their rights. Would you propose punishing banks using the latest technology to secure their vaults, because it makes it more cumbersome for you to legally access assets held in such banks?
New technologies can radically alter what the best copyright balance can be. Just because we put up with crappy technology in the past, and our abilities were limited as a result, doesn't mean that we should tolerate this in the future.
By 'not tolerate', you mean coerce authors into avoiding technology they would otherwise use to protect their works. If their legal rights were being respected, they would not have the need to use DRM. DRM is a result of the failure (or inability) of the state to enforce laws protecting those rights.
[By] means of carefully shaped policy, we can non-coercively influence tho
They aren't the same thing at all: you can use Windows without using MSN, and MSN without using Windows. In fact, based on earnings reports, Windows subsidises MSN, not the other way round. Windows Live might evolve into something like an advertising-based compoent of Windows, but for the moment at least it's still essentially separate, and probably also subsidised by Windows.
In any case, if there is any part of Microsoft to be concerned about regarding privacy, it is MSN or Windows Live, and not the Windows OS. The notion that Windows is spying on users for some nefarious purposes is simply ridiculous. Microsoft wouldn't gain anything at all from doing something like that, and would lose a great deal if it got out.
The author of the article seemed rather worked up about the fact that Microsoft get your IP address when you download Vista updates (never mind that they do when you download XP updates too, and so do any other OS providers when you download updates from them). There was also a comment on the privacy statement, and the fact that Microsoft will share the data with law enforcement agencies if required to by law. It all looked quite harmless to me.
At the end of the day, what would Microsoft gain from harvesting personal information about Windows users? Unless they plan to turn Windows into a product funded by advertising, I can't see the point in doing it. It would be a waste of resources to collect anything beyond what they need for technical improvements.
Did you read the article? It goes on about things like your IP address, and the web browser you're using being sent to Microsoft. This is essentially the information you send to every website you visit, unless you're using an anonymising proxy. Using Windows Update on XP, which runs via IE, almost certainly sends this same information to Microsoft, as does any web-based update function to the respective OS provider. The whole article reads almost like a joke.
Sending an IP address and the name of a web browser to an update server is hardly something to be concerned about. Microsoft's forays into advertising, on the other hand, are certainly something to keep an eye on. For the moment I'm a paying customer, but if advertisers become the paying customers and I'm simply a target for advertising, then I'll worry.
Ah yes, now you mention it, I've heard that one a few times too. Perhaps that's where 'Redmond' for Microsoft came from, but now I wonder how/why it got started for IBM.
[If] there are other, conflicting rights which are also considered to exist and which are protected, the issue of which has priority, and why, and under what circumstances becomes an issue.
There are almost always other, conflicting rights, hence the need for specifics statutes and/or case law in specific cases. It is a red herring to suggest this is in any way unique to the rights associated with intellectual property.
WIPO is at the center of this bit of disinformation [the view that IP refers to creations of the mind]. In any event, such a meaning doesn't make sense, as I've pointed out before.
As I pointed out, the view that intellectual property is a form of property, with associated property rights, is based on centuries of legal tradition in Europe, with the Berne and Paris conventions dating from the 19th century, and national statutes considerably older. It is well understood, and cannot reasonably be called disinformation simply because you disagree with it.
[There] basically are only two property regimes: real property for land, and personal property for pretty much everything else.
This is the fundamental, and perhaps insurmountable, area of disagreement. In European tradition, there are at least three forms of property, including land, personal property and intellectual property. There is no need to try and coerce intellectual property into the category of personal property, any more than there is to try and coerce land into personal property, or vice-versa.
As I see it, your argument runs as such:
(1) Assumption: There are only two forms of property which are qualitatively different, namely land and personal property
(2) Deduction: Given (1), if intellectual property is property, it must be defined as either land or personal property
(3) Observation: Intellectual property is qualitatively different from land
(4) Observation: Intellectual property is qualitatively different from personal property
(5) Deduction: Given (3) and (4), intellectual property is neither land nor personal property
(6) Conclusion: Given (2) and (5), intellectual property is not in fact property
The obvious flaw in this argument is (1), which is an assumption, not a fact. Without this arguably incorrect assumption to hold it together, the entire argument falls apart.
I am saying for a fact that [intellectual property and intellectual property rights] are synonymous, because there is no other reasonable or logical meaning for them.
Yet this opinion is at odds with that of the WIPO, the organisation charged with overseeing international IP treaties, inspired by earlier national laws, which have been in force in many countries for more than a century, and have been signed by virtually every country in the world. Why is your opinion more authoritative than that of the WIPO?
Of course, the problem is that DRM is just self-help and is a mechanism for evading the portions of copyright law which happen to be meant to benefit the public from whom the authority for such laws is drawn anyway.
DRM is simply technology that makes it more difficult to violate an author's rights, as a reaction to technology that has made it easier to do so. Technological improvements often include side effects which make it easier to violate the law, e.g. developments in transport and explosives in the 19th and 20th centuries made it easier to rob banks. These were then countered by other technologies, e.g. the use of stronger materials to construct vaults.
DRM is incapable of only protecting the rights of the copyright holder without infringing on the rights of the public.
Are you suggesting that the transition from analogue to digital storage/transmission of data has created new rights? DRM does not stop me reading a passage from a book and t
Microsoft has now dropped the x64 marker from the 64-bit versions of Vista; you either buy 32-bit edition or 64-bit edition.
Actually you just buy Vista, and the licence can be used for either the x86 or the x64 port (except Starter, which is a low-cost version for developing countries, and unless I'm mistaken is x86-only). Ultimate comes with media for both architectures, but the other versions only come with media for one architecture or the other. If you want media for the other architecture in these cases, you have to request it from Microsoft, and pay a nominal fee to cover postage and packing.
[Absolute free speech is] safer than allowing the power of the government to be used against
people merely because of their speech. Remember, I did say that while I find the idea of an absolutist right
of free speech attractive, I do struggle with it for basically the sorts of reasons you mention.
It still doesn't make sense to me. There's no need to group defamation and incitement with the free
expression of ideas. They're different things, just like kicking a football and kicking another person are
different things. People should naturally be free to kick footballs, but not other people.
Why should the precise content of speech have to be justified to anyone? If people are going to
have freedom of speech, then that means that they have the freedom to choose what speech they want to engage
in. If it's identical, then it's identical. Who cares?
Why does walking across a plot of land have to be justified to anyone? The answer is because walking across
someone else's land without their permission can be said to infringe their right to their land, with various
exceptions. Using someone else's creative works without permission can be said to infringe their right to those works,
also with various exceptions. The issue is simply whether or not the respective rights are considered by
society to exist, and to be protected by law.
[It is] clearly not the case [that intellectual property refers to works].
According to the WIPO, Intellectual property refers
to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs
used in commerce.
First, if works were property, if they could be property, we wouldn't need copyright law to
simulate to some extent what it would be like if they were property. Ordinary personal property laws would
suffice.
To the extent that different forms of property differ in their nature, the rights associated with them
differ, and hence so must the laws regulating those rights. Laws regulating the rights associated with land ownership, for example, tend to be different from those relating to ownership of personal belongings.
Secondly, a copyright and a work to which a copyright pertains are distinct entities. And when a
copyright expires, the work does not. But the work is no longer anyone's property at that point, it is free
to the public. Copies, the third kind of distinct entity, are clearly ordinary personal property; a book is
no different than a comb or a table, so it can't be that.
If the term 'intellectual property' has any real meaning, then it must refer to the exclusive rights, and not
to the subject of those rights, or copies in which those subjects are fixed.
You seem to be suggesting that 'intellectual property' and 'intellectual property rights' are synonymous. They are in fact different things, just as land and the rights associated with land are different things.
You're using the term in a meaningless and confusing way. This is why I object to it altogether;
it doesn't help understanding of these issues in the least, and it strives to confuse laypeople into thinking
of whatever vague thing happens to be called 'intellectual property' today as being basically the same as
real or personal property, so that they'll use those norms in relation to it, and not others.
Everything that falls under that umbrella is basically sui generis, not just as a group, but even within that
group. It is maliciously deceptive to try to wrestle in norms regarding property, and I don't tolerate
it.
It certainly isn't meaningless, nor arguably is it confusing. As for the notion that it's deceptive, the view
that rights to intellectual property are property rights can be found in law dating from the 18th century, at
least in continental
It's not necessarily a matter of commercial verus non-commercial. The question is whether or not bugs are being found and fixed by professional developers, i.e. people being paid (directly or indirectly) to do it, or by the mythical 'many eyes' of user volunteers.
I don't know about OpenBSD, but the consensus on Linux seems to be that it's primarily developed by professionals, not volunteers. In effect, then, it's just a run-of-the-mill software project, with paid developers finding/fixing bugs (perhaps based on external failure reports). It may be a rigorous and effective development process, but it's not the one of Eric Raymond's 'many eyes' myth.
When you say 'Redmond', do you mean Microsoft? If so, I've noticed the Register and one or two other web tabloids do the same thing. It strikes me as quite comic, in the way it resembles the use of capital cities when referring to national governments, almost as if Microsoft has been elevated from a mere corporation to the status of a state. Is there any reason for it? Do you do this for any other corporations?
We've always known that Linux and most of the popular OSS projects are developed by professionals.
You may know this, but clearly not everyone realises Eric Raymond's 'many eyes' theory is nothing more than a myth: just look at the posts in this Slashdot article. This tiresome myth is repeatedly regurgitated by open source advocates who apparently believe it, despite the empirical evidence to the contrary.
The article was written by Andrew Brown of the Guardian, not anyone associated with Sun or OpenOffice, so in all likelihood, the choice of words was his. In any event, I would be interested to see a similar analysis of projects without commercial roots, especially Linux, given its high profile.
A good argument against this myth is made in a Guardian article from a couple of years ago about OpenOffice, which includes the following comment about external contributions, i.e. those not made by the 100 or so full-time developers paid by Sun to develop it:
But what about the innumerable volunteers who can download the code and fix what they like? They take one look at the effort involved and run. OpenOffice is an extremely complex mountain of source code. As far as I know, in the five years it has been available as open source, not one contribution to the program has come from amateurs. The outsiders who have provided input have been full-time professionals employed by Linux companies to help make the software credible.
Yes. And like a lot of people, I have a tough time trying to reconcile the practical benefits of those sorts of laws with the very attractive position of absolute free speech, which is, after all, what the Constitution actually says. Don't think this is a fringe view, either. Consider, say, Supreme Court justices like Douglas or Black who also had this view.
How can you reasonably argue that it's right for someone to be allowed to destroy your reputation by lying about you? If someone like Rupert Murdoch, for example, decides he doesn't like you, good luck trying to defend your reputation against his resources. How can it be right to allow a demagogue to incite a crowd to murder someone?
This view that absolute free speech is inherently good, and must necessarily trump all (or most) other fundamental rights is simply baffling to me. What possible social benefit is there in allowing defamation and incitement?
So? Free speech applies to the literal expression, as well as the underlying idea.
Why is this necessary? If freedom of speech is about the right to express any opinion or idea openly, and without fear of censorship or legal reprisal, why do you need the right to precisely duplicate someone else's words? If you can understand their argument, surely you're capable of presenting it in your own words, even if they refuse to allow you to present their work.
A law which is acceptable in principle, and which is widely broken without serious harm, and not seriously enforced, is tolerable. If, say, enforcement became heavy-handed and common, people's attitudes would likely change. This is why things like DRM are making people upset with copyright law; people traditionally have believed in copyright law, or at least been tolerant of it, but haven't much felt it to be applicable to them as they make a mix tape, or something.
You may be right about this, but there's also a compelling argument in the opposite direction. A recent study at Keele University in the UK, for example, found that 61% of individuals in the sample had committed a serious criminal offence. This included things like defrauding their insurance companies and stealing stationery from their employers. To take this last example, virtually nobody who steals stationery from their employer would be willing to walk into a post office and steal stationery from it. Why? Because it's harder, they're more likely to get caught and the clear information about the price makes it more obvious that they're stealing.
Recent technological developments have made it far easier to violate laws protecting the rights of authors than it's ever been before, with the result being a substantial rise in the violation of authors' legal rights, both economic and moral. Judging by the example of theft from employers versus theft from shops and post offices, if DRM makes it more difficult to violate laws protecting authors' rights, and more obvious to those who do that they're breaking the law, it might actually have the effect of convincing many of them to obey it. It doesn't have to be perfect either, as long as it's enough of a nuisance to convince the average user that it's easier to obey the law.
Needless to say there are activists who oppose the legal protection of authors' rights, but they generally represent a fringe, and not mainstream thought. Most people who violate laws protecting authors' rights arguably do it because it's easier than obeying them, and they view the harm to the author as small enough not to be particularly burdensome. Only time will tell, but if a convenient DRM scheme leads to low-cost and legal copying of works (e.g. ebooks, music, films), I think you'll find most of the current complaints will evaporate, particularly if such schemes allow blank media taxes, for example, to be repealed.
"Intellectual property" is a nonsensical, dishonest term. But if anything is IP, then it is things like copyri
The UK is one of the few countries in the EU with a first past the post electoral system. In most EU countries, though not all even excluding the UK, representation of each party in the national parliament is broadly proportional to the votes received by that party, except that very small parties (e.g. 3%, 5% or similar thresholds) are typically excluded.
With broadly proportional representation in parliament, a legislative majority requires indirect support from a majority of the electors. This means that a government indirectly requires at least a plurality of the vote for a minority government, or a majority of the vote for a majority government.
In general, if a government cannot be formed without support in parliament, and a minister in the Council of the European Union reflects the government position, isn't this position likely to have support in parliament? How often do MPs from the government parties really vote against the government?
Your post is too long to address entirely through quoting, so I'll address some of the points without quoting.
The US government is not representative of US society, at least in the matter of authors' rights, and the current laws are likely to gradually change
I'll take your word on this, but are you suggesting that you think the USA will withdraw from the Berne Convention?
Do you consider other laws which are frequently violated, such as rules governing driving, to be against social norms? Alternatively, do you suppose the ones violating these laws support them in principle, but believe there are cases where other priorities override them?
The question of whether or not moral rights are 'real'
You included some points about utilitarianism, which I don't see as being connected to the question of whether or not moral rights are 'real', but the following is I think the kernel of your argument:
I don't see any way to reconcile the idea of an inherent right of free speech, which is inclusive of the right to repeat the speech of others, and to be associated with it, or to alter it in ways which might be opposed by the originator of that speech, and a right to prevent others from doing so.
This strikes me as rather an extraordinary point of view. Do you view laws protecting individuals from defamation, incitement and so on as being inherently opposed to the right of free speech too? An author's rights apply only to a specific work, not to the underlying ideas. There is absolutely no question of authors' rights preventing open discussion of anything.
Essentially, you seem to be saying that moral rights of authors are not 'real' because you think they conflict with certain other rights which you view as 'real'. This is surely a very common situation, as for example with the conflict between public access rights and private property rights. If you take the extreme view that any fundamental right is absolute, and cannot be overruled in any cases by conflicting rights, your position will rapidly become untenable, and even absurd.
The suggestion of hypocrisy
Why do the rights expire? Why are they sometimes waivable? Why is it that they don't always apply? They are, in fact, just another kind of economic right, but a particularly bad one, in that there's so little economic value involved and so much public cost.
Why do an author's rights expire some decades after the author has died? Surely this is obvious: the author is dead. As for the rights being absolute, rarely are any rights absolute, as I've already pointed out. There are all sorts of examples where one right overrides another, and by your standard, one could quite easily argue that supporters of nearly every right are thus hypocrites. Even the right to life is not absolute in the USA, where the state still lawfully kills people.
International transfer of intellectual property
I pointed out the need for coordination, if intellectual property is to be transferred amongst countries. You replied that copyrights are still national, which as far as I can see is irrelevant. If an author creates a work which is protected under German law, for example, it is certainly proper for it to be given similar protection under French law, if transferred to France. The fact that national law applies in both cases is irrelevant, insofar as that law conforms to the Berne Convention. That is in fact the very reason for harmonisation.
The issue of natural rights and societal views
As far as I can tell, what you've written amounts to saying, 'I believe the right to own property is natural, but an author's moral rights to his or her works are not.' That's all very well for you, but not everyone agrees with this view. In "Von der Unrechtmäßigkeit des Büchernachdrucks" (1785), for example, Imannuel Kant argues that authors have innate personal rights over their works, and development of th
If the Berne Convention goes against the views of US society, why did the US government ratify it?
I don't recognize that authors or others to whom the authors have transferred them innately have rights which could be recognized, nor do I think that moral rights are publicly beneficial or even real...
What do you mean by not real? If it is the view of society that one has moral rights over what one creates, how is this less real than, for example, a similar view that one has a right to own property?
... everyone who supports them is being hypocritical, IMO.
In what way?
I would dance the jig of happiness if the US did the sensible thing and pulled out of TRIPS, Berne, and all the other copyright treaties, and instead implemented whatever system was best for us. And I would be pleased to see other countries do likewise.
If intellectual property is allowed to be transferred from one country to another, it seems quite sensible to me to cooperate in treatment of it. You're of course free to oppose cooperating with other countries, but fortunately this view does not seem to be official US policy, in at least this particular area.
That strikes me as somewhat of a tautology; you're saying that when you break the law, you break the law which is bad, so the law should be against that.
Not at all. I am arguing that it is the view of most societies that authors have economic and sometimes moral (as in my society) rights to their works. Those who violate laws designed to protect these rights are not committing victimless crimes, they are violating what society views as the rights of the authors of the works involved. An individual who does not share the views of the broader society cannot simply ignore those views, at least not when they are expressed through law.
Copyright law is purely and solely utilitarian (when not corrupt) and should generally conform to social norms.
To those who believe in moral rights of authors, the matter of how those rights are protected isn't quite so simple. You've said you're against them, but you don't speak for everyone else.
Society is speaking and is apparently happy with non-commercial piracy. The law should reflect this. C.f. Prohibition in the US.
If society is speaking, I would expect the laws to be changed. However, this is merely a detail, similar to the question of public access to the countryside. Allowing public access does not invalidate the rights of property owners, and expanding the scope in which copying is allowed does not invalidate the rights of authors and/or copyright holders.
You can't say copyright violation is a victimless crime, and remain both rational and honest in your argumentation. Reflecting the broader views of the socieities which have ratified it, the Berne Convention (BC) recognises both economic and moral rights of a copyright holder.
The economic rights of a copyright holder have long been recognised throughout the West, but moral rights are less clear. They have been recognised in continental Europe since the late 19th century, with the BC dating from 1886, but have not generally been recognised in Common Law countries (mostly the UK and former colonies). However, insofar as they are protected by the BC, they must still be protected in Common Law countries that are parties to it (including the UK since 1886 and the USA since 1989 -- the USA took more than a century to ratify because of disagreements over moral rights).
If you violate copyright law, you are not only violating the economic right of the owners of the relevant works to compensation for your use of those works, but also their moral right to control public access to their works, and potentially other rights as well. The owners are the victims of infringement, and most certainly do complain to the police when their rights are violated. Needless to say, there is an enormous difference between individual piracy and piracy on an industrial scale, especially for commercial gain, but neither is in any sense victimless.
Which is the equivalent of the state creating roads that only Ford cars can work on and then requiring all users of other cars to replace them in order to use the roads.
I don't know if there's really any value in going further with this analogy, but in the situation we've got today, the roads are there, it's just that nobody can use them. I.e. the infrastructure for digital distribution is in place, but the BBC can't distribute content digitally for legal reasons. If it were a case of building a completely new infrastructure, that would of course be a different matter.
If DRM is necessary as the BBC claims it is then it's reasonable that a player should be produced for licence fee payers that will run on all the mainstream OSs.
I agree they should offer it for Mac OS, but they can reasonably argue that 'mainstream OS' means Windows. Besides which, the content will still be offered via traditional means as well, so it's not exclusive to Windows users, they're just in a position to benefit from Microsoft's investment in DRM technology.
We pay for the production of the TV programs and we are paying for the establishment of the new service and we are paying for the creation of the media player. It is not outside of the abilities of the BBC tech department to create their own platform independent media player and, if they believe it necessary, DRM system.
You may be right, but I don't honestly think developing and maintaining A/V codecs and a viable DRM system competitive with what Microsoft can offer is something the BBC would be capably of doing, and certainly not in a cost effective way. Is spending an excessive amount of resources to duplicate a technology that can easily and inexpensively be licensed from a third party, reaching 95% of end users, effective use of the licence-fee payers' money?
BBC content will still be distributed in the traditional ways, which are less convenient, but don't require DRM for legal compliance. In that way, then, it will still be accessible to those who choose not to use Windows.
It seems to me the issue here is that Microsoft developed DRM technology that allows the BBC to distribute content digitally, which it would otherwise be unable to do for legal reasons. This means Windows users benefit, but if viable solutions to the problem exist on Mac OS, and perhaps other platforms, then the ideal situation would be for the BBC to support them too. If such solutions don't exist, then there's really nothing the BBC can do for users of those platforms, given its legal obligations.
I don't think you know what you're talking about. Scheduling of the GPU isn't the same thing as 3D acceleration, and full interruptability of GPU operations requires hardware support that isn't in pre-DirectX-10 GPUs.
I'm sure you're trying to be helpful, but when you don't understand what you're talking about, it's actually just a nuisance. I would be interested to hear from someone who knows how the graphics system in OS X works, but sorry, I don't think that's you.
Fair enough, but what I'm really talking about is the 'Free Software' movement, not what that movement defines as 'Free' software, if you take my point. Public domain, BSD, these were all around before there was any 'Free Software' movement.
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The key reason the (32-bit) Windows support for DOS is different from something like DOSBox is simply that it is integrated into the rest of the system. MS-DOS applications see any of the system drives (NTFS, SMB, etc.) as DOS drives, 16-bit Windows applications can create windows and such that are fully integrated into the desktop (because the 16-bit calls are actually translated and passed to the 32-bit Windows API), etc.
On either Windows or Linux, one can run the overwhelming majority of historical software through various emulators, virtual machines and so on. However, these are far from seamless, and if one frequently uses such legacy software, it can become a nuisance. The subsystem model in Windows, which is used not only for MS-DOS emulation but also for Unix emulation, and formerly for limited OS/2 1.x emulation, is far more seamless.
The Unix subsystem in Windows would actually be brilliant if Microsoft put more effort into it. It could easily offer an alternative to Linux, but since Microsoft only offer it on the more expensive versions of Windows and appear to allocate very little in the way of resources to it, its usefulness is unfortunately limited. I still prefer it to a virtual machine in most cases, but the quality of the ports to it (e.g. of the GNU development tools and the OpenBSD command-line tools) is quite poor.
Property is simply that which can be owned, as determined by the public will. In simplified terms, anything created by an individual, or acquired from nature through the efforts of that individual, is by default the property of that individual, and can generally be exchanged with or given to others. The rest of property springs from this simple basis, with of course various qualifications and exceptions which vary from one society to another.
Refusing to do business with a bank whose procedures you disapprove of, or an artist using DRM, is perfectly reasonable. However, would you favour a policy by which the state refuses to guarantee the property rights of such banks? This is what you are suggesting in the case of artists using DRM.
How do they infringe on your rights? Do you believe you have an inherent right to the thoughts expressed by another? If you dislike the way in which others choose to express their thoughts, you are absolutely free to ignore them. They are not harming you by not sharing the expression of their thoughts with you, or by sharing them only in a way you disapprove of. By default you have no access to these expressions.
I agree with this in the specific case of nerds, but disagree with it in the general case. Most people still buy DVDs, for example, because it's easier than copying them. A growing number of people are also buying and downloading music protected with DRM, because it is actually easier for them than illegally downloading music that is not protected by DRM.
Perhaps the view of whether it's 'right' or 'wrong' depends on the perspective. In constitutional legislation I am familiar with here in Europe, across a number of countries, the right to freely express ideas/thoughts/opinions is expressly recognised.
Again, authors' rights are considered fundamental by many in Europe, and are not precisely equivalent to copyright in the common
Without the implication that it is unusual or unique, there is no reason to mention it. If all or nearly all fundamental rights conflict in certain circumstances with others, then why mention this when attacking a particular right?
This is only a minor modification, expanding upon the initial assumption. Your three requirements appear to have been derived from examining the attributes of land and personal property.
What is the basis of this definition? Why is it more honest than the definition of the WIPO, which coincides with the definition in my English dictionary? Have they all got it wrong, or is your definition out of step with the common understanding?
Your argument is like claiming a schipperke isn't actually a dog because you know dogs have tails, and schipperkes (generally) haven't. Your usage is completely at odds with the norm, and you can't reject standard usage as somehow incorrect simply because you disagree with it.
Bank security makes lawful banking activity more difficult and cumbersome that it would otherwise be, but it prevents criminal activity.
DRM does not stop me reading a passage from a book and typing in a copy of it, nor creating an analogue copy of audio/video material.
If one can read a book, how do you suggest DRM can ever prevent one manually copying passages from it?
No, not at all. You are suggesting punishing (or perhaps in your view refusing to reward) authors who take advantage of technology to enforce their rights. Would you propose punishing banks using the latest technology to secure their vaults, because it makes it more cumbersome for you to legally access assets held in such banks?
By 'not tolerate', you mean coerce authors into avoiding technology they would otherwise use to protect their works. If their legal rights were being respected, they would not have the need to use DRM. DRM is a result of the failure (or inability) of the state to enforce laws protecting those rights.
In any case, if there is any part of Microsoft to be concerned about regarding privacy, it is MSN or Windows Live, and not the Windows OS. The notion that Windows is spying on users for some nefarious purposes is simply ridiculous. Microsoft wouldn't gain anything at all from doing something like that, and would lose a great deal if it got out.
At the end of the day, what would Microsoft gain from harvesting personal information about Windows users? Unless they plan to turn Windows into a product funded by advertising, I can't see the point in doing it. It would be a waste of resources to collect anything beyond what they need for technical improvements.
Sending an IP address and the name of a web browser to an update server is hardly something to be concerned about. Microsoft's forays into advertising, on the other hand, are certainly something to keep an eye on. For the moment I'm a paying customer, but if advertisers become the paying customers and I'm simply a target for advertising, then I'll worry.
Ah yes, now you mention it, I've heard that one a few times too. Perhaps that's where 'Redmond' for Microsoft came from, but now I wonder how/why it got started for IBM.
Sorry, I don't know. I found a page on microsoft.com, but it doesn't include any mention of OEM versus retail.
There are almost always other, conflicting rights, hence the need for specifics statutes and/or case law in specific cases. It is a red herring to suggest this is in any way unique to the rights associated with intellectual property.
As I pointed out, the view that intellectual property is a form of property, with associated property rights, is based on centuries of legal tradition in Europe, with the Berne and Paris conventions dating from the 19th century, and national statutes considerably older. It is well understood, and cannot reasonably be called disinformation simply because you disagree with it.
This is the fundamental, and perhaps insurmountable, area of disagreement. In European tradition, there are at least three forms of property, including land, personal property and intellectual property. There is no need to try and coerce intellectual property into the category of personal property, any more than there is to try and coerce land into personal property, or vice-versa.
As I see it, your argument runs as such:
(1) Assumption: There are only two forms of property which are qualitatively different, namely land and personal property
(2) Deduction: Given (1), if intellectual property is property, it must be defined as either land or personal property
(3) Observation: Intellectual property is qualitatively different from land
(4) Observation: Intellectual property is qualitatively different from personal property
(5) Deduction: Given (3) and (4), intellectual property is neither land nor personal property
(6) Conclusion: Given (2) and (5), intellectual property is not in fact property
The obvious flaw in this argument is (1), which is an assumption, not a fact. Without this arguably incorrect assumption to hold it together, the entire argument falls apart.
Yet this opinion is at odds with that of the WIPO, the organisation charged with overseeing international IP treaties, inspired by earlier national laws, which have been in force in many countries for more than a century, and have been signed by virtually every country in the world. Why is your opinion more authoritative than that of the WIPO?
DRM is simply technology that makes it more difficult to violate an author's rights, as a reaction to technology that has made it easier to do so. Technological improvements often include side effects which make it easier to violate the law, e.g. developments in transport and explosives in the 19th and 20th centuries made it easier to rob banks. These were then countered by other technologies, e.g. the use of stronger materials to construct vaults.
Are you suggesting that the transition from analogue to digital storage/transmission of data has created new rights? DRM does not stop me reading a passage from a book and t
It still doesn't make sense to me. There's no need to group defamation and incitement with the free expression of ideas. They're different things, just like kicking a football and kicking another person are different things. People should naturally be free to kick footballs, but not other people.
Why does walking across a plot of land have to be justified to anyone? The answer is because walking across someone else's land without their permission can be said to infringe their right to their land, with various exceptions. Using someone else's creative works without permission can be said to infringe their right to those works, also with various exceptions. The issue is simply whether or not the respective rights are considered by society to exist, and to be protected by law.
According to the WIPO, Intellectual property refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.
To the extent that different forms of property differ in their nature, the rights associated with them differ, and hence so must the laws regulating those rights. Laws regulating the rights associated with land ownership, for example, tend to be different from those relating to ownership of personal belongings.
You seem to be suggesting that 'intellectual property' and 'intellectual property rights' are synonymous. They are in fact different things, just as land and the rights associated with land are different things.
It certainly isn't meaningless, nor arguably is it confusing. As for the notion that it's deceptive, the view that rights to intellectual property are property rights can be found in law dating from the 18th century, at least in continental
I don't know about OpenBSD, but the consensus on Linux seems to be that it's primarily developed by professionals, not volunteers. In effect, then, it's just a run-of-the-mill software project, with paid developers finding/fixing bugs (perhaps based on external failure reports). It may be a rigorous and effective development process, but it's not the one of Eric Raymond's 'many eyes' myth.
The article was written by Andrew Brown of the Guardian, not anyone associated with Sun or OpenOffice, so in all likelihood, the choice of words was his. In any event, I would be interested to see a similar analysis of projects without commercial roots, especially Linux, given its high profile.
How can you reasonably argue that it's right for someone to be allowed to destroy your reputation by lying about you? If someone like Rupert Murdoch, for example, decides he doesn't like you, good luck trying to defend your reputation against his resources. How can it be right to allow a demagogue to incite a crowd to murder someone?
This view that absolute free speech is inherently good, and must necessarily trump all (or most) other fundamental rights is simply baffling to me. What possible social benefit is there in allowing defamation and incitement?
Why is this necessary? If freedom of speech is about the right to express any opinion or idea openly, and without fear of censorship or legal reprisal, why do you need the right to precisely duplicate someone else's words? If you can understand their argument, surely you're capable of presenting it in your own words, even if they refuse to allow you to present their work.
You may be right about this, but there's also a compelling argument in the opposite direction. A recent study at Keele University in the UK, for example, found that 61% of individuals in the sample had committed a serious criminal offence. This included things like defrauding their insurance companies and stealing stationery from their employers. To take this last example, virtually nobody who steals stationery from their employer would be willing to walk into a post office and steal stationery from it. Why? Because it's harder, they're more likely to get caught and the clear information about the price makes it more obvious that they're stealing.
Recent technological developments have made it far easier to violate laws protecting the rights of authors than it's ever been before, with the result being a substantial rise in the violation of authors' legal rights, both economic and moral. Judging by the example of theft from employers versus theft from shops and post offices, if DRM makes it more difficult to violate laws protecting authors' rights, and more obvious to those who do that they're breaking the law, it might actually have the effect of convincing many of them to obey it. It doesn't have to be perfect either, as long as it's enough of a nuisance to convince the average user that it's easier to obey the law.
Needless to say there are activists who oppose the legal protection of authors' rights, but they generally represent a fringe, and not mainstream thought. Most people who violate laws protecting authors' rights arguably do it because it's easier than obeying them, and they view the harm to the author as small enough not to be particularly burdensome. Only time will tell, but if a convenient DRM scheme leads to low-cost and legal copying of works (e.g. ebooks, music, films), I think you'll find most of the current complaints will evaporate, particularly if such schemes allow blank media taxes, for example, to be repealed.
With broadly proportional representation in parliament, a legislative majority requires indirect support from a majority of the electors. This means that a government indirectly requires at least a plurality of the vote for a minority government, or a majority of the vote for a majority government.
In general, if a government cannot be formed without support in parliament, and a minister in the Council of the European Union reflects the government position, isn't this position likely to have support in parliament? How often do MPs from the government parties really vote against the government?
I'll take your word on this, but are you suggesting that you think the USA will withdraw from the Berne Convention?
Do you consider other laws which are frequently violated, such as rules governing driving, to be against social norms? Alternatively, do you suppose the ones violating these laws support them in principle, but believe there are cases where other priorities override them?
You included some points about utilitarianism, which I don't see as being connected to the question of whether or not moral rights are 'real', but the following is I think the kernel of your argument:
This strikes me as rather an extraordinary point of view. Do you view laws protecting individuals from defamation, incitement and so on as being inherently opposed to the right of free speech too? An author's rights apply only to a specific work, not to the underlying ideas. There is absolutely no question of authors' rights preventing open discussion of anything.
Essentially, you seem to be saying that moral rights of authors are not 'real' because you think they conflict with certain other rights which you view as 'real'. This is surely a very common situation, as for example with the conflict between public access rights and private property rights. If you take the extreme view that any fundamental right is absolute, and cannot be overruled in any cases by conflicting rights, your position will rapidly become untenable, and even absurd.
Why do an author's rights expire some decades after the author has died? Surely this is obvious: the author is dead. As for the rights being absolute, rarely are any rights absolute, as I've already pointed out. There are all sorts of examples where one right overrides another, and by your standard, one could quite easily argue that supporters of nearly every right are thus hypocrites. Even the right to life is not absolute in the USA, where the state still lawfully kills people.
I pointed out the need for coordination, if intellectual property is to be transferred amongst countries. You replied that copyrights are still national, which as far as I can see is irrelevant. If an author creates a work which is protected under German law, for example, it is certainly proper for it to be given similar protection under French law, if transferred to France. The fact that national law applies in both cases is irrelevant, insofar as that law conforms to the Berne Convention. That is in fact the very reason for harmonisation.
As far as I can tell, what you've written amounts to saying, 'I believe the right to own property is natural, but an author's moral rights to his or her works are not.' That's all very well for you, but not everyone agrees with this view. In "Von der Unrechtmäßigkeit des Büchernachdrucks" (1785), for example, Imannuel Kant argues that authors have innate personal rights over their works, and development of th
The economic rights of a copyright holder have long been recognised throughout the West, but moral rights are less clear. They have been recognised in continental Europe since the late 19th century, with the BC dating from 1886, but have not generally been recognised in Common Law countries (mostly the UK and former colonies). However, insofar as they are protected by the BC, they must still be protected in Common Law countries that are parties to it (including the UK since 1886 and the USA since 1989 -- the USA took more than a century to ratify because of disagreements over moral rights).
If you violate copyright law, you are not only violating the economic right of the owners of the relevant works to compensation for your use of those works, but also their moral right to control public access to their works, and potentially other rights as well. The owners are the victims of infringement, and most certainly do complain to the police when their rights are violated. Needless to say, there is an enormous difference between individual piracy and piracy on an industrial scale, especially for commercial gain, but neither is in any sense victimless.
It seems to me the issue here is that Microsoft developed DRM technology that allows the BBC to distribute content digitally, which it would otherwise be unable to do for legal reasons. This means Windows users benefit, but if viable solutions to the problem exist on Mac OS, and perhaps other platforms, then the ideal situation would be for the BBC to support them too. If such solutions don't exist, then there's really nothing the BBC can do for users of those platforms, given its legal obligations.
I'm sure you're trying to be helpful, but when you don't understand what you're talking about, it's actually just a nuisance. I would be interested to hear from someone who knows how the graphics system in OS X works, but sorry, I don't think that's you.
Fair enough, but what I'm really talking about is the 'Free Software' movement, not what that movement defines as 'Free' software, if you take my point. Public domain, BSD, these were all around before there was any 'Free Software' movement.