But then, most copyrightable work is just produced by "sweat of the brow", just like any other work. For example, I'll readily grant that some programmers are really creative, but most computer programs are just churned out for money. It would be far too difficult to apply any test of true creativity, so instead we have a situation where all work of certain types is covered by copyright, whether it is creative or not.
If we want to use copyright to reward work, than wouldn't it be logical to extend it so that it covers every different sort of work? Alternatively, if we don't think that mere hard work should be given special legal protection, why should the stuff that I churn out day after day without thinking about it be copyrightable?
On the other hand, setting the bible in type is a substantial job of work, as is performing a piece of classical music, or translating a book from a foreign language. It could easily be argued that this work is just as deserving of copyright protection as the original creation. Just taking a photograph does not require so much effort.
I remember visiting Italy, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria by train during the cold war. No queues for passport checks then either! It was much easier than the train from England to France is now.
But what actually happens now is that patents are written in a bizarre sort of legalese which is incomprehensible to most people skilled in the technological area to which the invention pertains. It surely doesn't take much skill on the part of patent examiners to see that this is the case. If this regulation were enforced, surely the vast majority of patent applications would be rejected on sight.
That's how patents are supposed to work: in return for the temporary protection of a patent, you have to reveal exactly how your invention works in the patent application, so that everyone can copy it once the patent has run out.
I wonder how many people in the UK regularly change the SIM card in their phone when they go abroad? I have a collection of SIM cards for every country I regularly visit, so that I get local calling rates in each country. So I would have no interest in buying a locked phone.
I would guess that buyers of high-end phones would often be regular travellers. But perhaps Apple is assuming they would be using the phone for business, and therefore uninterested in saving money on calls while overseas?
Yes, modern societies have rules. Most of these rules have been in place for hundreds of years. Then, suddenly, a new rule appears, and in the space of just three weeks it is enshrined in law, with prison sentence for anyone who breaks it. Shouldn't we question whether this new rule is a good one or a bad one? Especially when the people affected by the behaviour being outlawed already have a range of legal remedies available to them, and the motivation for the politicians passing the law appears to have been cash bribes?
Are those figures right? Does it only cost $250 or $500 per donation to bribe a Canadian politician? Wow, I could afford to buy a couple of laws in Canada at that rate! I should have thought it would cost a luxury yacht, or some bars of gold in a Swiss bank account, at least. The Canadians should look at a properly-run country like Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia to see how things should be done.
Neither is there an inherant right for business models to be propped up by government legislation, especially when there is already the remedy of breach of civil contract.
Hmm.. Google "gives" everyone its services for free, and yet it seems to make a huge pile of money. I wonder how much of that money would still be in your pocket if Google did not exist? And yet you want to work for them for free? It's a good trick.
But it's a risky strategy for the CSIRO. If the standard never takes off, everyone will stick with 802.11g until some other, completely different, standard comes along. So perhaps the greedy people at CSIRO will get nothing, and will starve.
dead authors may have live heirs who need the money
My grandfather is dead, but I am his heir. He did some good work 70 years ago but I am quite poor. Everyone must send me $10.
it would be nice to think that one's work could benefit one's children for some time
I would like that too. But my employer has told me that my pay will be stopped when I die. Evidently I am in the wrong industry.
But that problem is easily solved (from the point of view of the ISP). Just get these groups to give them a list of web sites they don't like, and start censoring these websites too.
This is basically what has happened in the UK, with the "cleanfeed" filter; I believe it happens in Canada too.
the industry chooses not to deploy them
Which is the whole problem. Section 26 of RFC3261 is entitled "Security Usage Recommendations" and describes a variety of security mechanisms that implementors may (or may not) choose to use.
If I am in control of both ends of the SIP conversation, I can arrange things so that it is secure. But if I just call some random person on a SIP phone, it look like I've got no guarantee that the two ends will negotiate any sort of encryption, and if they do not, there is no feedback to tell me that my conversation is insecure. So in practise I've just got to assume that all SIP conversations are insecure.
I remember the last time the Japanese announced that they were going to change the whole face of computing, with this project. After a few years, it was going to be the only hardware/operating system/networking combination that anyone would ever use. I wonder how they're getting on?
But of course this scheme does not allow the parents to decide what is profane; the parents' only role in this is to sign up for it (after being told that it is "for the sake of the children"); the censorship is then done by the government.
Anything is vendor-supported if I pay for vendor support. It doesn't have to be embedded in a flash chip.
The advantage of this is that it is vendor-supported by a vendor of Dell's choice. Presumably they then give Dell a kick-back. OK, that's an advantage for Dell, not for the purchaser.
What makes it even harder to keep Java updated is the fact that Sun issued it under a non-free license, so that many of the Linux distributions don't include it, and they quarrelled with Microsoft, so that it's not bundled with Windows. So not only do you have to download it and install it separately, but also you have to keep it up-to-date manually instead of relying on the updates supplied for your operating system.
Of course the next version of Java will be free, but one of the features of Java has always been that everything will be all right when the "next version" comes along.
Slashdot Mirror
Jury costs? Does this really mean that the jury shared $2.5M between them? Or am I missing something in my understanding of the US legal terminology?
Fair enough.
But then, most copyrightable work is just produced by "sweat of the brow", just like any other work. For example, I'll readily grant that some programmers are really creative, but most computer programs are just churned out for money. It would be far too difficult to apply any test of true creativity, so instead we have a situation where all work of certain types is covered by copyright, whether it is creative or not.
If we want to use copyright to reward work, than wouldn't it be logical to extend it so that it covers every different sort of work? Alternatively, if we don't think that mere hard work should be given special legal protection, why should the stuff that I churn out day after day without thinking about it be copyrightable?
Actually, I'd go for the second option.
On the other hand, setting the bible in type is a substantial job of work, as is performing a piece of classical music, or translating a book from a foreign language. It could easily be argued that this work is just as deserving of copyright protection as the original creation. Just taking a photograph does not require so much effort.
I remember visiting Italy, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria by train during the cold war. No queues for passport checks then either! It was much easier than the train from England to France is now.
But what actually happens now is that patents are written in a bizarre sort of legalese which is incomprehensible to most people skilled in the technological area to which the invention pertains. It surely doesn't take much skill on the part of patent examiners to see that this is the case. If this regulation were enforced, surely the vast majority of patent applications would be rejected on sight.
That's how patents are supposed to work: in return for the temporary protection of a patent, you have to reveal exactly how your invention works in the patent application, so that everyone can copy it once the patent has run out.
All this does is to ensure that, if the police raid you, you are guaranteed to be sent to jail for not having the encryption keys to your data.
I've met plenty of Windows-centric IT people who seem to think networking is some sort of black magic
I'm not surprised. Getting two Windows boxes to talk to each other on a network is black magic.
I wonder how many people in the UK regularly change the SIM card in their phone when they go abroad? I have a collection of SIM cards for every country I regularly visit, so that I get local calling rates in each country. So I would have no interest in buying a locked phone.
I would guess that buyers of high-end phones would often be regular travellers. But perhaps Apple is assuming they would be using the phone for business, and therefore uninterested in saving money on calls while overseas?
Yes, modern societies have rules. Most of these rules have been in place for hundreds of years. Then, suddenly, a new rule appears, and in the space of just three weeks it is enshrined in law, with prison sentence for anyone who breaks it. Shouldn't we question whether this new rule is a good one or a bad one? Especially when the people affected by the behaviour being outlawed already have a range of legal remedies available to them, and the motivation for the politicians passing the law appears to have been cash bribes?
Are those figures right? Does it only cost $250 or $500 per donation to bribe a Canadian politician? Wow, I could afford to buy a couple of laws in Canada at that rate! I should have thought it would cost a luxury yacht, or some bars of gold in a Swiss bank account, at least. The Canadians should look at a properly-run country like Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia to see how things should be done.
Neither is there an inherant right for business models to be propped up by government legislation, especially when there is already the remedy of breach of civil contract.
Hmm.. Google "gives" everyone its services for free, and yet it seems to make a huge pile of money. I wonder how much of that money would still be in your pocket if Google did not exist? And yet you want to work for them for free? It's a good trick.
But it's a risky strategy for the CSIRO. If the standard never takes off, everyone will stick with 802.11g until some other, completely different, standard comes along. So perhaps the greedy people at CSIRO will get nothing, and will starve.
dead authors may have live heirs who need the money
My grandfather is dead, but I am his heir. He did some good work 70 years ago but I am quite poor. Everyone must send me $10.
it would be nice to think that one's work could benefit one's children for some time
I would like that too. But my employer has told me that my pay will be stopped when I die. Evidently I am in the wrong industry.
The whole paying money to a dead author thing is even weirder.
But that problem is easily solved (from the point of view of the ISP). Just get these groups to give them a list of web sites they don't like, and start censoring these websites too.
This is basically what has happened in the UK, with the "cleanfeed" filter; I believe it happens in Canada too.
the industry chooses not to deploy them
Which is the whole problem. Section 26 of RFC3261 is entitled "Security Usage Recommendations" and describes a variety of security mechanisms that implementors may (or may not) choose to use.
If I am in control of both ends of the SIP conversation, I can arrange things so that it is secure. But if I just call some random person on a SIP phone, it look like I've got no guarantee that the two ends will negotiate any sort of encryption, and if they do not, there is no feedback to tell me that my conversation is insecure. So in practise I've just got to assume that all SIP conversations are insecure.
I remember the last time the Japanese announced that they were going to change the whole face of computing, with this project. After a few years, it was going to be the only hardware/operating system/networking combination that anyone would ever use. I wonder how they're getting on?
Perhaps the news is that, since this person is leaving his job at a magazine paid for by advertising, he is finally free to tell the truth.
For the prevention of serious crime.
How long before we line up at isp's with photo ID to have the internet turned back on?
Already happening in some countries
But of course this scheme does not allow the parents to decide what is profane; the parents' only role in this is to sign up for it (after being told that it is "for the sake of the children"); the censorship is then done by the government.
Anything is vendor-supported if I pay for vendor support. It doesn't have to be embedded in a flash chip.
The advantage of this is that it is vendor-supported by a vendor of Dell's choice. Presumably they then give Dell a kick-back. OK, that's an advantage for Dell, not for the purchaser.
What makes it even harder to keep Java updated is the fact that Sun issued it under a non-free license, so that many of the Linux distributions don't include it, and they quarrelled with Microsoft, so that it's not bundled with Windows. So not only do you have to download it and install it separately, but also you have to keep it up-to-date manually instead of relying on the updates supplied for your operating system.
Of course the next version of Java will be free, but one of the features of Java has always been that everything will be all right when the "next version" comes along.