I would love to see each bill only include relevant stuff in it. No more riders. First, there wouldn't be as much pork barrel crap anymore. Second, congress critters could no longer use the "My opponent voted against a bill to save the kittens" even though that bill had all sorts of other crap that the opponent opposed. And thirdly, it would slow congress down. They make entirely too many laws as it is. But at the same time it might speed them up since they won't have to argue about completely irrelevant parts of a bill to get it passed.
So the technology was invented in the future, but we have it now. But since we have it, the people in the future won't bother to discover it because they already have it, which means it wasn't ever discovered, thus in the past we didn't have it to grant to the people in the future, which means that now they had the motivation to discover it, but since they sent it back to us, they had it in the past, and just took that knowledge for granted and didn't have to discover it, so the future never discovered it, so they didn't send it back to us, so we didn't have it, and thus they didn't have it to take for granted, so they discovered it, and then sent it back to us, and so on and so forth.
They had that. It was called the Redeemer. You only got one shot. And you had better not be around when it goes off. And the enemy could shoot it down, or they could shoot you.
But think of the other effects a bill like this would have. No more FPSs and GTA-clones. You make the fear-mongering think-of-the-children-types happy AND the todays-games-have-no-creativity group happy. Its a win-win situation.
a) Then remove it. Guess what? iTunes has a built in way of changing your musics information.
b) Then remove it. Guess what? iTunes has a built in way of changing your musics information.
c) What? This isn't even an issue. First, I'll pretend that you didn't pay extra for the increased bit rate. Second, how does this stop you from doing what Fair Use dictates you can do? In fact, how does this even begin to stop you from doing anything illegal at all? If you don't want it there, then remove it. Guess what? iTunes has a built in way of changing your musics information.
Ok, something got lost in translation somewhere. Just to make sure we are on the same page, a reversible process in thermodynamics is 100% efficient. No energy is lost to heat. There are no reversible processes. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Which means that ALL processes are irreversible. Therefore if I say "Just say no to $TOTALLY_UBIQUITOUS_THING" and I know that $TOTALLY_UBIQUITOUS_THING's opposite does not exist, then it is called a joke. Indeed if we could say no to irreversible processes, this entire Universe would be very different than it is today in probably every aspect.
The drug analogy was only because I thought you were saying you can't say no to something until it occurs. I thought you were saying we can't say "I will not start this process" until after you had already started the process and thus reverse your action.
Furthermore, the intent of my sig is not to get into a discussion of any variety about global warming. The intent is for people to say "Haha, there's no such thing as a reversible process." Just to be clear, here are my views: The Earth's climate can change and has done so many times. Humans put a lot of crap into the environment and we should reduce that for lots of reasons. Whether those two things are connected in either direction is rather a moot point in my opinion.
And then welcome to the world of high priced everything. Or did you somehow think that goods are delivered by birds? Things get shipped everywhere, including food and mail. You do such silly things as that and you will see food prices rise drastically. Shipping costs would increase substantially, thus driving up prices on everything at the store AND on the internet. But let's not stop there, because nearly everything is shipped at some point, be it at the raw materials stage or final delivery.
There are lots of ways to reduce emissions. We could make engines more efficient, make driving more efficient, make roads more efficient, influence people to drive less, walk more, use mass transit, etc. Some of those ways are better than others, and some ways of making those ways happen are better than others. I'm all for people holding up the mass transit banner, but how about making mass transit more pleasant before making the alternatives less pleasant. The experiences I had on the bus was such that if I couldn't drive I would still not take it. I would buy a new bike and ride that. You might say your purpose has been fulfilled, that I am driving less, but I would say that in so doing you have also put undue burden on the economy. On the other hand, if you made mass transit more appealing to me than driving (as opposed to making driving less appealing than mass transit, there is a difference), then I would use it and you perhaps have done so without killing the economy.
Like I said, I don't entirely know how to make mass transit more appealing, cost effective, and efficient, but I'm sure someone was thought about it and has come up with ideas that would make it more appealing than driving. The way to do it is to fix mass transit, not harm driving. The suggestions I gave previously on how to fix roads made driving more appealing, but it also made it more efficient, safer, pleasant, and healthier for the environment. I'm sure there is something that could be done for mass transit that would do the same.
First, you explain why they shouldn't. Seriously, the constitution says, "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." Copyrights (and patents) are a man-made thing. Previous to copyrights, if you came up with an idea and didn't want anyone else to use it, then you wouldn't ever publish it*. However, the founding fathers knew that it would be beneficial to get people to publish their works, so as an incentive they allowed for copyrights. In essence, if you publish your material to the world, we'll pretend that you control it for a short time. That gives you the incentive of sharing your ideas, and the world is a better place for it.
Now to answer your question about why they should expire...If you are given exclusive right to your writings forever, that sure is an incentive to publish your works. However, we don't want you to just publish your ideas. We want to use them, that's what promotes progress. So we can't very well let you have exclusive rights to them forever (what use are they to you after your dead anyway?). So we set an expiration. This also gives you an incentive to create a new work. So we give you exclusive rights to your works for a long enough time for you to profit AND to publish your next work(s).
What are you even talking about? I played Halo before I had even heard of any hype for it. I did it solo, and co-op. The ONLY thing I liked about it better than any other game I had played was the co-op. It wasn't that spectacular, it still isn't that spectacular. There is ONLY one thing that make it so big, and that is the hype. I know people who will prattle on about it forever like it was God's gift to mankind. They can never tell me what's good about it. Every time they try I tell them about lots of other games that have what they are talking about. You want story, go to Half-Life, you want multi-player, see Counter-Strike. You might say that Halo combined those two, but I would say that when you are playing Halo for story, you are not playing multi-player and vice versa, so that point is irrelevant.
The graphics on Halo suck. At the time Halo 1 was getting really popular I got into a discussion about the graphics with a roommate. He was comparing Jedi Outcast at 1600x1200 with Halo at 640x480 and saying that Halo was better. This is the kind of mentality that most Halo fans have. To them, Halo is "Just Better(TM)." I had to just ignore him, as I've had to do with everyone else who says anything about Halo's graphics being good at all. Jedi Outcast was not even trying to be a graphics power house, it was running off an old engine and it still looked better with a Radeon 7200.
Level Design? My goodness, man, what are you smoking. Have you even played the library level? After about two minutes you don't even know which direction you're going, which direction you came from, and you can't even count how many times you've seen the exact same stuff over and over again and again. The maps on the ships aren't much better. Sure there are big areas outdoors, but those are repetitive as well, they just don't feel like it when compared to the monotony you just sustained from every indoor environment.
I don't know how the control scheme compares with other console FPS, but I didn't think it was all that great. It was fine, but the only thing I thought even worth mentioning about it was that you could throw a grenade without having to switch to that weapon. I won't get into a comparison between control schemes for PC-based and console-based games, because that's been done, and is somewhat irrelevant to why Halo was popular on a console, but there wasn't anything special about the controls.
Multi-player is kind of hard to judge. There are lots of games that have better. Comparing time played, as of right now, Counter-Strike has over 5 billion minutes of play logged each month. Adding in CS:S and CS:CZ nets closer to 7.5 billion minutes each month. Since it's inception, Xbox live has logged a total of 2.3 billion hours, or to put it in similar units, 138 billion minutes. Let's be generous and pretend that Halo 2 accounted for every last minute (Halo 1 wasn't on Xbox Live so we can't include it). It would take Counter-Strike 18 months to equal that. IOW, one game does in 18 months what an entire service does in 72. Yet we don't have Counter-strike in the headlines every couple of days do we?
That's somewhat off-topic however. The thing Halo has going for it, I conjecture, might be that it has no bots. People are forced to play with others if they are going to do it at all. But then you'd be crazy to play it on the same box. You get 640x480 divided by 4. A whopping 320x240 in all of its interlaced glory. I did that once, every one talked about how cool it was. I was too busy trying to adjust my eyes to being able to see what I was even looking at. I must say that I enjoyed my time despite the screen size, but that's called a party. It wasn't because of Halo. I would have had a much more enjoyable experience playing UT, Trackmania, or any other game where we each have our own screen, or where the screen is shared more efficiently, such as Wii sports or something.
I hate to be a poor sport, but the reason we have Halo stories all the time is beca
All day long I was trying to find another analogy that would help you understand my point. Every one I thought of though was based on either copyrights as they currently are set up, which disqualifies it, or contracts. But in a contract, if you were to die then the company no longer has to hold up their end of the bargain seeing as you are not holding up your end (unless of course you put a clause in there that they were to pay your estate or some other silly thing). I was forced to rethink my position and will concede that you are correct. There is no promotion of the arts by offering copyrights to dead people. I agree with you that copyrights should end at the death of the copyright holder regardless of how much time is still left on the copyright. Of course, it goes without saying that there would be a time limit on the copyright regardless of death. 40 years sounds good, I could go for as low as 20, but I tend to think that's getting on the low end.
Speaking of the justification issue, I brought that up simply because of the poster I originally replied to, who was saying people use "copyright != theft" as justification. You are probably right though, that many people don't justify their infringement with that thinking. I'm sure they have much more rational reasons to justify infringement, such as what you suggested.
While it does sound odd that we have copyrights lasting after the death of the creator, I don't have a problem with it in theory. 70 years is ridiculous, I think we are agreed on that, but I can see that if someone created a work, and released it hoping to make lots of money, or at least enough to support his family, then died a year later, I can see allowing his estate to hold the copyright for a short term. I'd say 30-40 years is sufficient or 10-15 years after the death of the creator, which ever comes first.
Finally: A well-reasoned post, I'm glad to notice!:-)
You are right that it is not a zero-sum game. However, MS has sold 9.64 million Xbox 360s, compared to Nintendo selling 6.92 million Wiis. Looking at life span, the Wii is 6 months old, the Xbox360 is 18 months old. That means the Wii has sold an average of 1.15 million Wiis each month, compared to the Xbox360 selling an average of 0.54 million per month. That is to say, over the life of the console, the Wii is selling more than twice as many consoles as the Xbox360. Granted, the first few months are always higher in sales, so the Wii's numbers are skewed slightly higher relative to the Xbox360, but in order for the Wii to fall to an average of 0.54 million per month, they would have to sell only 2.72 million units in the next 12 months. That's equal to their current monthly average over the course of two months. IOW, the Xbox360's sales are weak, comparatively.
Of course not all crimes are equal. I was specifically referring to theft and copyright infringement there. In general, I find theft more reprehensible than copyright infringement, however, if you were to compare someone stealing a bank pen to the kind of infringement that runs rampant in Asia (and even the subways of New York), I would say then that the copyright infringement is more reprehensible. It all depends on context. But what I was getting at more than that was not that crimes are viewed with varying degrees of reprehensibleness (is that a word?), but that some justify their copyright infringement as being acceptable, simply because it isn't theft. It's still against the law, thus it is still a crime. If you're going to break a law, it shouldn't be because it's not as bad as something else. I speed on occasion, but I don't justify doing it because it's not as bad as running a red light. I do it because I want to get somewhere faster.
About your second point, in general I agree with you there. If the majority of the population doesn't follow a law, then that law should be looked over. However, take my speeding example. More people speed, and do so consistently, than have ever infringed copyright. Yet we shouldn't just get rid of speed limits, or even raise them considerably higher. However, I think your numbers may be wrong. Copyright infringement is not the downloading of files. It is not in the obtaining of a copyrighted work. It is in the unauthorized copying and distribution of the copyrighted work. All of these cases involving the RIAA have been people who have had songs that they were distributing through p2p software, not because they were downloading them, or they were from bittorrent which automatically uploads portions of the files you are downloading. Thus you are making unauthorized copies AND distributing them, so they are infringing on two counts. While there are a lot of people who are doing this, the vast majority of the population doesn't, and even then, I would say that the majority of people who are are not doing willful copyright infringement. They just don't understand that by leaving files in their shared folders they are infringing copyright. That doesn't make them any less guilty, but it does mean that the law isn't being willfully broken by 70%-80% of the population. Hence, there is more reason to educate and litigate, then to get rid of copyright in general.
That being said, I think copyright terms ought to be shortened. The minimum now is 70 years, assuming the creator dies the moment he obtains a copyright. That is ridiculous. Going with the intent of copyright, which is "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." I won't get into what can be defined as "useful arts," but it is obvious that copyrights were meant to promote for a limited time. A copyright term of 70 years goes beyond promoting and is far from what I would call a limited time. I also feel that fair use rights need to be codified, and enforced. In other words, get rid of the DRM, and the section of the DMCA that makes copy protection scheme circumvention illegal.
Not even that. Normal bounty hunters would look for accused exploiters on the lam. Or did we decide that if you are on bail then you are guilty. If so, why are we letting guilty go free for a short time?
I used to feel the same as you do. But the reality is that they are different crimes. Notice how they are both crimes, they are both illegal, but they are still different. I'm saying this without feeling any need to justify my illegal habits, because I have none. It's more of a pedantry. It's similar to drunk drivers. I don't drink, even socially, I hate drunk drivers, and I especially hate when they cause the loss of life, however, when they do, it isn't called murder, but manslaughter. You could argue that both of them take a life, but that's not the point, they are different. You could also argue that theft and copyright infringement have an effect on a copyright holders income, but they still aren't the same crime. Just like shoplifting isn't embezzlement, but they are still crimes that deal with taking what is not lawfully yours.
However, I can understand why you might be upset. Some people do use the difference as justification. There could be lots of reasons why someone views one as reprehensible and the other as acceptable, and thus feel justified in making that distinction, but that doesn't negate the distinction. There is still a difference. Accept that, recognize that some people are idiots, some people are pedants, and try to figure out which ones are which.
Oh thank you. My wife's laptop has been going crazy with svchost using up insane amounts of CPU and memory. I seriously thought it was virus for a long time until I ran it through several anti-virus programs, then I noticed it went craziest in conjunction with Yahoo's IM client. But even after removing that it still was weird. I didn't know what else to think. I hadn't thought that it would be a bug (I don't know why not, it's MS after all?). At least now I know who to blame.
Those ideas aren't mutually exclusive. You could make mass transit more beneficial and at the same time make roads better for people who have to drive, for example bus drivers. But still, you aren't going to obviate the need for driving. You still have to worry about delivery of all sorts of things which wouldn't work on mass transit.
However, I don't know how to make mass transit more appealing without going to excess. I took the bus for three weeks from home to work and back again. A 15 minute drive (20 minutes during heavier traffic) became a 75 minute commute. Sure I got some reading done, but not that much considering that 30 minutes of that time was walking. So maybe more stops, but then that makes the trip even longer because the bus has to stop more, which also creates more stop and go, which is what we're trying to avoid. I'm sure there is a way to make it more effective, I just don't know what it is. I'd ride my bike, but it was stolen a few months ago and I don't have enough to buy a new one yet. But even then, like I said earlier, with the way the roads are designed there are lots of intersections, which only increases the danger for cyclists and drivers alike. So no matter which way you look at it, city planners need to plan their roads much more efficiently for the safety of all.
You are right in more ways than you know. In the case of driving, you get better gas mileage in maintaining a speed than you do in stop and go traffic (hence hwy mileage is better than city). City planners need to get out and look at their streets and think about what they can do to increase the amount of time someone is driving*, and decrease the amount of time they are waiting at lights or braking unnecessarily.
Where I live there is a stretch of road that the stupid city planners decided should be the major road. In the course of 1.1 miles there are 10 stop lights. In the next 0.7 miles there are an additional 3 and there are another 4 in the mile before that. There is not enough distance between each one to time them so inevitably you're bound to hit 3 or 4 red lights on a good day. I've had days where I hit every one. It gets worse when traffic is bad, because sometimes you'll end up sitting at a light for two cycles or more. Most of the time, no one can even get to half the speed limit before having to brake again. The only other major roads around are the same way, and the other option is to get into residential areas. But if you do that the speed limit is reduced and you have to choose your course wisely or you'll get a stop sign every tenth to two tenths of a mile. In other words, the road planning is such that it keeps you in very slow stop and go traffic, even if there isn't traffic at all.
If they were to change the layout (which I realize that by now would cost a lot of money, and in some cases is not feasible) they could increase speeds while decreasing accidents and moving violations. In addition they would decrease the total driving time, increase fuel economy, decrease total emissions. The changes would also go a long way towards easing every one's drive which reduces the risk of road rage. People are less likely to run red lights or speed up on yellow because they occur less often.
I used to live in Glendale, AZ. At the time, while all the cities around us were putting in cameras to catch red light runners and speeders, Glendale tried to time their lights such that if you went the speed limit, you would get green lights. First of all, they were able to do this because there was enough distance between lights to allow for it. When they did this, and I realized that it worked more often than not, my driving habits changed drastically. No longer was I racing to try to beat the next light, but instead maintained the speed limit. Sure I hit some red lights, especially during heavy traffic, but for the most part, I was hitting more greens, and driving safer. I noticed that I was much calmer when driving and much less willing to run a yellow light. I don't know if they still do it, but I thought it was the greatest idea ever.
Another thing city planners can do is make residential roads not so straight. Yes, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but making roads curved means you can have fewer stop signs (less stop and go), and people tend to drive slower on turns than on straight roads, thus you've built in a speed limiter where little kids and old ladies are walking around.
I'm sure there are lots of other ideas that actually work towards making driving easier, faster, more fuel efficient and safe all at the same time. So you are right, make the default the best choice, and suddenly the world becomes a lot better place.
I'm not saying this is the case, but it's quite possible to respond to lower demand by raising prices. Say you had a situation where you are selling muffins. There are 1000 people willing to buy your muffins for $1 and 200 people willing to buy your muffins for $3. It makes more sense for you to sell it at $1. That way you earn $1000 rather than $600. But let's say you change your recipe and demand for your muffins drops. Now you have only 400 people willing to buy your muffins for $1 and 150 people willing to buy for $3. Now it makes more sense to raise your prices to $3. Now you are earning $450 rather than $400.
Granted, it would really make more sense to go back to your old recipe, but this example does explain why sometimes you can raise prices even though demand is declining.
They might be trying, but every time I go to a used movie store, pawn shop, e-bay, garage sale, etc., I am reminded that they are doing a very terrible job at it.
That's all fine and good and your analogy works great when talking about hammers. In fact, it works great when talking about "entertainment" and that is how it is. Your analogy falls dead when talking about "Spider-Man 3" or any other specific. There is no discussion here about how much one person is locking someone else out of making movies. AACS, or any DRM, does not keep anyone from selling movies, music, books, software or whatever (and TBH, it doesn't do a very good job at doing what it claims to do, but that is beside the point). Intellectual Property does not prevent anyone from making or selling certain types of entertainment. What it does to is prevent you from redistributing Spider-Man 3, or whatever else, without proper authorization first. This is the same as Peter not allowing Joe to distribute Peter's hammers. There is still the right of first sale, however. If Joe wants to go buy a million copies of Spider-Man 3 and sell them for anywhere from free to a million dollars, that's Joe's business, and intellectual property rights don't prevent that. He purchased legit copies from Sony and then used his rights to sell it again. Joe cannot however, buy one legit copy, then sell a million copies regardless of how much he sells it for (anywhere from negative to positive infinity).
Of course, you'll only agree with that if you agree with the idea of copyright. Like I said earlier, I do agree with copyright, though I disagree with it's length. But even if you don't agree with copyright, your talk of the free market is not correct in this regards. If Peter had a patent on "large bludgeoning device to drive nails", then maybe we would be talking about the same thing. But then maybe that would drive Joe to invent "an air-powered gun to drive nails" and then we would all be the better for it. But this debate is about copyright, not patent. Actually, my point to the previous poster was not even about copyrights, or intellectual property in any sense, so I don't know how we got into this conversation.
Re:Wally Shirra was an Old School Astronaught bada
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Wally Schirra Dead at 84
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We've definitely gone from the days when our pilots were national heroes, and trans-oceanic flights were major news items, to relatively anonymous folks risking their lives to put the next group of people in another country for our own entertainment. Honestly, does anyone here know the name of a current pilot who's flown across the Atlantic off the top of their head without doing a search? We need a mission around the globe or something similar sooner rather than later.
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I would love to see each bill only include relevant stuff in it. No more riders. First, there wouldn't be as much pork barrel crap anymore. Second, congress critters could no longer use the "My opponent voted against a bill to save the kittens" even though that bill had all sorts of other crap that the opponent opposed. And thirdly, it would slow congress down. They make entirely too many laws as it is. But at the same time it might speed them up since they won't have to argue about completely irrelevant parts of a bill to get it passed.
You would be wrong. There is nothing in copyright law, nor in fair use doctrine, that mentions anything about friends or profit or any such things.
So the technology was invented in the future, but we have it now. But since we have it, the people in the future won't bother to discover it because they already have it, which means it wasn't ever discovered, thus in the past we didn't have it to grant to the people in the future, which means that now they had the motivation to discover it, but since they sent it back to us, they had it in the past, and just took that knowledge for granted and didn't have to discover it, so the future never discovered it, so they didn't send it back to us, so we didn't have it, and thus they didn't have it to take for granted, so they discovered it, and then sent it back to us, and so on and so forth.
They had that. It was called the Redeemer. You only got one shot. And you had better not be around when it goes off. And the enemy could shoot it down, or they could shoot you.
But think of the other effects a bill like this would have. No more FPSs and GTA-clones. You make the fear-mongering think-of-the-children-types happy AND the todays-games-have-no-creativity group happy. Its a win-win situation.
a) Then remove it. Guess what? iTunes has a built in way of changing your musics information.
b) Then remove it. Guess what? iTunes has a built in way of changing your musics information.
c) What? This isn't even an issue. First, I'll pretend that you didn't pay extra for the increased bit rate. Second, how does this stop you from doing what Fair Use dictates you can do? In fact, how does this even begin to stop you from doing anything illegal at all? If you don't want it there, then remove it. Guess what? iTunes has a built in way of changing your musics information.
Ok, something got lost in translation somewhere. Just to make sure we are on the same page, a reversible process in thermodynamics is 100% efficient. No energy is lost to heat. There are no reversible processes. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Which means that ALL processes are irreversible. Therefore if I say "Just say no to $TOTALLY_UBIQUITOUS_THING" and I know that $TOTALLY_UBIQUITOUS_THING's opposite does not exist, then it is called a joke. Indeed if we could say no to irreversible processes, this entire Universe would be very different than it is today in probably every aspect.
The drug analogy was only because I thought you were saying you can't say no to something until it occurs. I thought you were saying we can't say "I will not start this process" until after you had already started the process and thus reverse your action.
Furthermore, the intent of my sig is not to get into a discussion of any variety about global warming. The intent is for people to say "Haha, there's no such thing as a reversible process." Just to be clear, here are my views: The Earth's climate can change and has done so many times. Humans put a lot of crap into the environment and we should reduce that for lots of reasons. Whether those two things are connected in either direction is rather a moot point in my opinion.
There are other definitions of reversible.
Also, you can say no to something before you are doing it. Do you have to be doing drugs to say no to it?
And then welcome to the world of high priced everything. Or did you somehow think that goods are delivered by birds? Things get shipped everywhere, including food and mail. You do such silly things as that and you will see food prices rise drastically. Shipping costs would increase substantially, thus driving up prices on everything at the store AND on the internet. But let's not stop there, because nearly everything is shipped at some point, be it at the raw materials stage or final delivery.
There are lots of ways to reduce emissions. We could make engines more efficient, make driving more efficient, make roads more efficient, influence people to drive less, walk more, use mass transit, etc. Some of those ways are better than others, and some ways of making those ways happen are better than others. I'm all for people holding up the mass transit banner, but how about making mass transit more pleasant before making the alternatives less pleasant. The experiences I had on the bus was such that if I couldn't drive I would still not take it. I would buy a new bike and ride that. You might say your purpose has been fulfilled, that I am driving less, but I would say that in so doing you have also put undue burden on the economy. On the other hand, if you made mass transit more appealing to me than driving (as opposed to making driving less appealing than mass transit, there is a difference), then I would use it and you perhaps have done so without killing the economy.
Like I said, I don't entirely know how to make mass transit more appealing, cost effective, and efficient, but I'm sure someone was thought about it and has come up with ideas that would make it more appealing than driving. The way to do it is to fix mass transit, not harm driving. The suggestions I gave previously on how to fix roads made driving more appealing, but it also made it more efficient, safer, pleasant, and healthier for the environment. I'm sure there is something that could be done for mass transit that would do the same.
First, you explain why they shouldn't. Seriously, the constitution says, "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." Copyrights (and patents) are a man-made thing. Previous to copyrights, if you came up with an idea and didn't want anyone else to use it, then you wouldn't ever publish it*. However, the founding fathers knew that it would be beneficial to get people to publish their works, so as an incentive they allowed for copyrights. In essence, if you publish your material to the world, we'll pretend that you control it for a short time. That gives you the incentive of sharing your ideas, and the world is a better place for it.
Now to answer your question about why they should expire...If you are given exclusive right to your writings forever, that sure is an incentive to publish your works. However, we don't want you to just publish your ideas. We want to use them, that's what promotes progress. So we can't very well let you have exclusive rights to them forever (what use are they to you after your dead anyway?). So we set an expiration. This also gives you an incentive to create a new work. So we give you exclusive rights to your works for a long enough time for you to profit AND to publish your next work(s).
What are you even talking about? I played Halo before I had even heard of any hype for it. I did it solo, and co-op. The ONLY thing I liked about it better than any other game I had played was the co-op. It wasn't that spectacular, it still isn't that spectacular. There is ONLY one thing that make it so big, and that is the hype. I know people who will prattle on about it forever like it was God's gift to mankind. They can never tell me what's good about it. Every time they try I tell them about lots of other games that have what they are talking about. You want story, go to Half-Life, you want multi-player, see Counter-Strike. You might say that Halo combined those two, but I would say that when you are playing Halo for story, you are not playing multi-player and vice versa, so that point is irrelevant.
The graphics on Halo suck. At the time Halo 1 was getting really popular I got into a discussion about the graphics with a roommate. He was comparing Jedi Outcast at 1600x1200 with Halo at 640x480 and saying that Halo was better. This is the kind of mentality that most Halo fans have. To them, Halo is "Just Better(TM)." I had to just ignore him, as I've had to do with everyone else who says anything about Halo's graphics being good at all. Jedi Outcast was not even trying to be a graphics power house, it was running off an old engine and it still looked better with a Radeon 7200.
Level Design? My goodness, man, what are you smoking. Have you even played the library level? After about two minutes you don't even know which direction you're going, which direction you came from, and you can't even count how many times you've seen the exact same stuff over and over again and again. The maps on the ships aren't much better. Sure there are big areas outdoors, but those are repetitive as well, they just don't feel like it when compared to the monotony you just sustained from every indoor environment.
I don't know how the control scheme compares with other console FPS, but I didn't think it was all that great. It was fine, but the only thing I thought even worth mentioning about it was that you could throw a grenade without having to switch to that weapon. I won't get into a comparison between control schemes for PC-based and console-based games, because that's been done, and is somewhat irrelevant to why Halo was popular on a console, but there wasn't anything special about the controls.
Multi-player is kind of hard to judge. There are lots of games that have better. Comparing time played, as of right now, Counter-Strike has over 5 billion minutes of play logged each month. Adding in CS:S and CS:CZ nets closer to 7.5 billion minutes each month. Since it's inception, Xbox live has logged a total of 2.3 billion hours, or to put it in similar units, 138 billion minutes. Let's be generous and pretend that Halo 2 accounted for every last minute (Halo 1 wasn't on Xbox Live so we can't include it). It would take Counter-Strike 18 months to equal that. IOW, one game does in 18 months what an entire service does in 72. Yet we don't have Counter-strike in the headlines every couple of days do we?
That's somewhat off-topic however. The thing Halo has going for it, I conjecture, might be that it has no bots. People are forced to play with others if they are going to do it at all. But then you'd be crazy to play it on the same box. You get 640x480 divided by 4. A whopping 320x240 in all of its interlaced glory. I did that once, every one talked about how cool it was. I was too busy trying to adjust my eyes to being able to see what I was even looking at. I must say that I enjoyed my time despite the screen size, but that's called a party. It wasn't because of Halo. I would have had a much more enjoyable experience playing UT, Trackmania, or any other game where we each have our own screen, or where the screen is shared more efficiently, such as Wii sports or something. I hate to be a poor sport, but the reason we have Halo stories all the time is beca
All day long I was trying to find another analogy that would help you understand my point. Every one I thought of though was based on either copyrights as they currently are set up, which disqualifies it, or contracts. But in a contract, if you were to die then the company no longer has to hold up their end of the bargain seeing as you are not holding up your end (unless of course you put a clause in there that they were to pay your estate or some other silly thing). I was forced to rethink my position and will concede that you are correct. There is no promotion of the arts by offering copyrights to dead people. I agree with you that copyrights should end at the death of the copyright holder regardless of how much time is still left on the copyright. Of course, it goes without saying that there would be a time limit on the copyright regardless of death. 40 years sounds good, I could go for as low as 20, but I tend to think that's getting on the low end.
Speaking of the justification issue, I brought that up simply because of the poster I originally replied to, who was saying people use "copyright != theft" as justification. You are probably right though, that many people don't justify their infringement with that thinking. I'm sure they have much more rational reasons to justify infringement, such as what you suggested.
:-)
While it does sound odd that we have copyrights lasting after the death of the creator, I don't have a problem with it in theory. 70 years is ridiculous, I think we are agreed on that, but I can see that if someone created a work, and released it hoping to make lots of money, or at least enough to support his family, then died a year later, I can see allowing his estate to hold the copyright for a short term. I'd say 30-40 years is sufficient or 10-15 years after the death of the creator, which ever comes first.
Finally:
A well-reasoned post, I'm glad to notice!
Thanks for the compliment. I'm glad to oblige.
You are right that it is not a zero-sum game. However, MS has sold 9.64 million Xbox 360s, compared to Nintendo selling 6.92 million Wiis. Looking at life span, the Wii is 6 months old, the Xbox360 is 18 months old. That means the Wii has sold an average of 1.15 million Wiis each month, compared to the Xbox360 selling an average of 0.54 million per month. That is to say, over the life of the console, the Wii is selling more than twice as many consoles as the Xbox360. Granted, the first few months are always higher in sales, so the Wii's numbers are skewed slightly higher relative to the Xbox360, but in order for the Wii to fall to an average of 0.54 million per month, they would have to sell only 2.72 million units in the next 12 months. That's equal to their current monthly average over the course of two months. IOW, the Xbox360's sales are weak, comparatively.
Of course not all crimes are equal. I was specifically referring to theft and copyright infringement there. In general, I find theft more reprehensible than copyright infringement, however, if you were to compare someone stealing a bank pen to the kind of infringement that runs rampant in Asia (and even the subways of New York), I would say then that the copyright infringement is more reprehensible. It all depends on context. But what I was getting at more than that was not that crimes are viewed with varying degrees of reprehensibleness (is that a word?), but that some justify their copyright infringement as being acceptable, simply because it isn't theft. It's still against the law, thus it is still a crime. If you're going to break a law, it shouldn't be because it's not as bad as something else. I speed on occasion, but I don't justify doing it because it's not as bad as running a red light. I do it because I want to get somewhere faster.
About your second point, in general I agree with you there. If the majority of the population doesn't follow a law, then that law should be looked over. However, take my speeding example. More people speed, and do so consistently, than have ever infringed copyright. Yet we shouldn't just get rid of speed limits, or even raise them considerably higher. However, I think your numbers may be wrong. Copyright infringement is not the downloading of files. It is not in the obtaining of a copyrighted work. It is in the unauthorized copying and distribution of the copyrighted work. All of these cases involving the RIAA have been people who have had songs that they were distributing through p2p software, not because they were downloading them, or they were from bittorrent which automatically uploads portions of the files you are downloading. Thus you are making unauthorized copies AND distributing them, so they are infringing on two counts. While there are a lot of people who are doing this, the vast majority of the population doesn't, and even then, I would say that the majority of people who are are not doing willful copyright infringement. They just don't understand that by leaving files in their shared folders they are infringing copyright. That doesn't make them any less guilty, but it does mean that the law isn't being willfully broken by 70%-80% of the population. Hence, there is more reason to educate and litigate, then to get rid of copyright in general.
That being said, I think copyright terms ought to be shortened. The minimum now is 70 years, assuming the creator dies the moment he obtains a copyright. That is ridiculous. Going with the intent of copyright, which is "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." I won't get into what can be defined as "useful arts," but it is obvious that copyrights were meant to promote for a limited time. A copyright term of 70 years goes beyond promoting and is far from what I would call a limited time. I also feel that fair use rights need to be codified, and enforced. In other words, get rid of the DRM, and the section of the DMCA that makes copy protection scheme circumvention illegal.
Not even that. Normal bounty hunters would look for accused exploiters on the lam. Or did we decide that if you are on bail then you are guilty. If so, why are we letting guilty go free for a short time?
I used to feel the same as you do. But the reality is that they are different crimes. Notice how they are both crimes, they are both illegal, but they are still different. I'm saying this without feeling any need to justify my illegal habits, because I have none. It's more of a pedantry. It's similar to drunk drivers. I don't drink, even socially, I hate drunk drivers, and I especially hate when they cause the loss of life, however, when they do, it isn't called murder, but manslaughter. You could argue that both of them take a life, but that's not the point, they are different. You could also argue that theft and copyright infringement have an effect on a copyright holders income, but they still aren't the same crime. Just like shoplifting isn't embezzlement, but they are still crimes that deal with taking what is not lawfully yours.
However, I can understand why you might be upset. Some people do use the difference as justification. There could be lots of reasons why someone views one as reprehensible and the other as acceptable, and thus feel justified in making that distinction, but that doesn't negate the distinction. There is still a difference. Accept that, recognize that some people are idiots, some people are pedants, and try to figure out which ones are which.
Oh thank you. My wife's laptop has been going crazy with svchost using up insane amounts of CPU and memory. I seriously thought it was virus for a long time until I ran it through several anti-virus programs, then I noticed it went craziest in conjunction with Yahoo's IM client. But even after removing that it still was weird. I didn't know what else to think. I hadn't thought that it would be a bug (I don't know why not, it's MS after all?). At least now I know who to blame.
Those ideas aren't mutually exclusive. You could make mass transit more beneficial and at the same time make roads better for people who have to drive, for example bus drivers. But still, you aren't going to obviate the need for driving. You still have to worry about delivery of all sorts of things which wouldn't work on mass transit.
However, I don't know how to make mass transit more appealing without going to excess. I took the bus for three weeks from home to work and back again. A 15 minute drive (20 minutes during heavier traffic) became a 75 minute commute. Sure I got some reading done, but not that much considering that 30 minutes of that time was walking. So maybe more stops, but then that makes the trip even longer because the bus has to stop more, which also creates more stop and go, which is what we're trying to avoid. I'm sure there is a way to make it more effective, I just don't know what it is. I'd ride my bike, but it was stolen a few months ago and I don't have enough to buy a new one yet. But even then, like I said earlier, with the way the roads are designed there are lots of intersections, which only increases the danger for cyclists and drivers alike. So no matter which way you look at it, city planners need to plan their roads much more efficiently for the safety of all.
You are right in more ways than you know. In the case of driving, you get better gas mileage in maintaining a speed than you do in stop and go traffic (hence hwy mileage is better than city). City planners need to get out and look at their streets and think about what they can do to increase the amount of time someone is driving*, and decrease the amount of time they are waiting at lights or braking unnecessarily.
Where I live there is a stretch of road that the stupid city planners decided should be the major road. In the course of 1.1 miles there are 10 stop lights. In the next 0.7 miles there are an additional 3 and there are another 4 in the mile before that. There is not enough distance between each one to time them so inevitably you're bound to hit 3 or 4 red lights on a good day. I've had days where I hit every one. It gets worse when traffic is bad, because sometimes you'll end up sitting at a light for two cycles or more. Most of the time, no one can even get to half the speed limit before having to brake again. The only other major roads around are the same way, and the other option is to get into residential areas. But if you do that the speed limit is reduced and you have to choose your course wisely or you'll get a stop sign every tenth to two tenths of a mile. In other words, the road planning is such that it keeps you in very slow stop and go traffic, even if there isn't traffic at all.
If they were to change the layout (which I realize that by now would cost a lot of money, and in some cases is not feasible) they could increase speeds while decreasing accidents and moving violations. In addition they would decrease the total driving time, increase fuel economy, decrease total emissions. The changes would also go a long way towards easing every one's drive which reduces the risk of road rage. People are less likely to run red lights or speed up on yellow because they occur less often.
I used to live in Glendale, AZ. At the time, while all the cities around us were putting in cameras to catch red light runners and speeders, Glendale tried to time their lights such that if you went the speed limit, you would get green lights. First of all, they were able to do this because there was enough distance between lights to allow for it. When they did this, and I realized that it worked more often than not, my driving habits changed drastically. No longer was I racing to try to beat the next light, but instead maintained the speed limit. Sure I hit some red lights, especially during heavy traffic, but for the most part, I was hitting more greens, and driving safer. I noticed that I was much calmer when driving and much less willing to run a yellow light. I don't know if they still do it, but I thought it was the greatest idea ever.
Another thing city planners can do is make residential roads not so straight. Yes, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but making roads curved means you can have fewer stop signs (less stop and go), and people tend to drive slower on turns than on straight roads, thus you've built in a speed limiter where little kids and old ladies are walking around.
I'm sure there are lots of other ideas that actually work towards making driving easier, faster, more fuel efficient and safe all at the same time. So you are right, make the default the best choice, and suddenly the world becomes a lot better place.
I'm not saying this is the case, but it's quite possible to respond to lower demand by raising prices. Say you had a situation where you are selling muffins. There are 1000 people willing to buy your muffins for $1 and 200 people willing to buy your muffins for $3. It makes more sense for you to sell it at $1. That way you earn $1000 rather than $600. But let's say you change your recipe and demand for your muffins drops. Now you have only 400 people willing to buy your muffins for $1 and 150 people willing to buy for $3. Now it makes more sense to raise your prices to $3. Now you are earning $450 rather than $400.
Granted, it would really make more sense to go back to your old recipe, but this example does explain why sometimes you can raise prices even though demand is declining.
They might be trying, but every time I go to a used movie store, pawn shop, e-bay, garage sale, etc., I am reminded that they are doing a very terrible job at it.
That's all fine and good and your analogy works great when talking about hammers. In fact, it works great when talking about "entertainment" and that is how it is. Your analogy falls dead when talking about "Spider-Man 3" or any other specific. There is no discussion here about how much one person is locking someone else out of making movies. AACS, or any DRM, does not keep anyone from selling movies, music, books, software or whatever (and TBH, it doesn't do a very good job at doing what it claims to do, but that is beside the point). Intellectual Property does not prevent anyone from making or selling certain types of entertainment. What it does to is prevent you from redistributing Spider-Man 3, or whatever else, without proper authorization first. This is the same as Peter not allowing Joe to distribute Peter's hammers. There is still the right of first sale, however. If Joe wants to go buy a million copies of Spider-Man 3 and sell them for anywhere from free to a million dollars, that's Joe's business, and intellectual property rights don't prevent that. He purchased legit copies from Sony and then used his rights to sell it again. Joe cannot however, buy one legit copy, then sell a million copies regardless of how much he sells it for (anywhere from negative to positive infinity).
Of course, you'll only agree with that if you agree with the idea of copyright. Like I said earlier, I do agree with copyright, though I disagree with it's length. But even if you don't agree with copyright, your talk of the free market is not correct in this regards. If Peter had a patent on "large bludgeoning device to drive nails", then maybe we would be talking about the same thing. But then maybe that would drive Joe to invent "an air-powered gun to drive nails" and then we would all be the better for it. But this debate is about copyright, not patent. Actually, my point to the previous poster was not even about copyrights, or intellectual property in any sense, so I don't know how we got into this conversation.
We've definitely gone from the days when our pilots were national heroes, and trans-oceanic flights were major news items, to relatively anonymous folks risking their lives to put the next group of people in another country for our own entertainment. Honestly, does anyone here know the name of a current pilot who's flown across the Atlantic off the top of their head without doing a search? We need a mission around the globe or something similar sooner rather than later.