You're an argumentative shill who values precedent and subordinate laws above what's written in the only document which gives the government any legitimate authority to operate in the legal realm.
So, all evidence to the contrary, you're saying that NDAs are unenforceable.
Only the ones which include unconstitutional clauses about intellectual property. An NDA which reserves all rights to the original author and inventor is Constitutionally enforceable and the government is legitimate to enforce it.
Are you consciously ignorant and argumentative, or did they teach you how to do this in lawyer training?
Cpt. Kangarooski... you are a legal shill. Try being a decent human being for an hour. I imagine you'll experience something similar to what most people experience when they have a deeply religious moving experience.
Is it your contention that the founding fathers were not slave owners?
It's my contention that a slave of Thomas Jefferson or George Washington had more pride, human dignity, and a more pleasant lifestyle than any of our modern day McDonald's indentured servants.
And yet, I can still recover damages from you for having breached the contract.
That's an abomination and the courts have no Constitutional authority to support it. You may recover damages from me but the government has no legitimate part in helping you do it.
After your conviction, you've had your trial, and you're done. In fact, additional trials are precluded by double jeopardy.
It's not my fault that you overstepped your Constitutional authority by violating my rights. I guess we'll have to say that the conviction is summarily overturned.
but you delude yourself
As a lawyer you're far more familiar with self-delusion than I could ever dream to be.
If I can contract away my right to speak about some specific thing
You can but, should at any time you choose to rescind that contract, the Constitution protects you because you still have those rights.
I can sell you my right to free speech. You may pay me. I may accept that money. You're a dumbass. At any time I may choose to reinvoke that right.
A right is like hair color. At any time I can change the color of my hair but, at the end of the day, my hair is still the same color.
And? If you consent to the search, no warrant is needed.
No warrant is needed but you now recognize that at any moment I can tell you to leave. Anything you gather after I tell you to leave is inadmissable because I am now recognizing my right to require you to have a warrant.
Go get arrested for something, admit to the police that you did it, tell them you don't want a lawyer, and plead guilty, which avoids a trial
Constitutionally, one moment after I've been convicted, I can require a full trial in accordance with my rights. They're free to say,"But you admitted to..." and I can say,"That was outside my authoritative rights. Now, within my rights, I choose to say nothing." At that point it's up to a jury of my peers to decide if my admission was valid or not. But, Constitutionally, I should be allowed to demand a new trial within my rights and they should be required, Constitutionally, to proove their case with my past testimoney weighed against my current silence taking into account any duress that may have been placed on me in the circumstances of my past testimony.
For 295 years?
It is sad that so much "past precedent" is accepted as truth without question, isn't it? What if past precedent dictates that the earth is flat? Does that make it so?
A proposition which you haven't shown any support for, and which centuries of practice seem to rebut.
Again we breach the area of bribery and greed. The Constitution guarantees rights to authors and inventors, not to beneficiaries or signatories. Cope.
They do if you gave them that right
The Constitution recognizes them but they have no right to that idea, as the Constitution only guarantees that exclusive right to me as the author or inventor.
Sorry. Let that be a lesson to you. Consider more carefully next time before attempting to swindle, strongarm, or extort an author or inventor.
How would big epics like the LOTR movies get made without money?
Not that I was Tolkien's personal friend but I don't recall anyone funding him specifically to write those books. As for the production... performers will always perform good works. Shakespeare, Beethoven, Bach... any of them. They were all performed long before the long reaching arm of intellectual property laws.
LotR is just that good. Someone, at some point, was going to fund its performance sooner or later. Maybe Jackson wouldn't have been in on it. Maybe the actors would've been different. It would have always been just as good.
Wow. I'm going to start by saying "Wow". You're brilliant at expanding and filling up space with legal bull-honky.
So you're saying that I cannot lawfully sign an NDA?
You can. But, if you can show that your ideas are your ideas, the government has no power to support a company litigating against you over your own ideas.
That if the police come to my door, have no warrant, and ask to conduct a search, that I cannot choose to let them in?
This has what to do with intellectual property law? This is covered by search and seizure without a warrant. If they have a proper warrant, then you have no right to be protected against the search and seizure. That's in the Constitution.
That I cannot choose to testify against myself in court? That I cannot waive trial, or counsel, or jury?
Constitutionally you can't waive those rights. I know. You're addicted to practice and precedent set by the current state of affairs.
Given that the world obviously isn't like that, don't you think that maybe you're wrong?
People like you have managed to funnel enough money to politicians and Supreme Court Justices to encourage them to look the other way when such abuses happen.
Some things aren't waivable, e.g. the 13th Amendment, but this is attributable to the way that they're written, not some universal principle.
On the contrary, they're waivable due to ignorance and the power that greed has over honest principle. You're a self-admitted lawyer. I'm sure you're familiar, first hand, with the practice of compromising the truth, morality, civility, and humane ideals in the interest of earning a larger paycheck.
What you're upset about is a perception that artists can't go back on their word.
Their word was given under terms of a contract which was unconstitutional. The contract is null and void in the eyes of the government. If a company is being abusive then, yes, a decent human being would support another's right to change their mind.
You've never changed your mind, eh? Figures.
So... ten years after you sell your house, do you think that you ought to be able to march in and take it back?
The house was legally bought and sold. If I sell my idea to a company, they legally bought it and I legally sold it but they do not have the right to keep me from using that idea to benefit someone else. That's the difference between tangible and intangible property. I sold them a particular instance of my idea but, under the Constitution, I still retain rights to continue to use that idea at my own whim. Constitutionally a company can never sue me for using my own intangible property.
Contract law is all about making promises binding
Quit being a troll. You know as well as I do that's only 50% of contract law. The other 50% is about breaking those contracts.
Sorry if you don't like it, but maybe you should be more careful in the future.
If only people of your ilk would be so inclined to tell that to the companies who sell CDs and DVDs to consumers. "Sorry if you don't like that I'm ripping this and putting it on the network but maybe you should be more careful in the future about who you sell to."
Just because artists are willing to give away their rights doesn't mean that the rights didn't vest in them initially
We've gone round on this before and I'd like to say flatly that I do not believe the same thing you do. The Constitution does not recognize your right to sign away your right to free speech, or freedom of religion, or any other rights which citizens entail. The laws are not acting to protect the authors and inventors from the predatory position of the companies, who could take or leave the authors/inventors dead in a ditch while the author/inventor needs a paycheck to eat or sleep.
I suppose you support indentured servitude, perhaps with a clause for sexual services, if it were written properly into a contract?
I'll not debate this with you again. You're addicted to the law in the absence of regard for what's written in the only document which grants the government any legitimate power in this arena.
The Constitution doesn't say a word about whether rights must remain with artists
It sure does. It says exclusive rights to authors and inventors. On the other hand, it doesn't say a word about "Unless King George threatens to evict them and have them fired if they don't comply."
Taking away their ability to bargain doesn't help much.
Current laws regarding intellectual property take away the ability of the author or inventor to bargain by locking them into a one-time decision when it should allow the author or inventor the freedom to say,"Sorry. Your company sucks. I'm taking my ideas and going elsewhere."
"here, take THIS medication once and never have to buy it from us again, or take THIS medication for the rest of your life, paying us all the while..."
In some ways you're right and I agree with your sentiment.
However, in the case of medicine, it's not quite that simple. You can't just cure herpes or cancer. Here's why: Any disease is the presence of malfunctioning cells inside of an organism which, hopefully, is composed mostly of properly functioning cells. Nature has given us an immune system which, over many millions of years, has developed into a specialized system of cells which roam throughout the healthy system and attempt to identify cells which are malfunctioning or entities (such as viruses) which are alien to the body. If nature hasn't been able to figure out how to recognize exogenous from endogenous entities then how can a simple chemical compound change that?
One must address the problem. The problem is one of two possibilities: the immune system is malfunctioning or the exogenous entity has managed to mask itself. It's always a case by case basis. You may have persistent herpes because your T-cells lack the mechanism to properly recognize the herpes virus and other infected cells. Why are those T-cells incompetent? Well, there are hundreds of possible cellular inadequacies: malformed proteins, internal systems out of sync, inaccurate response to cytokine levels surrounding the functioning cells, to name a few. Your partner, on the other hand, may have herpes because their particular strain happens to express surface markers which are so close to endogenous cell surfaces that it's impossible to distinguish.
How is a pharmaceutical company supposed to know, seven years in advance (the timeline for even a quick development) which target to pursue? Even if they concentrated just on you, and fixing your immune system, your T-cell inadequacy may be a completely different situation from the someone else's immune system where, hypothetically, the T-cells are properly tagging infected cells but the NK cells are unable to overcome the proliferation rate of infected cells.
I could go on but I hope that you begin to see that pharmaceutical companies are being held to unrealistic standards and have a nearly impossible task attempting to develop a medicine for an infected population majority. Even if they manage to successfully diagnose a majority they'll get lambasted by the ignorant for not concentrating on a population minority.
They do what everyone else does. They throw up their hands in disgust and concentrate on the only thing which matters: make the most money in the least amount of time.
The only real travesty is that, given the government's support of obviously unconstitutional intellectual property law and employee agreements, the individual scientists actually working in the lab make a pittance to live on while the CEOs, executives, and primary stock investors (who know nothing of science or medicine), spew out ignorant media reports on the state of science and walk off with the lion's share (and then some) of any profits which are made.
The Founding Fathers were slaveowners, slave rapers, beaters of white servants
Right... because it's always a good idea to have a house and land full of people who are so degraded that they're plotting to knife you in the back and don't care if they get drawn and quartered afterwards.
Haven't we picked you up as an antipatriotic malcontent terrorist yet?
And, in the absence of copyright law, you're still free to sell that story. Let's say there's no copyright law and you print off a single copy, spend weeks handmaking a beautiful cover for it, and then sell it to some 10-year old who takes it to the local library and photocopies it and gives it away to all their friends (allowing only for the cost of photocopying it). You'd be a dumbass and I don't want my taxpayer money to support you. Before you release any easily copied product you need to consider, just like any other business, the nature of your customers, your production, and your supply lines.
Now, say you write a book a get it properly lined up with a proper publisher and, in the absence of copyright law, your book hits the store shelves and a single 10-year old buys it. If the book were properly advertised before the release then there will be at least a dozen 10-year olds in to buy the book before the first one can read it and hype it up to their friends enough where they ask for photocopies. By the time that single 10-year old saves enough lunch money for the photocopier and spends the time pressing the "GO" button you'll have a reasonable customer base such that the other ten year olds, rather than waiting for their cheap photocopied edition, will have prodded their parents into shelling out the $5 for a real paperback.
The world will continue to work just fine in the absence of copyright law.
Besides, don't credit card purchases need a signature?
In the cases where a signature can't be obtained in a credit card purchase the concession has been allowed to use those extra numbers printed on the back of the card. It's not foolproof but it shows that the matter has been considered. There is no such consideration in the situation of the sale of a CDs and DVDs.
As for the warning printed on the packaging: that warning, should a case be tried on the merits of it alone, is probably unenforceable. The warning makes little or no mention of what rights the consumer is purchasing and so, if the warning itself is the binding terms, one could say that the consumer has no rights at all to fair use. That sort of situation would probably create more legal quandries than even the *AA would ever want to wade through.
In order for a company to turn an open sourced project into a closed one, they'd have to find and destroy every copy of the project's source code. Otherwise, they would face competition from the OSS community -- and would likely lose.
Indeed.
After my initial response I had some time to think about it on the drive home from work. I thought,"Who cares if some company steals my work? Let them steal it. Let them develop and refine it. In the absence of this pesky trouble about copyright and intellectual property, I'll just steal it back."
I guess that's what I meant when I said that the absence of copyright law and intellectual property would change the entire face of the industry. Open source developers and companies would engage in what would become creative, cooperative, and mutually beneficial competition. Under the current system, it's like the worst product doing everything it can to strangle off any creative competitor by denying them corporate employment because the product doesn't fall under the iron fist of proprietary copyrights.
I vote for the world without the copyright and intellectual property bull-honky.
If there would exist no property rights to ideas then how can one sell them? You first need to prove property rights of said item to sell it.
People will buy anything and there is no jurisdiction for the federal government to tell you that you can't provide the service of your intellect for a price. Employment.
There is no such thing as intellectual property, but I'll be happy to pay you money if you know how to do what I need to get done.
you've done your time, you are not supposed to be punished for the rest of your life
That's a beautiful concept. The USA is home to a much more vindictive society. Yes. Crimes are permanent--felonies, misdemeanors, even tickets. A bad mark on your credit record, for example, traditionally is expunged after seven years. Try explaining that to the debt collector who just bought the contract to collect the cash last month.
Here in the USA records are kept pretty much for life. It's one great downward spiral from the moment you're born. There is no redemption until you die and no amount of penance or time will soothe the harassment of the bankers and businessmen. Yet, at the same time, those same bankers and businessmen are constantly looking for ways to outsource the jobs and keep salaries at a bare minimum.
It's got to be from our puritanical Pilgrim roots. With the left hand they browbeat you for not doing the dishes and with the right hand they force you away from the sink.
With that price they are given the rights to share the video
In all reality it is impossible to dictate what someone does with a product which they've legally purchased and tangibly own. I for one do not wish to play cat and mouse games for the next 70 years that I'm on this planet. Everyone has the right to share whatever they've bought because it's natural. The alternative--litigation after the point of sale--is destructive, alienates customers, and creates criminals and strife where there was nothing but peaceful commiseration and sharing.
If the media companies feel they're getting a raw deal by selling a product which is easily shared for $15 then they're free to raise the price at the point of sale or pursue the cat and mouse game of proactive media protection. Litigation over a product after the point of sale is both intolerable and preposterous. If large companies want to have the same rights as citizens then they need to learn that there is no right to extort citizens in the name of profit. Businesses either thrive or they don't. It's not up to the government to provide protection for a business model which technology has made obsolete.
As an addendum I legally own better than 99.9% of my music and video collection. I do not have illicit (under current law) copies of any movies or more than about 30 tunes. I do not participate in p2p apps (I don't trust that p2p programmers are properly skilled in the concepts of network security) nor do I publicly offer any of my collection to the open network. I'm just sick and tired of the whining coming from people who feel they can regulate the rain and the air. "The road to hell..." and all that.
I'm talking about rights, you know, the vague concept you think doesn't exist
There is a natural right to share anything which you own. If you sell something you own to someone else then they own it and they have a right to share it. If you don't like it then raise the price before the sale or safeguard the medium. Litigation after the point of sale is unacceptable.
If you go out, you accept all risk of being shot. So what?
Now we're on the same page. Live at your own risk and accept responsibility for your actions. If you sell something to someone then you accept responsibility for having sold it. If you sell something which is easily copied then you know full well they may copy it. You accept that risk at point of sale. You do not have the right to legally harass your customers if you miscalculated the cost of business. Some businesses thrive and some fail. That is the way of the world.
It's your own fault. It's not something that the government is responsible for.
It's also quite easy to kill someone. Does that in your opinion make it right?
Ridiculous. The loss of life is in no way comparable to replication of IP. You do see the difference between death and sharing don't you?
If I want to have sex with your girlfriend or wife and I need to do you away, does owning a gun somehow make it ok?
Again, ridiculous. Raping my girlfriend at gunpoint while holding me back at gunpoint is in no way comparable to the replication of IP. You do see the difference between violence and sharing don't you?
So why didn't you sue them?
Because IP gives no rights to authors or inventors. Rights only belong to the people who bought the IP. You sold your product. They bought it. They own the IP and they are free to share it. Similarly you still own your IP and are free to share it or sell it to anyone else. If you don't like it then deal in a product which isn't so easily copied.
That may be true but coming up with a hypothetical and improbable sad story situation to justify your concept of ownership isn't proving it.
In other words, you are speaking out of your ass about things you have no clue about
Allow me to sum up the reality of IP: Once you sell something quit trying to pretend you still own it. The IP age is over. The IP age should never have been started. If you want your IP for yourself then keep it to yourself. If you want to share it with others then you accept all risk of redistribution. It's no secret that P2P exists and it's no secret that CDs are easily copied. If you want your customers to pay-per-play then play live in performance halls where you search them for recording devices before they enter.
You're no different from anyone else in life. Think carefully before you decide to sell anything. Consider all aspects of the sale and everything that may happen afterwards.
The age of IP is over. We will no longer subsidize the careless mentality of the media industry.
As for patents and inventions: I've not yet seen a patent ever protect a brilliant inventor from a manager who says "You're fired if you won't accept that the company owns your IP."
What I meant is no one can force me to work for free
This is true. But just like anyone else who makes an easily copied product, be it lemonade, bread, or toothpicks: You accept all risk if someone else makes and distributes your product better than you do. It is you who is responsible for safeguarding your supply lines, your distribution centers, and your customer base up to the point of sale. Legal harassment after the point of sale is not acceptable.
I should be the only person allowed to decide who gets to copy the music I've made
What makes you so special? You're pouting and ranting at the same time. You made a product and you sold it. The fact that your product is easily replicated puts you in the same boat as a good portion of the rest of the population. Just like everyone else: if you don't like the selling price then don't sell the product. When I sell my patents to companies I realize full well that, while the IP is mine and that's my work, the company very well could turn around and produce a million of the patented product and never give me another dime. At my last employer I was required (extorted) to sell my patent rights to the company for $1 or risk termination of employment.
Once you sell the product and have accepted money for it then the game is over. No more of this "but I didn't know" or "but I'm not getting rich enough" or "but I can't pay my bills".
Life's not easy. Cope.
I think there'll soon be no more professional recording studios nor musicians
Vague doomsaying. What do you mean by "professional"? There will always be some people with money and an interest in audio production and there will always be some people who profit from it. Maybe Hollywood won't be the center of civilization and movie stars won't be entitled to millions of dollars at a shot. Maybe Britney Spears and Metallica won't be able to own thousand acre ranches. So what? I enjoyed music but not enough to support an industry which harasses the citizens of my nation for sharing their enjoyment with each other. We'll always have music and happiness somewhere.
The severity of the situation which you've described is completely hypothetical and composed of conjecture. P2P is not a secret so yes, you are a moron if you don't consider the possible effects of P2P ahead of time. No sea captain could ever claim that the world owed him a ship and a crew if he was sacked by a storm--it's one of the risks of being a sea captain. Cope. Nor have I yet seen a blog where an artist could say "we released this album and then watched our sales drop because it hit P2P". There's a reason why artists cut their deals with the distributors and manufacturers. There's a reason why guaranteed sales exist. I'll point out your flaws: You did not have proper advertising or distribution planned before you released the product. Your $10k album was released prematurely. Had you engaged in sealing the proper business deals and the proper method of distribution then you would have reached the proper profitable customers long before the album made it to P2P. Additionally any businessman worth a bank account knows better than to invest all resources in a single venture which could be easily tanked. If you blew your life savings hoping that the $10k album would help you Get Rich Quick then close your ears so you don't hear me laugh because it'll just cause you consternation and anger.
Look. The rest of us do it every time we walk in for a job interview. The employee agreement sucks, the salary sucks, but it beats the heck out of trying to sell knitted mittens or slippers from the kitchen.
they just need to stop being morons at running their business
That's precisely it. When people start a business there's no guarantee that it will succeed and there's no guarantee that it will live longer than next quarter's funding. Have you seen the blank stares of people who got screwed because their business failed and their partners deserted them? That's life. If that's the hand you were dealt then your only option is to pick up, move on, and find a wage that allows you to eat.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you consciously ignorant and argumentative, or did they teach you how to do this in lawyer training?
Cpt. Kangarooski... you are a legal shill. Try being a decent human being for an hour. I imagine you'll experience something similar to what most people experience when they have a deeply religious moving experience.
The world will continue to Just Work in the absence of copyright and intellectual property law.
It's not my fault that you overstepped your Constitutional authority by violating my rights. I guess we'll have to say that the conviction is summarily overturned.
As a lawyer you're far more familiar with self-delusion than I could ever dream to be.
I can sell you my right to free speech. You may pay me. I may accept that money. You're a dumbass. At any time I may choose to reinvoke that right.
A right is like hair color. At any time I can change the color of my hair but, at the end of the day, my hair is still the same color.
No warrant is needed but you now recognize that at any moment I can tell you to leave. Anything you gather after I tell you to leave is inadmissable because I am now recognizing my right to require you to have a warrant.
Constitutionally, one moment after I've been convicted, I can require a full trial in accordance with my rights. They're free to say,"But you admitted to..." and I can say,"That was outside my authoritative rights. Now, within my rights, I choose to say nothing." At that point it's up to a jury of my peers to decide if my admission was valid or not. But, Constitutionally, I should be allowed to demand a new trial within my rights and they should be required, Constitutionally, to proove their case with my past testimoney weighed against my current silence taking into account any duress that may have been placed on me in the circumstances of my past testimony.
It is sad that so much "past precedent" is accepted as truth without question, isn't it? What if past precedent dictates that the earth is flat? Does that make it so?
Again we breach the area of bribery and greed. The Constitution guarantees rights to authors and inventors, not to beneficiaries or signatories. Cope.
The Constitution recognizes them but they have no right to that idea, as the Constitution only guarantees that exclusive right to me as the author or inventor.
Sorry. Let that be a lesson to you. Consider more carefully next time before attempting to swindle, strongarm, or extort an author or inventor.
LotR is just that good. Someone, at some point, was going to fund its performance sooner or later. Maybe Jackson wouldn't have been in on it. Maybe the actors would've been different. It would have always been just as good.
You can. But, if you can show that your ideas are your ideas, the government has no power to support a company litigating against you over your own ideas.
This has what to do with intellectual property law? This is covered by search and seizure without a warrant. If they have a proper warrant, then you have no right to be protected against the search and seizure. That's in the Constitution.
Constitutionally you can't waive those rights. I know. You're addicted to practice and precedent set by the current state of affairs.
People like you have managed to funnel enough money to politicians and Supreme Court Justices to encourage them to look the other way when such abuses happen.
On the contrary, they're waivable due to ignorance and the power that greed has over honest principle. You're a self-admitted lawyer. I'm sure you're familiar, first hand, with the practice of compromising the truth, morality, civility, and humane ideals in the interest of earning a larger paycheck.
Their word was given under terms of a contract which was unconstitutional. The contract is null and void in the eyes of the government. If a company is being abusive then, yes, a decent human being would support another's right to change their mind.
You've never changed your mind, eh? Figures.
The house was legally bought and sold. If I sell my idea to a company, they legally bought it and I legally sold it but they do not have the right to keep me from using that idea to benefit someone else. That's the difference between tangible and intangible property. I sold them a particular instance of my idea but, under the Constitution, I still retain rights to continue to use that idea at my own whim. Constitutionally a company can never sue me for using my own intangible property.
Quit being a troll. You know as well as I do that's only 50% of contract law. The other 50% is about breaking those contracts.
If only people of your ilk would be so inclined to tell that to the companies who sell CDs and DVDs to consumers. "Sorry if you don't like that I'm ripping this and putting it on the network but maybe you should be more careful in the future about who you sell to."
Cope.
I suppose you support indentured servitude, perhaps with a clause for sexual services, if it were written properly into a contract?
I'll not debate this with you again. You're addicted to the law in the absence of regard for what's written in the only document which grants the government any legitimate power in this arena.
It sure does. It says exclusive rights to authors and inventors. On the other hand, it doesn't say a word about "Unless King George threatens to evict them and have them fired if they don't comply."
Current laws regarding intellectual property take away the ability of the author or inventor to bargain by locking them into a one-time decision when it should allow the author or inventor the freedom to say,"Sorry. Your company sucks. I'm taking my ideas and going elsewhere."
However, in the case of medicine, it's not quite that simple. You can't just cure herpes or cancer. Here's why: Any disease is the presence of malfunctioning cells inside of an organism which, hopefully, is composed mostly of properly functioning cells. Nature has given us an immune system which, over many millions of years, has developed into a specialized system of cells which roam throughout the healthy system and attempt to identify cells which are malfunctioning or entities (such as viruses) which are alien to the body. If nature hasn't been able to figure out how to recognize exogenous from endogenous entities then how can a simple chemical compound change that?
One must address the problem. The problem is one of two possibilities: the immune system is malfunctioning or the exogenous entity has managed to mask itself. It's always a case by case basis. You may have persistent herpes because your T-cells lack the mechanism to properly recognize the herpes virus and other infected cells. Why are those T-cells incompetent? Well, there are hundreds of possible cellular inadequacies: malformed proteins, internal systems out of sync, inaccurate response to cytokine levels surrounding the functioning cells, to name a few. Your partner, on the other hand, may have herpes because their particular strain happens to express surface markers which are so close to endogenous cell surfaces that it's impossible to distinguish.
How is a pharmaceutical company supposed to know, seven years in advance (the timeline for even a quick development) which target to pursue? Even if they concentrated just on you, and fixing your immune system, your T-cell inadequacy may be a completely different situation from the someone else's immune system where, hypothetically, the T-cells are properly tagging infected cells but the NK cells are unable to overcome the proliferation rate of infected cells.
I could go on but I hope that you begin to see that pharmaceutical companies are being held to unrealistic standards and have a nearly impossible task attempting to develop a medicine for an infected population majority. Even if they manage to successfully diagnose a majority they'll get lambasted by the ignorant for not concentrating on a population minority.
They do what everyone else does. They throw up their hands in disgust and concentrate on the only thing which matters: make the most money in the least amount of time.
The only real travesty is that, given the government's support of obviously unconstitutional intellectual property law and employee agreements, the individual scientists actually working in the lab make a pittance to live on while the CEOs, executives, and primary stock investors (who know nothing of science or medicine), spew out ignorant media reports on the state of science and walk off with the lion's share (and then some) of any profits which are made.
I never advocated leaving your front door unlocked with a sign that says,"Come in and take whatever you like."
Haven't we picked you up as an antipatriotic malcontent terrorist yet?
Now, say you write a book a get it properly lined up with a proper publisher and, in the absence of copyright law, your book hits the store shelves and a single 10-year old buys it. If the book were properly advertised before the release then there will be at least a dozen 10-year olds in to buy the book before the first one can read it and hype it up to their friends enough where they ask for photocopies. By the time that single 10-year old saves enough lunch money for the photocopier and spends the time pressing the "GO" button you'll have a reasonable customer base such that the other ten year olds, rather than waiting for their cheap photocopied edition, will have prodded their parents into shelling out the $5 for a real paperback.
The world will continue to work just fine in the absence of copyright law.
As for the warning printed on the packaging: that warning, should a case be tried on the merits of it alone, is probably unenforceable. The warning makes little or no mention of what rights the consumer is purchasing and so, if the warning itself is the binding terms, one could say that the consumer has no rights at all to fair use. That sort of situation would probably create more legal quandries than even the *AA would ever want to wade through.
After my initial response I had some time to think about it on the drive home from work. I thought,"Who cares if some company steals my work? Let them steal it. Let them develop and refine it. In the absence of this pesky trouble about copyright and intellectual property, I'll just steal it back."
I guess that's what I meant when I said that the absence of copyright law and intellectual property would change the entire face of the industry. Open source developers and companies would engage in what would become creative, cooperative, and mutually beneficial competition. Under the current system, it's like the worst product doing everything it can to strangle off any creative competitor by denying them corporate employment because the product doesn't fall under the iron fist of proprietary copyrights.
I vote for the world without the copyright and intellectual property bull-honky.
There is no such thing as intellectual property, but I'll be happy to pay you money if you know how to do what I need to get done.
you've done your time, you are not supposed to be punished for the rest of your life
That's a beautiful concept. The USA is home to a much more vindictive society. Yes. Crimes are permanent--felonies, misdemeanors, even tickets. A bad mark on your credit record, for example, traditionally is expunged after seven years. Try explaining that to the debt collector who just bought the contract to collect the cash last month.
Here in the USA records are kept pretty much for life. It's one great downward spiral from the moment you're born. There is no redemption until you die and no amount of penance or time will soothe the harassment of the bankers and businessmen. Yet, at the same time, those same bankers and businessmen are constantly looking for ways to outsource the jobs and keep salaries at a bare minimum.
It's got to be from our puritanical Pilgrim roots. With the left hand they browbeat you for not doing the dishes and with the right hand they force you away from the sink.
With that price they are given the rights to share the video
In all reality it is impossible to dictate what someone does with a product which they've legally purchased and tangibly own. I for one do not wish to play cat and mouse games for the next 70 years that I'm on this planet. Everyone has the right to share whatever they've bought because it's natural. The alternative--litigation after the point of sale--is destructive, alienates customers, and creates criminals and strife where there was nothing but peaceful commiseration and sharing.
If the media companies feel they're getting a raw deal by selling a product which is easily shared for $15 then they're free to raise the price at the point of sale or pursue the cat and mouse game of proactive media protection. Litigation over a product after the point of sale is both intolerable and preposterous. If large companies want to have the same rights as citizens then they need to learn that there is no right to extort citizens in the name of profit. Businesses either thrive or they don't. It's not up to the government to provide protection for a business model which technology has made obsolete.
As an addendum I legally own better than 99.9% of my music and video collection. I do not have illicit (under current law) copies of any movies or more than about 30 tunes. I do not participate in p2p apps (I don't trust that p2p programmers are properly skilled in the concepts of network security) nor do I publicly offer any of my collection to the open network. I'm just sick and tired of the whining coming from people who feel they can regulate the rain and the air. "The road to hell..." and all that.
Now we're on the same page. Live at your own risk and accept responsibility for your actions. If you sell something to someone then you accept responsibility for having sold it. If you sell something which is easily copied then you know full well they may copy it. You accept that risk at point of sale. You do not have the right to legally harass your customers if you miscalculated the cost of business. Some businesses thrive and some fail. That is the way of the world.
It's your own fault. It's not something that the government is responsible for.
Again, ridiculous. Raping my girlfriend at gunpoint while holding me back at gunpoint is in no way comparable to the replication of IP. You do see the difference between violence and sharing don't you?
Because IP gives no rights to authors or inventors. Rights only belong to the people who bought the IP. You sold your product. They bought it. They own the IP and they are free to share it. Similarly you still own your IP and are free to share it or sell it to anyone else. If you don't like it then deal in a product which isn't so easily copied.
Allow me to sum up the reality of IP: Once you sell something quit trying to pretend you still own it. The IP age is over. The IP age should never have been started. If you want your IP for yourself then keep it to yourself. If you want to share it with others then you accept all risk of redistribution. It's no secret that P2P exists and it's no secret that CDs are easily copied. If you want your customers to pay-per-play then play live in performance halls where you search them for recording devices before they enter.
You're no different from anyone else in life. Think carefully before you decide to sell anything. Consider all aspects of the sale and everything that may happen afterwards.
The age of IP is over. We will no longer subsidize the careless mentality of the media industry.
As for patents and inventions: I've not yet seen a patent ever protect a brilliant inventor from a manager who says "You're fired if you won't accept that the company owns your IP."
What makes you so special? You're pouting and ranting at the same time. You made a product and you sold it. The fact that your product is easily replicated puts you in the same boat as a good portion of the rest of the population. Just like everyone else: if you don't like the selling price then don't sell the product. When I sell my patents to companies I realize full well that, while the IP is mine and that's my work, the company very well could turn around and produce a million of the patented product and never give me another dime. At my last employer I was required (extorted) to sell my patent rights to the company for $1 or risk termination of employment.
Once you sell the product and have accepted money for it then the game is over. No more of this "but I didn't know" or "but I'm not getting rich enough" or "but I can't pay my bills".
Life's not easy. Cope.
Vague doomsaying. What do you mean by "professional"? There will always be some people with money and an interest in audio production and there will always be some people who profit from it. Maybe Hollywood won't be the center of civilization and movie stars won't be entitled to millions of dollars at a shot. Maybe Britney Spears and Metallica won't be able to own thousand acre ranches. So what? I enjoyed music but not enough to support an industry which harasses the citizens of my nation for sharing their enjoyment with each other. We'll always have music and happiness somewhere.
Look. The rest of us do it every time we walk in for a job interview. The employee agreement sucks, the salary sucks, but it beats the heck out of trying to sell knitted mittens or slippers from the kitchen.
That's precisely it. When people start a business there's no guarantee that it will succeed and there's no guarantee that it will live longer than next quarter's funding. Have you seen the blank stares of people who got screwed because their business failed and their partners deserted them? That's life. If that's the hand you were dealt then your only option is to pick up, move on, and find a wage that allows you to eat.