Well first off, Islam is the only religion to promote killing those who are of a different religion
Bullshit.
So yes, your point applies to Muslims, but that's it
Even if that were true (it's not), how is that not people killing in the name of religion? I proved my point, and you want to deny the facts?
Secondly, just because someone is christian and kills someone because "they think it's wrong", it doesn't mean that religion had anything to do with it.
Oh, I see. How convenient. You appear to be in complete denial of reality. Even when something happens, you find an excuse.
yes, I'm sure that those killings of abortion doctors by Christian Fundamentalists who said they were doing it in God's name had absolutely nothing to do with religion.
so you cannot blame religion for their actions, only the person.
So, religion also can't claim credit for the positive actions of its followers? What's the point, then? In case you hadn't noticed, all religions do in fact take credit for the good actions of their followers. You can't have it both ways.
"Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 5 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites. "
Doesn't sound like a particularly reliable source of data to me.
Oh yes, that Apple denied Google's app from the app store because it would compete with Apple's own offering. Sounds like power over other companies to me.
I said direct power. You're chasing a red herring, because Google knew exactly what it was getting into when it signed up to sell applications in the App Store. Every developer that signs up knows that their application may be rejected, and there is no guarantee that their app will ever get sold in the store.
Any company who is betting their livelihood on a guarantee that their apps will not be rejected by Apple is making a foolish business decision.
Compare with the Microsoft situation, where an entire industry - the selling of computer hardware - basically existed at the whim of Microsoft. If you were a PC OEM, it was almost impossible to survive if you didn't sell Windows. And Microsoft wanted to make sure that you ONLY sold Windows with your hardware, and punished those who didn't.
If both Microsoft and Apple do something that is morally wrong, then more people will be affected by Microsoft. But this doesn't make it less morally wrong for Apple. Not being the monopoly is not a "get out of jail free" card.
I don't see where morality comes into it in either case. What do you think that Apple did which was morally wrong? For that matter, what did Microsoft do that was morally wrong? Anti-trust laws aren't about morality as far as I can see, they are about the economy and marketplaces.
You're engaging in semantic shifting. There's a difference between being able to run third party programs written for your operating system and being able to run programs written for other operating systems.
But you said that preventing software from running via technological measures was immoral. You did not specify that it only applied to software that would otherwise run.
You have to be very careful when proposing things to be codified into law/morality. Because if there was a law or moral code written the way you wrote your proposal, you can bet your bottom dollar that there's a lawyer out there who will argue that not making your OS compatible with his clients software, is a technological measure designed to prevent his software from running.
I'm sure you mean well, but you have to be more precise. It's similar to the whole "net neutrality" issue - if you aren't very precise about your definitions, you end up with people turning things upside-down.
What, because Cory Doctorow says so? This position is stupid. You may not want intellectual property not to property, but the fact is that it is.
is it not possible to own a patent or copyright? Is it not possible to sell a copyright or patent to someone else? Of course it is. So how is that not property? Anything else that can be bought, sold or have ownership transferred is considered property.
The problem Cory's argument has is that he's getting the property part wrong. The property is the exclusive right to distribute (or in the case of patents, manufacture), not necessarily the content itself.
It doesn't become your product, it becomes your piece of hardware - owning the "product" is an entirely different thing. Semantics aside, you can hack it, and install whatever you want on it. But why is Apple under any obligation to sell everyone's applications in the App Store? When developers sign up for the store, they sign contracts that explicitly state that their applications might be rejected.
Desktop computers have been "extreme" for 25 years then?
Since when has every desktop computer OS been able to run every piece of software written for every other OS? Since when has every desktop computer been able to run every OS?
There are plenty of touchscreen devices out there now. Competition is a good thing. If Apple really has something unique, it can work within the patent and copyright system. Restricting software installation doesn't help defend Apple's works, and hurts users.
That may well be, but how is it not within Apple's rights to decide what software to sell in its own store? The terms and conditions of selling in the App Store are well known to developers up-front when they sign the contracts.
"Intellectual property" isn't property, and violating copyright and patent law isn't "theft".
The parent was talking about purposefully prohibiting the running of software that would otherwise run.
That's not what the post said.
Obviously if there are technical limitation (such as the fact that the software was designed for a different OS) that's an entirely different situation.
The post specifically called out technological means as being unacceptable - so how is it a different situation?
The issue here is not that there's a technical limitation stopping the software from being run, but rather, there's an arbitrary block put in place by the developers of the OS.
There's a block being put on the software being distributed by Apple in its own online store. Do you think that stores should be forced to carry whatever product any vendor wants them to carry?
Even more interesting is the fact that Japanese companies rarely hire foreign engineers. Technology in Japan is homegrown. Yet, the Japanese beat the Americans in several areas of high technology. Most of the patents for your LCD monitor are owned by Japanese companies.
But Japan also suffers for it. If it let more foreigners in, perhaps Japan would do better in, say, software development. Perhaps it would do better with other devices if it let a few foreigners show them something about interface design? It's this insularity that appears to be holding back their otherwise excellent products in many ways. not that they aren't successful, but they could be even better.
Ah, Glenn Beck would be proud" in place of reasoned argument and expect that to be the end of it, as if that says anything.
Well, it seems doubtful that you are capable of giving a reasoned argument, given that the contents of your posts contain nothing rational or worth debating.
No manufacturer has the right to prohibit person A from installing on a device he owns software written by person B: any legal or technological measures to this end are immoral,
Hmmm, so it's immoral that Windows software can't natively run on Linux? Should the developers of Linux be forced to make Windows.EXE applications compatible, and vice versa?
The big difference is really that Apple does pretty much everything on its own turf - its own OS, running on its own hardware. Microsoft's empire, on the other hand relies on third-party 'partners' and OEMs. And Microsoft has abused those relationships time and time again - and has had the power to destroy companies if they don't behave the way Microsoft tells them to.
Apple does shitty things, but isn't in a position of direct power over other companies - Apple plays with its own toys.
An entity can take a public domain work, make changes, and copyright the result preventing others from using the changes. This possibility doesn't exist when no copyright law is enforced.
Actually it does. The company could do the same thing, and DRM the modified software for the same effect (arguably, an even worse effect).
The GPL prevents this eventuality.
How can it do that without copyright law?
It's actually a rather brilliant hack for those who believe the copyright system is a detriment to society.
What evidence do you have that the GPL was written because "copyright is a detriment to society"? I thought is was written because closed-source software was considered detrimental to software users.
The more things that are GPL, the closer you get to a non-copyright society.
That doesn't make any sense, because the GPL requires copyright to work. So, more GPL software doesn't bring us any closer to a copyright-free society.
when in reality it is more likely that close to 100,000 people who would have never bought the book are now reading Dan Brown when they never would have otherwise.
So, in summary, you're saying that piracy is a very bad thing, and must be stopped at all costs?
Without the system they would not need the system.
Without the copyright system, how would licenses such as the GPL ensure that the software remains Open Source, and is not misappropriated? I don't recall the authors of the major Open Source licenses saying that their goal was the abolition of copyright law.
If Open Source doesn't need the copyright system, then why don't they just declare the works to be Public Domain? that would be the same as having no system.
Perhaps some day, instead of releasing entire novels, authors will release single chapters, wait until enough people have paid, and then release the next chapter, and so forth, until the entire novel is complete.
Right, so books end up being ruined like this. No thanks.
Almost every aspect of open source/creative commons etc. requires attribution,
That's true - but many Open Source proponents are also proponents of abolishing copyrights and patents, or "imaginary property" as they say. It seems the intellectual property aspects of Open Source are only an intermediate, "necessary evil" for many of them.
and even pirates don't bother removing credits.
Really? In my experience, most torrent files of TV shows have the credits removed, all for the sake of saving a few MB/kB. It's one of my pet peeves, actually. If you're distributing someone else's content (and even crediting you own 'scene' group), you could at least acknowledge the people who made the show in the first place.
This is nonsensical. You might as well say postal mail will become the cheap, fast communications method, while e-mail will become the expensive, slow method...
If anything is nonsensical, it is your comment. Email is inherently faster than snail-mail. There is nothing about the medium of transmission that makes radio inherently corporate, or podcasting inherently non-corporate.
If anything, radio is far more accessible without corporate intervention, as it doesn't require expensive or complicated technology, doesn't require one to subscribe to a corporate ISP, etc. It's not even particularly difficult to build your own radio from components. Compared to radio, internet-based delivery requires a lot more corporate middlemen.
Webcasting requires a $100 PC and ~$15/mo for an internet connection (both of which you may already have) to support a dozen or so listeners.
So? how does that imply a non-profit motivation? How does it mean better quality independent media, or a more community-oriented media?
In case you haven't noticed, public radio stations actually tend to have charters of ethics, and are founded on the basis of the public good, while there is usually no such commitment on behalf of individual podcasters.
Once the profit goes away, the college stations have no reason to exist, and no way to pay for themselves, even with employees who will work for free.
So, how do you explain the numerous other independent, community and public radio stations that don't exist to make a profit in any way?
I'm not making anything up. Did you happen to completely ignore the whole thing with Christian Fundamentalists murdering abortion doctors, or Islamic Fundamentalists and numerous terrorist bombings? How about Salman Rushdie living in exile to escape religiously motivated murder? Your ignorance is astounding.
Slashdot Mirror
P.S:
Here's a selection of Bible quotes advocating the killing of non-Christians, or those who are perceived to violate Christian tenets.
And some articles about contemporary Christians advocating the deaths of non-believers and sinners, sometimes taking efforts to cause those deaths.
No, StatCounter talks about pageviews, while Net Applications talks about users. I'm guessing most users tend to load more than 31 pages per month.
Either way, there are lies, damn lies, and web statistics.
Well first off, Islam is the only religion to promote killing those who are of a different religion
Bullshit.
So yes, your point applies to Muslims, but that's it
Even if that were true (it's not), how is that not people killing in the name of religion? I proved my point, and you want to deny the facts?
Secondly, just because someone is christian and kills someone because "they think it's wrong", it doesn't mean that religion had anything to do with it.
Oh, I see. How convenient. You appear to be in complete denial of reality. Even when something happens, you find an excuse.
yes, I'm sure that those killings of abortion doctors by Christian Fundamentalists who said they were doing it in God's name had absolutely nothing to do with religion.
so you cannot blame religion for their actions, only the person.
So, religion also can't claim credit for the positive actions of its followers? What's the point, then? In case you hadn't noticed, all religions do in fact take credit for the good actions of their followers. You can't have it both ways.
It makes much more sense if you replace Google with Apple in your comment ( - except for "don't be evil" part).
That doesn't make a lot of sense, as Apple isn't an advertising company, and very few people believe Apple isn't a big company out to make money.
From the StatCounter website:
"Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 5 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites. "
Doesn't sound like a particularly reliable source of data to me.
What does this have to do with monopolies? It's not like Apple controls the market for mobile phone software. There are plenty of alternative choices.
Oh yes, that Apple denied Google's app from the app store because it would compete with Apple's own offering. Sounds like power over other companies to me.
I said direct power. You're chasing a red herring, because Google knew exactly what it was getting into when it signed up to sell applications in the App Store. Every developer that signs up knows that their application may be rejected, and there is no guarantee that their app will ever get sold in the store.
Any company who is betting their livelihood on a guarantee that their apps will not be rejected by Apple is making a foolish business decision.
Compare with the Microsoft situation, where an entire industry - the selling of computer hardware - basically existed at the whim of Microsoft. If you were a PC OEM, it was almost impossible to survive if you didn't sell Windows. And Microsoft wanted to make sure that you ONLY sold Windows with your hardware, and punished those who didn't.
If both Microsoft and Apple do something that is morally wrong, then more people will be affected by Microsoft. But this doesn't make it less morally wrong for Apple. Not being the monopoly is not a "get out of jail free" card.
I don't see where morality comes into it in either case. What do you think that Apple did which was morally wrong? For that matter, what did Microsoft do that was morally wrong? Anti-trust laws aren't about morality as far as I can see, they are about the economy and marketplaces.
You're engaging in semantic shifting. There's a difference between being able to run third party programs written for your operating system and being able to run programs written for other operating systems.
But you said that preventing software from running via technological measures was immoral. You did not specify that it only applied to software that would otherwise run.
You have to be very careful when proposing things to be codified into law/morality. Because if there was a law or moral code written the way you wrote your proposal, you can bet your bottom dollar that there's a lawyer out there who will argue that not making your OS compatible with his clients software, is a technological measure designed to prevent his software from running.
I'm sure you mean well, but you have to be more precise. It's similar to the whole "net neutrality" issue - if you aren't very precise about your definitions, you end up with people turning things upside-down.
Also, intellectual property really isn't property [guardian.co.uk].
What, because Cory Doctorow says so? This position is stupid. You may not want intellectual property not to property, but the fact is that it is.
is it not possible to own a patent or copyright? Is it not possible to sell a copyright or patent to someone else? Of course it is. So how is that not property? Anything else that can be bought, sold or have ownership transferred is considered property.
The problem Cory's argument has is that he's getting the property part wrong. The property is the exclusive right to distribute (or in the case of patents, manufacture), not necessarily the content itself.
It doesn't become your product, it becomes your piece of hardware - owning the "product" is an entirely different thing. Semantics aside, you can hack it, and install whatever you want on it. But why is Apple under any obligation to sell everyone's applications in the App Store? When developers sign up for the store, they sign contracts that explicitly state that their applications might be rejected.
Desktop computers have been "extreme" for 25 years then?
Since when has every desktop computer OS been able to run every piece of software written for every other OS? Since when has every desktop computer been able to run every OS?
There are plenty of touchscreen devices out there now. Competition is a good thing. If Apple really has something unique, it can work within the patent and copyright system. Restricting software installation doesn't help defend Apple's works, and hurts users.
That may well be, but how is it not within Apple's rights to decide what software to sell in its own store? The terms and conditions of selling in the App Store are well known to developers up-front when they sign the contracts.
"Intellectual property" isn't property, and violating copyright and patent law isn't "theft".
How is intellectual property not property?
The parent was talking about purposefully prohibiting the running of software that would otherwise run.
That's not what the post said.
Obviously if there are technical limitation (such as the fact that the software was designed for a different OS) that's an entirely different situation.
The post specifically called out technological means as being unacceptable - so how is it a different situation?
The issue here is not that there's a technical limitation stopping the software from being run, but rather, there's an arbitrary block put in place by the developers of the OS.
There's a block being put on the software being distributed by Apple in its own online store. Do you think that stores should be forced to carry whatever product any vendor wants them to carry?
Even more interesting is the fact that Japanese companies rarely hire foreign engineers. Technology in Japan is homegrown. Yet, the Japanese beat the Americans in several areas of high technology. Most of the patents for your LCD monitor are owned by Japanese companies.
But Japan also suffers for it. If it let more foreigners in, perhaps Japan would do better in, say, software development. Perhaps it would do better with other devices if it let a few foreigners show them something about interface design? It's this insularity that appears to be holding back their otherwise excellent products in many ways. not that they aren't successful, but they could be even better.
Ah, Glenn Beck would be proud" in place of reasoned argument and expect that to be the end of it, as if that says anything.
Well, it seems doubtful that you are capable of giving a reasoned argument, given that the contents of your posts contain nothing rational or worth debating.
No manufacturer has the right to prohibit person A from installing on a device he owns software written by person B: any legal or technological measures to this end are immoral,
Hmmm, so it's immoral that Windows software can't natively run on Linux? Should the developers of Linux be forced to make Windows .EXE applications compatible, and vice versa?
The big difference is really that Apple does pretty much everything on its own turf - its own OS, running on its own hardware. Microsoft's empire, on the other hand relies on third-party 'partners' and OEMs. And Microsoft has abused those relationships time and time again - and has had the power to destroy companies if they don't behave the way Microsoft tells them to.
Apple does shitty things, but isn't in a position of direct power over other companies - Apple plays with its own toys.
An entity can take a public domain work, make changes, and copyright the result preventing others from using the changes. This possibility doesn't exist when no copyright law is enforced.
Actually it does. The company could do the same thing, and DRM the modified software for the same effect (arguably, an even worse effect).
The GPL prevents this eventuality.
How can it do that without copyright law?
It's actually a rather brilliant hack for those who believe the copyright system is a detriment to society.
What evidence do you have that the GPL was written because "copyright is a detriment to society"? I thought is was written because closed-source software was considered detrimental to software users.
The more things that are GPL, the closer you get to a non-copyright society.
That doesn't make any sense, because the GPL requires copyright to work. So, more GPL software doesn't bring us any closer to a copyright-free society.
when in reality it is more likely that close to 100,000 people who would have never bought the book are now reading Dan Brown when they never would have otherwise.
So, in summary, you're saying that piracy is a very bad thing, and must be stopped at all costs?
Nobody is saying that copyright is bad
You might want to try reading slashdot sometime.
Without the system they would not need the system.
Without the copyright system, how would licenses such as the GPL ensure that the software remains Open Source, and is not misappropriated? I don't recall the authors of the major Open Source licenses saying that their goal was the abolition of copyright law.
If Open Source doesn't need the copyright system, then why don't they just declare the works to be Public Domain? that would be the same as having no system.
but I have no illusions that it's a type of property
That's very odd, seeing as it is a type of property. You do realize you can sell your copyrights to someone else, right?
So if authors and publishers are worried about piracy of books why don't they cut libraries off?
They would very much love to do so. Problem is, they legally can't.
Perhaps some day, instead of releasing entire novels, authors will release single chapters, wait until enough people have paid, and then release the next chapter, and so forth, until the entire novel is complete.
Right, so books end up being ruined like this. No thanks.
Almost every aspect of open source/creative commons etc. requires attribution,
That's true - but many Open Source proponents are also proponents of abolishing copyrights and patents, or "imaginary property" as they say. It seems the intellectual property aspects of Open Source are only an intermediate, "necessary evil" for many of them.
and even pirates don't bother removing credits.
Really? In my experience, most torrent files of TV shows have the credits removed, all for the sake of saving a few MB/kB. It's one of my pet peeves, actually. If you're distributing someone else's content (and even crediting you own 'scene' group), you could at least acknowledge the people who made the show in the first place.
This is nonsensical. You might as well say postal mail will become the cheap, fast communications method, while e-mail will become the expensive, slow method...
If anything is nonsensical, it is your comment. Email is inherently faster than snail-mail. There is nothing about the medium of transmission that makes radio inherently corporate, or podcasting inherently non-corporate.
If anything, radio is far more accessible without corporate intervention, as it doesn't require expensive or complicated technology, doesn't require one to subscribe to a corporate ISP, etc. It's not even particularly difficult to build your own radio from components. Compared to radio, internet-based delivery requires a lot more corporate middlemen.
Webcasting requires a $100 PC and ~$15/mo for an internet connection (both of which you may already have) to support a dozen or so listeners.
So? how does that imply a non-profit motivation? How does it mean better quality independent media, or a more community-oriented media?
In case you haven't noticed, public radio stations actually tend to have charters of ethics, and are founded on the basis of the public good, while there is usually no such commitment on behalf of individual podcasters.
Once the profit goes away, the college stations have no reason to exist, and no way to pay for themselves, even with employees who will work for free.
So, how do you explain the numerous other independent, community and public radio stations that don't exist to make a profit in any way?
I'm not making anything up. Did you happen to completely ignore the whole thing with Christian Fundamentalists murdering abortion doctors, or Islamic Fundamentalists and numerous terrorist bombings? How about Salman Rushdie living in exile to escape religiously motivated murder? Your ignorance is astounding.