All these fights on copyright have made me think. If an author was well known enough, the books were in high demand, etc. would they have enough pull to require that the publishers release their works into the public domain after a certain period of time, upon the author's death, or a certain number of years after the author's death? Or would even some of the top authors have to find other means to publish their books?
Of course if a new author tried this they would be told 'screw you, do what we say or find another company' but when you have an author where amazon and other companies have extra security for just that book to prevent leaks (harry potter, I think one of the dan brown books may have been this way, etc.) would there be any difference?
You also have writers, movie producers, etc. who, while they do it to make a living, refuse to sacrifice on the quality of their work just to make more money (or any money). They will not just sell the rights to a book, for example, to make a movie and let it end there. It better fit with their expectations of what the movie should be compared to the book. (If I remember right JK Rowling was not/is not only heavily involved in the movie making process she required that they do certain things). The trick is for an author to find a balance between making a living and maintaining their image of their work. If they don't understand that some compromise has to be made to fit a 500-1000 page book into 1.5-3 hours then they need to reevaluate whether it is worth having it turned into a movie.
The issue is when it is the family controlling this, things that the author would have flat out refused to allow to happen get done with the permission of someone else.
I am guessing if you are an independent developer you could just put something similar to this in the license 'as of 25 years after the original release of this version of this software I release this software into the public domain'
Note: this is the same thing with any software as well, as copies are made into most of the same locations as well as the files themselves in the operating system's buffer/cache in RAM
Fairly offtopic but if copying into ram is an issue.... whenever I watch a rented movie I am making probably 3+ temporary copies of the movie while watching it. Is this illegal? (by the standards of the copyright holders/actual law both) 1. In the disk drive 2. ?On the controller itself? 3. In ram 4. ?In the CPU cache? 5. In video card memory 6. If it is outputting to a screen that does any of it's own processing you can probably add a few more here
Of course these are fractions of the movie (or even a frame of a movie) at any point in time but the entire thing passes through. Since sharing fractions of a movie over P2P software is illegal, shouldn't making multiple copies of a movie that is owned by someone else illegal?
Note: this is a joke for now but I have a feeling sooner or later it is going to end up in a lawsuit somewhere
Eventually it is going to be much more common to self publish for these reasons. Yes it happens a ton already but you aren't going to get your book into all the chain stores by yourself. If you can self publish on a major ebook (or on demand print) store with the option to opt out of this service, keep all rights to terminate distribution, etc. then more people will start doing it.
There is a difference between a right to sell the original works and a right to do whatever you want. Similar to how an author can sell right to publish to one person (even limiting it to certain regions of the world, as many books have different publishers in different areas of the world), right to make a movie to another, etc. The contract probably states if the publisher has the right to make certain modifications.
Failures of the power source of power steering are relatively easy to fix (use the wheels to either generate electricity or keep turning the pump). Failure of the steering system itself on the other hand is much harder to deal with. Complete failure of the steering system (not just power steering) can happen on a traditional vehicle but I have never actually witnessed it.
Put enough current/voltage through anything and it can/will explode. a watermellon for example. Also look up exploding wire on youtube. People dump enough current through a bit of wire and it makes a nice little pop.
What about when that company decides running the multiplayer servers is no longer profitable to them?... "oh, we released a new game, lets kill the old servers to get people to buy the new game".... usually it only happens after 2 or more games have been released but I believe it has already happened with the C&C series
Actually read once where a cell phone store (I think it was one of the specialized att or verizon stores) employee persistantly tried convincing him that their awesome cameraphones would be just as good or better than his digital camera..... He had thousands of dollars worth the SLR equipment and they still wouldn't keep using the MP to MP comparison.
The 200MB iso is meant primarily for installing on networkless or low speed connections so the packages are already available. A comparison would be a linux network install cd/floppy vs the live cd/cd with packages on it.
Funny that just says that the iso files available are not official. I do not see where it says that the 6MB network installer is more official than the 200 MB installer with all of the file sets on it.
I am guessing that statement is just outdated since at one point in time some or all of the.iso files they release now were not available in the past and other people made and distributed unofficial ones.
Most distros have at least one or two really good mirrors nearby. Maybe when they don't offer a 4GB file (their install.iso file is 200MB) they don't see the need.
Depending on the person they may not be paying interest on it. Also, eventually (there may be some already) there will probably be ultra low/no interest loans for people installing solar.
Typically they literally load nothing from the cd. They just check to make sure it is there (and legit) and after that you can just eject the disk with no issue.
I was referring to the % of the price that goes to steam vs the developer compared to stores/distributors/manufacturers in retail. Sorry that I wasn't clear.
Technically the service valve provides takes the role of packager, distributor, and store so if you add up the amounts those companies normally get (on an equally priced game) and it is a similar amount then it shouldn't be any big deal (for the developer). Especially since valve may have to distribute the game a hundred times.
Slashdot Mirror
All these fights on copyright have made me think. If an author was well known enough, the books were in high demand, etc. would they have enough pull to require that the publishers release their works into the public domain after a certain period of time, upon the author's death, or a certain number of years after the author's death? Or would even some of the top authors have to find other means to publish their books?
Of course if a new author tried this they would be told 'screw you, do what we say or find another company' but when you have an author where amazon and other companies have extra security for just that book to prevent leaks (harry potter, I think one of the dan brown books may have been this way, etc.) would there be any difference?
You also have writers, movie producers, etc. who, while they do it to make a living, refuse to sacrifice on the quality of their work just to make more money (or any money). They will not just sell the rights to a book, for example, to make a movie and let it end there. It better fit with their expectations of what the movie should be compared to the book. (If I remember right JK Rowling was not/is not only heavily involved in the movie making process she required that they do certain things). The trick is for an author to find a balance between making a living and maintaining their image of their work. If they don't understand that some compromise has to be made to fit a 500-1000 page book into 1.5-3 hours then they need to reevaluate whether it is worth having it turned into a movie.
The issue is when it is the family controlling this, things that the author would have flat out refused to allow to happen get done with the permission of someone else.
I am guessing if you are an independent developer you could just put something similar to this in the license 'as of 25 years after the original release of this version of this software I release this software into the public domain'
Note: this is the same thing with any software as well, as copies are made into most of the same locations as well as the files themselves in the operating system's buffer/cache in RAM
Fairly offtopic but if copying into ram is an issue.... whenever I watch a rented movie I am making probably 3+ temporary copies of the movie while watching it. Is this illegal? (by the standards of the copyright holders/actual law both)
1. In the disk drive
2. ?On the controller itself?
3. In ram
4. ?In the CPU cache?
5. In video card memory
6. If it is outputting to a screen that does any of it's own processing you can probably add a few more here
Of course these are fractions of the movie (or even a frame of a movie) at any point in time but the entire thing passes through. Since sharing fractions of a movie over P2P software is illegal, shouldn't making multiple copies of a movie that is owned by someone else illegal?
Note: this is a joke for now but I have a feeling sooner or later it is going to end up in a lawsuit somewhere
Eventually it is going to be much more common to self publish for these reasons. Yes it happens a ton already but you aren't going to get your book into all the chain stores by yourself. If you can self publish on a major ebook (or on demand print) store with the option to opt out of this service, keep all rights to terminate distribution, etc. then more people will start doing it.
They can't be forced to but can someone say 'we will pay you an extra million to give up this right' is that legal?
There is a difference between a right to sell the original works and a right to do whatever you want. Similar to how an author can sell right to publish to one person (even limiting it to certain regions of the world, as many books have different publishers in different areas of the world), right to make a movie to another, etc. The contract probably states if the publisher has the right to make certain modifications.
It may.... we may a) blow ourselves up or b)manage to blow up the sun (see a.)
Failures of the power source of power steering are relatively easy to fix (use the wheels to either generate electricity or keep turning the pump). Failure of the steering system itself on the other hand is much harder to deal with. Complete failure of the steering system (not just power steering) can happen on a traditional vehicle but I have never actually witnessed it.
Put enough current/voltage through anything and it can/will explode. a watermellon for example. Also look up exploding wire on youtube. People dump enough current through a bit of wire and it makes a nice little pop.
Forgot this one, or when the company goes out of business
What about when that company decides running the multiplayer servers is no longer profitable to them?... "oh, we released a new game, lets kill the old servers to get people to buy the new game".... usually it only happens after 2 or more games have been released but I believe it has already happened with the C&C series
Actually read once where a cell phone store (I think it was one of the specialized att or verizon stores) employee persistantly tried convincing him that their awesome cameraphones would be just as good or better than his digital camera..... He had thousands of dollars worth the SLR equipment and they still wouldn't keep using the MP to MP comparison.
Is it a case where permanently damaging the camera would be good enough?
The 200MB iso is meant primarily for installing on networkless or low speed connections so the packages are already available. A comparison would be a linux network install cd/floppy vs the live cd/cd with packages on it.
install.iso is 200MB, the iso that has just the installer on it without packages is around 10MB.
Funny that just says that the iso files available are not official. I do not see where it says that the 6MB network installer is more official than the 200 MB installer with all of the file sets on it.
I am guessing that statement is just outdated since at one point in time some or all of the .iso files they release now were not available in the past and other people made and distributed unofficial ones.
Most distros have at least one or two really good mirrors nearby. Maybe when they don't offer a 4GB file (their install.iso file is 200MB) they don't see the need.
Was looking at the wrong file, guess it is 200MB but they probably have their reasons for not offering a torrent by default
Their main CD is not very large at all. If I remember correctly most of the files are downloaded during the installation.
Depending on the person they may not be paying interest on it. Also, eventually (there may be some already) there will probably be ultra low/no interest loans for people installing solar.
Typically they literally load nothing from the cd. They just check to make sure it is there (and legit) and after that you can just eject the disk with no issue.
I was referring to the % of the price that goes to steam vs the developer compared to stores/distributors/manufacturers in retail. Sorry that I wasn't clear.
Technically the service valve provides takes the role of packager, distributor, and store so if you add up the amounts those companies normally get (on an equally priced game) and it is a similar amount then it shouldn't be any big deal (for the developer). Especially since valve may have to distribute the game a hundred times.