I'm not disagreeing with the fact that the ruling is based off bogus and ridiculous moral rights. I agree that the reason for the judgement, while within the laws of the land, is daft (not the judges fault, politicians fault).
My point is not that the directors should have won. My point is that these companies are illegally distributing. If they also try to pass the work off as original then they would infringe the moral rights of the directors because the attribution of the work would be flawed. What I believe they have the right (as in the right exists, this ruling makes it clear the right does not exist in law) to do is edit the films on behalf of the individual making the process, and then return to them a copy, along with any material pertaining to the copyrighted work so long as the work is not distributed.
I've have been trying to find the specifics of the case to see if the only claim the directors made was the one they made based moral rights or not. If they had lost on only that count then the GPL is fine. If however there were claims based on distribution rights, and those editing the movie had won, the GPL would be dead in the water.
No thats not the same. Did you even listen to what I was saying. The scenario you describe should be perfectly legit. I take a copy of Ubuntu to my mate who modifies it so that it does something I want, then gives me back every copy and I pay him. Neither of us distribute it, and there is no need to pass our modifications on. The GPL is fine.
Your analogy would be fine except that copyright is not physical property. You own your car and can do what you like with it without affecting distribution rights because there can only ever be one car like that.
I agree with most of your counter arguements in principle but that doesn't change the fact that if this ruling had gone against the movie studios then the GPL would be dead.
Kinda a technical point but this is actually slightly different. If the judge hadn't ruled the way he has, the GPL would be dead. Here is what I see as being the problem. This company is selling a derivative work. They are not modifying an existing work without distribution, they are selling a derivative. Sure, they require you to bring in an existing copy, but they do not use that copy, they give you a new one.
If they took that copy and modified it on behalf of the owner, and did not distribute the work, or if the person who bought the work did the same, then I think this should be counted as fair use. However, you have to hand over all copies of the work at the end, and if another client wants to job done, then you have to do the work over again.
Consider the following situation. I want to make a closed source version of Linux, so I ask that people bring me a copy of Ubuntu and then sell them my modified version. See the problem? If this ruling was allowed then close sourcing GPL code would be as easy as giving someone a copy of the code, asking them to give it back to you, then burning the CD.
The judge got it right in this case. You can modify works for your own use, and you can modify other works if you don't distribute, but you cant modify and distribute.
This isn't fair use because the company is illegally distributing the DVDs.
If this company had been allowed to continue then the GPL would be dead. I want to sell a version of Linux, I just ask my client to bring in a CD with Ubuntu on it, burn (literally) the CD and sell them my copy.
It is not fair use because this company is making money from derivative works by distributing them before the end of the copyright term.
I will now talk about what rights I think you have, not what rights you have under law. You have a right to make a derivative work and not distribute it. You have a right to pay someone else to make a derivative work and not distribute it. You do not have the right to make a derivative work and distribute it.
So if I make a custom modification for a company, and they pay me to. Thats fine so long as they keep all of the work that went into the modification and I don't copy the modification again for another client. If I did, then I would have to GPL the code (or rather, convince my previous employer to GPL the code).
By your standards then, every scientist should recieve compensation for their work. Your system will make a very small number of scientists very rich since basic priciples become 'property' just like any other sequence of 1's and 0's.
I'm interested where this inherent right to compensation comes from, and where it stops. No contract has been agreed between a ligitimate representative of the people and the artist agreeing the terms of their creation contract. If an artist was not comissioned to produce their work why should they have inherent right to compensation for it's distribution? If they do not want it distributed they can keep it secret. No inherent right of their is broken in my opinion. Copyright does however violate the inherent right to obtain access to cultural heritage, we accept that violating this right is okay, if only for a good reason. False economics is not a good reason to violate this right.
Why do you single out one group of tradesmen for special treatment, this hardly seems reasonable to me. I can create lots of jobs which would not exist without a law to keep them there, and make up inherent rights of compensation. However these jobs would be economically ridiculous.
I much prefer the justification of enhancing the public domain, otherwise you could just as easily argue that society should pay me a dollar a day for reading slashdot, as a slashdot reader I acumulate the opinions of geeks, this forms a real end product which people value because they read my comments and download them from the web.
I accept you may have the making of a coherent point, but your ideas of pre-existing 'ownership' rights of ideas run counter to the established reasons for copyright and patents. If I am to understand I will need more information on where you believe these rights come from, and how they are different from the other 'rights' I list above.
"they [Artists] should be free to decide how to distribute their art"
No, they are free to either not distribute their art, or distribute their art on societies terms. If they don't distribute their art, if they keep it secret then there is nothing anyone can do to them.
We encourage them to distribute their art and enhance the public domain by granting them copyrights. These are not rights that exist apriori to legislation, they are rights we made up to help enhance our cultural heritage. They are like the rights water companies get to pump water. They don't own the water, they just transport it for us. They are also like the broadcast rights that can be bought. They are not apriori pre-existing rights, they are just rights we made up.
As such, current legislation represents a poor bargain by society with artists and their representatives. In effect because one has a right to ones cultural heritage one is compelled to disobey the law and stand up for ones rights. The tempory made up rights of the copyright holder do not supercede indefinately the rights of society to access it's cultural heritage.
One is compelled to disobey in the sense of civil disobedience however, rather than in the sense of sneekily downloading Britney Spears latest tripe and the ignorantly feeling guilty for it.
Artists have no right to recompense for making something up. My job is to make stuff up. I have to convince someone to pay me to make stuff up every time I want to work. But I don't have a right to any of that money, I have to convince people that it is worth their money for me to make stuff up every time.
The copyright system needs to be rebalanced in order to meet it's primary objective, which is not reimbursing artists for their time, but enhancing the public domain. If artists cant handle working in a market environment and want monopoly protection then thats just too bad, large scale monopolies on a type of good don't work and that is what we have at the moment.
"Today my gf is a school teacher and rarely if ever do the parents ever discipline the kid."
Most of the stupid parents remember that the only way to survive in school was to pick on the other kids and misbehave. Teachers were for the most part incompetant and when they see a teacher, that is what they assume.
Most of the smart kids remember that teachers offered no help to the smart kids when they were picked on/attacked and that the only way to survive was to use whatever means necessary to defend themselves.
School is a hellish war zone. Teachers have always done nothing to correct that and parents know it. It's hardly surprising that teachers are offered no backup when parents remember nearly every time they were punished in school it should have been the other guy.
"Most homeless people aren't there by choice and there are lots of folks who are just 1 pay check away from joining them, spare a thought when your walking around town and if you have some change give generously."
I'm certain they did not conciously choose a drug addiction, or to become mentally ill, but you are not fixing the problem by giving these people money. I'm from Europe so I don't know if things are different in the US, but most of the people on the street here are not using the money you give them to buy food.
Most of them are not bad people either. They do very much need help. But by giving them money / things they can trade for money you are making the situation worse. Local government should have provisions for dealing with the mentally ill and those with a drug addiction problem (which is the majority of people on the street) that keeps them off the street and away from drugs. And they need to be forced to accept help, because many wont take it willingly.
Put another way, those of you who give money to a homeless person, either because it makes you feel less guilty about their predicament or because you believe you are doing a nobel deed are slowly killing them.
Now I know some of you will say "if someone doesn't give them money then they will get their money for heroine from somewhere". Yes, they will. See my above comment about keeping them off the streets and away from drugs.
If you really cared about helping people instead of making yourself feel better, then you would either give money to charities that have a track record of getting people off the streets (although even then you are making being on the streets 'easy' and will encourage more people to end up that way), or you would ask that government take some more out of your pay packet and provide these people with the help they need and to support those on low income with a job, so that market forces are a little better controlled and poverty is better managed. You certainly wouldn't give them the money to buy their next beer with.
Unless such a universe is impossible. How something is metaphysically impossible though, I don't know. One might argue that a universe with free will must be evil, and that a universe without free will is evil in and of itself. Therefore God is force to make a universe containing some evil. However the idea that God has no choice but to create a universe with evil in it does take some of the lustre off said diety.
While I agree string theory lacks predictive power, many people working on it are looking for a physical principle that will make it predictive. There are plenty of people working on GUTs, discrete symmetries, Alternative routes to Quantum Gravity, etc.
However, while a theorists primary job is to create a predictive theory, they have other jobs as well. The advancement of mathematics (pure as well as applied) for one. String theory has made many contributions to our understanding of geometry, which a physicists would spot and a mathematician would have a harder time with (because the two disciplines think very differently for all their similarities).
String theory has problems, big problems, and I feel we have lots our way a bit. I would suggest more time should be focused on understanding the basics of string theory, things like low dimensional models and compatible principles, and less time dedicated to scouring the landscape for a theory that really is not going to be that useful anyway (after all, we been scouring the landscape for some time now and found countless number of 'wrong' ground state zero modes).
Of course the cheat in string theory comes in here, because there are an awful lot of ground states. One might in fact suggest that with all the parameters one has, one could fit any set of physical results to string theory, if one is prepared to put to one side the dynamic generation geometry and fit the background. This is of course the problem with string theory, what are the most likely ground states for the universe the end up in given a specific value of the string tenion.
"The point here is that boycotts ("voting with your dollars") aren't effective because they skew the "voting" in favor of those with more money."
No, that precisely wasn't the point I was making. The point I was making is that the RIAA should have precisely no say on this issue. They get what they are told and lump it. My point was that the implication here in the submission (which the submitter was also argueing against) was that boycotts should be what we use to protect citizens rights to the cultural heritage of humanity. My point was that if we use boycott tactics alone, then the RIAA is getting way more say than they are entitled too.
Whenever DRM comes up you get a small number of people who say that DRM is fine so long as it isn't mandated by government. Well I'm argueing that isn't the case because you can prevent people from accessing content which, when it enters the public domain, they are entitled to. If they wish to publish under the protects afforded them by copyright, then they should be required to ensure that the material is accessible to the public once it enters the public domain because the only reason they have that protection is to encourage the enhancement of the public domain.
If you believe this is a non-sequitor I'd suggest that the line of logic goes as follows. Copyright exists to enhance the public domain. DRM stops works entering the public domain effectively granting publishers perpetual copyright. Therefore DRM violates the spirit in which the copyright was granted. If it were down to me then I would remove the copyright on every piece of work that has been copy protected by the copyright owner or their official representatives under Article I of the constitution, unless the owner agreed to release unencumbered copies.
I think you missed the point. The parent suggested we use a boycott to protect ourselves from DRM. However DRM is an infringement of citizens right to access the cultural heritage of humanity. I was pointing out that if we decide to fight this one using dollars as votes then the RIAA, who as a collective organisation and not an individual should have precisely no say on a rights issue has billions of dollars (votes), while the average Armerican has a few tens of thousands of dollars (votes). That system is highly unfair since as this is a rights issue the people should be the ones to decide, given suitable moderation by a constrained government which errs on the side of protecting rights over following the will of the people.
They are entitled to zero votes since this is a rights issue and they are not an individual. If the system we are going to employ gives them more than zero votes, and in fact will always give them more votes than an individual, I would suggest that is a major flaw in the system.
I think you missed the point. If we are going to rely solely on economics to prevent our rights being taken away, then those labels attached to the RIAA have far more clout than an individual American citizen. Given that those labels are not people, they should have zero say on rights issues. To suggest boycott is the solution is like suggesting not making tea is the solution to taxation without represntation.
The solution is a change of government, to one which is concerned primarily with peoples rights. People have a right to acess the cultural heritage of humanity.
Yeah, but I'm under no dillusion. I'm leaving Europe as soon as I can for Canada, where thanks to Quebec large amounts of power are still held at local level. There is at least a hope of changing things in Canada for the better without having to shoot virtually every politician. I'm afraid I just don't feel up to a mass killing of people who have basically done nothing wrong except be delluded by the system.
I don't know what you mean by the government is the people. The government is China is very much not the people. The government in Iran as well.
The government should be a manifestation of the peoples collective will to protect their rights, and ensure compliance with their responsibilities. The government is responsible for protecting peoples rights. When they fail it is the responsibility of the people to protect their rights by changing the government. Your government does not protect the rights of the people.
"And really, I'm not sure I like a world were you have the "right" to content that I produce."
So you believe that people do not have a right to the cultural heritage of humanity? Knowledge and information are not property. I would claim that considering them as such is an odd position to take. Here is the deal. You produce content, society agrees to give you certain, limited temporary rights as an incentive. Don't like it? Don't create. At least that used to be the deal.
If we go down the route of dollars as votes to protect rights (access to cultural heritage is a right), then your average American has 37,000 votes a year and the multimedia industry has billions. There is a body which is supposed to protect our rights, it's called the government. But it isn't doing it's job so I guess you have to use what means are necessary to protect them. Members of the RIAA have a monopoly over the recent cultural heritage of the United States, which is an infringement of the rights of its citizens. If your government is not going to do anything about it, then you are obliged to take action. That action however, isn't to surrender further rights by moving to a one dollar one vote system (which is basically what you have now).
Given the history of your country I really do wonder why it is more American politicians aren't getting shot over the numerous rights issues they are ignoring. Heck when you were a colony of my country you lot knew what to do when oppressive leaders took away your rights.
"Everyone can vote with their dollars, but that doesn't tell the RIAA why they aren't getting the dollars."
I do love this idea. Has any one else noticed that if we reduce ourselves to voting with our dollars, then ordinary people get about 37,000 votes a year if they are lucky, while Corporations and the super rich get millions or billions of votes?
Boycotts may or may not work, but they should not be the primary means of collective bargaining for the people. The collective bargaining agency supposed to stand up for the rights of the people is called the government. Or at least, that was the impression I got.
I think you will find if you look at the test cases that some of the worst atrocities in history were conducted under popular regiems. Stalinist Russia, Hitlers Germany, The Golden Hoarde. These were, with their people at least, pretty popular, for a time.
Governments do not exist to enforce morals. They exist to control society to the degree that it works from a pragmatic point of view. Murder, stealing, rape, these are all illegal because if they were not, the government would fail in it's objective of protecting the rights of its citizens. They are not illegal because they are immoral. They are illegal because they infringe upon one individuals basic rights.
Consider homosexuality. Should homosexual acts be illegal? Homosexual acts do no harm to those parties not involved. No ones basic rights are infrigned. The government has no business in the matter. Same goes for abortion, unless you believe that the fetus has rights, and that those rights are infringed by arborting it. Same goes for experimentation on fetuses.
However, if you are going make these arguements, then I for one would like to see a slightly better approach than "this inconsistent 2000 year old book told me so". The definition of what consitutes a human being is the last place where religion can get its grubby paws on the state and drag us back to theocracy.
We are tottering on the edge. If the Christians, Muslims, etc win, then we slide back to the dark ages. Or we can complete the work started in the Enlightenment.
Sure it is. This guy patented little more than automated copy and paste. He might geniunely think it is a valid invention but ignorance is no excuse. We really need to start punishing stupidity where we find it, otherwise these morons are going to take over more than they already have.
Maybe thats because with modern genetics evolution theory is little more than a very complicated branch of statistical mechanics. You wouldn't pick a fight with statistical mechanics would you?
You got the overrated mods because you failed to understand one of the tenets of liberal democracy. It is Morality that is being legislated because there are lots of things that are in peoples interests that we don't do. Ban smoking totally or instance could be seen as a moral issue. A Liberal Democracy (I'm European, Liberal over here doesn't mean left wing) is one in which the governments principle aims are protecting agreed upon rights. These are not based upon right or wrong, but on ensuring that certain actions are still possible after legislation. Morality, religion, what is best for the country, don't come into it. If there is a risk the country is going to be wiped out you still shouldn't legislated against that risk if the legislation contravene one of the basic rights of your citizens, unless to not legislate contravenes another greater right. Security, in essence the right to be safe in ones home, is a basic right. It has short term priority. If security is at stake the government can temporarily detail people, prevent the publication of documents, etc. However it cannot do so permanently and can only do so in response to a temporary crisis. This is reflected in governments cynical desire to call everything a war. Wars are a short term security threat, so you can restrict peoples freedoms 'temporarily' during them. But what about the never ending war on drugs, or the war on terror. The flamebait mod makes no sense, I don't think you were trying to be malicious, I just don't think you understand what a liberal democracy is.
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I'm not disagreeing with the fact that the ruling is based off bogus and ridiculous moral rights. I agree that the reason for the judgement, while within the laws of the land, is daft (not the judges fault, politicians fault).
My point is not that the directors should have won. My point is that these companies are illegally distributing. If they also try to pass the work off as original then they would infringe the moral rights of the directors because the attribution of the work would be flawed. What I believe they have the right (as in the right exists, this ruling makes it clear the right does not exist in law) to do is edit the films on behalf of the individual making the process, and then return to them a copy, along with any material pertaining to the copyrighted work so long as the work is not distributed.
I've have been trying to find the specifics of the case to see if the only claim the directors made was the one they made based moral rights or not. If they had lost on only that count then the GPL is fine. If however there were claims based on distribution rights, and those editing the movie had won, the GPL would be dead in the water.
And how would your model impact on the GPL?
No thats not the same. Did you even listen to what I was saying. The scenario you describe should be perfectly legit. I take a copy of Ubuntu to my mate who modifies it so that it does something I want, then gives me back every copy and I pay him. Neither of us distribute it, and there is no need to pass our modifications on. The GPL is fine.
Your analogy would be fine except that copyright is not physical property. You own your car and can do what you like with it without affecting distribution rights because there can only ever be one car like that.
I agree with most of your counter arguements in principle but that doesn't change the fact that if this ruling had gone against the movie studios then the GPL would be dead.
Kinda a technical point but this is actually slightly different. If the judge hadn't ruled the way he has, the GPL would be dead. Here is what I see as being the problem. This company is selling a derivative work. They are not modifying an existing work without distribution, they are selling a derivative. Sure, they require you to bring in an existing copy, but they do not use that copy, they give you a new one.
If they took that copy and modified it on behalf of the owner, and did not distribute the work, or if the person who bought the work did the same, then I think this should be counted as fair use. However, you have to hand over all copies of the work at the end, and if another client wants to job done, then you have to do the work over again.
Consider the following situation. I want to make a closed source version of Linux, so I ask that people bring me a copy of Ubuntu and then sell them my modified version. See the problem? If this ruling was allowed then close sourcing GPL code would be as easy as giving someone a copy of the code, asking them to give it back to you, then burning the CD.
The judge got it right in this case. You can modify works for your own use, and you can modify other works if you don't distribute, but you cant modify and distribute.
This isn't fair use because the company is illegally distributing the DVDs.
If this company had been allowed to continue then the GPL would be dead. I want to sell a version of Linux, I just ask my client to bring in a CD with Ubuntu on it, burn (literally) the CD and sell them my copy.
It is not fair use because this company is making money from derivative works by distributing them before the end of the copyright term.
I will now talk about what rights I think you have, not what rights you have under law. You have a right to make a derivative work and not distribute it. You have a right to pay someone else to make a derivative work and not distribute it. You do not have the right to make a derivative work and distribute it.
So if I make a custom modification for a company, and they pay me to. Thats fine so long as they keep all of the work that went into the modification and I don't copy the modification again for another client. If I did, then I would have to GPL the code (or rather, convince my previous employer to GPL the code).
By your standards then, every scientist should recieve compensation for their work. Your system will make a very small number of scientists very rich since basic priciples become 'property' just like any other sequence of 1's and 0's.
I'm interested where this inherent right to compensation comes from, and where it stops. No contract has been agreed between a ligitimate representative of the people and the artist agreeing the terms of their creation contract. If an artist was not comissioned to produce their work why should they have inherent right to compensation for it's distribution? If they do not want it distributed they can keep it secret. No inherent right of their is broken in my opinion. Copyright does however violate the inherent right to obtain access to cultural heritage, we accept that violating this right is okay, if only for a good reason. False economics is not a good reason to violate this right.
Why do you single out one group of tradesmen for special treatment, this hardly seems reasonable to me. I can create lots of jobs which would not exist without a law to keep them there, and make up inherent rights of compensation. However these jobs would be economically ridiculous.
I much prefer the justification of enhancing the public domain, otherwise you could just as easily argue that society should pay me a dollar a day for reading slashdot, as a slashdot reader I acumulate the opinions of geeks, this forms a real end product which people value because they read my comments and download them from the web.
I accept you may have the making of a coherent point, but your ideas of pre-existing 'ownership' rights of ideas run counter to the established reasons for copyright and patents. If I am to understand I will need more information on where you believe these rights come from, and how they are different from the other 'rights' I list above.
"they [Artists] should be free to decide how to distribute their art"
No, they are free to either not distribute their art, or distribute their art on societies terms. If they don't distribute their art, if they keep it secret then there is nothing anyone can do to them.
We encourage them to distribute their art and enhance the public domain by granting them copyrights. These are not rights that exist apriori to legislation, they are rights we made up to help enhance our cultural heritage. They are like the rights water companies get to pump water. They don't own the water, they just transport it for us. They are also like the broadcast rights that can be bought. They are not apriori pre-existing rights, they are just rights we made up.
As such, current legislation represents a poor bargain by society with artists and their representatives. In effect because one has a right to ones cultural heritage one is compelled to disobey the law and stand up for ones rights. The tempory made up rights of the copyright holder do not supercede indefinately the rights of society to access it's cultural heritage.
One is compelled to disobey in the sense of civil disobedience however, rather than in the sense of sneekily downloading Britney Spears latest tripe and the ignorantly feeling guilty for it.
Artists have no right to recompense for making something up. My job is to make stuff up. I have to convince someone to pay me to make stuff up every time I want to work. But I don't have a right to any of that money, I have to convince people that it is worth their money for me to make stuff up every time.
The copyright system needs to be rebalanced in order to meet it's primary objective, which is not reimbursing artists for their time, but enhancing the public domain. If artists cant handle working in a market environment and want monopoly protection then thats just too bad, large scale monopolies on a type of good don't work and that is what we have at the moment.
"Today my gf is a school teacher and rarely if ever do the parents ever discipline the kid."
Most of the stupid parents remember that the only way to survive in school was to pick on the other kids and misbehave. Teachers were for the most part incompetant and when they see a teacher, that is what they assume.
Most of the smart kids remember that teachers offered no help to the smart kids when they were picked on/attacked and that the only way to survive was to use whatever means necessary to defend themselves.
School is a hellish war zone. Teachers have always done nothing to correct that and parents know it. It's hardly surprising that teachers are offered no backup when parents remember nearly every time they were punished in school it should have been the other guy.
"Most homeless people aren't there by choice and there are lots of folks who are just 1 pay check away from joining them, spare a thought when your walking around town and if you have some change give generously."
I'm certain they did not conciously choose a drug addiction, or to become mentally ill, but you are not fixing the problem by giving these people money. I'm from Europe so I don't know if things are different in the US, but most of the people on the street here are not using the money you give them to buy food.
Most of them are not bad people either. They do very much need help. But by giving them money / things they can trade for money you are making the situation worse. Local government should have provisions for dealing with the mentally ill and those with a drug addiction problem (which is the majority of people on the street) that keeps them off the street and away from drugs. And they need to be forced to accept help, because many wont take it willingly.
Put another way, those of you who give money to a homeless person, either because it makes you feel less guilty about their predicament or because you believe you are doing a nobel deed are slowly killing them.
Now I know some of you will say "if someone doesn't give them money then they will get their money for heroine from somewhere". Yes, they will. See my above comment about keeping them off the streets and away from drugs.
If you really cared about helping people instead of making yourself feel better, then you would either give money to charities that have a track record of getting people off the streets (although even then you are making being on the streets 'easy' and will encourage more people to end up that way), or you would ask that government take some more out of your pay packet and provide these people with the help they need and to support those on low income with a job, so that market forces are a little better controlled and poverty is better managed. You certainly wouldn't give them the money to buy their next beer with.
Unless such a universe is impossible. How something is metaphysically impossible though, I don't know. One might argue that a universe with free will must be evil, and that a universe without free will is evil in and of itself. Therefore God is force to make a universe containing some evil. However the idea that God has no choice but to create a universe with evil in it does take some of the lustre off said diety.
While I agree string theory lacks predictive power, many people working on it are looking for a physical principle that will make it predictive. There are plenty of people working on GUTs, discrete symmetries, Alternative routes to Quantum Gravity, etc.
However, while a theorists primary job is to create a predictive theory, they have other jobs as well. The advancement of mathematics (pure as well as applied) for one. String theory has made many contributions to our understanding of geometry, which a physicists would spot and a mathematician would have a harder time with (because the two disciplines think very differently for all their similarities).
String theory has problems, big problems, and I feel we have lots our way a bit. I would suggest more time should be focused on understanding the basics of string theory, things like low dimensional models and compatible principles, and less time dedicated to scouring the landscape for a theory that really is not going to be that useful anyway (after all, we been scouring the landscape for some time now and found countless number of 'wrong' ground state zero modes).
Of course the cheat in string theory comes in here, because there are an awful lot of ground states. One might in fact suggest that with all the parameters one has, one could fit any set of physical results to string theory, if one is prepared to put to one side the dynamic generation geometry and fit the background. This is of course the problem with string theory, what are the most likely ground states for the universe the end up in given a specific value of the string tenion.
"The point here is that boycotts ("voting with your dollars") aren't effective because they skew the "voting" in favor of those with more money."
No, that precisely wasn't the point I was making. The point I was making is that the RIAA should have precisely no say on this issue. They get what they are told and lump it. My point was that the implication here in the submission (which the submitter was also argueing against) was that boycotts should be what we use to protect citizens rights to the cultural heritage of humanity. My point was that if we use boycott tactics alone, then the RIAA is getting way more say than they are entitled too.
Whenever DRM comes up you get a small number of people who say that DRM is fine so long as it isn't mandated by government. Well I'm argueing that isn't the case because you can prevent people from accessing content which, when it enters the public domain, they are entitled to. If they wish to publish under the protects afforded them by copyright, then they should be required to ensure that the material is accessible to the public once it enters the public domain because the only reason they have that protection is to encourage the enhancement of the public domain.
If you believe this is a non-sequitor I'd suggest that the line of logic goes as follows. Copyright exists to enhance the public domain. DRM stops works entering the public domain effectively granting publishers perpetual copyright. Therefore DRM violates the spirit in which the copyright was granted. If it were down to me then I would remove the copyright on every piece of work that has been copy protected by the copyright owner or their official representatives under Article I of the constitution, unless the owner agreed to release unencumbered copies.
I think you missed the point. The parent suggested we use a boycott to protect ourselves from DRM. However DRM is an infringement of citizens right to access the cultural heritage of humanity. I was pointing out that if we decide to fight this one using dollars as votes then the RIAA, who as a collective organisation and not an individual should have precisely no say on a rights issue has billions of dollars (votes), while the average Armerican has a few tens of thousands of dollars (votes). That system is highly unfair since as this is a rights issue the people should be the ones to decide, given suitable moderation by a constrained government which errs on the side of protecting rights over following the will of the people.
You got me, I made a slip. You do have a right to keep secret material. The incentive is pragmatically for publication of material.
They are entitled to zero votes since this is a rights issue and they are not an individual. If the system we are going to employ gives them more than zero votes, and in fact will always give them more votes than an individual, I would suggest that is a major flaw in the system.
I think you missed the point. If we are going to rely solely on economics to prevent our rights being taken away, then those labels attached to the RIAA have far more clout than an individual American citizen. Given that those labels are not people, they should have zero say on rights issues. To suggest boycott is the solution is like suggesting not making tea is the solution to taxation without represntation. The solution is a change of government, to one which is concerned primarily with peoples rights. People have a right to acess the cultural heritage of humanity.
Yeah, but I'm under no dillusion. I'm leaving Europe as soon as I can for Canada, where thanks to Quebec large amounts of power are still held at local level. There is at least a hope of changing things in Canada for the better without having to shoot virtually every politician. I'm afraid I just don't feel up to a mass killing of people who have basically done nothing wrong except be delluded by the system.
I don't know what you mean by the government is the people. The government is China is very much not the people. The government in Iran as well.
The government should be a manifestation of the peoples collective will to protect their rights, and ensure compliance with their responsibilities. The government is responsible for protecting peoples rights. When they fail it is the responsibility of the people to protect their rights by changing the government. Your government does not protect the rights of the people.
"And really, I'm not sure I like a world were you have the "right" to content that I produce."
So you believe that people do not have a right to the cultural heritage of humanity? Knowledge and information are not property. I would claim that considering them as such is an odd position to take. Here is the deal. You produce content, society agrees to give you certain, limited temporary rights as an incentive. Don't like it? Don't create. At least that used to be the deal.
If we go down the route of dollars as votes to protect rights (access to cultural heritage is a right), then your average American has 37,000 votes a year and the multimedia industry has billions. There is a body which is supposed to protect our rights, it's called the government. But it isn't doing it's job so I guess you have to use what means are necessary to protect them. Members of the RIAA have a monopoly over the recent cultural heritage of the United States, which is an infringement of the rights of its citizens. If your government is not going to do anything about it, then you are obliged to take action. That action however, isn't to surrender further rights by moving to a one dollar one vote system (which is basically what you have now).
Given the history of your country I really do wonder why it is more American politicians aren't getting shot over the numerous rights issues they are ignoring. Heck when you were a colony of my country you lot knew what to do when oppressive leaders took away your rights.
"Everyone can vote with their dollars, but that doesn't tell the RIAA why they aren't getting the dollars."
I do love this idea. Has any one else noticed that if we reduce ourselves to voting with our dollars, then ordinary people get about 37,000 votes a year if they are lucky, while Corporations and the super rich get millions or billions of votes?
Boycotts may or may not work, but they should not be the primary means of collective bargaining for the people. The collective bargaining agency supposed to stand up for the rights of the people is called the government. Or at least, that was the impression I got.
I think you will find if you look at the test cases that some of the worst atrocities in history were conducted under popular regiems. Stalinist Russia, Hitlers Germany, The Golden Hoarde. These were, with their people at least, pretty popular, for a time.
Governments do not exist to enforce morals. They exist to control society to the degree that it works from a pragmatic point of view. Murder, stealing, rape, these are all illegal because if they were not, the government would fail in it's objective of protecting the rights of its citizens. They are not illegal because they are immoral. They are illegal because they infringe upon one individuals basic rights.
Consider homosexuality. Should homosexual acts be illegal? Homosexual acts do no harm to those parties not involved. No ones basic rights are infrigned. The government has no business in the matter. Same goes for abortion, unless you believe that the fetus has rights, and that those rights are infringed by arborting it. Same goes for experimentation on fetuses.
However, if you are going make these arguements, then I for one would like to see a slightly better approach than "this inconsistent 2000 year old book told me so". The definition of what consitutes a human being is the last place where religion can get its grubby paws on the state and drag us back to theocracy.
We are tottering on the edge. If the Christians, Muslims, etc win, then we slide back to the dark ages. Or we can complete the work started in the Enlightenment.
Sure it is. This guy patented little more than automated copy and paste. He might geniunely think it is a valid invention but ignorance is no excuse. We really need to start punishing stupidity where we find it, otherwise these morons are going to take over more than they already have.
Maybe thats because with modern genetics evolution theory is little more than a very complicated branch of statistical mechanics. You wouldn't pick a fight with statistical mechanics would you?
You got the overrated mods because you failed to understand one of the tenets of liberal democracy. It is Morality that is being legislated because there are lots of things that are in peoples interests that we don't do. Ban smoking totally or instance could be seen as a moral issue.
A Liberal Democracy (I'm European, Liberal over here doesn't mean left wing) is one in which the governments principle aims are protecting agreed upon rights. These are not based upon right or wrong, but on ensuring that certain actions are still possible after legislation.
Morality, religion, what is best for the country, don't come into it. If there is a risk the country is going to be wiped out you still shouldn't legislated against that risk if the legislation contravene one of the basic rights of your citizens, unless to not legislate contravenes another greater right.
Security, in essence the right to be safe in ones home, is a basic right. It has short term priority. If security is at stake the government can temporarily detail people, prevent the publication of documents, etc. However it cannot do so permanently and can only do so in response to a temporary crisis.
This is reflected in governments cynical desire to call everything a war. Wars are a short term security threat, so you can restrict peoples freedoms 'temporarily' during them. But what about the never ending war on drugs, or the war on terror.
The flamebait mod makes no sense, I don't think you were trying to be malicious, I just don't think you understand what a liberal democracy is.